I, likely as many of us on this website, have a large collection of A's hats. In total I would say, including duplicates, I have over 75 A's hats. I have official game hats, replica hats, fashion hats, philly A's hats, and a few minor league A's hats as well. And for at least 20 years I have had a superstition. It is a simple practice: If the A's win I wear the same hat that I wore the day before. If they lose, I change the hat. It is simple but what is interesting, or slightly annoying if you ask my wife, is how long that I have kept it up. For the recent stretch of three wins in a row I wore the current A's road hat (with the black under-brim). After the loss to Toronto I went with the recent black alternate and then a white fashion hat with a gray A's logo. I then went with the gray under-brimmed road hat for the two wins, the 1993 road hat with the white A's logo(my favorite A's hat), and today I have switched to the older black alternate (with the gray under-brim) after yesterday's loss. There are exceptions. When I run I always wear the same A's hat, a green flexfit hat that is light weight (not any edition of BP hat). In the off season all bets are off and I switch daily. On off days I generally don't switch. My wife thinks it is silly but I have given my son several of my hats, especially older snap-back hats, and he has started the tradition. Does anyone else have a superstition, habit, or tradition such as this?

Bigfoot has not yet been confirmed, but, EL CHUPACABRA LIVES!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

Also, starting on September 9th is the baseball world cup. 

22 countries are competing to win the world cup with first round games being held in Spain (Barcelona), Czech Republic (Prague), Germany (Regensburg), Croatia (Zagreb) and Sweden (Stockholm).

Of interest to me are team Canada, the US, team Cuba, and team Sweden. 

Team Canada has a lot of AA and AAA guys with a few guys who have had cups of coffee in the majors.  One of their pitchers is Jamie Richmond who came back with Joey Devine in the Kotsay trade. They play their first round games in Sweden. 

 

Also, team USA and team Canada play a practice game today (and again on the 4th, 5th, and 6th) in North Carolina.

Team USA is made up of largely AA and AAA guys.  The A's connection is a coaching staff that includes Jim Bowie, Ernie Young (That triple play might be my favorite memory of the lean 93 to 98 years), and Jamie Quirk.  By the way, I remember one of Quirk's only games as an Athletic in 89.  I think that he homered in his first A's at bat in Cleveland. 

Team Cuba has many international play veterans including catcher Ariel Pestano and outfielder Frederich Cepeda who mashed like hell during the last WBC. 

Team Sweden has a player who is from norcal and is a personal friend of mine.  He is a duel citizen and I hope that he does well.  I will pass on any appropriate reports from the games that he gives me. 

 

The other participating countries are: the Netherlands Antilles (who at times will team up with the Netherlands and at times will play independently), Australia, China, Chinese Taipei, Croatia, Czech Repuplic, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico (there are several big leaguers on Mexico's roster including Ricardo Rincon), the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico (lots of former big league players), South Africa, and Spain. 

 

It is nice to see Giambi contributing to the Rockies' success.  I have a lot of Giants fans in the family but I think I want to the Rockies to go to the NLCS and face the Cards.

 

But seriously, a CHUPACABRA!!!

In case you hadn't seen the news yet our very own Chris Denorfia was a hero last night for team Italy.  I was very suprised to see this but happy.  Then again, there are quite a few major leaguers on the Italy roster.

 

I love track bike racing.  Where are the local tracks?  And check out this guy's PE logo tattoo.  That is coolness.

 

Knitters don't like springing ahead either.

 

112 Canadians have died in Afghanistan.  I don't mean this as a poltical post but I have members of my in laws, my Canadian family, who are in Afghanistan.  Every time that I hear a headline on the news about causalities I make sure that it is not somebody that I know.  I am generally against war and I heart goes out to family members and soldiers world wide.  I want everyone to come home safe. 

 

I am actually going to run in shorts today.  It is just above freezing.  Yay.  Seriously, I miss California, California winters, and running here.

 

 

More speculation about Frank Thomas.  The head line of the article:

From a Blue Jay to a Jackhammer . Basically the article states that the Joliet Jackhammers of the Northern League are willing to offer Big Frank $3500 a month.  I would play ball for that but I don't have the resume that Thomas does.

The headline makes me fondly remember the large piece of rebar that Big Frank would use in the on deck circle.  Some more interesting information is later in the article:

On a more serious note, the Oakland A's are apparently considering going after Thomas and will make a call within 48 hours.

At this point I really want this to happen.  The fan in me loves Frank and he was one of my favorite A's of the last run of success (Huddy, Ellis, and Tejada are among the others) and it would just make my fanbone really happy.  And, given that he has really been a slow starter the last few years and comeback to do well I think that we would get a much better hitter than he has shown thus far (and certainly a better hitter than his DH replacement Rod Barajas).  As has been stated many times his BABIP is in the .150 range, which indicates plain bad luck thus far.  His walk rate and HR rate are fine.  I say, SIGN BIG FRANK! 

Then again, I am not Billy Beane.

OK, running content:

Robert Cheruiyot extremely well in winning Boston on Monday.  A huge effort considering that he was basically solo for most of the race that makes he and Bill Rogers 4 time winners.  I think that he would have set a course record had their been a stronger field.  The Boston pro field has slipped in the last several years and I would love to see Ryan Hall run Boston, maybe he would have a shot at winning.  I would have preferred to see Meb   win, but I will take hall. 

OK, /running content.

ummmm,

I went to the dump with my brother in law last Friday .  That was fun.

 

Dump away.

Poll

Could my man crush on Big Frank be larger?

5%

No, you love the man a little bit too much.

3 votes

17%

Yes.

10 votes

39%

No, but Big Frank is deserving of such love.

22 votes

3%

Stop making DLD's, you east time zone living ass.

2 votes

12%

NO MORE RUNNING CONTENT, you ass.

7 votes

21%

Bring back Jim Mecir!

12 votes

56 votes | Poll has closed

 

Rich Harden is dead, AKA, day to day.

Continue reading this post »

I am not typically a negative guy and I am actually fairly optimistic about this year's team but for today, everything sucks.  It is my birthday and I am pretty depressed about how things are going.  Nobody has even wished me happy birthday yet and given that birthdays at this age are largely about taking stock this is not where I wanted to be at 31. 

I have moved back to Canada and this winter has just broken.  It has been rough and not only that, I have had major trouble finding a job in my field in a down economy.  Given that, I have had to take an entry level job in my field and the prospect of not being able to see the A's at all this year, maybe ever again, is very real.  I have not been able to race this year due to not being able to afford to pay for or travel to races.  I was going to run this one. 

We just had our A's host a three game set in which we did not draw more than 16,384 fans.  This of course will ad to the tedious BS that is the wider Bay Area's media support of the Giants, even though we have always had a better product in terms of team success. 

In fact, we have only drawn only over 22K once and that was against the Red Sox on opening night with a large number of their fans in the stands.  Sigh.......

 

Its Monday, it is bleak, and this link dump sucks, just like everything else.

It appears that there is a dispute about coaches and other non players getting paid to participate in the Japan Major League opening day festivities.  The red sox have already held a one day strike boycotting their last spring training game today. 

 

Here is the article.

 

Major league baseball is of course capable of retracting promises made to both the A's and BoSox to be a part of this trip. I  wonder if the A's will follow suit or be MLB's lackey boys.

 

It will be interesting to see how this turns out. 

 

 

So, I am checking my email and the various websites that I check daily and I decided to check the A's rumors on prosports daily.  

Poll

What player would it hurt most to see in an Angels uniform?

12%

Crosby (yeah, it would hurt the Angels.)

34 votes

22%

I have been paying attention, No player is safe from a trade and I root for the name on the front and not the back.

62 votes

11%

Miguel Tejada

32 votes

6%

What is up with the running content? Spam the Halo board with that mess!

18 votes

39%

Eric Chavez

107 votes

7%

Byrnes

21 votes

274 votes | Poll has closed

Continue reading this post »

With the little one asleep on my lap and the wife taking a much deserved nap I thought that I would take the time to write this up.  Athletics Nation is a large and relatively diverse community so I imagine that there may be a critical mass that would fit the bill for this idea.  How many runners are there on athletics nation?  Do we have enough to form a running club?

Runsgood and I have exchanged emails about this very idea.  He and I both have some college running experience and would love to be a part of forming a running club based in part on being A's fans.  

-My basic idea would be to have a running club that would have several cells in various areas in norcal.  I am going to be living in the Davis area as of late July / early August so I would be involved in that area.  There would be as many cells wherever there would be interest.  
-Ideally these cells would meet at least 2 or 3 times a week to conduct an interval training session, a tempo session, and a long run.
-The cells would come together to race periodically as a team.  Ideally this race series would be a target for those who wanted to compete in it:

http://www.pausatf.org/data/2006/xcschedule2006.html

Hopefully we could enter a full team in all of the divisions, men's and women's open in addition to men's and women's masters (over 30, a barrier that I will breach within a year..   Sigh...)  divisions.

-We could also target less competitive races more geared towards fun.  

-This could be a potential schedule of races:

http://www.dipsea.org/index.html

http://www.ffsac.com/template.asp?id=137

http://www.thegreatrace.org/

http://www.pausatf.org/data/2006/xcschedule2006.html

http://www.runtofeedthehungry.com/home.html

http://www.runcim.org/

And of course we would want to include the A's yearly fun run.  

-The idea of the club would be to have it be open to anyone who wanted to join, be they beginners or established runners.  Not everybody would have to race.  Different cells could have different social functions and the like.  

The main reasons why I would want to get athletics nation involved would be to combine two of my great passions in life (running and baseball, particularly A's baseball), help introduce more people to running, and get a team together to run the Pacific Association cross country race series.  

I would hope that we could get some sort of racing shirt together with athletics nation via astropitch.com and get some interest.

We'll, be honest, am I barking up the wrong tree?  Should I be content to join one of the many norcal running clubs instead of this?  Or would you have interest?   Would you know of one who may have interest?

Poll

is this a good idea

23%

fire macha now, or something....

4 votes

5%

maybe...

1 votes

58%

Yes.

10 votes

11%

No, there are enough running clubs in norcal, join one of those.

2 votes

17 votes | Poll has closed

june 1st, 1:13 pm east cost time, 10:13 PST, ABLJG (his initials, he has a long name) came into this world in a heaving mass of 9 pounds and 1 OZ.  He is big and hungry.....
YAY!!!  He is finally here.

We went into labour the night before and it went well.  The actual delivery only lasted 18 minutes.  Baby and momma are asleep.  I am catching up on several days worth of A's condesed games (KENDALL HIT ONE OUT?!?!?!  WTF?!?!  YEAH!!).

I wore a Kendall jersey in hopes that my son will like the idea of being a pitcher...  Kendall seems to make pitchers happy.

Mom is tired.  

Really tired...

Future ace closer (if he wants to be) is roaring and ready to go:

Good times...
need sleep...

Give me of A's fandom and games since (and including) the third game of the KC series and I will fill in AN on the wonders of meconium, functioning on 45 minutes of sleep for days at a time, and the utter joy of seeing your own child open their eyes and look back at you for the first time ever.  Well, I don't think I can put that last one into words...

Ok, given that our A's are depleted by injury right now and are struggling I thought that I would post a diary about my time this week attending A's games at the Skydome (errr... Rogers Centre).

Tuesday night:

My wife and I attended taking advantage of the $2 ticket promotion sitting in the upper level.  

The view was nice:

I wore the road grey jersey under the hunch that the A's would wear it and they did!  Much more importantly my wife and I took our son to his first baseball game.  He was very excited to go earlier in the day:

And then at the game he had a great time:

It was great to see the A's win and it was fun giving the drunks in the section that suggested that I sucked nothing to talk about.  I also enjoyed seeing Brown step onto the field before the game for the first time as a major leaguer.  

On Wednesday I spent the mid morning at the hockey hall of fame with my hockey player friend who has season passes:

He also had free first level tickets to the game that night and that came in handy.  We watched BP.  We paid particular attention to Thomas chatting it up with swish:

And not to leave the ass fans out I got a shot of J.Brown's jean selling ass before the game:

The poor guy was so nervous that he fell over while running one of his pre game sprints.  I do not have a picture of that.

I had joked with Toronto A's fan that since he was missing the game that his favourite pitcher Mr. Cupcakes was going to threw a shutout and that the bug hurt was going to hit a dinger.  Well, we got half of that.  It was good to see the offence wake up for a game but it was a frustrating game to watch.

Thursday we toronto A's fan was there and we got to admire thomas' size up close:

The roof was closed and I find that the park seems very boring and unballpark like when the roof is closed.  The game felt the same, unball game like.  Only Swish's two dingers kept it somewhat palatable to watch.  It was ugly.  It got worse when Thomas pulled up lame halfway between second and third on Kielty's double to left.  I had commented before to TAF that they should pinch run for him given that the game was out of hand.  It was just ugly on all counts.

The highlight of the game had to be because of Rene Lachemann.  All throughout the game he had been coming out every inning and giving a ball to a young person in the stands right behind first base.  Normally he had given baseballs to kids under the age of 8 or so.  Throughout the game I had been making eye contact with him and giving him a thumbs up sigh.  I was wearing a home white A's jersey and I stood out among all of the jays fans in the section.  Before the start of the 9th inning he pointed at me and threw me a ball!!!

That was the highlight of the game.  

I had fun but I would have loved to see more wins.
Melhuse hit very well but I wonder how well he called games given that there was only one quality start in the three games that he caught in Toronto.

Ok, earlier we had this diary:

http://www.athleticsnation.com/story/2006/2/9/145459/1410#27

I have not heard from easy rich dude in awhile but I still think that he is going to be there.  

I will be attending all three games.  Tommorow night with my wife (who is 8 months pregnant).  I will be sitting in the 500 level to take advantage of $2 tuesday.  I look forward to it because if there is a cure for a sputtering offense it is John Towers.  I will be wearing my grey Oakland Road jersey with the green hat tommorow night if you want to look for me.  

Wednesday night I will be there with my friend mike, the hockey player, sitting first base side in the 100 level.  Smoking Joe B., AKA, cupcakes is going to help me to teach my hockey loving friend a thing or two about baseball.

On thursday I will be very close to the A's dugout in the 100 level with Toronto A's fan and our friend whom we refer to as an Eddie Gaedel lookalike.  Captain Saarloos is going to show the world that he is the best #7 starter in baseball.  

Last year I met a few other members of Athletics nation at the games in Skydome.  Giggleingone, her sister, and oakland mullosks (with mother in tow) were there and were all very nice to meet.  Who is going to be there this year?  If you would like to hang out drop me a message at ernestleifjohnson@gmail.com.  Thanks and I hope to see fellow athletics nation members at the game.