Athletics 5, Tigers 1

The comical thing about the whole experience was the commute: I drove, and we argued about whether we wanted to take I-280 to I-880 to the Fremont BART station, which we'd catch to the stadium, or wake I-85 to Hwy 101 and go over the Dumbarton Bridge to the Union City station to catch BART. Well, Subrata suggested taking I-85 to Hwy 237 to I-880 to Fremont, which probably was the best choice to avoid rush hour traffic (we left Apple at 4:30 pm), except that we got so involved in our conversation that we blew the 237 turnoff! So we ended up taking the bridge anyway (with my first drive through East Palo Alto, the relative "slum" of the SF peninsula), which turned out to be fine.

But this story will be continued later... after the game.

The game was more interesting than we'd suspected: A's started Tim Hudson it turns out actually had a no-hitter into the seventh inning, but we were too busy marvelling at the close defensive plays of Tigers outfielder Luis Polonia (he made two great catches and just missed a third) and the lousy defensive play of Tigers first baseman Tony Clark, allowing the A's to build a 3-0 lead. It was not quite brutal, but it was pretty clear who the better team was this night; the Tigers later scored a run in the ninth when the A's committed an error of their own.

Final score: A's 3, Tigers 1.

The Tigers are really a very bad team, and in large part due to mismanagement which dampens their prospects to become good anytime soon. They have a lot of "pretty good players" who make enough money to each be a little albatross holding the team down. Subrata and I argued about who on the team would be worth keeping if one of us was General Manager. I'd be inclined to trade everyone of value over the age of 26 for anything I could get and start entirely over, but this would be an unpopular move for a team which just moved into a new ballpark.

The A's, by contrast, have an old, relatively crummy ballpark (the Coliseum, or "The House That Al Wrecked", referring to Al Davis moving the football Raiders back to Oakland and extorting some lousy changes to the stadium in the bargain), but they have a terrifically-run team with a great, young offense and some hope for the pitching. It was a little surprising that fewer than 11,000 people came out to the game.

I bought some garlic fries and will not make that mistake at the Coliseum again this season; they're far inferior to the fries that the Giants vend at their stadium. On the other hand, there's a specialty vendor at the Coliseum from which we each bought a giant pretzel covered with cinnamon sugar, which was delectable! Yum! And not even too ridiculously overpriced!

Yes, a pretty good evening at the park, if a little chilly. And the Red Sox won their season opener behind more brilliant pitching from Pedro Martinez!

So, back to the commute: We get on BART to head back to the car, but we get on the wrong train! Before we know it, we're getting off at the Pleasanton station, which is 15 minutes off the main line we wanted to take! D'oh! We were two of about seven people who made exactly that mistake, so we didn't feel too stupid (just stupid enough), but it delayed us.

Then, we decided to try I-880 to Hwy 237 again, and once again I blew the 237 turnoff, and we ended up driving around the north end of Santa Clara trying to get onto 101. We finally did so and hooked up with 237, but it was not our night for commuting. Sheesh!

Got home late. Collapsed. Slept a little later this morning. But it was worth it!

Jen Wade makes her own list of links to entries about her party. She also has a little fun with some of the dubious comments I made about the party myself, which I guess I can understand. I guess I sometimes am maybe too careful to be even-handed if there's something I don't like, although in my journal I feel that that's how I want to record things for posterity (or something). I wrote to her to say that I really did enjoy myself, really!

Today was a day of "wacky problems with my work environment": The mouse cursor kept disappearing on my Mac OS X Server machine, prompting me to reinstall, and I think the Oracle database server we use for one of our internal apps is full. Weird things to try to diagnose, and it takes me away from doing real work. Sigh. Tomorrow should be better.

Tonight was gaming night, and we played two games we hadn't played before: One called Plague and Pestilence is a simple card game simulating the Middle Ages, sort of. The other is a Cheapass Game called Falling where the object is to hit the ground and go splat last, which involves some interesting timing issues, which I enjoyed quite a bit, but I don't think everyone else felt quite the same.

Tomorrow I must work on my taxes. I need to finish them off, write out the obscene check to the government, and get on with my life with that behind me.