Play Ball! Sacramento’s rich baseball history

In late May, Sacramento officially announced its bid for Major League Baseball (MLB) expansion, hoping to land a team of its own when the league expands from 30 to 32 teams in 2029.

At the press conference, Mayor Kevin McCarty said people were gathered not only to launch their campaign for MLB expansion officially, but also to celebrate “175 years of love affair for baseball” in Sacramento.

If you’re a baseball savant, you may know the history of baseball in the city, but if you’re not familiar, the Sacramento History Museum has you covered with the latest exhibit — Play Ball! Sacramento in the National Pastime. 

Through 175 years of baseball, the city has seen numerous teams, different stadiums and major league baseball games played in Sacramento. The exhibit showcases different photos, uniforms, videos, equipment and other memorabilia on the third floor of the history museum.

Shawn Turner, the museum's photocopier and magician, said he’s impressed with how deep the history is in Sacramento, which goes all the way back to the gold rush era.

“It's hard to apply empirical numbers to how big it is, but the anecdotal evidence is just unending, just so many connections you can make here,” Turner said. “So, that's what I love, is that people can come to the exhibit and make their own connections to players they knew or heard about, and they can talk to their generation of players.”

The exhibit will be running from now until the end of October when the baseball season ends. The Sacramento history museum is open 7-days-a-week from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Play Ball! Sacramento in the National Pastime exhibit will run until the end of October when the baseball season ends.Keyshawn Davis/CapRadio

Exhibit highlights

Turner highlighted what was known as the first game that took place in Sacramento in 1860 at a place called "Ferguson Field” near R Street.

One of the walls in the museum shows that MLB Legend Babe Ruth played two games in Sacramento.

“A big part of Sacramento baseball was a Sacramento Winter League, and it wasn't the only winter league, but they did play from November through February,” Turner said as he pointed toward a wall with historical facts.

He continued, “this is kind of the teaser wall, just kind of introducing people and pointing to the fact that baseball was big enough that Babe Ruth showed up twice to play barnstorming [exhibition] games, and the second time he showed up with Lou Gehrig, his Yankee teammate.”

Also highlighted in the museum is Sacramento’s former minor baseball teams which include the Salons, Senators, and a team that used to play in Oak Park called the Gilt Edge, which was named after beer brewed by the Buffalo Brewing Company, according to Turner. The two current  Sacramento teams River Cats and the Athletics are also mentioned.

Many of those teams played at a stadium that used to be located on 11th and Y street of Sacramento, which today is known as Riverside and Broadway.

“It started out as Buffalo Park, then Moering Field, then Cardinal Field, then Doubleday Field briefly, and then finished as Edmonds Field, and now it's where there's a Target store,” he said.  “There's a plaque in the parking lot designated, just commemorating the field.”

The last game played at Edmonds Field in Sacramento was an exhibition game between the San Francisco Giants against the Cleveland Indians, now the Guardians, in 1964 where Hall-of-Famers Willie Mays and Willie McCovey hit back-o-back home runs.

“Starting at shortstop for the Cleveland Indians was Woody Held, who, when he was 11, he was a bat boy for the Sacramento Solons,” Turner said. 

The field was demolished a week later, according to Turner.

Target on Broadway and Riverside used to be a baseball stadiums where many minor league Sacramento teams used to play.Keyshawn Davis/CapRadio

Another feature in the exhibit is a wall commemorating all of the baseball legends from the Sacramento area including baseball agent Scott Boras from Elk Grove, current Giants pitcher Logan Webb from Rocklin, first-ever woman coach in MLB Alyssa Nakken from Woodland and many more.

Major League town?

Ken Suratt is a resident from Boston who is traveling the U.S. to watch every major league baseball team. He recently traveled to Sacramento to watch the Athletics play against the New York Yankees.

Suratt loved visiting the exhibit and believes Sacramento is a good baseball city.

“I just like the people who are really nice,” Suratt said. “I didn't know the history until I actually started looking up here, and that just made me more of a fan of Sacramento.”

Ken Suratt visited the Sacramento History Musuem on Friday, June 5, 2026. He was impressed by Sacramento's rich baseball history.Keyshawn Davis/CapRadio

Sacramento History Museum's social media manager Jared Jones said he supports the city getting a MLB team. He believes the exhibit is attracting more visitors. 

“I think this is helping to bring tourists to our city, and it's bringing people that are more interested in what we have to offer here in Sacramento,” Jones said. “Having an exhibit like our Play Ball! Sacramento in the National Pastime is so timely as well, because there's so much baseball history in Sacramento, that if we have it and having an expansion team could only mean even bigger things for Sacramento.”

If Sacramento were to be awarded an expansion team, Jones believes the team should be named after something related to the Gold Rush.

“Sacramento grew as the closest major city to the gold fields,” he said. “It could be the Argonauts… it could be, the Miners or anything like that would be great.”

Turner on the other hand would love for Sacramento to bring the Salons back, but has other names in mind. He was still upset that they didn’t go with his names for the River Cats name contest in 2000 when the team moved to the city.

“I have two answers — one was the Robber Barons and the other was the Americans because the team that was coming down was the Vancouver Canadians,” Turner said. “If you call this team the Sacramento Americans, you'd be doing homage to both rivers, and so those are my ideas, and they came up with the River Cats, and I don't know what a River Cat is.”