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A's 3, Rangers 0, Indians go homeThursday I decided to organize an outing to see an Athletics game this weekend. The A's have been drawing terribly, this is the last weekend of the regular season, and they're still in contention. So I sent mail to some people, and almost everyone was unable to attend, except that Subrata wanted to go, and persuaded two of his cow-orkers and a friend of their to come along.So Friday I got five tickets. Surprisingly, most good seats were taken. I could have gotten upper deck seats behind home plate, but opted for second deck seats out in left field, right near the foul pole. I drove to Union City and took BART up, and met Subrata and company at the Coliseum edge of the bridge to the BART station. I picked up tickets, and we found our seats. Subrata thought they were fine, and they really were not bad. If there's a down side to the game, it was that it was hotter than expected (about 90 degrees and sunny), and I could have dressed cooler. But that's a small deal! The game was a big deal! The A's entered play 1/2 game ahead of Seattle in the AL West, and 1-1/2 games up on Cleveland for the AL Wild Card. A win would guarantee them a playoff berth; a loss could result in strange things such as a make-up game in Tampa tomorrow, followed by a one-game playoff with either Cleveland or Seattle on Tuesday. Much to be avoided! The A's sent their ace, Tim Hudson, already nicknamed "Little Pedro", to the mound to try to win his 20th game of the season, while the Rangers - who have gone "from first to worst" in the last year sent rookie Ryan Glynn to the mound with Rafael Palmeiro and a cast of near-nobodies on the field behind him. The on-base percentage of the first two Rangers hitters added together was less than .600 - miserable! Oh, it was a close game. Both pitchers squirmed out of minor jams early on, and Hudson got out of a second-and-third, one-out situation in the middle of the game (Jason Giambi made a perfect throw to home plate to save a run). But the A's didn't muster a lot of offense either, other than Giambi walking three times and a few scattered hits, and the game was scoreless through six. In the bottom of the seventh, Jeremy Giambi (Jason's younger brother) hit a double, and on the very next pitch, catcher Ramon Hernandez brought him home with a single. Hudson worked the eighth, and in the bottom of the eighth, second baseman Randy Velarde ("he's old, but he can play", I'd said to Subrata earlier) crushed a ball to deep center field for a home run, and pinch-hitter Olmedo Saenz hit another one two batters later which just cleared the left-field fence directly below us. The park was packed with 45,000 people - possibly a season high for this Athletics team with its low payroll which has had trouble drawing fans all year! Athletics players must have looked around and wondered who all these people were (and why they hadn't come to see them before!). Green and gold (thought by misguided midwesterners to be the colors of a football team) abounded. The drummers in left field were beating out rhythms, and a mock-Survivor contest was occurring during the game for one of ten people to win prizes. It was exciting! Jason Isringhausen pitched the ninth, finally shutting down the Rangers after putting two men on base, and players and coaches ran out on the infield and jumped for joy! The Athletics won 3-0 and are the 2000 American League West champions! Photos from the game:
Cleveland and Seattle both won, so Seattle wins the Wild Card, and Cleveland goes home for the winter, after five consecutive postseason appearances. The Bay Area is sending both its teams to the playoffs. Both have home field advantage in the first round, and both face hated Noo Yawk teams in that round. The Giants finished with the best record in all of baseball, at 97-65, and beat Randy Johnson and the Diamondbacks today. The A's finished at a fine 91-60. My Red Sox and their boneheaded general manager finished 2-1/2 games away from the playoffs, behind the hated Yankees. Consolation is that those Yankees finished their season by losing 7 straight games, went 3-15 in their last 18 games, and have the worst record of all playoff teams (87-75). The Phillies and Cubs tied for worst record in baseball at 65-97. And, CJ has tickets to two Giants Division Series games this week, and I'll be going to one with her! Woo-hoo!
(For some reason I wrote "4" instead of "3" for the A's on this ticket. I corrected it after I scanned it and noticed this...) Here are my picks for the playoff series. "Host" means that team has home field advantage in that series (I think the AL has home field advantage in the World Series).
Division Series:
 Final baseball tally for the season: I went to 12 games, down 1 from last year. 8 Giants games, 4 A's, including 2 A's/Red Sox. Teams I rooted for went 10-2 for the season, up from 8-5 last year. 25 games in two years! 18-7 over that stretch! I've gone home a happy fan an awful lot. I'd forgotten, while living in Wisconsin, what it's like to live near winning teams. Here's a summary of the games I went to (team I rooted for always listed first):
Also, CJ wraps up her season in a recent entry. This morning, NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday featured an article on polling, mainly about how questions can be worded and polls can be structured to add or remove biases in pollee's responses. This reminded me that I got a call from a pollster last week. I don't know who he was from. He was mainly asking me about new television series: Whether I'd heard of them (I mostly hadn't), whether I planned to watch them (I mostly don't). He asked me many detailed questions about an upcoming TV-movie with Tom Selleck and Mark Harmon, which sounded immensely cheesy (based on a Louis L'amour novel, I think). He also asked a few questions about my voting patterns and what I thought of the Presidential campaign, though he didn't ask who I planned to vote for. It took about 20 minutes, and was interesting. I wish he'd told me up front how long it would take, but otherwise I didn't mind it.
Anything else I should mention? Uh... I discovered a neat candy store in Los Gatos yesterday, where all candy is priced in bulk, $7.00 per pound. I bought some but tried to resist buying too much. Neat place. Other than that, it's back to work tomorrow...
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