Idiots Write About Sports

Everything that went wrong Monday? It sure went well tonight. The A’s worked the counts (six walks!), got runners on base (12 hits!), and got the big hit when they needed to (a five-run second inning, with four of those runs coming with two outs!). And that’s before we even mention the four homers, two of them coming courtesy of Nick Swisher.

Just as Monday was too soon to start wearing sackcloth and ashes, tonight’s win shouldn’t put anyone in a rush to calculate Oakland’s Magic Number. (It’s 318, I believe, but who’s counting?) Still, you look for the positive signs where you can, and the most positive sign tonight was the A’s five-run outburst in the second.

Oakland scored its first run of the year on a one-out bases-loaded ground out by Mark Kotsay. The A’s did that a lot in 2004 — clog the basepaths with runners who would subsequently remain on the bases twiddling their thumbs while a string of batters failed to drive them home. The A’s ability to turn potentially game-breaking rallies into LOB-paloozas contributted as much to the team’s failure to reach the post-season as any leaky bullpen. So after Kotsay’s grounder left runners on second and third with two out, you can excuse world-weary A’s fans like myself for assuming that one run was all we were going to wind up with.

Which is when Jason Kendall smacked a two-run single to right. And Eric Chavez slammed a pitch over the left-field fence. And before you could say, “The A’s failed to capitalize in the second,” Oakland was enjoying a comfortable five-run lead.

Hey, you take your victories where you can. And if Oakland is able to drive runners home with any efficiency, maybe this won’t be as long a season as Monday’s festival of offensive ineptitude might have indicated.

Other random notes from Wednesday’s win:

* I feel confident in saying that Kirk Saarloos isn’t always going to turn in six innings of one-hit ball. But after watching the way the non-roster invitee handled himself on the mound in his unexpected start, I’m a lot less worried about the fifth starter role than I might have been had Seth Etherton been handed the job.

* Curious that Mark Ellis starts on Monday when Barry Zito — a fly-ball pitcher — is on the mound and that Keith Ginter, who’s not nearly so handy with the glove, gets the start on the day a sinkerball pitcher appears. Some day I will figure out what goes on in Ken Macha’s wine-dark mind, but today does not appear to be that day.

* We got the Orioles feed tonight on MLB Extra Innings, with Jim Hunter on the play-by-play and Jim Palmer handling the color. They’re not bad. They’re pulling for the Orioles, obviously, but not so overtly that it distracts from the telecast. And Palmer clearly does his research, as he seemed reasonably well-informed about the A’s roster. Although he is capable of the occasional doozy:

“Billy Beane wrote a book called Moneyball,” Palmer said, by way of explaining the A’s preference for college draftees. “Or at least, he co-authored it.”

Yes… under his pen name “Michael Lewis.”

[Correction: It may have been Fred Manfra and not Jim Hunter handling the play-by-play duties for that game. Frankly, I don’t know, nor does it change my opinion of the Orioles broadcast team’s basic competence. It’s just a little mortifying after mocking Jim Palmer for spreading inaccuracies that I would do the same. Oh, the shame!]

* There is no thrill more giddy than watching Sammy Sosa smash a ball, do that “I just hit a homer” hop of his out of the batter’s box… and then watch as the ball dies right at the warning track for an inning-ending out.

In case you were wondering, Sammy does not follow up those warning-track outs by blowing kisses.

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