You never know what you might see at an MLB game, as Sacramento learned this year.

Sacramento State’s sports teams have endured many lean years. But the institution, which debuted its original sports — basketball, baseball and tennis — in 1948, has embraced a controversial change.

It’s been a decade-plus rollercoaster ride for Sacramento Republic FC’s efforts to build a new stadium, but on a bittersweet historic day for Elk Grove’s Wilton Rancheria, the tribe and SRFC broke ground on a $175 million, 12,000-seat multi-use stadium in The Railyards district north of downtown Sacramento.

The owners of events for nerds, geeks and other pop culture fans aren’t worried about competing with each other, but with everything else. 

For our new Out of Office column, reporter and photographer Brad Branan takes us on a journey to some of his favorite hikes around Lake Tahoe. 

Once upon a time — 1959, to be precise — Fairytale Town opened at 3901 Land Park Drive in Sacramento, just four years after Disneyland debuted in Southern California. Almost immediately it was acknowledged, year after year, as one of the region’s top five family amenities — and still is. 

In general, players know to watch out for the younger players, who can be child prodigies who rapidly increase their ratings. “They say when his feet don’t touch the floor, you’re in trouble,” local player Paul Taylor said.

When Off the Beaten Track debuted in early 2021, the Capital Region was tenuously crawling back from the worst pandemic in more than a hundred years. As we poked our heads outside, we wondered which businesses made it out OK, and how did they do it? Their compelling tales were the overriding storylines of those early post-pandemic days, while impacts from COVID-19 stretched throughout OTBT’s run.