I haven't been keeping up with you, my friend (I think I'm talking to my blog here, but you're welcome to join).
I have just been witnessing the first half of the 2008 MLB season. Its been really exciting so far, with the usual mix of chills and thrills. Fantasy baseball on yahoo's been belly-belly good to me, as well as the A's (both above .500, which is the biggest surprise to me).
Although the pundits (that always makes 'em sound critical and negative, which I like) think the A's are ready to "even-out" and start losing a bunch to get to "where they're supposed to be" this year, with young-young pitching and no-no hitting, I like to think the little volkswagen-of-a-team-that-could will make strides to stay afloat. not playoff-afloat, but above .500-afloat, which is relatively okay.
That non-committal phrase (relatively okay?) is there because when you listen and watch everyday, .500 means just that, winning a day, losing a day, or maybe 2-in-a-row, then back again. Baseball is all about streaking. Well, not Will-Ferrell-in-Old-School, "Come-on-everybody!" kinda-streaking, but the win 2-out-of-3 in a series, 7-outta-10, 20-for-the-month kinda-streaking.
They say that every team wins a third of their games, playing 162, so 54 to be exact. Its the other third (the best teams rarely get above .667 - that would be 108 wins! crazy!) that everyone worries about. Its like presidential candidates wanting Iowa, or what they say that baseball managers say: "the problem is not getting guys to like you, because its not always possible. It's the keeping the 5 guys that don't like you away from the 5 guys that aren't decided." That may have been a Casey Stengel, but then it would have been said a lot better. That one was probably either Earl Weaver, or Tommy Lasorda...
So yea, I don't remember the A's winning a bunch in a row, but I do remember the times they beat up on some teams. Without totally cheating, and looking at the W-L schedule, I think they swept some interleague series. I don't like sounding uneducated, but I was never good at remembering specific games or times.
I remember they swept the Giants in San Fran. That was a good feeling, but I couldn't get into listening to the Giants broadcasters (who I work for/with) calling the A's games. It was so foreign-sounding, like they didn't know who my guys were.
I love the Giants radio guys, and how they sound, and what they say, and how they joke around all the time. I like 'em all a lot more than Ken Korach and Vince Controneo, but I guess that's because I like the entertainment of it. Ken, Vince, and Ray Fosse are all my Broadcasters, with a capital B. that's because they bring me the team, which I neither work for, nor have a constant radio-station or media-0utlet for.
KNBR does the Giants games, Giants news, Giants interviews, Giants commentary. They even have a gross slogan: "Everything Giants." When they stink it up, the slogan doesn't sound so good anymore. The A's don't have that kind of let down (well, they have 100% baseball, but that's as generic and warm/fuzzy sounding as it gets, so its not so bad). But they also don't have an all-sports, omnipotent god of a radio station and network. Witness a craigslist.org posting for one of their desk-jockey jobs:
"KNBR – The Bay Area's Sports Leader is looking for a Promotions Coordinator. KNBR is one of the top sports talk radio stations in the country, and has a format monopoly in the Northern California region. If you believe you're the right person for this job, please follow the resume submission instructions at the end of this posting."
A format monopoly?! That's gross! Who writes that in when trying to get people to apply for a job? In Gary Radnich's immortal words, "Who does that? Who has time?!"
So, clearly, my own station, KNBR, is not giving me the scoop on my favorite team. The A's guys are the ones that get me my information on MY team. well, yea, if you know anything about me, you know that I wear my Detroit Tigers warmup shirt & polo proudly, and half-my-living-days I wear a Japanese Hanshin Tigers cap, so what the hell-kinda-A's-fan am I?
I'd like to think that if Magnum PI could wear a Detroit cap everyday (every single fuckin' day he wore that cap, authentic wool, in HAWAII of all places, and he didn't get bald?! my hero!) and not say a word about being a Tigers fan (which the actor Tom Selleck is, but not necessarily the character, apologies to all those loyal Magnum fans that heard him utter Tigers knowledge in season 5, etc.), then I think I should be alright, rooting for:
#1. the Oakland A's (by choice, marriage/relationship, gut-feeling, logical conclusion, admiration),
#2. the SF Giants (by birth, guilt, employ, and proximity),
#3. the Dee-troit Tigers (in 2003 almost losing the most games in MLB history,
Ivan Pudge Rodriguez single-handedly mauling the Giants in the 2003 playoffs and then signing-on with Detroit, promising the fans a championship, and then doing it in 2006,
and Magnum PI inspiration. The Tigers are also the first team that I found that wins when I root for them. Sure that kind of reasoning is fickle at best, and subjective as hell, but when I was watching and rooting, they hit walk-off sayonara homers, which made me feel l might not be jinxed after all.
I love the Detroit Tigers. That's because in 2003 (if that sentence was a crap-ful for you), the team was one loss (119) away from tying the most losses for a team in the 162 game schedule to end the season (the 1962 Mets, who were an new expansion team that year). They had no where to go but up, and that's an old old proud team. They've won World Championships with Ty Cobb (1900's, I could try to remember, or even look it up, but that'd be cheating), Hank Greenberg, the first Jewish American star (1935), and Hal Newhouser (Announcer Hank Greenwald's childhood favorite, 1945). I read up on the team, looked at their players (especially when Pudge came over from Florida), and decided that they were worth rooting for, if only to get back to .500 after losing 119 games (43 wins, .265 winning percentage!). They failed in 2004 and 2005, even though in 2004 they had a streak of 3 or 4 straight games winning on a sayonara-walkoff homer (that was the best streak I've ever seen, and I was subscribed to MLB.com at the time, so I watched 2 or 3 of those 4 games). Then in 2006, they picked up a few new faces, and went all the way to the World Series. I was blown-away because I was just hoping that they would finally get to .500. That year they were the best in the league (okay, they Were, but got knocked-out of 1st place on the last day by they Twins. They had the best record in the MLB at some points, but settled for wild-card winner). Then they beatup on the Yankees, and then met up with the A's of Oakland (who I was rooting for daily).
It was a tense time for me, as a fan and an Oakland-dweller. We watched the A's of Swisher, Haren, Kotsay, Street, Thomas, Bradley, Kendall, and Scutaro play every day. Turned on the radio and left it on at home, for luck. Watched games at brew-pubs on the big-screen (we rushed over there the night they clinched their division, and then listening to the post-game on the way home, heard Swish yell "I'ma go get fucked up!" on the air, off mic, after his interview. That was the best, from a personal and professional standpoint. Haha.
So the Tiggs beatup on the Yanks, and the A's beat the Twins in 3 straight. I went to the clincher, and saw the Anthem military flyover, a big loud slow cargo plane instead of a jet, I think in the spirit of big loud slow Frank Thomas. I watched Scutaro drive in 2 with a shot to the rightfield corner, ending in his knees-bent "I'm safe at second, what just happened?" pose. I'd been a fan of Marco Scutaro's since I saw him win a few games on his own (game-winner double off the wall against the Yanks, opening night in the drizzle, Gamewinning single into centerfield against the crazy 5-infielder defense against the Angels in September, etc.). This series was the culmination of his contributions to the team and his fans. Clutch as always, and them some. The epitome of the little guy coming up big for the little A's.
So as the A's were set to play the Tigers, all of my fan-friends accused me of 1. wanting this matchup, and 2. not caring if the A's lost in this series. This was totally not fair. I would much rather see the A's go all the way to the World Series, but knowing the A's, the little volkswagens of the league, I wasn't sure they could do it. And the series went badly, the A's played burnt-out and tired-looking, couldn't hit, gave up big homers to little-known to everyone else sluggers (Marcus Thames, Craig Monroe had a crazy series-of-his-life series, and Alexis Gomez killed the A's in game 2 (Okay Okay, so I didn't even know who the hell Alexis Gomez was)). The end of the A's season came in sweep-city game 4, 10/14/2006.
I was late to the brew-pub, getting my car (my volkswagen bug, dammit, why won't you believe that I'm an A's fan for real?!) from the shop, and got there just in time to order some eats, watch the A's relievers struggle to keep the lead/tie (okay, so I do have to peek at the boxscore a little, but I do remember that Kiko Calero was the most lights-out he'd ever been in that year), and then Street, trying for a 3 (3!, that's just stupid!) inning save, give up the game-winning, walkoff, sayonara, 3-run homer to long-haired (that everyone hates but me- he says he does it because it makes his face look less round, and I agree), fist-raised, Magglio Ordonez. He who beat my boy Ichiro for the Batting title. He who went to Vienna to get his knee fixed because he wanted the best. He who brought the team into prominence, to this day even.
So how could I be sad to see that? And how could I be happy the A's lost? I thought and still think that it was the best way for it to end. A sweep (meaning no chance), ended by the Samurai-tradition beheading. It was beautiful, and graceful, and it ended the suffering, and I was and still am okay with it.
I don't hear A's fans talk about that too much, but that's probably because 1. A's fans are the best at looking forward to the new youngsters and the future, 2. most of those guys on that 2006 team are gone, and 3. Detroit got their whatevers kicked-in and handed to them, and turned-away, and all those, in the World Series against the Cardinals. The fuckin' Cardinals?! the Fuckin' Cardinals?! you're fuckin' kiddin' me.
The Cardinals?! Pujols, of course. But of Rolen, Suppan, Carpenter, stupid little shortstop Eckstein (well, I would love him if he ever played on my team), young catcher Molina, barely beat the Mets (the fuckin' Mets?!) come-on, man, the Cardinals?! that's fuckin' disgusting. Won a game with Kenny Rogers on the mound, and then the next day the news was that he had dirt/pinetar on his hand. That just killed any momentum the Tiggs had, because they had to apologize for the dirt/pinetar (I still don't know what that was all about).
To have my year end that way, I think that was all my fellow A's fans come-up-ins on me. The Cardinals?! (now that I think about that, I don't think I'm over that one, still) The worst is when you see the commercials for the Sports Illustrated Special Bound-edition Big Fat Book of the Cardinals World Championship. The ffuckin' Cardinals?! okay, I'm really not over that one...
So to gracefully end myself, the first-half of 2008 has been great! All the chills and Thrills. The A's make me proud, and now you know how I became a Tigers fan. So the next time you see me in my Detroit warmup jacket, you know where I'm coming from. From the Lake, in Oakland, baby. Yea, and the Hanshin Tigers cap to top it off, just to bust your chops for asking.
(oh yea, I wear the hat for luck - check the standings and believe!)
see ya -
JN
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