Everybody Loves Baseball!

I'd like to add one more thing about FanFest: Although it wasn't my thing, how cool was it that everybody in the city is into baseball!!! 'Way cool! Even restaurants are on the American pasttime bandwagon.

In fact, while we were in Moscone West, I was counting Giants and A's jerseys on the fans. And there were many more than that. People were wearing their colors. That's the way it should be.

The 800-pound gorilla locally, however, was forgotten for a few short days. It was best expressed by Alex Rios, the young guy hitting the early homeruns in the Home Run Derby yesterday at AT&T Park. He said something like, the championship is up to whomever wants it. It's beginning to look like neither the Giants nor the A's want it.

When we entered this season -- when we enter any season past 1995 for the Oakland Athletics -- we check 'em off: we have pitching, we have defense....oops, we don't have hitting. But we won't have to score that many runs because of Reasons 1 and 2.

However, at half-time in 2007, our pitching has shown whoopsiness, particularly two of our starting pitchers, all of our middle relief, and most of our closer(s). And most of that, I think, is due to injury, albeit injury that has claimed the same players over and over. And our defense is suffering as well. I mean, Marco Scutaro with 4 errors in ONE game? Who would've believed? Okay, we know that Marco is not his best at third, but that was ridiculous.

Still....I have faith in our pitching. Pitching has come from surprising sources, like Chad Gaudin and oldster Alan Embree. The health of Kiko Calero and Huston Street could really help out. You'll notice I haven't even mentioned Esteban Loiaza, Rich Harden, and I don't dare mention Justin Duchsherer. It's beginning to look like the first two starters won't be starting any time soon, or on a regular basis.

Hitting will never come around. Thank you, Shannon Stewart, for keeping us in the ballgame. But, as a team, the A's will never hit more than .250 this year. Guaranteed.

Still, I'm looking forward to Thursday, as are all the A's Faithful. It's what we do.