Demons hover for the A’s
By Art Spander
They’re so close. Again. But the demons hover. Again. One game is all the Oakland Athletics need to advance to the American League Championship Series.
As year after year, it seems all they needed was one game to advance.
A game they never could win.
Having taken two in the 2013 best-of-five division championship competition, the A’s appear to have the edge over the Detroit Tigers.
History begs to differ.
The statistics are notorious, the memories painful.
Last season they were a win away, against these same Tigers, well, virtually these same Tigers, tied at two victories apiece. Detroit went on to the World Series, the A’s back to the same question that has haunted them much of this brief 21st century: What went wrong?
In 2000, they lost the fifth game to the Yankees.
In 2001, they won the first two from the Yanks – in New York – then came back to Oakland, to the Coliseum, with its raucous fans, and began a three-game losing streak. Adios.
Game 3 was when Derek Jeter grabbed a poor throw halfway up the first-base line and with a backhanded flip from foul territory cut down the plodding Jeremy Giambi at home. Final score, New York 1, bewildered A’s 0.
In 2002, the so-called “Moneyball” year, Oakland lost in five to the Twins. Not the Yankees or the Red Sox – to whom they would drop the series in 2003 by the inevitable total of three games to two. The Twins.
It was in 2003 Mr. Moneyball, Billy Beane, the A’s general manager then and now, was heard to mutter to a few journalists after the 4-3 loss to Boston in Game 5, “If I had another $50,000, we would have won this.”
Of course, Beane’s image and reputation were burnished by the Michael Lewis book, subtitled, “The Art of Winning an Unfair Game,” for succeeding despite not having that $50,000.
Beane’s then-revolutionary ideas of going after unwanted, slow-footed bargain-basement sluggers didn’t hurt. Yet, what is conveniently overlooked about 2002 is that on the roster were three of the era’s finest pitchers, Barry Zito, Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder.
Oakland’s shortstop that season, Miguel Tejada, wasn’t bad either, voted the American League MVP Award over Alex Rodriguez, then playing short for the Texas Rangers. Zito won the AL Cy Young Award.
That hardly sounds like a roster scraped together from the Sunday rec leagues.
Beane knows his ballplayers. He also knows his budgetary limitations, which basically have prevented Oakland from retaining the biggest stars, such as Jason Giambi, who departed after winning the MVP in 2001. Still, sometimes it seems Beane delights in being forced to dig for pennies and solutions.
The real problem -- and this is as much a cause of the poor regular season attendance as playing games at O.co Coliseum, the last stadium shared by baseball and the NFL – is that fans never have time to identify with the best players. Here today, gone to New York or Washington or Phoenix.
Years ago, a columnist – well, me – knowing names make news, complained to Beane, “Your team has no buzz.” Without hesitation, he responded, “You call it buzz, I call it noise.”
The stories are litany. Oakland, the city, is in a bad way, with too much crime. The Coliseum, 48 years old, is antiquated, subject to overflowing sewage in clubhouses and dugouts. (Did anyone notice, across the Bay during the 49er game Sunday, there was a sewage leak at Candlestick Park?)
The A’s owner, Lew Wolff, wants to move the team to San Jose, because of the wealth and cachet of Silicon Valley.
A’s fans, few from April through September, numerous in October, are a stubborn, boisterous group, more so than those who follow the San Francisco Giants, where at AT&T Park the surroundings are lush and the concession menu includes sushi and garlic fries.
Giants fans attend as a diversion. A’s fans attend because of an obsession.
Oakland in 2012 made a huge (and expensive) leap, signing the Cuban free agent Yoenis Cespedes, who has been worth every dollar of his four-year, $36 million deal. That he won the home run hitting contest, prior to the All-Star Game, only gave him added status.
The A’s, as is every winning team, are built on pitching, from 40-year-old Bartolo Colon to 23-year-old Sonny Gray, who shut out the Tigers in Game 2. In Cespedes, Coco Crisp, Josh Donaldson and others they have enough hitting.
They’ll need both in Game 4 against the Tigers. History being what it is, they do not want to confront another Game 5.