Sigh of Relief

LAA 6, OAK 7

And the wait is over. I finally witness an A's victory in the flesh after all these months. It was wonderful warm day at the Oakland Coliseum and the Oakland bats came alive...with the exception of the bats of Chavez and Durazo. At least on one of Chavvy's ground outs he advanced the runners, leading later to a RBI. But our supposed "big bats" realy need to wake the hell up.

Team LOB: 4

That's more like it.

In another note. When the game started the scoreboard read ANA 0, OAK 0 when the game ended the scoreboard read LAA 6, OAK 7, wierd.

In addition to the bats warming up or D was lively too. There were some spectacular catches by Scutaro and Byrnes. I will amend my previous statement about Byrnes; Brynses' throwing arms sucks, but his ability to field the ball is pretty good with his speed and athleticism making up for some (well, actually, many) bad reads off the bat.

This game was on of the best games I've seen in a long time. It was a seesaw and Angels and A's trading spaces many times during the game. When the Angels were up I did not once doubt that the A's would get back in it. Mike Scioscia pulled a "Ken Macha with Barry Zito" and left John "Slingblade" Lackey in too long to allow three run jack by Marco "I don't hit for power" Scutaro.

The relief pitching was again excellent, featuring Huston Street's first big league win. When Street came in he got two outs on six pitches, all strikes, I was kinda drinking at the time so I don't remember if it was a popup and K or 2 K's, but Street was impressive, his stuff is just filthy, three K's in two innings. Dotel did a very Dotel-esque (meaning suspenseful) job closing out the game for a save. And now there's a three-way logjam for first place in the AL West, but first place nonetheless.

Today was just a perfect day for baseball in Oakland and I was glad I was there, even if I was still wearing my slacks from church.