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OAD has decided to boycott the A's pending the end of the current losing streak. As an expression of protest against all of these terrible games, and particularly in light of the fact that the best A's are either being given away to other teams or apparently feel no real urgency about actually playing baseball, we have decided to abstain from the A's until they can pull things together.
Despite trying to make peace with this season that has been disappointing in so many ways, we can't help wondering what would have been if the A's had started playing like they are right now at a time when it had a chance to save the season. These games feel just like the traditional post All-Star break surge. Tons of offense. Reliable pitching. Even some injustice (Jairo's ejection) to get the A's riled up. But this year, we just have to appreciate each win on its own merit. And while even Ken Korach admitted last night that winning five in a row and sitting above .500 makes him start to do the math about the chance of a playoff berth, we aren't going to get our hopes up just yet. Instead, we are simply going to say -- Go Oakland!
We are just so pleased that in light of all our griping the A's swept the Blue Jays, Esteban Loiza returned and was awesome, and -- most exciting of all -- the A's are now at .500! A few good games can really change our point of view. Maybe things aren't so bad!
Great job A's!
Perhaps it is bad form to post a lament after the A's win two games in a row in a season where winning back to back games is an event worth noting. And, of course, we are happy about homeruns and good pitching performances that have the A's inching closer to .500. But we have to say that we are so tired of feeling like the majority of the A's related news is frustrating and negative. We hate the current stories about how Scoot is not going to get to play everyday, and how the A's may not have let Huston close so that he would have fewer saves and be cheaper next year, and how every. single. day. more and more A's (now Murphy and Buck) fall into the injury black hole which seems to suck people in forever (Rich Harden, anyone?). Not to mention that Jack Cust's defense is truly painful and we feel like we barely know Dan Johnson anymore. Further, there are a bunch of current A's that we can't keep track of let alone tell apart. We watch plenty of A's games in person and on TV, but if we had to pick Hannahan, Brown, Furmaniak, etc. out of a lineup, we would have a pretty hard time. Even knowing how to spell their names is a challenge. Sure, sometimes we can figure out who's who by comparing them to former A's. Andrew Brown, for instance, looks a lot like Jay Witasick. At least, we thought so during one telecast. And Ruddy Lugo has a Juan Cruz-y look to him, we think. But seriously, we are in big trouble if we find comfort in the fact that our new relievers look like the likes of Witasick and Cruz.
With that said, go A's!
Although Miguel Tejada has sometimes given him a run for it, all in all, the A we miss the most from the past few years is Tim Hudson. He is just too great. This proves it.
Go A's!!
As the season winds down and the A's are out of contention, we're trying to re-discover our roots and get back to mentioning the positive quirky things that we love about the A's. Accordingly, we'd like to share with you the following hilarious (and all too true!) exchange that we heard yesterday on XM radio on the Tigers' broadcast:
Color guy: "Mike Piazza is wearing the tightest pants we've seen in a
really long time."
Play-by-play guy: "Yeah, those look like 70's throwback pants."
Color guy: "The question is, how does he get those on."
Go A's!
The news that the Cubs claimed Shannon Stewart off waivers -- wait, the news that Shannon Stewart was even put on waivers -- has us really depressed. Although we will admit that the waiver wire leaves us scratching our heads every year and we always forget how exactly the whole process works, and we know that this doesn't mean that he is going to the Cubs for sure, and that the A's could get some good prospects in return, the notion that the A's might lose the guy who has been one of the only bright spots in a pretty miserable season just makes us want to die. And it would have been nice if someone with the A's had let Shannon know so that his quote in the paper wouldn't have been: "I heard something like that," Stewart said before flying with the A's to Detroit. "I really don't know what to say about it. I like the guys here. I like the team here." He likes it here! Even though the A's are terrible! Shouldn't we get to keep him for that reason alone?! In other Cubs news, how weird/great is it that Rob Bowen turned out to be the hero of last night's game?
Right now we feel like we are in a Tom and Jerry cartoon with an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. There is just so much goodness and badness in A's land right now that it is hard to sort it out. For example:
Good: The A's won 2 games against the Angels.
Bad: The A's lost 2 games against the Angels.
Good: The A's scored lots of runs early in last night's game.
Bad: The A's gave up the lead sending the game into extra innings.
Good: The A's won last night on a Mike Piazza single.
Bad: Mike Piazza cleared waivers and might be traded this week.
Good: It was great to see Ronnie Wash on tv last night get so fired up that he got ejected.
Bad: The story over the weekend that certain A's don't like Bob Geren.
Good: Joe Blanton didn't get traded.
Bad: Neither did any of the A's that aren't helping us at all.
Good: Big crowds came out for the Angels series even though the A's are below .500 and have almost no chance of making the playoffs.
Bad: Some fans pretended to be the Hammer Guys in a totally lame imitation.
Good: Due to injury, Marco Scutaro is playing every day.
Bad: Eric Chavez is stricken again with some vague and lingering injury.
Good: The A's one African American player is basically the best guy on the team.
Bad: Milton Bradley says that Billy Beane is racist and that the A's treated him poorly.
Good: We still love the A's.
Bad: We still love the A's.
As always, go Oakland!
We here at Oakland A's Days have long pondered the question of exactly who gets to attend the A's Rootbeer Float Day ("RFD"), which is always held before a weekday day game. We now know the answer. Old people and people in wheelchairs. Oh, and the Boys and Girls Clubs of nearly everywhere (thanks, apparently, to tickets provided by Mark Kotsay). We can also say with complete certainty that it was the best A's crowd that we have been a part of all year. We were completely shocked by how everyone was so normal and non-embarrassing at RFD, and then so into the game. And early on, we figured we were surrounded by kindred spirits when we saw that the table where Glen Kuiper and Robert Buan were making floats was virtually deserted. It is a wise bunch who choose to have the A's wives make their floats rather than those two dingbats. As for the game, it was tense and exciting and super great. In a season that has had a lot of downsides, it seems like RFD brought out the best in everyone. Even the A's.
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