The Sacramento A’s first home game was an 18-3 blowout loss, but still worse, the radio broadcast conked out seven times, scoreboards went out, there was a drone delay, and chants of “Sell the Team!” rocked the new ballpark Sutter Health Park.

The now-Sacramento A’s (and sorry A’s ownership, they’re playing in Sacramento and that’s what we’ll call them) had their home opener at their new Sactown ballpark Sutter Health Park on Monday. And while they had a “sellout” crowd, there are only 12,000 seats in that rinkydink bush-league park, so this was hardly an accomplishment.

Moreover, the A’s got annihilated 18-3 by the Chicago Cubs, so that crowd was not there for very long. And by the time the game hit the sixth inning, with the score 16-3 and Sacramento fans bolting for the exits, the old familiar chants of “Sell the team!” cascaded through the tiny park.

The marathon of mortifying embarrassments started well before Monday’s first pitch. As the A’s held their introductory press conference early in the day, reporters noticed that the press facility was not in the ballpark. Instead, the press conference facility was this Fyre Festival-looking Tuff Shed outside the stadium.

The stadium itself did not appear to be up to par either. When the Cubs’ Dansby Swanson hit a first-inning home run (making the score 4-0 right off the bat), the park’s scoreboards went completely dark, as seen above.

The biggest muck-up may have been the fact that the radio broadcast from Sacramento crapped out not once, not twice, but seven times over the course of the game. The sports blog Awful Announcing details each of these seven technical difficulties, including one in which announcer Ken Korach tried to say "We apologize for the technical issues,” but the broadcast cut out again before he could finish saying the word “issues.”

And with the game completely out of hand at 16-3 in the seventh inning, umpires had to stop play for a drone delay, because someone flew a drone over the field during play.

How does one sneak a drone into a Major League Baseball game? That’s a question that A’s and Sutter Health Park officials have got to be asking themselves right now.

So all in all, an absolutely humiliating first night of Major League Baseball in Sacramento, for both the city and the A’s organization. The temptation is to say that it can only get better from here. But it can indeed get much worse. After all, we haven’t even gotten to the part of the season where 110-degree temperatures and hot turf start causing injuries, or worse, to fans and players.

Related: Oakland A’s Mistakenly Print Up “A’ss” Hat, Quickly Remove It, Now It’s Selling for $5,000 on eBay [SFist]

Image: SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA - MARCH 31: Fans wait to enter Sutter Health Park for the Athletics game against the Chicago Cubs on March 31, 2025 in Sacramento, California. Tonight is the first game the Athletics will play at Sutter Health Park. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)