According to MLB.com columnist Phil Rogers, “A’s are equipped to get out of rut“! Of course, he does go on to say that we probably have no chance of winning the division, but still! Anything can happen! Especially because Little Nicky Punto is back! JUICE BOX JUICE BOX JUICE BOX! And this is the free game on MLB.tv!
Game 144 is gross.
So when I clicked Post Comment for the above comment I got an error message that simply said
no success
That happened to me yesterday when I made the first comment in the game thread.
So that’s what’s been going on! All NM’s fault.
Hard not to take that as a poor omen. OTOH, the A’s have lost the last five games I’ve done threads for, so seeing EM’s appear gave me positive vibes.
Are we pulling for KC or Detroit? (Assuming we retain the will to root.)
My head says Detroit, but my heart vehemently disagrees.
I’d like KC to play .300 ball the rest of the way yet still beat Detroit for the division.
OK, but what about tonight.
KC for sure, for me.
Eh, KC.
How great would an early crooked number for the A’s feel?
You know what, Ray? You already know that answer to that. Go to hell.
I’m willing to expand the definition of early to include sometime before sunset Pacific time.
Current mlb.com headline: A’s have horses to sprint past rocky road.
OK, let’s go with that.
I love Rocky Road.
So won’t you go and buy a half-gallon, baby?
yoda. yo yo yo, yo yoda.
there. we pretty much just recreated my 1983 summer camp experience.
met him in a swamp down in degoba where it bubbled all the time like a giant carbonated soda. so so so so soda
Ugh, Billy, we don’t need horses. We need baseball players.
False. We aren’t selling DNA!
Billy, I’m going to need you to fire me in a flippant manner for the benefit of our cinematic audience. You can rehire me in a few years after I’ve come around to this new way of thinking.
I just reassured myself that Callapso is not under contract for next year.
This one feels good to me
That’s what she said?
Here’s our problem – we need to wait for next weekend for the Texas League to finish, so we can get Barf:
Hey Angels: Prepare to get Barf’d!
Yahoo has Jon Lester of the (Red) Sox pitching to Mike Taylor of the A’s right now.
GameDay has “Injury Delay”. Who broke?
Norris took a hard shot to the shoulder. Still in the game
today is mlb.tv free game of the day
Presumably because no one would pay to see it.
Nice job, Jonny.
A run!
or two!
I have a good feeling about tonight.
Yeah, this is going nicely.
The White Sox basically gave us those two runs. Runners at 2nd and 3rd with no outs, but the A’s managed to hit three hard grounders to 3B.
That said, I’ll take ’em. And Lester is looking like he can make those runs hold up.
That is the point from which this warm feeling stems.
Well when Callaspo is getting a hit…
Hey, a break!
i knew this comment was dangling out there dangerously.
Fuld did not look like he really knew what he was swinging at there
“Oh, I’m supposed to be swinging at BASEBALLS? Fuck me. I thought it was lace dolls. Well that’s my problem right there.”
Crooked number!
anybody else have an unshakeable
dale a tu cuerpo alegria, camarena
hey camarena!
going through their head?
and sure enough VC says cienfuegos to seal the malaprop deal.
Phew.
Great, just fucking great.
Crack observation there Glen. “Maybe” he hit his head? Well, let’s see, his helmet fucking flew off and isn’t anywhere near him and he’s hold his head. Hmm… I bet it’s his leg.
And also, Gentry/Reddick should be awarded an extra base due to fielder’s interference (yes, still bitter).
Agreed.
nice josh.
Donnie!
This is pretty cool.
Man, I hope Gentry’s okay
Two crooked numbers in the same game? Unbelievable!
But also, Donaldson!
I’m not going to get excited until A) we get the 27th out with the lead, B) we score in more than 2 innings and C) we win 20 games straight and pass the Angels. And no, 19 in a row won’t be good enough. It’s got to be 20.
Glen, you have one job. And you suck ass at it.
And it’s not ass-sucking.
That’s really more of a hobby.
He did some ass-sucking in college. He thought about turning pro, but he threw out his shoulder junior year, so it really became more of a hobby.
I have not had a Chicago-style hot dog in a long time, they can be quite good.
Technical difficulties? Really?
with game feed? someone’s lying to you. my feed/s are fine.
What feed do we have now?
A better one it seems. I’m not hearing Glen.
I have no idea. White Sox?
Why am I being subjected to Steve Stone?
Did Ray finally snap?
Good protecting Lowrie!
I just got an A’s commercial on this White Sox feed, followed promptly with a CSN commercial extolling the greatness of Chicago fans. I’m all sorts of confused
Oh no, they crossed the streams.
Heh.
The baby in sox gear was cute, though.
I’m still getting the A’s feed on mlb.tv. They reported that Gentry has a concussion from the collision.
Ugh, at least they TOOTBLAN’d
nice camera work. i actually got more out of VC’s call.
I did enjoy the mild exasperation in the CWS announcer’s voice that the third out had been made at third base.
Hawk and Other White Sox Guy spend a lot of time being exasperated. This last month and a half? That’s like their whole lives.
The board has very little put on it these days. Poor board.
that was bad by fuld. getting to second with only 1 out, someone might get a hit and make him score. A’s might break that rule where you’re not allowed to score more than 3 innings per game. that’s worse than a balk, right?
dammit! do they have to forfeit now or something?
Looks safe to me, the unbiased observer
safe by a callus.
moss doesn’t grow on the south side.
Do we have anyone up in the pen right now?
44
has it been said? trust the fours, luke?
(i hate star wars.)
What are you, some kind of communist?
Monarchist
Most powerful handgun in the world. Could blow your head clean off.
nice.
Lester getting it done there
Snodgress? I bet he didn’t get teased in school at all for that name
semien?
What age do kids learn that word? I feel like he might have escaped peak teasing years before kids really knew that word
we had sex ed in 6th grade. seems like prime teasing time.
Fortunately for him there’s precedent in baseball
Kind of feel bad for Semien. Bay area guy, went to my high school while I was there. But on the other hand, I’ll take all the help the A’s can get right now
so what did you guys call him??
He was already relatively large and great at baseball. So, Marcus
The most famous athlete who went to my high school was Mia Hamm. Some day I will kill Nomar so she and I can live together in bliss as we were meant to.
And Nurse Upgrade’s views on this plan?
I haven’t worked out all the details, but I’m thinking the old hidden secret second family scam.
I think that would be a really good time to drive across the country in a shitty diaper.
dan quisenberry and brent mayne
Kristi Yamaguchi.
Oh, hey, and Gary Plummer.
Laettner and Orpik.
Some guy Randy Johnson. He pitched or something.
Thanks, and go As.
Sounds like a porn name
He was fairly mustachioed.
Thanks, and go As.
corky carroll and one of the dudes from endless summer.
ack! and hank conger.
i’ve mentioned daric barton went to mine briefly but graduated from my sister’s.
Kurt Rambis
Also, Ross McGowan, who used to be on KPIX.
Laurie Koehn. Still the best three-point shooter I think I’ve ever seen in person. And I’ve seen Steph Curry and Klay Thompson. She was the Wilt Chamberlain of Kansas women’s high school basketball.
Sam Chapman — played for the Philadelphia A’s!
Huh. Wikipedia says that Nyjer Morgan went to my high school, and graduated just one year before me. I don’t remember him, but I also never went to any baseball games.
And his baseball-reference page only lists two high schools in Canada. I’m going to guess that either wikipedia is just wrong (likely) or else he just had a brief stop-over at Tam High.
Yeah, don’t remember him at all (and I did play baseball when I was there, so would probably have been aware of him)
Of course, we mostly just focus on Tupac.
Wikipedia has him as class of 97, so you wouldn’t have overlapped, right?
Oh, right. I guess we would have just missed.
(looks on wiki at my high school. Nope, still the same)
Oliver Lang was in my class. He’s my usual cite for this, to make the point that Tam is not a sporting hub.
well if we’re gonna be making imaginary sports up, i have to go with tito ortiz.
Splat magazine may have ranked him number one, but everyone knows they overrate the Triple Crown stats (kills, dodges, percentage of reloads without smushing any of the balls). Paintball Prospectus raised serious questions about his peripherals.
In fairness, he was on ESPN late-night a fair bit when I was in college
Oh yeah, I remember him.
Billy Volek and Kevin Federline. Also our arch rivals had this Ryan Cook guy. He was after my time but it makes every meltdown that much worse because he’s a Cougar.
Nobody I know of from my high school has gone on to a notable athletic career, but we had Meryl Streep and J. Geils.
Though, I spent half a year at Hayward High and they’ve had Bill Walsh, Jack Del Rio, Andre Ward, Eddie House, Jon Miller, Don Wakamatsu, and a few others.
Brandon McCarthy!
Also due to proximity to Broadmoor Skating Arena where many Olympians train, scads of Olympic skaters including Peggy Flemming and Jeremy Abbott.
A’s only: Billy FKing Martin, Shooty Babitt, Claudell Washington and Glenn Burke.
We might win this game.
Shut up!
Well look at Keebs go
Rangers went full teAse
Damn, Donnie.
see want take
Ok it’s the next day.
HNNNNNG she is so hawt.
Thanks, and go As.
yeah, i wouldn’t mind having a little faith.
I’m extremely proud of myself for not knowing who this is.
latter-days buffy antag / dollhouse protag / whedon pantheon
I’m extremely proud of myself for only recognizing her from a Kevin Smith movie.
buffy is a masterpiece.
Dollhouse is interesting in a “i have a day to kill in bed and gotta watch TV” sort of a way.
Don’t forget Bring It On!
also excellent. Unexpectedly
Tying this thread to the high school discussion from above, Eliza Dushku grew up in Watertown, MA, which is where I live now. I voted for her brother for town council! Also, I ran in a 5k with her (well, I ran but she evidently walked because her finishing time was like 45 minutes). I didn’t actually see her though…
The A’s may give up the division. They may even give up a playoff spot. But they will never give up that run differential trophy.
Double digit dibs!
I have to believe that a high scoring blowout win feels even better to the players than the walkoff in Oakland the other day. Cathartic, even.
a team unslumping’s gotta seem better to them than a player carrying.
They scored in multiple innings.
luckily the umps didn’t notice.
Yup. This is the game that will finally bust the slump. And then tomorrow an umpire will blow a game-changing call, or three guys will get injured, and we’re right back where we started. It never fails. Literally every time it’s seemed like the team was coming out of it BOOMfucked.
Yes! I finally got one!
I feel like I’m actually a more legitimate recipient of this than most, because my negativity is based in a firm and irrational belief that most of what has happened to us, and will continue to happen to us, is sheer shit luck. I don’t think this team is worse than it was, and for much of this stretch, I don’t think they’ve even PLAYED much worse than they were. The amount of shitawful luck since the trade deadline has been unbelievable. I see no reason for it not to continue.
Just a random win. Nothing special until they string 20 wins in a row. 19 won’t be good enough, gotta be 20.
30 or bust.
maybe one will be callaspo?
An actual A’s victory!
Read this as an annual A’s victory. And I thought, has it only been that long since the last one?
it’s a celebration.
Scribner for closer
yay laugher
I always thought that term was very unsportsmanlike.
I’ve never understood why professional sports should be sportsmanlike in that manner.
Not that I care that much, but I can imagine it would feel pretty poopy to lose by 11 runs and then have the other team literally laughing at you.
So? It feels pretty poopy to be bad at any job.
That’s a reason to change prep sports (and anything below). I think there’s an interesting argument about sportsmanship and D1 sports. I just don’t see it about the pros, especially a sport like baseball where every at bat has (small, but non-zero) long-term career implications
apart from being paid millions and being adults anyway, so get over it big rich boy, doesn’t sportsmanship have a little to do with: tomorrow this could be you losing, so don’t rag on the other team too much today?
Sure. Don’t taunt them.
But a “laugher” is a term for a blowout. And if we are defining sportsmanship as “not trying too hard during a blowout” (which is a useful definition for prep sports), I don’t see how it applies in the pros.
I’m not really being that serious. I don’t really care about sportsmanship, at least not as it’s generally defined. I just think “laugher” is a funny term.
not sure it’s the other team laughing. could be the audience (sure, of the other team mostly, but also the same team and the neutrals) thinking it’s a laugher because the competition itself becomes absurd, not the players or their output.
i’d say at some moment, even if you’re rooting for the team losing, it’s so far out or reach that you come to a sort of peace, or release from tension, and this could be when you laugh at your own side.
That happened in my local LGBT softball league. There was a bully team that was laughing at us and using trans slurs, and I gave a Billy Martin-worthy performance calling those sons of bitches every name in the book.
Apparently the umpire hated them too, and he didn’t do so much as give me a warning.
Interesting choice of comparisons in that Billy Martin was not known for his tolerant attitude toward the LGBT community.
I thought Billy Martin hated and feared EVERYBODY, kinda like Nixon…
I would have called it a Lou Piniella-style tantrum, but I didn’t kick my hat.
Yeah baby! Great win. More like that please.
How did that happen?
Drawn in infield, chopper from Fuld barely hopped through, after that it couldn’t be fielded in time to stop second run from scoring.
Infield in in the ninth inning down five runs? Why not, I guess.
In fact, IIRC, they kept the infield in even after some runs scored against it, surprised me too.
That sucks for the pitcher.
I farted. You can thank me later.
In a contest of teams with horrible luck, something had to give.
The extent to which I am not going to read a Bruce Jenkins column on why the A’s shouldn’t have traded Yoenis is limitless.
it’s because in one of his 1000 random opinions contradicted by the other 999, he told billy to extend YC’s contract.
#savedyouabarf
Oh hey, the Mariners lost! We care about that now.
Yes we do. Got on the plane in LA, game tied. Plane lands in SF. Second thing I do (after texting wife) is check the Seattle game.
Sad, ain’t it?
For a fleeting moment I thought were going to miss Sale. Then I remembered it was a four-game series. Bummer.
which makes tomorrow’s game really important to win
AND ALL THE MORE GLORIOUS WHEN WE BEAT HIM
A win? What?
Current in-division AL West records:
LAA: 34-24 (.586)
SEA: 34-28 (.548)
OAK: 33-30 (.524)
HOU: 31-35 (.470)
TEX: 23-38 (.377)
HOU was 25-51 in the division last year, including 6-32 against OAK/TEX.
If Altuve really is Rogers Hornsby reincarnated,
my fantasy keeper team will be awesomethe division could start getting really interesting.Honestly, they have looked like a team that’s pretty close to being good recently. If Appel can turn it around and Correa forces his way up the ladder quickly, look out.
If Melvin isn’t giving this speech today he’s doing it wrong:
Your typo is not helping, Jonah.
LMAO
Doesn’t look like a typo to me.
I think those could help us save ourselves from the grave.
The Mariners schedule is considerably harder than ours, that’s for sure. In addition to the three with us they have 7 with the Angels, 4 at Toronto, and 3 at Houston (+tonight against Houston at home). That is tough, even though Toronto and the Angels probably won’t have anything to play for that last week.
Let’s hope we get on a roll, the M’s kick the Angels ass. Then both teams would have something to play for, we could then overtake the Angels, and monkeys would fly out of my ass.
At this point the best we can realistically hope for is that we get the Mariners in the WC game, and that they have to use Felix in Game 162 or 163 to get in. I would say the same for the Royals/Shields, except for Ugh, Vargas.
Has anyone Dr. K’d a thread recently? I’m grasping at straws here people..gotta be some way to break the curse…
today is the day.
I can’t pay attention to the day game. that has been the problem. too much attention. like getting a puppy back to the house
That makes sense.
I will say I have a morbid curiosity to see the articles that will start drifting out in Nov and Dec as people leave and the Suslus of the world have less to write about. I’m sure we will find out about a hidden Moss ailment that he felt he needed to play through “for the good of the team”. But what I really want to hear is the division between the somethings and the something else’s.
Remember when someone ran into him and he grabbed his arm? He’s been awful ever since.
I do remember that now. But why hasnt somebody smarter than me had it x-rayed and MRI’d etc?
yes yes.
Wait. You’re sacrificing a puppy??!!
No, a whole chicken.
put the puppy in the bucket ≠failure pile in a sadness bowl from KFC
you guys are mixing up your patton oswalt bits.
I’m trying to decide if I want to listen to the game at work or go to the DMV. Can’t figure out which would be more painful.
Listen at the DMV. It is through suffering that we become stronger.
Fuld (and Burns, of course) shaved the ‘stache. Maybe that will do it?