Oakland A's Days

Nice Thoughts

We are thrilled that Joe B. and Huston Street are going to be sticking around for at least a little while.  Joe is everything good, reliable, underappreciated, and slightly overweight about the A's.  And Huston, of course, has ice water in his veins.  We do worry that Joe B. won't have the same joie de vivre without his buddy Nick Swisher around, but we hope Joe will make new friends and continue to be excellent in a sort of understated way.  We really hope both of them come to Fanfest on Saturday since the A's are currently marketing only the appearance of "Rollie Fingers, A's Manager Bob Geren, and Past and Current Players."  We are going to be there regardless, but Rollie Fingers and Bob Geren aren't going to hold our attention for long. 

On a totally unrelated note, we absolutely adore the "Where Amazing Happens" NBA commercials.  And this Warriors specific one is so good we can't stand it.  We have watched this commercial something like two trillion times.  If they had made commercials like this for baseball, instead of those completely stupid Dane Cook promos, people probably wouldn't care about steroids at all. 

Not Totally Such Bad News

On the one hand, we could view Kotsay's departure as more bad news, especially since the A's are still going to pay some huge amount of his ridiculous salary.  But on the other hand, we aren't really that sad about it.  The fact is, Kotsay is a great guy.  And he has an insanely gorgeous, glamorous wife.  And he loves kids.  And he is nice to fans.  And he is a great outfielder. And his in the park homerun in the ALDS against the Twins was one of the most exciting things ever.  And he was easily one of the coolest A's.  No question.  But we feel like Kotsay's offensive struggles weighed down the whole team.  So often Kotsay was the guy who could have gotten a big hit, but didn't.  And he seems to be someone who is hurt a lot with the kind of weird, vague injuries that never go away. And now that Nick Swisher and everyone else we loved is gone, we sort of feel like why not burn down the whole team and start over?  And if we are starting over, better to do so with a new centerfielder who doesn't have to struggle so mightily at the plate.  So while we wish Kotsay well and want only the best for him, we aren't going to be sad about this.  We are over being sad.  It is just so last year (and a little bit of this year, but who's counting).

Go A's!

WTF?

Nick Swisher to the White Sox makes us sick.  The bad news just keeps on coming.  Any day now we imagine that the A's will announce that  they are retiring Stomper and dispensing with having a mascot altogether.  Aaargrgrgh.

p.s. Super sorry Anna.