I went to a baseball game on Saturday in Oakland. My friend Devon is an A's fan, while my friend Liz follows the Giants. Since the teams were playing each-other, it seemed an opportune time to go see a game on the cheap.

Tickets were $10. We certainly got our money's worth, if only because of the entirely entertaining crowd.

Oakland, despite a pedigree of baseball excellence that is nearly unparalleled in recent years, has a somewhat lackluster fanbase. San Francisco tends to have teams that suck, but they get headlines (for Barry Bonds), have a nice stadium, and are generally seen as a bit more upper crust. Mixing these two does not necessarily make for a happy time on either end. A's fans feel grumpy that everything is so much NICER for the Giants, while SF fans are pissed that their team sucks donkey balls.

Given that the teams only face each other a few times a year and have absolutely no effect on their respective standings otherwise, this is a rivalry that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. There isn't even the media-inspired animosity that you'd get in Chicago or New York. In truth, both teams have a much stronger rivalry with teams down south (the Dodgers and Angels) than they should have with each-other. But rivals they are. I suppose it all goes back to the Earthquake series in 1989.

I wasn't quite cognizant of this going into the game, so it was somewhat of a learning experience. Given the close proximity of the teams, both got the home crowd treatment such that whenever anything happened, you couldn't tell who it favored just by listening: the boos and cheers were in equal proportion throughout the stadium.

By some odd happenstance, we ended up in a powderkeg section. The disagreements between the two sides ranged from loudly boisterous (but somewhat good natured) to bordering on hostile. For a good half of the game, some of the more intoxicated elements chanted in support of their side. Given the lack of mental facilities of those involved, these chants were little more than 'Let's go Oakland!' followed by 'Let's got Giants!' Back and forth from about the fifth inning on. It takes a certain kind of dedication to do that.

Eventually, we got our own permanent security guard fixture, given that the tensions seemed just about ready to boil over. This was amusing, because despite the multitude of personalities and loyalties there was still a fair bit of fun conversation to be had. I believe I was the only Seattle fan, but it was too cold to properly display my loyalties.

As for the game itself, it was rather well-played. I appreciated the fairly strong pitchers duel. San Francisco won a 1-0 match, largely because they focused their action at one point. Oakland certainly out-hit them, but the scattered elements couldn't scare up a single run.

Of particular entertainment was Jack Cust, he of the Three True Outcomes. In essence, he is more likely to have one of three results when he comes to bat: a walk, a strikeout, or a home run. My particular amusement at Cust's ability to give the defenders nothing to do sparked off a conversation between Liz and Devon. The end result is the usericon courtesy of Liz.

In his four at bats, Cust did have two strikeouts. But he also had a flyout and an entirely improbable bunt single. The former is not entirely out of line, but the latter astounds me. The man has two skills: patience and power. Speed is not in the repertoire. Neither is defense, which is why he's a DH.

M's aren't here, thanks to a stupendous late-season collapse. Even so, the best four teams in the AL are in the post-season.

On the NL side, things are considerably more exciting, with a one-game playoff for the wild-card on Monday, and then three evenly matched teams and one incredibly lucky team going at it from there.

NL Wild Card - Colorado beats San Diego.
NLDS - Colorado beats Philedelphia, Chicago beats Arizona.
ALDS - Boston beats Anaheim, Cleveland beats New York
NLCS - Colorado beats Chicago
ALCS - Cleveland beats Boston
WS - Cleveland beats Colorado

From CuSO4 on the AMG ML:
- Sasaki Kiyoshi, 1 of the pitcher of the Hokkaido based Pacific League baseball team Nippon Ham Fighters. He is nick-named Belldandy-Sasaki. Why ? Because he is good at drawing bishoujo characters, and is a doujin artist. In one of the team magazine, he draw an illustration of Belldandy.
Somehow someone has scanned the magazine and put it onto the net. http://suspend.hp.infoseek.co.jp/bel.jpg
His illustration of other anime characters : Kenshin of Kenshin http://f.hatena.ne.jp/images/fotolife/m/megun/20060106/20060106141101.jpg
Natsume Aya of Tenjoutenge http://suspend.hp.infoseek.co.jp/sasaki2mini.jpg

I went to the M's game yesterday. First time I'd gotten to Safeco this year, which is kinda sad because Deanna's asked me to come a few times previously, but it hasn't worked out schedule-wise.

Even so, I don't think I could have picked a better game to go to. The weather was perfect and the game was good.

Since it was a Red Sox game, it was packed, despite the M's being a kajillion games out of first. Still, they'd won three of the previous four games against New York and Boston (which sounds much better than winning three of the previous fifteen... also true), so I think there was a bit of a mild euphoria going into this.

The first two innings were astounding. Gil Meche was on fire, getting five strikeouts in six outs. This was after Washburn had managed to out-strikeout Randy Johnson a few nights back. In a way, it felt like stepping into bizarro-M's world. He slowed down a bit after that, but still. Five strikeouts in two innings. Insane.

Third innning saw things heat up a bit, when Coco Crisp hit a two-out solo shot to right field. It didn't seem incredibly deep, and I wondered at the time if Snelling or Ichiro could have snagged it. Probably not.

The M's came back in the bottom of the fourth. Beltre hit a nice double (and smartly didn't try to extend it to a triple) then scored on Ibanez's single. At this point, I got my first chance to experience The RAUUUUUL crowd in the left-field bleachers.


(picture shamefully stolen from Deanna.)

Their enthusiasm for Ibanez remained strong throughout the game, if not always consistent. Sometimes it was RAUU...UUU...UU...L as they worked at getting their act together. Still, fun to see. It struck me that it'd be cool to get a crowd together in right with DOYLE (DOOOOOYLE?) signs. Or maybe we could try to do it from Deanna's seats. Then he'd be able to see us.

Of course, Boston managed to come back in the next inning and score another two-out run. It wasn't on a homer, though, as a single, walk, single managed to sneak another one in. It almost didn't work, too, as the RBI single was JUUUUST out of Ichiro's grasp.

Seattle looked like it was going to make some noise in the bottom of the fifth when Betancourt got a one-out triple. C'mon. One out, man on third? You can get him home with a sac fly. Right? Right?

Well, T.J. Bohn was up next, and seeking his first major league hit. He'd gotten on base earlier via a fielder's choice, and this time he kept up his trend by striking out swinging. Maybe he was seeking that sac fly. Then Ichiro ended the inning by grounding out. Things haven't been great recently for our favorite Japanese position player.

The seventh inning marked the end of Meche's game, but he got his seventh strike-out, and only allowed two runs. For him, that's spectacular. In the bottom of the inning, the M's tried to get him into a win situation. Betancourt had an awesome homer to left, his seventh of the year. That and the triple started me on a run of "The Future is NOW!" (since we don't need the Shortstop of the Future anymore.)

And then... and THEN... T. J. Bohn comes up. He hit a single. I think my jubilant jump and shout confused surrounding fans. Maybe they thought I was a relative or something. Still. First major league hit.


(Deanna's again)

So, one on, one out, score tied. Ichiro up... SINGLE! Bohn to second! Yeah, we're on fire here. Right? Right?

Lopez hit into a double play. Sigh.

Still, tie game in the seventh, things are looking good. Soriano comes in to relieve Meche and gets two quick outs. Then... what? what? Hargrove meanders out to the mound and sends Soriano packing. Now, I like George Sherrill as much as the next guy, but why not let Soriano finish up the inning? Sure it's Big Papi David Ortiz up, but the guy's just take out the first two batters. Let him pitch a bit!

Ortiz doubled to left. Then Grover makes another dumb call and intentionally walks Ramirez. Crowd boos. Grover wanders out to the mound and sends Sherrill away. Calls in Putz. (Yay! Putz!) For some reason, I had a bit of confusion at this point and thought it was an inning earlier, so it seemed like the M's were bringing in their closer with two plus innings to go. If so, it would actually be a good decision on Grover's part (after doing his level best to snatch defeat from the jaws of a good tie game). Putz wasn't quite ready, so there was a bit of an extended warmup session while Ortiz held a party at second base.


(Deanna)

So, Putz pitches to Lowell, who hits a single. Ortiz rounds third and heads for home. Manny rounds second and guns for third. Ichiro picks up the ball and guns it to Beltre who catches it and bops Manny on the head on the turn. The ball POPS OUT OF HIS GLOVE! Then he snags it with his other hand. Crisis averted and the inning's over, but they still scored the run.

Bottom of the eighth. Deanna's phone rings. We're sitting there watching Mike Timlin (anyone remember him?) warm up. Beltre comes up to the plate. Deanna's talking on the phone and I'm thinking "Beltre's going to hit a homer to right." I -know- this is going to happen. I look down at her camera and consider grabbing it to snap a picture of the swing. I debate. I look up.

Boom. Homer to right. Crowd erupts. Deanna shouts into the phone "What? I can't hear you! The crowd's really noisy!"

Now it's a tie game. No outs, nobody on. Ibanez singles. RAUUUUUL crowd goes nuts and starts an orgy in left. Sexon singles, Ibanez goes to third. The other half of the Benuardo Perssard combo (Ben Broussard) comes in, hits a sac fly to center and Ibanez scores. M's up 4-3 for the first time in the game. Johjima and Betancourt fly out to end the inning, but still. We're ahead. Going into the ninths, and Putz is on the mound.

Funny thing. Throughout the game, Deanna was wondering if she should buy a jersey to take to Japan. When Johjima came up, she said if he hit a homer, she'd buy his jersey. Of course, he flies out.


(Yeah, her shot.)

For about two pitches in the bottom of the ninth, Putz looked as awkward as he was in the bottom of the eighth. Then he goes all white supremacy on the BoSox. K K K. Game over, and...

I SMELL SWEEP!

(which did happen. today, y'know, not yesterday. because that'd only be two games, not three.)

After the game, we ran into another M's blogger, chatted for a while, and went to the team store. Deanna did get a Johjima jersey, but a replica, not a real one. Significantly less expensive. They only had replicas for Ichiro and Johjima, though, and while I like both players, I'd feel a bit bandwagon-ish if I got one. So I picked up a Betancourt fake jersey T-shirt (to go with my Moyer one, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense.) If they get Snelling ones in next year, I may go for one of those.

Deanna and I walked back to my car, I drove her home, then headed home myself and was just under an hour late.

We'll have to see if I can get to another game after her trip to Japan before I leave for SF in a month.

Good times. Good times.

AL Postseason
Boston - East
Detroit - Central
Texas - West
Chicago - WC

ALDS
Detroit over Texas
Boston over Chicago

ALCS
Detroit over Boston

NL Postseason
New York - East
St. Louis - Central
Los Angeles - West
San Diego - WC

NLDS
New York over San Diego
LA over St. Louis

NLCS
New York over LA

WS
Detroit over New York

Well, the M's sucked again this year. On the upside, there's no way they can do as badly as last year.

There is a slim, although unlikely chance, that five teams in the AL could end with exact same record. Boston and New York (ugh) are tied atop the NL east. They've got the same record as Cleveland, which is just two games behind the ChiSox in the Central. And the Angels have clinched the west, but are only one game behind the BoSox, Yankees, and Indians as far as records are concerned. I really don't want to see the Yankees go, though, so I just hope that Cleveland and Boston stay ahead of them.

For far more amusing fare, though, we look at the NL. Atlanta has just finished up its 14th straight #1 season. St. Louis has the NL Central tied up very nicely. (In fact, they're well situated to have the best record in the majors... again.) that's the Ho-hum stuff.

Houston has a 2.5 game lead for the wild card. Philedelphia is trying to stay in it, but they've got an extremely long shot of making up that ground in under a week. Still, there could be some excitement into the final weekend if they go on a short tear and Houston drops a couple mid-week.

For the REALLY fun stuff, we look at the West. San Diego doesn't quite have it tied up, since they're only 4 games up from San Francisco, but we can assume it will be the Padres on top. For a much bigger question, though, we wonder if the Padres are even going to be at .500 at the end of the season. They currently have a record of 78-79, with five games left to play. They need to go 3-2 in order to get to .500. Meanwhile, both Washington and Florida are sitting at 80-78. They'd need to go 0-4 in order to fail to get to .500 for the season.

Why is this significant? Well, it looks like we may see a few things come to pass that've never happened before. The first is that a team in last place in one division would be good enough to take first in another. The second is that every team in the NL East could finish above .500. The third is that every team in the NL West could end up below .500.

Basically, the Padres, with their record of not even being able to crack the halfway mark will get to go to the postseason while four teams in the NL East with better records will go home in October.

Postseason matchups for the NL look like St. Louis vs. San Diego, and Atlanta vs. Houston. The team with the best record will play the wild card... unless the wild card is in that division. Since both Houston and St Louis are in the Central, they can't play each other the first round. St. Louis gets the worst of the other two leaders, then.

What would be VERY strange would be if Atlanta had the best record in the league. By the rules, it'd play the Wild Card team. This is despite the fact that Houston is a much better team than San Diego.

Here's another fun oddity. San Diego faces St. Louis in the division series. In the seven games those teams have played this year, San Diego has gone 4-3. Against Atlanta, SD has gone 5-1 in six games.

Can you imagine anything as odd as a team getting to the World Series with a sub-.500 record for the season? What would we bet on in a World Series between the Chicago White Sox (haven't won it all since before the Black Sox scandal), and a team that isn't even at .500 for the year but improbably has made it to the final seven.

That's almost worth rooting against Boston for.