It’s the Tower Bridge, which spans the Sacramento River, and it’s impossible for fans watching A’s games to miss.
If you’ve watched the Athletics play at Sutter Health Park, you’ve undoubtedly seen the bridge in the distance beyond the right field fence. In person, it’s visible from several areas around the ballpark. Overhead footage on TV broadcasts frequently airs shots that show it in the distance.
The bridge opened in 1935 and has been on the National Register of Historic Places for more than 40 years. You can turn to Wikipedia to learn more about this structure, but in a baseball context, there are a few noteworthy things that are interesting to know.
The A’s wear it on their sleeves
The Tower Bridge is important enough to Sac Town that it has earned a spot on the A’s uniform. In January, the franchise unveiled a specially designed patch that appears on the right sleeve of the A’s jersey. The 2.8-by-4.25-inch patch depicts the bridge above a scripted rendering of “Sacramento.” It appears on all four of the team’s jerseys — the home white, the road gray, and the two alternates, gold and green. The use of green and gold blends well with the club’s colors, and the vertical shape of the badge makes it stand out on the sleeve. (In today’s world of sleeve patch sponsorships, it’s nice to see a patch that isn’t tied to a corporation.)
Although some detractors have grumbled online that it replaces the team’s iconic and popular elephant patch, the bridge patch seems to have been well received overall. So much so that T-shirts with a large rendering of the patch are available for sale online and at the ballpark. Fans can even buy the patch itself to affix to their A’s jersey, should they wish. If the team were staying in Sacramento long term, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the bridge incorporated into a City Connect design.
Without getting too deep into the weeds, tributes to bridges have appeared in several City Connect designs. San Francisco’s first City Connect jersey featured the Golden Gate Bridge on its sleeves. Pittsburgh’s design features the texture of the Clemente Bridge within the “PGH” letters. Finally, New York City’s Queensboro Bridge appears on the New York Mets City Connect caps.
It’s lit up for A’s games
Its gold appearance seems to make the Tower Bridge a good visual fit for the Athletics, but the city takes things a step further for certain ballgames. On special occasions, the bridge is illuminated with green lights that cast a stylish glow on the towers and steel girders. The gold-and-green scheme is visible from the ballpark, particularly from the upper seats along the third base side. The A’s aren’t the only baseball club to which the bridge pays tribute. For select River Cats games, the bridge is lit in red to tie in with the MiLB team’s primary color. Beyond baseball, the bridge has occasionally been lit in purple to honor Sacramento’s NBA team, the Kings, who play just across the bridge from Sutter Health Park.
The Tower Bridge is one of a handful of prominent city structures that is lit up to recognize the local MLB team. New York’s Empire State Building periodically appears awash in colors that honor the Mets and Yankees; Toronto’s CN Tower lights up to celebrate the Blue Jays; and Cleveland’s Terminal Tower often glows in the colors of the Guardians, to name a few.
It’s not as close as the Clemente Bridge
When baseball fans think about a bridge that is visible from a ballpark, they undoubtedly picture the iconic Roberto Clemente Bridge, which is a key part of the backdrop at Pittsburgh’s PNC Park. From some angles, the Tower Bridge looks considerably closer to Sutter Health Park than the Clemente Bridge looks to PNC Park — but this isn’t actually the case. I had some fun with the Measurement Tool on Google Maps and learned the following. The entrance to the Tower Bridge sits about 1,270 feet from Sutter Health Park’s home plate, or about 900 feet from the ballpark’s outfield fence. In contrast, the entrance to the Clemente Bridge is only about 685 feet from home plate at PNC Park, or about 280 feet from the outfield fence.
Part of the illusion that Sacramento’s bridge appears so close to the ballpark is that it’s considerably taller than its Pittsburgh counterpart. At 78 feet tall, the Clemente Bridge boasts less than half the height of the Tower Bridge. Another key difference between the two bridges — at least for baseball fans? While the Clemente Bridge is closed to vehicles before and during games, the Tower Bridge doesn’t close. Fans, however, can use the bridge’s two sidewalks to walk to and from the ballpark.
You must be logged in to post a comment.