Despite comments suggesting the Oakland Athletics would be known only as “The Athletics” or “The A’s” when they move to Sacramento next season, the team appears to be considering other, more traditional options.
Public records available from the United States Patent and Trademark Office show the Oakland Athletics trademarked two new names this past Thursday, the “Sacramento Athletics” and the “Sacramento A’s.”
Does this mean they’ll use that name officially during the brief few years they’ll spend in California’s capital? No, not at all.
Let’s assume the club is dead set on using “The Athletics” in 2025. Why would they then trademark a name they’ll never use? Well, it’d protect themselves and the league from someone else scooping up the name and doing whatever they want with it. This also allows them to go forward with that name (legally, anyway) should they change their mind closer to the season.
I still think the club should use a geographic identifier rather than being locationless once the shift happens. Sacramento Athletics, California Athletics, or even remaining as the Oakland Athletics are all better options than playing without a market attached to them, in my opinion… but then again, I don’t live anywhere near the area, so what does it matter what I think?
LINK: Oakland Athletics complete logo and uniform history
The Athletics will wrap up their fifty-seven seasons of playing in Oakland at the end of the current 2024 Major League Baseball season. They will then move about 75 minutes northeast to their new home in Sacramento, where they’ll play at Sutter Health Park, currently home to the Triple-A River Cats, for the 2025 through 2027 seasons. In 2028, if the new stadium construction goes according to plan, the Athletics will move to Las Vegas, Nevada, where we assume they’ll play as the Las Vegas Athletics from that point forward.
Once the A’s complete their shifts to Sacramento and Las Vegas, the franchise will have relocated four times throughout its history—a record for a Major League franchise. The club began in the American League’s first season in 1901 as the Philadelphia Athletics. They headed west in 1955 and continued on as the Kansas City Athletics until moving to Oakland in 1968, Sacramento in 2025, and finally(?) Las Vegas in 2028.
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