Happy Halloween Ya Scumbags!

As I’m making my coffee in the morning my cat routinely comes into the kitchen and stands next to my legs to greet me, lightly brushing with his tail every so often. I pick up the little critter and set him on the bar to stroke his orange coat for a bit before giving him a few treats. After gobbling the morsels, he then runs outside on the deck to get some fresh air and to harass random chattering and angry squirrels simply trying to access their mythical, hidden cache. This is part of our routine, something that promotes health and wellness. It’s a great thing to be a wild and crazy guy, but we also need routines to settle our brain so the messy bugger is able to compute correctly. What is the significance of this? Nothing. Just another day…except today is Halloween!

I tried to watch a bit of the World Series last night, but it’s difficult to be attentive as I don’t have a dog in the race. No doubt, this has to be the most ‘Merica Fall Classic of all time as you have a crew of trash-can-banging cheaters from a state that instituted fascist abortion laws, essentially reverting humanity and women’s rights back to the Vatican of the 1300’s, (still up in the air if we can burn a hussy at the stake) or you can root with an assortment of redneck menagerie eating processed nacho cheese out of a pork barrel and periodically switching off on chanting the “tomahawk chop” with the bass intro to a shitty White Stripes song the whole goddamn game. On occasion my subconscious was discombobulated and I had to stop for a moment and assure myself that I was watching a baseball game and wasn’t mysteriously transported to a klan rally by aliens via Jewish space lasers. My friend overheard the chanting from the other room and said simply, “stupid,” and I just chuckled as I polished off my Budweiser and smashed the can against my forehead. I’m no paragon of virtue either, obviously, but it was a superb game in the end despite the psychic fallout–Braves won 3-2.

There was an article in some mainstream-newspaper-fish wrap where the hack stated that the rubes (the fans) must enjoy baseball in the present moment on grounds that  the dissolute prima-donnas will be striking next year. “You must savor every inning as if it’s your last.” I thought, who gives a toss? I refuse to give in to the effete demands of millionaires and billionaires and their nihilist institution! In addition, my team will be a shit show next year anyway, and if I need my junkie fix I can always watch Japanese baseball (NPB) or go check out my local sandlot team. I heard the Austin Grackles are supposed to be pretty good, and they sport some sweet ball-caps. I guess you could say that I’m entering my end of the year, cynical “baseball sucks” neurosis routine until spring training starts again, this time without Bob Melvin for the first time in over a decade. No doubt, I’ll probably read a few books about players and seasons from the past over the winter and let out a prolonged sigh. 

I got tix tonight to see John Carpenter’s original 1978 classic, Halloween, and I’m excited to see it on the big screen for the first time. It’s a typical slasher trope that teenagers are killed for having pre-marital sex, but one of the characters is strangled for casually thinking about banging her boyfriend on the way to pick him up in her 1977 Chevrolet Monte Carlo. Ain’t that the way it goes? Life sometimes just ain’t fair. I’ve also decided that I’m taking a break from this crusty ‘ol degenerate blog and wont see you guys again until April. Until then, stay well and warm, don’t eat all the kid’s candy, leave the “bag snatching” to the teens, and when you start seeing double it’s time to leave the bar. 

Turn Out The Lights…The Party’s Over

Viva Las Vegas?

I had no misguided delusions of this team winning the division at the beginning of the 2021 season. The past few days I have read various comments comparing Sergio Romo to a white flag, but you’ll see that I wrote on this very blog some months ago that I saw the Romo and Elvis Andrus acquisitions as a white flag with no implications of competing before a single ball was hurled or a single bat was swung.

It was simply lipstick on a pig.

It’s not practical for a team that is tip-toeing the paper-thin line between “good” and “average” to lose two All-Star caliber players (Marcus Semien, Liam Hendricks) and supplant them with two decrepit, below average players who are barely ML caliber. Who was relegated to pick up the slack? Because no one on this roster did–or was even capable–and the numbers to be replaced were insurmountable. The fact that either player stepped on the field wearing pajamas with Oakland stitched on the front was a middle-finger to the fans. A ruse. The same tired and time-honored baseball front office hoax of getting the fans interested by virtue of a recognized player who “did it in the past” rather than the ability to put up numbers for your team today–and the uneducated, fringe fans fall for it…every…single….time.

We as fans are supposed to “trust the process,” but where does a team go with a 29th ranked minor league system and zero ability to sign high profile free agents? Are we as Oakland fans to forever wish upon a star with the likes of Skye Bolt or a myriad of AAAA players? To dig through the trash to find somewhat capable players with obvious flaws and then leave it to management to disguise said flaws? Make no mistake about it, the contention window has closed with this current team, and with the threat of a move to Las Vegas imminent, these are times of high anxiety for fans of the green and gold. We are staring into the void of the baseball universe and having an existential crisis while the front office is trying to prove their craftiness by playing a glamorized version of Strat-O-Matic. Dare I say the Devil Rays have surpassed the A’s at their own game in this respect? A World Series appearance, the best record in the AL, and a stacked minor league system tells me…. hell yes.

Humbled and surpassed at our own Moneyball game as a billionaire con-man (John Fisher and his tasseled loafers can burn in hell) hiding behind the scenes uses the team, the city of Oakland, and MLB in order to extort and develop hundreds of acres of publicly owned land posing as a “stadium project.” In the end, this team we root for is just an asset for real estate development–the franchise itself is entirely immaterial to the bottom line.

These are disparaging times with no foreseeable reprieve.

Asterisks Beer Review While Vaxxed as F*ck

Bang. Bang.

I know the threat of the Oakland Athletics moving to a different city looms in the shadows, but it would be inconsequential to comment here until the Oakland City Council votes on the matter on July 20th. The readers of this blog already know my feelings concerning billionaire flim-flam artists and John Fisher is no exception. 

***

I finally got my second vaxx shot, so I commended my new precursor to freedom and the ending of covid-induced hibernation by buying a few beers and a new collectable Skeletor as my companion and I drove through the winding, craggy hills singing Don Henley’s “Dirty Laundry” at the top of our lungs. (Subsequently, I was confused by her public animosity of the Eagles, but love of a few choice Henley songs)  It’s scorching and humid and we are glistening as a result. There was an excursion to Taco Bell, a food I hadn’t eaten in well over a decade, and I felt as if  I was eating toxic sludge with notes of acidic regurgitation, but I needed sustenance before we went to a soiree bursting at the seams with a certain titular clique of Southern socialites. Not my cup of tea as a breezy West Coaster, although I was looking forward to imbibing on the Southern Belle, The Alabama Slammer, and The High Noon Old Fashion  which would perhaps loosen me up for the plethora of “ya’alls” and stiff posturing that would be heaved my way. How did I end up here?

“Did you ever notice that Donna Summer looks like Rick James without a mustache?” she said.

 ***

Are my readers tired of the pseudo-intellectual baseball pundit gibberish constantly shoved down their throats? Perhaps, but if you can’t dazzle them with your brilliance, then baffle them with your bullshit regarding “pre-gaming” and cliche sports blog financed beer reviews– but color me naive as I have not received one thin red dime for my efforts here. 

And as I was standing in the store aisle, blankly staring, and confused by the dizzying array of choices, I  gave in and decided to try the Houston Asterisks sponsored Crawford Bock, and my immediate impression was that it reminded me of a sort of piss-infused Newcastle. I found it to be rather bland for an attempt at a bock, and about as safe and by the books as you can get without going the dreaded “light beer” path. This is an attempt at making baseball fans that are used to drinking traditional lifeless, stodgy beer feel sophisticated by drinking a trendy, “craft beer” when this is the farthest thing from it. It’s a damn good metaphor for their baseball team–style over substance and pure surface trickery. I felt in the end I was paying for the can with its retro-rainbow Nolan Ryan era motif more than anything, and in the tradition of the organization, felt cheated. Not Recommended. 

 

A’s come out of the gate looking like Glass Joe, now look like a second level Piston Honda

The Mike Tyson’s Punchout cheat code is 007-373-5963

You know, I haven’t been giving this humble blog much time or attention lately, so I suppose it’s time to “dip into the ‘ol inkwell” and throw my two cents into the misty ether of right-wing conspiracies, porn, self-help, self-righteousness, quasi-mysticism and shit talking.

This baseball season, so far, can be summed up by using the opposite theater masks of tragedy and comedy, and this Oakland ball-club has all but bathed in the bubble bath of the above. After causing a mini-panic, collective brain-implosion and a negative knee-jerk reaction after starting out 0-6, the team collected themselves and went on a tidy 13 game winning streak–all but erasing the memory of their earlier incompetence and once again garnering the veneration of people with nothing better to do than to root for strangers wearing pajamas and Oakley Blades on a daily basis.

There was also a plethora of injuries, most notably a guy smashing his pinky finger against a desk (Jesus Lizard) because he was sucking at video games, (for more idiotic baseball injuries see John Smoltz and Glenallen Hill) and another taking a ricochet off a BP pitching cage and getting a shiner in an absolute “someone up there really hates me” freak of nature accident. (…and in a deliciously tasty form of irony, yours truly once took an angry Nintendo controller ricochet off the eye socket, giving both injuries a swirling, yin and yang home in my world of lunacy)

Yesterday, Mark Canha was drilled in the elbow with a wayward toss by a Baltimore hurler breaking legend Captain Sal Bando’s HBP record and, ever the comedian, doffed his cap to the crowd. I am absolutely thrilled that this guy has worked his ass off to turn himself into one of the best lead-off hitters in the game, and it’s hard to surmise that he was acquired from the Colorado “baseball team” for the baseball trade equivalent of a ham sandwich. 

The crescendo of BS before you is slowly coming to an end, (we’re all busy, aren’t we?) and I’ll leave you on this particular thought–watching Elvis Andrus play baseball is like the equivalent of rubber-necking a repulsively bloody and twisted metal-strewn car accident on the freeway. You know you shouldn’t look, but you can’t pull your eyes away because you want to see how bad it gets. An absolute shit show that makes me wonder how the yokels in Texas ever put up with the guy. Mr. Blue Hawaii was the mental goof protagonist on the one and only time I EVER saw a runner tag and score from 3rd on an infield pop. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you would pencil that in on your scorecard as a “SAC P6.”

Blasphemy.

It’s the day before Opening Day, day

Now that’s a beautiful lineup. Nine out of 10 shirtless guys agree.

I was watching an A’s /Twins game from 1988 on YooToob and it was a blast from the past and a chopped-up line in the bathroom of nostalgia. Bob Welch was on the hill for the good guys and it was sort of sad to see him facing Kirby Puckett as both shuffled off this mortal coil way too soon. I was enjoying the game and settling in, but I was distracted by all the shirtless guys carrying their wax cups full of Budweiser, happily fluttering around in the crowd like social butterflies with blindingly glistened oil-soaked bodies and Tom Cruise approved knockoff Ray-Bans.

When did it become socially acceptable for guys to walk around shirtless at the ballpark in the ’80s? I’ve seen this sort of exhibitionism in many 80’s movies, (maybe it was because gay culture was influencing the mainstream on the down-low, hence the straight guy mustache trend of the era which was obviously a disco-hangover and made baseball players look like leather daddies as they shoved pounds of Hollywood Happy powder up their nostrils) but was it art imitating life or vice versa? Although the apotheosis of shirtless guy movies, Magic Mike, came out in 2012, it still didn’t inspire a vomit-inducing public movement. Guys in the 2000’s just decided it was more appropriate to leave their shirts intact. I’m not saying an individual should wear a suit and tie à la the 1920’s Babe Ruth era, but please leave the “beach bod” (which isn’t always the case) at the beach. It’s goddamn distracting as most of the time the person committing the atrocity looks less like Conan-era–Arnold and more like he was squeezed out of a tube. Is this is a California thing or an 80’s thing? Inquiring minds want to know.

***

Rebel Without a Cause.

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It’s (the day before) opening day and you would like to watch your favorite team, but you can’t due to blackouts. Bummer. Here’s the biggest misconception about MLB blackouts–teams are not blacking out games to make you go to the stadium, they are doing it to ensure they don’t piss off the regional sports networks, which are established cash cows to the tune of 2.1 billion. Like most of you, I couldn’t care less about what billionaire has the biggest dick and just want to watch my local team. Here is a gift for the dedicated readers of this site: (all 10 of you) simply click on Alfred E. Newman’s face to the upper right (or at the bottom if you are reading this on a phone) and free baseball! Burn it all down! Fuck Rob Manfred! Sabotage the system! …Although you’ll probably want to *ahem* return tomorrow since there are no games today.

Beer and Japanese Nachos

I’ve come a long way since I had to meticulously set up my VCR to record the Game of the Week on my lousy, buzzing and rolling miniature television crowned with broken rabbit ears. (and Mel Allen’s TWIB!)  It almost seems absurd that I can now watch any game of my choosing on my phone while exercising or sitting on the toilet, and up to four different games simultaneously on my laptop. And that’s exactly what I decided to do on a lazy Friday. Escape. Open a few cans of Lone Star, tear open a bag of chips and salsa, and…just…escape. Does anyone care about Spring Training and its shuffling of bush leaguers and odd rules? Probably not.

Shohei Ohtani was on the hill for the Halos and that made me harken back to the time I saw him pitch in an exhibition game at Dodger Stadium one curiously freezing night in Los Angeles. The bleachers were teeming with Japanese, no doubt there to see their fellow countryman Ohtani pitch, and a young lady walking by my seat in the aisle spilled a large tray of nachos on me and my F*** the Angels t-shirt. (The stains exist to this day and I am still resolute about that idea) She apologized profusely and meekly in broken English and I felt terrible for her and assured her that I would wash myself off in the bathroom and there were no hard feelings. I also made a mental note of the very odd cultural difference/dichotomy of the Japanese dressing as if they were attending a business function/fashion show rather than the American way of dress which was mostly casual and lacking visual ingenuity with a few jerseys and baseball caps thrown into the mix. I honestly had never seen anyone wear a suit and tie at a baseball game that didn’t involve black and white footage of a guy cheering for Babe Ruth and tossing a fedora into the air. Is this a thing?

These glorified practices are opiate-inducing, laid-back affairs and I was watching passively as Mike Trout was pulled from the game in the 3rd and was probably teeing off by the 5th. Matt Olson does what Matt Olson does and hits a moon-shot to RF in his “feast or famine” playing style that is popular with big leaguers and Olson seems to excel at. The A’s decided to throw in a pitcher by the name of Brian Schlitter (who didn’t play last year because the minor leagues went the way of the dodo) and I had to stifle a laugh as I had written about this dude waaay back in 2019 before that mystery guy even thought about eating the delicious flying mammal that caused a global pandemic: A’s call up Brian Schlitter, A’s bullpen still in the shitter.  You ever hear that tired cliche–“the more things change the more they stay the same?” As you may have guessed, Schlitter did indeed put the game in the shitter, but I didn’t notice as equal measure of beer and Spring Training kicked in, and I was soon floating on clouds while verbal sparring with Morpheus in lotus land. Final: Angels 7 A’s 3

John Fisher really, really, really sucks

He’s not dead!

In life, it’s best to go about it removed of preconceptions. Things tend to work out better that way. Besides purging potential disappointment…Ah, fuck it…welcome to the well-worn, mundane path of innocuous disagreement known as Hot Stove Baseball Talk!

If this is a time when Oakland fans are supposed to stand back and admire “The Process” and the genius(es) behind it, then let’s face it, these are moves you imagine and contemplate while hammered at the bar with buddies. Of course, you laugh at the inadequacy, stupidity, and audacity the next day, if not in the present moment. But damned if this isn’t *ahem* reality, or as I like to call it–the “Moneyball Hangover” set in motion due to piss-poor ownership.

Do the “geniuses” ( Is Brad Pitt still part of this process? Inquiring minds want to know)
have deeper insight than I do? Do they feel the same deflation or laid-back apathy? Because the passage of time and the numbers on a page usually tell you the value of a player and his present capabilities. And hardly ever, if ever…lie. And as a fan, you can be caustic and cynical, but also supportive. I believe this is called tough love.

Elvis Andrus: The epitome of average with a career .702 OPS and that includes the younger, career-high years. (The sad thing is that the A’s would settle for that OPS, and for readers that aren’t complete geeks–those numbers would quantify as average–not special, and not a beautiful and unique snowflake.) Every time this guy takes hacks against a Rangers pitcher this season half of his salary would be paid by the team he was trying to hurt–a shocking sign of the absolute desperation to wash their hands of him, and since they are AL West rivals, confidence in the inability to perform against them 18 times. The press releases say he “smiles a lot” and “appears to have a good time.” Oh, goody! We got an old guy with back problems who can’t hit and smiles a lot. I’ll have to remember that next time I’m contemplating watching a game. “We’re getting our asses kicked, but at least ol’ blue suede shoes is out there smiling and having a good time. My mind is at ease now.” That may be fine for the casual fan, but give me a guy like Mark Ellis who never smiled.
silver lining: we needed a SS…nothing more. He’s a body. A very expensive body. D+

Adam Kolarek: He’s a pretty darn good LOOGY (google it) in an era when the LOOGY is dying because the higher strikeout rates soar, the less that exploiting lefty-versus-lefty matchups matters. (And this makes Kolarek especially vulnerable as a ground ball pitcher) Conspiracies aside, he averages less than an inning per appearance but can be a valuable late-inning asset in a tough situation with a left-handed bopper at the dish as they had a minuscule 0.34 WHIP against the guy. If this tall drink of water can give us 50 innings and an ERA a little above or below 3.50 I would consider this a win.
silver lining: shut down the lefties and send their ass to the bench shaking their heads B-

Sergio Romo: Here’s a situation of, “whatever happened to…?” and then you find out he’s a 37-year-old has-been who was dumped by the Marlins and the Twins and is currently doing Kenny Powers cosplay in the Mexican League….because he has risen from the baseball graveyard. At this point in time, he is undoubtedly a gas can as proven in the AL Wildcard last season when he destroyed the Twins chances in the 9th inning of Game 1, essentially giving the Asterisks the win and all the momentum they needed to take the series. Probably not thought of too fondly in Minnesota. This guy was also a prominent SF Giant during their fugazi dynasty, so the fans may not accept him (may even boo him mercilessly, just ask Jim Johnson) if he struggles right away because of provincial disputes.
silver lining: he’s known to have a really good slider and we needed a bullpen guy. I don’t know….apparently any guy. C-