How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the A’s
In the early days of the The Dapper Lad, before we went “public” and had a massive readership (673 page views last week! Look out google, we’re coming for you!) we wrote a number of posts about the A’s. It is hard to write good baseball humor, but at the same time we (I) were giddy that they weren’t as terrible as everyone thought that they would be, after the off-season of our discontent, which saw all the team’s stars (and Marco Suctaro) get traded away. Realizing that no one actually cared about the plucky kids, we tried to subsume our compulsion to write about the A’s, but the seven (7) step program we entered to deal with this problem obviously isn’t working.
After last night’s 14-2 savaging of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (there should be a slaughter rule in Major League Baseball), the A’s have the best record in the American League. While the book might still be out about whether or not they are actually this good (they aren’t) they haven’t been winning games because they’ve been lucky: they’ve scored more runs than any other team in the AL. Someone might point out that they’ve played more games than anyone else in the AL, which would be an entirely valid point. But then we would point out to this someone, that they also have given up fewer runs than any other team in the majors! That’s in your face whoever you are!
In addition to just playing better baseball than the teams they are up against, weird things are happening. Frank Thomas hit a homerun against the A’s, and then promptly “forgets how to hit” and is cut by the Blue Jays. He is then signed for cents by the A’s and can suddenly hit again. In the five games since he’s been back his OPS is a none too shabby .976 (compared to .639 when he was playing in Canadia) and last night he got a triple. The man turns forty, weighs 275 pounds and he got a triple! If that doesn’t tell you something weird is going on, nothing will.
And for my loyal readership that has been following my bet on the number of wins the A’s will get for the season, they can be 23 games under .500 for the rest of the season and I’ll still win. That’s in your face Cal-Neva Casino! I’m coming for you!
