Oakland A's Episode IV: A New Hope
We know. This has happened before. Rich Harden pitches one game, looks like some kind of amazing alien super pitching machine, and we get our hopes up sky high. And then the inevitable (which we shall not name here) happens. So we are keeping our heads, and are just going to say that those two games in Japan made us feel much more positive about this year's A's than we ever thought we would. And not just because Harden looked great. But because there was a lot more offense than we ever remember from the Kotsay/Kendall years. And because it looks like Keith Foulke might not be awful. And because Emil Brown in Eric Byrnes style totally redeemed himself for the base running mistake with a great homerun. And because Mark Ellis hit a homer off Dice-K like it was no big thing. And because it is fun to see Kurt Suzuki (who, let us just clarify, was not having a "homecoming" in Japan stupid Gary Thorne) run out to the mound to Joe Blanton who is a great A and didn't get traded. And because there is a visible sort of scrappiness to Hannahan, Sweeney, Barton, Buck, etc. They looked like they were really trying. And it should be obvious to everyone that the A's played better than the Red Sox and should have won both games. And they did it all in the face of complete apathy from the fans and announcers (the Gary Thorne screw ups vis-a-vis the A's are too many to list, but ESPN should be ashamed) and irritatingly pompous preening from certain players on the current World Champs (we're looking at you Manny). And although we're still pretty irritated about the way things went down in Tokyo – the "home" games that weren't home games in any way shape or form (the A's didn't even get the "home" clubhouse; they had to cede even that to the arrogant Sox), the Red Sox demanding that the night game be switched to a day game, the ridiculous money demands that we mentioned in our last post – we would like to acknowledge how wonderfully the A's handled all that stuff. They didn't seem to complain or feel slighted or worry about the disparate treatment. They just played. It was great and it reminded us that we've always loved the underdogginess of the A's.
These A's are going to be fun to watch this year. As the marketing campaign says, they are 100% Baseball.
p.s. We loved that the Tokyo Dome has "ball girls," although we are somewhat scared that they were wearing light pink uniforms.
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