The Oakland Athletics are no longer. The club officially announced today that they are now known simply as Athletics.
The new location-less name will stick for as long as the team plays in Sacramento, which looks like it will be for the next three seasons before they move to Las Vegas, where *I assume* they’ll be known as the Las Vegas Athletics.
Once they take the field, this will be the first time in North America’s “Big Four” major sports leagues that a team has officially played a game without a location name in 80 years. The closest we saw to this in recent times was when the Anaheim Angels became the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and spent the next decade referring to themselves only as the Angels in just about everything aside from their preferred abbreviation, “LAA.”
There’s really no obvious reason for the Athletics to go this route. The team already owns the trademarks for both Sacramento Athletics and Sacramento A’s. They could’ve proceeded just as the Angels did previously and reserved the use of Sacramento for standings and scoreboards while sticking to “Athletics” on their uniforms and all official releases.
Along with the official name change came the official primary logo the Athletics will use while playing in Sacramento. There’s no surprise here; they’ll use just the “A’s” portion of Oakland’s logo, removing the green circle and the team name.
Club officials had previously revealed the team’s uniforms would remain largely the same when they shifted to Sacramento, with all the “Oakland” logos replaced with “Athletics.” This would mean changes only to their road greys and Kelly green alternate jerseys.
According to a post from @EvanDrellich on Twitter, the Athletics request the following: The club should be referred to only as “Athletics,” with the shorthand “A’s” allowed only after they’ve already been called Athletics. The team abbreviation will now be “ATH,” so you’ll see this on the TV scoreboards instead of “OAK” going forward. The A’s also do *not* play in Sacramento (my bad); they play in *West* Sacramento (maybe this is why they didn’t go with Sacramento Athletics?). They also mentioned the change, as I discussed earlier, to their primary logo.
The name change has already been reflected in the club’s online presence. The team is now listed second alphabetically between Arizona and Atlanta, appearing only as “Athletics” on MLB.com’s team selection list as well as their online shop at MLBShop.com. The team’s official Twitter and Instagram accounts also have removed all references to Oakland.
