The Athletics' Vegas debut felt a lot like West Sacramento with extra glitz

The inaugural but unofficial unveiling of the Las Vegas Athletics became, perhaps predictably, a theater of the absurd. Popups went up into the air and disappeared into the night. Ground balls popped off the ground without warning and bounded over infielders' heads. The A's traded a minor league home stadium in West Sacramento, California, for a minor league home stadium in the wind-swept desert and produced Major League Baseball as it was never intended.

It was definitely a spectacle. The A's spared no hype in introducing themselves to the city they expect to join for Opening Day 2028. There was a Backstreet Boy (Nick Carter) throwing out the first pitch and a fighter jet flyover and a tube in the visiting dugout that spewed green smoke into the air. They brought boxing ring announcer Bruce Buffer out to the pitcher's mound to announce the starting lineup, and it's safe to say you've never heard someone take longer to belt out the names of nine hitters and a starting pitcher.

Once the game started, no ground ball was routine, and no fly ball was lazy. Infielders had two jobs: 1) Try to predict the ball's unpredictable path, and 2) watch their teeth. When I asked A's shortstop Alika Williams to describe the difference between pavement and the infield at Las Vegas Stadium, he gave it almost no thought before saying, "Not much." ERAs swelled like poison toads -- there were 11 homers and 29 runs. Brewers starter Kyle Harrison, one of the best starters in baseball, gave up eight earned runs in 2 innings; his ERA went from 1.57 to 2.72. A's backup catcher Jonah Heim tied the score at 14 with two outs in the ninth on a ball that left his bat at 95 mph at a preposterous 48-degree launch angle.

It was, in the best way possible, a travesty to the game. Baseball in this ballpark needs to call a cab. Brewers left-handed hitters were laughing during batting practice as they watched easy swings produce fly balls that landed halfway up the berm beyond right field. "You know going in it's an offensive ballpark," A's manager Mark Kotsay said, and it was unclear whether he was aware of the double meaning.

The A's are playing six games in Las Vegas this week, and they're selling 2028 hard, sending players -- and Stomper, always Stomper -- out to volunteer at a local food bank and make appearances at summer camps and libraries. At 3:30 p.m. Monday, a local TV reporter walked around holding a Vegas A's giveaway T-shirt, with VEGAS and No. 28 on the back. He did his live shot while navigating his way around 60 boxes of those T-shirts that sat on the concourse just inside the main gate. There were plastic wristbands blinking green and gold on every seat.

"This feels like a trial run, in a way," A's rookie outfielder Henry Bolte said. "It's a promising thing to look forward to."

A's owner John Fisher, who maintained a private persona while the team was in Oakland (partly out of preference in the years before the move was announced, partly out of necessity since), was on the field before the game shaking hands and slapping backs. He watched the game with team executives and investors from the last suite down the left-field line. He sang the national anthem -- even yelling "Knights" at the appropriate time like a true Las Vegan -- and ate a hot dog and drank a beer. When amusement became farce and "Oh What a Night" was the between inning music, Fisher stood and sang long after the music ended. He was the happiest man in the ballpark.

Fisher's enthusiasm is rooted about 20 miles down the road, at the intersection of Tropicana Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard, where his $2 billion futuristic ballpark is beginning to Doppler into view. This driest of dry runs has afforded Fisher the opportunity to show off the progress of the ballpark to investors and media members and fans. Thirty minutes before first pitch Monday, the fans were asked to direct their attention to the big screen in left-center, where the live cam from the ballpark site ran for more than five minutes. It's like seeing a trailer for a movie that's still holding casting calls.

On Tuesday afternoon, the A's themselves took a tour.

Rookie starting pitcher Gage Jump, who had been pitching for the Triple-A Las Vegas Aviators until two weeks ago, said he hadn't seen the site before Tuesday because "I stay away from the Strip." But Tuesday, after the officially sanctioned and chaperoned team tour, Jump gushed.

"It was a lot cooler than I could have pictured," he said.

There will be a massive clear wall from (roughly) left-center to right-center made of something called cable-net glass, which comes in eight-foot squares and eliminates the need for visible frames. Jump said he and his teammates "nerded out" about the player-performance center, which includes recovery rooms with three hydro pools. It will be the smallest permanent ballpark in MLB, with 30,000 seats and room for 3,000 standing-room only fans, which Jump says is "going to feel very packed, which is what I like. I think it can give you a little more adrenaline. I'm very anxious about it, and eager to see it when it's done, and hope I get to play in it someday."

Other than the hype -- and the funhouse mirror baseball in the opening game -- so far this series has pretty much looked like a big league game in a minor league ballpark, which means it was pretty much like every A's home game since the beginning of last season, down to the enthusiasm from the fans of the visiting team. The great Vegas preview felt a lot like West Sacramento with an extra scoop of glitz.

The weather behaved itself for the first two nights. The wind blew steadily out to right-center, but the temperatures hung out in the low 90s. That figures to change. For the three-game series against theColorado Rockies, AccuWeather predicts: 107 Friday, 108 Saturday and 109 Sunday.

Sunday, for planning purposes, is a day game.