Gosh, I am so glad baseball season is right around the corner.

I am on my way to AZ for my first visit to see some A's Spring Training baseball!  Are there any local / nearby food spots that can't be missed?  All cuisine and price ranges acceptable.  

Additionally, how is the sun / weather at the stadium?  Any other things I need to be aware of?

Thanks in advance for your suggestions and recommendations.

Does anyone have an idea about how early one should get to the stadium to get a jersey on Saturday?  He's my all time favorite player and I'd really like to get one....  I recall on fleece blanket night, it was not hard to get one, but that was a weekday game and not very crowded.  I imagine the place will be packed to the gills on Saturday, no?  3pm? 2pm? Noon?

Thanks!

Peter Gammons is is on Mike and Mike (ESPN Radio) this morning. Looking for a sleeper pick, Golic asked which fans could likely be rooting for their team in October.  He said "I want to say the A's but they seem to be the consensus second best team in the A.L. behind Chicago."

What a great way to start the day (and season)...

Go A's.

let's start the day off with this one courtesy of ESPN:

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=kreidler_mark&id=2281783

tsk tsk tejada... tsk tsk

rant:
although i will say, it seems to me that the smart move is always to go to the team that pays the most, suck it up on a losing team for 2 years, then demand a trade to a contender.... i cannot remember the last time a team did not trade a malcontent star.  a-rod signs for 25 bajillion dollars and then still goes to the yankees... how many stars out there are on one team and having another team pay part of his salary?  too many.  i have no idea why teams just don't tell the player to suck it up, you took the money to play here, so play here.  if you wanted to go to a contender, you should have taken their lower offer...
ugh... this is really the only part of the game that bothers me....

According to Peter Gammons via the espn.com rumor mill the A's have asked about David Wells... Not that I have a problem with him, and I'm sure someone will spout info about his durability, absurd walk rate and blah blah blah... but at this point I think we need more pitching like a hole in the head / lineup....

Start your day off right:

Oakland A's - Bart Simpson - Reliable bad-boy winners who march to the beat of their own drum. Locked in a constant struggle against the overbearing establishment. Every time you think they're going to get what's coming to them, they weasel out of it and surprise you again.

Kansas City Royals - Gil the Salesman - Forever facing in an uphill battle to be competitive. Their failures tend to be more sad than comical. Others are just glad they're not them.

for the rest of the league:
http://barstoolsports.com/article/The_Definitive_MLB__Simpsons_Analogy_List/344/

fluff from the sluss:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/08/08/SPGRQE3R2S1.DTL

also from the denver post:
http://www.denverpost.com/rockies/ci_2920462

finally, (don't know if this tidbit was up already...)
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=stark_jayson&id=2125969

8. Useless Not-As-Big-As-We-Thought Dept.
 More Oakland: You may be hearing a lot these days about Barry Zito's eight-game winning streak. But by A's pitching standards, that isn't even unprecedented for him (since he also did it in 2001).
There is a streak within that Oakland rotation, though, that is unprecedented: Bet you didn't notice that the A's have now won 13 games in a row started by Dan Haren. Yep, 13.
So how often, you wonder, did the A's ever win 13 straight games started by their Big Three -- Zito, Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder -- back in the Good Old Days?
The correct answer: Never. Of course.

a's recap ap style:
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/recap?gameId=250802109

daily dose of steroids (aka lies and the lying liars that tell them):
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2123113

Rafael Palmeiro's positive steroid test was for stanozolol, a powerful anabolic steroid that is not available in dietary supplements, according to a newspaper report.

the nytimes link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/03/sports/baseball/03steroids.html?

Stanozolol, known by its brand name, Winstrol, was most notably linked to the Olympic sprinter  Ben Johnson of Canada, who was stripped of a  gold medal in 1988 after testing positive for that steroid.

geez, it's not even like it was something new and he didn't know the could test for it yet.... palmeiro's an idiot.

ugh... is anyone out there telling the truth???  

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/resurrection-in-oakland/

a nice little look at the turnaround... not too much that hasn't been pointed out here....

as a nice change of pace to all the articles in the mass media that have been attributing the success to the pitching credit is given where it is due:
"Oakland's pitching hasn't improved quite as much as the offense, but the pitching staff wasn't as bad as the lineup to begin with."

new article on the a's in the paper..
"Oakland turns dismal early season into distant memory" is the headline in the hard copy....
here's the lede:

WHEN Billy Beane awoke yesterday, his team was tied with the Minnesota Twins for the American League wild-card lead, half a game ahead of the Yankees. Did he ever think, Beane was asked, that his poor Oakland Athletics would be in a playoff race with the obscenely wealthy Yankees?
"Oh, gosh," he responded. "I'd love to tell Brian Cashman that. I wonder if they ever thought that they would be in a playoff race with us."

ps: sorry if this is a repost....

just two quick questions:

1. is it in-demand (ie can i watch the a's when i get home, or do i have to tivo/dvr it?)?-- not a deal breaker.
2. how many a's games did they show last year?  I was looking at the schedule, only the first week is posted on the internet, and in the first week of games, they are not showing 2 a's v tb games (not a big deal, but i don't wanna drop $140 on 20 a's games and 100 nationals games....)

Baseball Musings has a defensive range chart for all players.  I looked at Hatty for obvious reasons...  I've pasted a link to his charts below...  Can someone with more stats knowledge than me help explain this (I am ashamed to admit I've forgotten all I've learned since college).

http://pages.map.com/pinto/charts/9162004.htm

I live on the East coast and am dying to watch my boys play more than twice a year when they come to Yankee Stadium... Does anyone have experience with MLB.TV as compared to a cable sports package?  As it stands now, MLB.TV is $70 or $80 for the season and the cable package is about $140.  I think cable provides 60 out of market games a week, so I should be able to see the A's consistently enough....

That said, it seems that through MLB.TV, I can see almost all the non-blacked out A's games... is that correct?  Does anyone have first-hand knowledge of their package?  Can I watch the games not live (after work, etc)?  How is the video and sound quality?

Inquiring minds need to know.

In a recent Peter Gammons article, he states that he had a conversation in FL with a "player who might be the most intelligent man in uniform" regarding steroids....  

 "if I were a four-A player whose game was power and I thought I could make $100 million by taking steroids, who am I to say I wouldn't have done it? "

So probably not a power hitter... a pitcher maybe?  They tend to get credit for being smart (whether justified or not)....

Any guesses?

Everyone is attacking Canseco's credibility as a way of defending McGwire et al.  While if this were a slander issue (spoken word/lies), I would be hesitant to believe him, I think libel (printed lies) is a different issue.  This is because the publisher would also be liable if this is a flat out lie.  Regan Books is a division of Harper Collins.  Out of everyone involved in the steroids mess, I think the publishing house has the most credibility.  

For me it is essentially whether or you think the combined weight of the publisher's and Canseco's credibility is greater than other players and their agents.  If Regan Books allowed statements that bold to be printed, I think it must be true...  What will be interesting is to see how the book is edited for the European market, where the libel laws are different/ looser.

What does it look like now?

1. Zito
   
2. Harden
   
3. Blanton
   
4. Haren???
   
5. ???

WTF?!? now we have one ace in the hole... harden better be un-fucking-believable!