LAS VEGAS — Daniel Mendez strolled into the dim bar Saturday in a Dodgers cap and crisp, white Clayton Kershaw jersey. The same necklace Mookie Betts wears — the one with a bat and baseball on a black string — hung around his neck. He was a few minutes late for the start of the Dodgers’ postseason opener against the Arizona Diamondbacks. But what could happen in just a few minutes? A lot, it turns out.
“What?! How?! Thirty-three pitches?!” Mendez yelled, stupefied. “How did that happen?!”
A staggering scene was unfolding on the televisions around him at La Catrina Bar and Grill: Kershaw was crumbling in the first inning of Game 1 of the National League Division Series, adding to his head-scratching list of high-profile postseason fiascoes. The future Hall of Famer was abruptly pulled after surrendering six runs, throwing 35 pitches, and recording just one out in the Dodgers’ 11-2 loss.
Dodger Stadium was left in a stunned silence. Three hundred miles away, Mendez and his group of friends couldn’t believe it either.
“No way, Kershaw,” he said. “It breaks my heart.”
The disappointment extended to fans in places far and wide beyond Los Angeles. The Dodgers are more than a flagship Major League Baseball franchise. They are a lifestyle brand. They have fans, casual and die-hard, seemingly everywhere. But there is perhaps no more loyal enclave outside Southern California than the Las Vegas metropolitan area, where an exodus of Angelenos over the decades has made the booming big town feel more and more like a Los Angeles suburb.
And in the near future — when exactly remains unclear — the Oakland Athletics are poised to move into this unofficial Dodgers market where their fan base will pale in comparison.
“If you did a research study, you would find that the Dodgers are by far the most popular team in Vegas,” Jimmy Kimmel told The Times in a phone interview. “And I think it’s gonna take the A’s a long time to change that.”
Kimmel is perhaps the most famous Las Vegas Dodgers fan. The late-night talk show host was 9 when his family moved there from Brooklyn, where his father was a Dodgers fan before the franchise relocated across the country. Kimmel said he was initially a New York Mets fan, but since only Dodgers games were broadcast locally on TV and the radio, he switched allegiances.
“So I became a Dodgers fan,” Kimmel said, “because that’s what we did in Las Vegas.”
Long a forbidden market for major sports leagues, Las Vegas has become a coveted market thanks to gambling’s emergence from the shadows to the mainstream. The NHL’s Golden Knights broke the ice as an expansion team in 2017. The WNBA’s Aces, formally the San Antonio Stars, surfaced in 2018. The NFL’s Raiders followed, moving from Oakland in 2020.
All three have been a success. The Golden Knights reached the Stanley Cup Final in their inaugural season, won the championship last season and quickly have built a rabid fan base where hockey previously was an afterthought for most residents. The Aces have captured a following with a super team that hosted Game 1 of the WNBA Finals on Sunday. The Raiders, an iconic brand with ties to both Los Angeles and Oakland, benefit from unwavering support wherever they play.
As for baseball, Las Vegas has become a hotbed with an influx of natives, headlined by Bryce Harper, reaching the majors in recent years. The Las Vegas Aviators, the Athletics’ triple-A club, have been one of the biggest draws in the minors since opening their new ballpark in 2019. Last season, the affiliate led the Pacific Coast League in attendance. This year, their 11th sold-out game of the season came on July 4 in 114-degree heat.
The Athletics, however, would face unique challenges starting with the fact that there’s already a clear top MLB team in the market.
With the Dodgers in need of a big pitching performance on Monday against Arizona in the NLDS, they will ask Miller to continue his stellar season.
Las Vegas has for decades been considered part of the Dodgers’ local media market.
Games were carried on the radio in Las Vegas going back to the 1960s, making Vin Scully part of the summer soundtrack there too. The club currently doesn’t have a radio affiliate in the market, but one isn’t needed to listen to games on a smartphone.
In 2020, after a seven-year stalemate, DirecTV finally started carrying SportsNet LA, the Dodgers’ television home, putting games back on television for Las Vegas customers. Since Spectrum isn’t available in Las Vegas, Dodgers fans had been boxed out of legally watching their team on most nights during the regular season.
“It was rough for a little while there,” said Emmir Surur, a lifelong Dodgers fan originally from Palmdale. “We didn’t have a way of getting the game unless it was nationally televised.”
Surur is an example of the other factor strengthening the connection between Las Vegas and the Dodgers: migration.
Shelly Rieckmann’s husband moved to Las Vegas when he was 8 years old. He took his Dodgers fandom with him and passed it along to his children. Their 17-year-old son Jackson said he’ll never stop rooting for the Dodgers.
“We’ve gotten up in the morning, driven straight to Dodger Stadium, watched a game and come home,” Shelly Rieckmann said.
Brian Wedewer relocated to Las Vegas from Valencia as an adult in 1994 after the Northridge earthquake. Nowadays, Wedewer, a Dodgers fan, is Orel Hershiser’s best friend, business partner and next-door neighbor. As a broker spokesperson in real estate, he has observed firsthand thousands of Southern Californians moving into the region annually.
“I’d say if the A’s get here, in a lot of ways there probably will be more people excited that the Dodgers come to play here than the fact that the A’s are here,” Wedewer said. “It’ll do well, but we’re not super off the wall, like, ‘Oh my God, the A’s are coming.’”
Evidence of the Dodgers’ standing in the market is apparent at the Fashion Show mall on the Las Vegas Strip. Up on the second floor, in front of Dick’s Sporting Goods, is one of two Dodgers Clubhouse stores located outside Southern California. The other one is in Honolulu.
This one opened a year ago after some prodding from Franklyn McKesson, the store manager, who saw an opportunity after moving to Las Vegas from Los Angeles a year and a half ago.
“When the A’s come here, you’re not going to switch from Dodgers to A’s,” McKesson, 42, said. “It’s just not a thing. I think people underestimated how many former Californians are actually here in Vegas. It’ll be decades before the A’s can actually do what the Dodgers are doing here.”
AJ Dela Llana, a former assistant manager at the store, spent the first year of his life in Downey before his family moved to Las Vegas.
“There’s a huge presence of Dodger blue in this city,” Dela Llana said. “And when-slash-if the Oakland A’s relocate here, when the Dodgers come to Vegas, it’s going to be almost all Dodger blue in that stadium.”
One of the few people in the Athletics’ green and yellow — should the franchise not rebrand — could be Kevin Hernández. On Saturday, the A’s fan quietly watched the Dodgers fall apart with a beer mug in front of him at La Catrina. He had no rooting interest. His team was eliminated from playoff contention a while ago.
The Athletics finished a tumultuous season featuring reverse boycotts, nightly “Sell The Team” chants, and dismal play with a 50-112 record — worst in the majors. And yet Hernández, who moved to Las Vegas from the Bay Area six years ago, was at the bar Saturday wearing an A’s fitted cap and a No. 15 Ryan Sweeney A’s shirsey.
The Dodgers are stuck with using a diminished Clayton Kershaw in the playoffs after failing to get a workhorse pitcher this season.
“When I first got here,” Hernández said, “I met a lot of Dodger fans and they were like, ‘You’re like the first A’s fan I’ve ever met. I’ve never met an A’s fan.’”
Hernández attended an Athletics spring training game in Las Vegas in March. He can effortlessly rattle off random facts about the franchise. He follows the team closely every day during the long season. He’s a fan through and through. On paper, he’d be one of the residents thoroughly excited about the organization moving to Las Vegas. He’s not.
“It’s unfortunate that they’re moving,” Hernández said.
Across the bar, Mendez was beside himself as he watched his team fall behind 11-0 against the underdog Diamondbacks.
Mendez, 36, moved to Las Vegas from Inglewood, where he was born, with his family when he was 13 — but he never stopped going to Dodger Stadium. He said he went to five or six games this season and was just there for two in September with his wife, Mary, and 1-year-old son, Leo. He plans on attending a game in the National League Championship Series next week if the Dodgers advance.
The Dodgers need to win three of the next four games to make that happen. Thousands of fans in Las Vegas will be watching closely.
“It’s like 90% Dodgers fans here,” Mendez said. “But we’re happy Oakland is coming so we can get the Dodgers here.”
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