Idiots Write About Sports

I’m about to head out from work to the Coliseum for this evening’s Angels-Athletics tilt. And I do so dogged by a distinct feeling of foreboding — a nagging fear that this is the night the A’s are handed such a monumental and lasting beatdown that, in the inevitable winter post-mortems about a season gone, this will be the game people point to as to when the excruciating slide into irrelevancy began.

Of course, I feel that way before just about every home game I go to.

What’s different this time around is that the A’s on Wednesday had a chance to sweep the team with the best record in baseball (but not the best team in baseball — that squad resides in either Boston or the South Side of Chicago). And they essentially laid down for the Tigers and didn’t seem too downbeat about it. It’s as if, to a man, the A’s figured, “Well, we’ve already won the series and Kenny Rogers beats us like a drum, so let’s try and keep it close, but if we don’t, no biggie.” If so, it doesn’t speak well of the team’s competitive fire.

Then there’s the small matter that Oakland will be playing the Angels, a team with which they scraped knuckles back in May. So how do they gear up for this game with a hated divisional rival? By sounding like the Oakland branch of the Anaheim Angels fan club. Eww.

The Angels, of course, are in last place in the AL West, but only four games back and coming off a sweep of Seattle, plus a fairly convincing series win against the Dodgers over the weekend. They’ve started correcting some of their more glaring roster mistakes. And it is this team, not the ones in Seattle or Arlington, that has the resources to run away and hide with the division if given half an opportunity.

We had the monster down, and instead of emptying a round or two into the body, we walked over and held up a mirror to its mouth to see if it was still breathing. That trick never works.

Anyhow, I’ll be taking my mom to the game and we’ll be sitting out there in right field. So watch your goddamn language, you animals.

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