Athletics 5, Angels 2

Tonight I met Debbi and her friend Lisa in Menlo Park to go to the Athletics game. We carpooled over (I drove this time), and everything went remarkably smoothly, driving over the Dumbarton Bridge to Union City and then taking BART. We learned from our previous experience with driving to the Coliseum; BART is preferable.

It turned out to be the best-attended game I've been to at the Coliseum, sporting over 50,000 people. (Not the largest game I've ever been to, though, as I think some of the crowds at Candlestick Park in 1999 topped 55,000.) Even "Mount Davis" - the abominable tower of seats installed when Raiders owner Al Davis extorted Oakland into remodeling the stadium for him to bring his football team back - was 2/3ds full. Amazing! We had pretty good seats on the third-base line.

It must be said that the Anaheim Angels are a bad team. They've been a bad team for almost their entire history, with little peaks once a decade or so which nonetheless don't put them in the company of the league's elite, and if they make the playoffs at all they're out in the first round. This year the Angels have been dogged by a season-ending injury to their star (albeit overrated) first baseman Mo Vaughn, and prolonged ineffectiveness by their "Mr. Reliable" of the last 8 years, Tim Salmon. Several other players have been disappointing as well, and the year has just been an all-around washout for the team.

Barry Zito, last year's astonishing rookie turned this year's struggling sophomore, started for the A's. My read on Zito is that he's learning how to use his pitches effectively to keep the hitters (as they say) off-balance, and as he's been learning his craft, he's been turning his season around over the past month. To their credit, the A's have been patient with him, and have not overworked him, and I think he has as good as chance as any pitcher in baseball to turn into an ace starter in the next five years. This is also, it turns out, the third time I've seen him pitch this year.

Zito wasn't overpowering, but he was good enough to hold the Angels to 2 runs in 5 innings, and Jeff Tam came in and blew away the hapless Angels, throwing only 26 pitches in 3 full innings. (This may be the single most overpowering pitching performance I've ever seen; I felt like if I blinked, I'd miss the Angels' inning at bat. It was impressive.) The A's scored five runs in the third, and the game was pretty much over at that point. It took nearly 2 hours to play the first half of the game, and less than an hour to play the second half, and when it was over the A's had won 5-2.

In the "What did I see today that I'd never seen in person before" game, I saw an Athletic score on a wild pitch. It was strangely ruled a passed ball, which strikes me as odd since the pitch was a good three feet over the catcher's head, glancing off his glove.

It was a good evening at the park, although like most baseball games it wasn't a great game. But then, that just makes the great games that much more valuable when you see 'em.

Oh, and the Coliseum must have gotten a lot of complaints about the disappearance of the gourmet pretzel stand that was there last year, as they have a new one in the same location now. The pretzels are different, but that seems to be okay: Rather than getting a pretzel covered in cinnamon sugar, I got one with a cinnamon glaze which was hollow inside and filled with apple pie filling. It was pretty yummy!

After the game there was an Independence Day fireworks show. (Lisa's boyfriend Michel showed up late - he's been ill - but in time to watch it.) They emptied Mount Davis and the outfield seats and put all of those people on the field (roping off the infield), and then launched fireworks over the top of Mount Davis from outside the stadium. It was a good show! It had the cheesy-yet-stirring music you expect from I-Day fireworks, and a good and fairly long selection of sparklers. There might have been a bad view or two in the house, but you couldn't bet it for proximity! Well worth the effort to come out to the park.

BART was crammed on the ride back, but I think fighting your way through the BART crowds beats sitting in traffic. I love mass transit.

This is turning out to be a year of fewer baseball games for me. I could get up to the 13-or-so I've gone to each of the last two years if I wanted to, but I'm not quite that motivated. Tickets are expensive and I resent paying the larcenous service charges that the BASS ticket sales tack on (usually about $4.00 per ticket). I do want to get to at least 3 or 4 more games this year, though. Especially when the Red Sox are in town next month...