The Pastime

By now, nearly everyone who writes a blog, reads a blog, or has just heard of a blog is aware of the “discussion” between Will Leitch and Buzz Bissinger on a recent episode of HBO’s CostasNOW.

Leitch, the creator of the incredibly popular and influential Deadspin.com, appeared on the show to argue the merits of the new internet media revolution. Bissinger, the author of “Friday Night Lights” — a great book — and “Three Nights in August” — a terrible book — appeared in the role of “angry luddite with a file folder.”

It’s easy to get worked up about Bissinger’s profanity-laced tirade against an entire medium he sadly misunderstands, but I’m not going to join the legions of bloggers and enlightened readers that are up in arms about Bissinger’s hateful, ignorant opinions.

Why am I not concerned? Because Bissinger demonstrated to the world that he’s a sad, bitter man who can’t come to terms with the evolution of his profession. His ignorance and anger don’t worry me, because I don’t write to please Bissinger, or the dinosaurs of the sports journalism world.

I work at a newspaper, and I know many sportswriters. I interact with veterans of the dead-tree journalism business all the time. The vast majority of these experienced writers don’t have nearly the misunderstanding and hatred of blogs that Bissinger does. Quite to the contrary, many of these people are embracing the medium.

In a day and age when column inches are shrinking, and sports sections are being limited to perhaps four to five pages on a daily basis, blogs represent an outlet for all the writing that doesn’t fit in the print edition. Nearly every major newspaper in every city and state has a staff blog, and most utilize the freedoms of the web to expand upon their stories and offer further insight into the beat the cover, or further explore their opinions on a topic. They get it — unlike Bissinger.

I write about sports first because I love baseball, and secondly because I enjoy sharing my thoughts on the game with others — and I do mean sharing, because one of the greatest aspects of blogging is that you’re not writing in a vacuum and hurling words into the void. There’s a community of people out there who can comment on, react to, and build upon anything I choose to write.

Furthermore, Bissinger’s bile doesn’t get to me because I know that for all his bluster and outrage, he simply represents the ignorant sound and fury of an increasingly marginalized member of the mainstream media. His refusal to accept that a new source of sportswriting has emerged to compliment and enhance the current system is a sign of his downfall, not a strike in the futile and plainly silly war on blogs by the over-50 sportswriting crowd.

If I got upset every time someone said something ignorant and hateful, I’d be on medication for high blood pressure by now, and surely trimming years off my life due to stress.

As it is, I’m happy to do what I do, and I’ll continue to ignore the loud protests of ignorance by a vocal few who just don’t get it. I’d suggest that you, the reader, follow suit.

You’ve got to love the first two weeks of the season. Bizarre things are not only common, they’re almost certain to occur. Take a look at the standings, for instance.

Baltimore (Baltimore!) is atop the AL East with the best record in baseball. Boston and New York are below the .500 mark. In the AL Central, Kansas City leads the way, Cleveland is under .500 and Detroit only today won their first game of the season.

In the National League, things are just as unexpected. The Florida Marlins are atop the East, while everyone else has lost more then they’ve won. In the Central, the injury-plagued Cardinals are nevertheless at the top of the board.

It’s only in the two West divisions that some semblance of reason holds sway. The Angels, as expected, are leading the AL West, just ahead of the A’s — a bit of a surprise on Oakland’s part. In the senior circuit, things play out just as most expected: D-backs, Padres, Rockies, Dodgers, Giants. Funny, isn’t that the division that couldn’t sort itself out the past two years, and had the most lead changes of any in baseball? That figures…

I’ll give you this — Johnny Cueto’s debut for the Reds on Thursday was very, very impressive. He had a perfect game going into the sixth inning. The only hit he gave up was a solo homer. He struck out ten and walked none in seven innings. In his Major League debut. Wow.

However, it isn’t necessarily a sign of things to come. Cueto is a great prospect, and absolutely annihilated the minors over the last two years, but caution would be wise.

Look at some other pitchers who had similar starts to their major-league careers. Juan Marichal is an encouraging comparison, but Steve Woodard, Carlos Hernandez and Mo Sanford are less than immortal pitchers.

Sanford is an interesting case, because he also had his debut as a Cincinnati Red. On August 9, 1991, Sanford threw seven innings, giving up two hits and a walk, with eight strikeouts. Sanford went on to make only ten more starts in his Major League career.

Now, I’m not trying to make a case that Johnny Cueto is a bust — far from it. I think Cueto is an excellent prospect, and could be a great pitcher.

My point is a part of my ongoing war on small sample size analysis — don’t be so fast to make judgments based on one start.

A couple of weeks ago, while I was in Arizona enjoying the heavenly combination of spring training baseball and Phoenix March weather, I received an email from a marketing representative of Sony. Would I like to review MLB 08: The Show? Of course I would.

Just one problem, though. I didn’t own a Playstation 2, PSP, or PS3…

I had to call in help from my buddy Shawn, who does, in fact, own a PS3.

When I got back from my sunny, baseball-filled excursion in Arizona, I found a package waiting for me on my still snow-covered porch in Nebraska. Inside was not one, but several copies of the aforementioned game. It was time to get down to reviewing.

(Details on how you can get your hands on a copy, for free, later on in my review.)

Shawn and I cracked open the game that night and started exploring the features. We played for a couple hours, and I’ve got some first impressions to share. I’ll have more later, after I have a chance to play a little deeper into the game.

— — —

First, to the highlights of MLB 08: The Show.

— The game is beautiful. While it’s not a substitute for real life televised baseball after a long winter, it’s sure close. There’s an old acid test about walking into a room while the video game is on, and not immediately being able to tell if it’s real or a game. I was sitting down, playing the game, and there were times where I’d find myself almost wondering about the reality of what I was seeing on TV. Just great, great work on the part of Sony’s animators and designers. Well done.

— The ballparks are incredibly detailed and complete — they even have little cameramen in centerfield. The crowd doesn’t act like synchronized zombies, and little details stand out. For instance, a few dozen people in a section will stand up and try for a foul ball hit to them.

— The animation is very, very realistic. I wonder if Sony didn’t use motion capture for thousands of individual events like batting, pitching and fielding. Turning a double play looks just as graceful as the real thing. Eric Byrnes dives with just as much insanity as he does in real life. Bobby Crosby flails at outside sliders in the game with just as much hopelessness as he does hundreds of times a season. Tim Lincecum’s pitching motion is exactly as strange in the game as it is on the mound in San Francisco.

— Past the visual success, the gameplay is fun, and just the right amount of challenging. Well, at least it is so far. I played on the “veteran” setting, the second-easiest of the four difficulty levels. The pitching meter is pretty much the same as always, and location in the strike zone is handy with the left analog stick. Getting timing down on hitting isn’t hard, but getting a hit seems to be as difficult as it is in real life.

— We played several games, and the stats weren’t “video-game” at all — very realistic. Three to seven runs and about ten hits were the average, and pitchers didn’t end up striking out 18 or 20 batters. No one wants to play a game that’s that far off of reality, do they? Sony is all about this game being “the closest experience possible next to actually playing in the Majors,” and they’re not exaggerating that much. It’s not like playing baseball at all, but it’s very much like watching a game on TV — but with a lot more input than just yelling at the televised manager to pull the pitcher already.

I didn’t get a chance to try out the very cool-looking career mode, where you make a player and guide him through the minors — but I think it looks very promising. It’s like the career mode in Madden where you can guide a player, and you only play in that role. It’s interesting to see a game from only one player’s perspective, and I look forward to playing it more.

— — —

Now, onto the couple criticisms I have of the game so far…

— First, the load times are quite long. I understand that I’m playing a game in high-def, and that it’s a Playstation game — long load times are common. However, they seem especially lengthy on MLB 08: The Show. I used to play the Triple Play and MVP games back in the days of the original Playstation, so I’m familiar with the long pre-game load time, but I really thought that Sony would be able to better take advantage of the PS3 architecture. Madden 08, a comparable game made by EA, has much shorter load times. Curious.

— I was also disappointed to see that there are no extra mini-games like Home Run Derby, hitting practice or pitching practice. These were a staple of EA’s previous MLB game franchise, the MVP series, but are noticeably absent from The Show. Sometimes you don’t want to sit down with your buddies and play a full nine-inning game — that’s where Home Run Derby used to come in handy.

The game has a pretty low learning curve for those who just want to pick up a controller and play, but it’s definitely geared toward the realistic simulation crowd. Honestly, that’s what I’m looking for in a baseball game, but it might not be what everyone wants. There are no flames, no exploding home runs, and no unrealistically huge sluggers. There are other games that fill that niche, but the ultra-realistic simulator market is extremely well-filled by the MLB: The Show series.

Now, I’m sure some of you might be thinking to yourselves, “well, this guy is probably just giving the game a good review because Sony sent him a copy for free.” I won’t argue that that’s good logic, but I can tell you this: I honestly, genuinely like this game. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have taken the time to write the previous thousand words singing its praises.

In a couple weeks, after I’ve had some time to check out the rest of the features, I’ll be back with the second part of this review. I’m looking forward to testing out the career mode — my buddy Shawn has played with it for a couple days, and he’s only had good things to tell me so far.

— — —

And now, to the part you’ve all been waiting for — how to get a copy for the low, low price of zero dollars. Just be the first to answer the question below, by Sunday, April 13th.

This year’s cover model for MLB 08: The Show, Ryan Howard, has never faced the A’s — since he’s in the National League, is relatively young, and wasn’t with the team when they last played Oakland in inter-league play. He has, however, faced three pitchers that now play for the A’s. He’s hit a home run off of one of them. Three parts are necessary to get this one right. One, what are the three pitchers Howard has faced that are now on the A’s staff, which one gave up the homer, and who was on base when Howard hit his home run?

Submit your answer in the comments, and I’ll judge who submits the correct answer and mail them a copy of the game. First correct one wins.

(Hint: the easiest way to find the answer is through Baseball-Reference’s wonderful Play Index.)

As you may have heard — from any one of a hundred stories about it in various media outlets — this year marks the 100th anniversary of the Cubs’ last World Series title.

While that may be the most memorable thing we now recall about the 1908 baseball season, there is much more of interest than the last Chicago championship. Among them are the best pennant race — in both leagues — that we’ve seen in the majors, one of the greatest individual seasons of all time, arguably the biggest baserunning gaffe on record, and the top pitcher’s duel of the modern era.

Many, many books have been written about aspects of the 1908 season, but Cait Murphy’s “Crazy ‘08” has to be among the best.

Murphy has a sense of humor in her prose that helps the characters personalities leap out of the dusty domain of history and into vivid reality. This isn’t a dry retelling of a series of historical events — it’s a lively journey through one of the most entertaining seasons on record.

John McGraw, Nap Lajoie, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance and numerous others are the characters in this wild season, set against the backdrop of a changing game filled with talented naturals, unsavory gamblers, country rubes and unlikely heroes.

Murphy’s real accomplishment in the book is her fantastic ability to bring us to the 1908 season, as though it happened just a short time ago. She intersperses the chapters with “time outs”, or glimpses into what was going on in the outside world that year. Diverse topics touched on by Murphy include Tammany Hall in New York, the invented mythology of the genesis of the game, an infamous “murder farm” near Chicago and the fall of radical anarchism in America only to be replaced by radical communism.

Here’s a quote from the book which I feel helps to illustrate Murphy’s writing style and the way she covers the events of 1908. From page 182, in Chapter 9, “The Merkle Game”:

In the trajectory of a life, there is often a single year in which childhood flees. The knees of boys unknobble and voices deepen; girls lose their baby fat and discover high heels. Countries, too, can experience a year that beckons a new maturity — Poland joining the European Union in 2003, say, or Japan hosting the Olympics in 1964. Sometimes the transition to a new age can be plotted even more precisely. Television became a force in Britain on the afternoon of June 3, 1953, when the country tuned in to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Modern medicine began on October 16, 1846, when Boston physicians performed the first surgery with anesthetic.

Baseball’s year is 1908; the place is the Polo Grounds; the day is September 23; and the event is the most controversial game in baseball history. In the late afternoon of that crisp autumn Wednesday, as the sunlight fades into the gloaming of dusk, a teenage rookie starting his first major-league game makes a mistake, and turns an interesting season into something much more. Riots and mayhem follow the contest, as well as affidavits, front-page headlines, and at least one death. The game itself would not be decided, officially, for two weeks. Forevermore known as “the Merkle game,” it is the hinge on which the season turns — and 1908 is the season in which baseball itself makes the turn into the modern era.

If that doesn’t make you want to read the book, I don’t know what will. I have the feeling that Murphy, who makes her living as an assistant managing editor for Fortune magazine, could have a long and noted career in baseball writing, if the notion struck her.

I now greatly regret having missed her speak at the SABR convention last year in St. Louis. It was a toss-up for me between her presentation and another, and I can see now that I made the wrong decision. I’ll be looking for future works from Murphy, whose biography amusingly states that “she doesn’t throw like a girl.” Well, she doesn’t write like a little girl, either — she’s extremely polished, entertaining, knowledgeable and almost poetic in her prose.

I’ll leave you with one more quote from “Crazy ‘08″, and I urge you to pick up a copy soon. It’s a great read.

A typical game in 1908 used perhaps six to ten balls (compared to eighty-plus now) because fouls hit into the stands are supposed to be returned to play.

Fans didn’t always comply, of course, but the law is on management’s side. During batting practice in Brooklyn in April 1908, Giants manager John McGraw sends police into the stands to intimidate people into returning fouls. Christy Mathewson even tattles on one fan, which isn’t very nice, and the poor fellow is arrested. It is not until 1923 that an eleven-year-old establishes the principle of salvage. Young Reuben Berman was jailed overnight for the crime of refusing to return a ball at Philadelphia’s Baker Bowl. In the kind of decision that reaffirms one’s faith in the American judicial system, a judge ruled that “a boy who gets a baseball in the bleachers to take home as a souvenir is acting on the natural impulse of all boys and is not guilty of larceny.” After that, foul balls were fair game.

The walk-off home run. Baseball’s version of sudden death. Few moments in sports are as dramatic. Dennis Eckersley coined the term in the late 80s, describing how the defense would walk off the field following the game-ending hit. Since then, it’s become more suited to describing how the batter can walk around the bases to join his teammates celebrating at home plate.

In the history of the Oakland A’s, there have been 91 walk-off homers, or about 2.3 per season since 1968. In 2004, a high of six was set, while in 1969, 1974, 1979, 1983 and 1989, none were hit.

Four walk-off grand slams have been recorded. Two by Mark McGwire, one by Tony Armas, and one by Gene Tenace. The most dramatic had to be Big Mac’s shot on June 30, 1995. Down by a run to the Angels, McGwire came to the plate with two outs and the bases loaded — facing Lee Smith. On an 0-1 count, McGwire deposited a pitch into deep left field for the rare walk-off grand slam.

Here’s the complete list:

You can view the spreadsheet at Google Docs, too.

I’m going to be going into these home runs in more depth later on at Catfish Stew.

John Wolff was drafted out of Harvard University in the 47th round of the 2005 draft by the White Sox. After a strong showing in Spring Training and Extended Spring Training, Wolff was assigned to Bristol, in the Appalachian League. After just three games, he was cut. He played the rest of the season in independent ball.

Why is any of that particularly interesting? Here are a few reasons:

• Wolff wrote a book chronicling his experiences — the book I just finished reading: Harvard Boys.
• Wolff’s father also went to Harvard, was drafted, and played a few years in the minors.
• How many books, other than Jim Bouton’s classic Ball Four, give insight into the daily life of a professional baseball player? Especially a minor-leaguer?
• As an epistolary novel, the honesty shown by Wolff is compelling. When he describes the pain of finding his locker emptied, it’s believable. The comments from his father throughout the book add insight and humor to John’s stories of the minors.

Wolff, who also happens to be the grandson of Hall-of-Fame broadcaster Bob Wolff, is a straightforward and likable writer. His Harvard education obviously refined his ability, but he’s an interesting and observant writer. His father pursued a successful career as a book editor after his own minor-league career came to a close, and it’s clear that the younger Wolff has learned a thing or two.

Among the more entertaining stories that Wolff relays to the reader are those of the trials and tribulations of living out of a bus and motel room for a summer. Contrary to popular opinion, unless they’re a high draft pick, minor-leaguers make almost no money. Broken-down cars almost unfit to drive, endless meals of pasta, sharing low-rent apartments with five teammates, and making friends with college girls to use their laundry facilities are all-too-common aspects of the minor-league life.

The most striking theme of the book, though, is the ephemeral employment of most minor-leaguers. Out of nowhere, you’re released, and out of a job. No place to stay, no place to go, and very little in the way of job opportunities. Baseball is a business, after all, and in business tough decisions have to be made. All too often, that means cutting a good kid free, for seemingly little or no reason. This happens to John several times, and while he deals with it easier each time, you can tell that it stings terribly. It’s obvious, however, that he gains a great deal of experience from each bit of trouble that crosses his path, just as his father did 30 years before.

What really makes this book stand out, though, is the structure. It’s not just a diary, as it might seem. John’s emails home are obviously written with the idea in mind of later assembling them into a book, but they’re genuine. After each update, John’s father pens a paragraph of two in response, to give background, tell a tale from his own experience, or just empathize with his son. It’s all very good, and it’s pulled off without the least bit of corniness or sappiness.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed Harvard Boys. I was a bit apprehensive when I first picked it up, and put off reading it, but I’m certainly glad I decided to give it a shot. It’s one of the better baseball books I’ve read in the past few years. The insight into the daily life of a minor-leaguer is worth the price of the book alone, but the well-written stories and theme of learning from adversity make it a recommendation.

For those few people who still occasionally check out The Pastime to see if I’ve written anything — or died — I’ve got some news. I’ll be writing here more often in the coming months.

I’ve been very, very busy with my “real job” at the newspaper, college, and trying to keep up with those crazy minor-league goings-on at A Minor Consideration over at MVN.

Most of what you’re going to see here on The Pastime will be photographs, book reviews, travelogues, statistical experimentation and exploration, and random musings on the state of the game.

I just finished a pretty good baseball book yesterday, in fact, and will be posting my review very soon. It’s called “Harvard Boys”, and it chronicles the life of a low-draft pick’s struggles in the minor leagues. Good stuff.

Prompted by a comment by Charlie Tackos on this post, I did a little research on the home run power of 2B-SS combinations. When it comes to middle infielder teammates, Hanley Ramirez (29 HR) and Dan Uggla (26 HR) of the Marlins are close to establishing a Major League first. They’ve already become just the third 2B-SS combination to each hit 25 or more homers in a season, and are just a couple of round-trippers away from becoming the first pair to hit 30 each.

Previously, the 25-homer middle infielder teammate club consisted of Jimmy Rollins (25) and Chase Utley (32), who accomplished the feat for the Phillies in 2006, and Bobby Doerr (27) and Vern Stephens (30), for Boston in 1948 and 1950. No two middle infielder teammates have ever hit 30 out in the same season. Alfonso Soriano and Alex Rodriguez just missed each other in Texas, while A-Rod left Seattle just before Bret Boone’s career year in 2001. Jay Bell and Tony Batista could have accomplished the feat in 1999 for Arizona, but Batista was traded to Toronto after hitting only five home runs for the Diamondbacks.
Here’s the complete list, by year, of every 2B and SS to hit 25 or more home runs in a season. I’ve highlighted the teammate combinations in boldface.

I should really contact Dan Johnson to let him know that it would significantly prolong his Major League career to fly me all over the country for A’s games. After enduring yet another slump over the past month, he was a key producer in the the two games I saw him play this past weekend. After hitting a go-ahead RBI double against Scot Shields in the A’s 8-4 win on Friday night, Johnson blasted a two-run homer that temporarily gave the A’s the lead in Sunday’s eventual 4-3 loss. I’ve seen him play in Kansas City, Chicago and now Oakland, in addition to his spring training, AAA and collegiate periods, and he’s hit well in all. I obviously have some sort of “Dan Johnson mojo”, and for the good of the team, not to mention Johnson himself, it would probably be best to have me follow the team around for the foreseeable future.

I just looked up Johnson’s numbers in the 12 major league games I’ve seen him play in over his three-year career. It’s pretty astounding. Over 51 plate appearances I’ve witnessed, he’s hit .390 with an on-base percentage of .510 and a slugging mark of .976. He’s hit seven home runs in my presence with a 10:5 BB:SO ratio. Small sample size be damned, those are some pretty amazing numbers. Twenty percent of his career home runs have come in the dozen games I’ve watched him play — out of 282 career games played.

While I come from Nebraska, where a snowed out baseball game can be common, I found Oakland’s night temperatures at the Coliseum to be surprisingly chilly. I’ve been acclimated to 95 and humid back home, and this Bay climate was pretty unexpected. I was on the fence about buying an Oakland hooded sweatshirt or jacket, but the brisk, damp breezes convinced me to make the investment. And what an investment it turned out to be. I wore my new dark green zipped hoodie almost non-stop over the three days I spent in the Bay Area, not because I like it so much — though I do — but because it’s a completely different kind of summer than I’m used to. A cold one.

Around noontime on Sunday, Ken Arneson — the founder of Catfish Stew and the baseballtoaster family of blogs — stopped by my hotel at Jack London Square to drive me to that afternoon’s game. While he assured me that Bay Area weather was predictable — cool in the morning, the fog burns off by one, and then sunny — the game was periodically sprinkled with drizzle. Worse, John Lackey was pitching for the Angels.

Dan Haren did his part, allowing only two runs to Anaheim, but the offense struggled against Lackey — as they do against most pitchers in the American League. Dan Johnson’s two-run shot to deep center temporarily put the A’s ahead, but Kiko Calero is obviously still struggling to regain his effectiveness. Calero gave up the lead, and while the A’s nearly got to Francisco Rodriguez in the ninth, walks by Nick Swisher and Jack Cust went for naught when Mark Ellis’s line shot to the gap in right-center was caught by Gary Matthews.

(link to slideshow of game photos on photobucket)

I enjoyed finally meeting Ken and our other co-author, Philip Michaels. Both are very fine writers, and I’m honored to have been asked to join them at the beginning of this year. I thoroughly enjoy partnering with them on Catfish Stew, since we all have different writing styles and distinct areas of interest when it comes to covering the A’s. Apparently it’s working out well, because we were mentioned by name in the July/August issue of ATHLETICS magazine. I’m still in a bit of a state of disbelief about my name appearing in the official publication of my favorite baseball team…

A part of my weekend that I’ve as of yet failed to mention is actually the impetus for my journey to the Bay. On Saturday, about 120 fellow A’s fans and I gathered in the Home Run Plaza for Saag’s sausages and a Q & A session with Oakland General Manager Billy Beane and radio play-by-play master Ken Korach. It was AN Day IV, the fourth annual meeting of regulars from AthleticsNation.com — the first I’ve attended. I enjoyed meeting many people I’ve only corresponded with by email, and shaking hands with some of the kind folks that read what I write on The Pastime, Catfish Stew and A Minor Consideration. Sal Baxamusa, of The Hardball Times, was just as nice and interesting a guy as you might want to meet. Vlae Kershner, one of the fine fellows from SFGate.com’s A’s blog, was there, too. Vlae has linked to The Pastime before, and seemed genuinely amused yet delighted that there was an A’s fan as devoted as I am from the great state of Nebraska — not exactly in the A’s target market.

After eating a quick meal outside, the AN herd moved inside Mount Davis to pepper Billy Beane and Ken Korach with questions ranging from bland (”What made you want to be a broadcaster?”) to pointed (”What’s the deal with all the injuries, and why haven’t you fired Larry Davis?”). Ken was genial and seemed pleased to chat with fans as long as he could, while Billy was as open as you can expect a GM to be. Beane did deftly deflect and dodge some questions, but that’s to be expected. For the most part, it was a very satisfying Q & A session — with one exception. The acoustics in the hallway were horrible, and it was only exacerbated by the constant opening and closing of doors in the suites near us. I could only hear half of the responses, and I had to state my question in my loudest speaking voice so Beane could hear. If you know me, you know that I’m a pretty loud guy anyway, so you can imagine the din I must have had to overcome if I had to intentionally make myself louder. My query for Beane was related to how the changes in the amateur draft — slot money, August 15 signing deadline, etc. — has changed how he negotiates with and signs draftees. He responded that of course he can’t answer that completely, since the deadline is still two weeks away, but that he suspects it might have motivated a few high draft picks to sign earlier, since that’s what’s happened with Oakland’s top ten picks. He didn’t comment on 12th-round pick Gary Brown, who I mentioned, as I had hoped he might. I was looking for some nugget of information on whether Brown would sign or head off to Cal State Fullerton, but alas, my prospecting came up dry.

After the Q & A wrapped up, most everyone went out to watch the game. I sat with some of my fellow midwestern A’s fans — Kyle, Greg, Kevin and Terra — all good people and fine A’s fans that hail from Wichita, Kansas. The game turned out to be a win, continuing AN’s streak of wins on AN Day. During the last inning or two, Tyler Bleszinski — the founder of AN and the sbnation family of blogs — sat down next to us and we chatted for quite a while. Blez has been a boon for all of us non-resident A’s fans, and I personally really appreciate what he’s done to expand the borders of sports blogging. Past all that, Blez is one heck of a nice guy.

Afterwards, a number of us went to Pacific Coast Brewery in Oakland to hang out and talk, since we were getting kicked out of our seats after the game ended. This, of course, was when Barry Bonds decided to finally juice No. 755 out of the park — but we didn’t let that ruin our evening.

Jumping ahead a bit, past the baseball action, I spent the evening after the Sunday game doing some fairly touristy things with Kevin from Wichita, who had decided to delay his flight by a day to take in some more of the Bay Area. We took the ferry from Jack London Square in Oakland across the Bay to Pier 39 in San Francisco.

The catamaran ferry fairly flew across the water, leaving us little time to snap pictures of the Bay Bridge, Alcatraz and downtown San Francisco as they emerged from the thick fog.

Our first task, once disembarking upon the pier, was to find some nourishment. Garlic fries and hot dogs at the Coliseum only stave off hunger for so long, after all. Kevin was intent on finding some genuine San Francisco sushi, and that we did. A place called “Grandeho’s Kamekyo Japanese Cuisine Sushi Bar” was where we ended up. I’ve had very little Japanese food before, except for a taste of sticky rice and seaweed wrapping back in high school, in Mrs. Eggers’s class, but that’s another story altogether. At the sushi place near Fisherman’s Wharf, I let Kevin decide just what we should order. I believe we had, in no particular order, pickled ginger, marinated soybean sprouts, white and red tuna, California rolls with crab, Alaska rolls with salmon, some kind of barbecued eel roll, wasabi, and some other things I’m not sure I recollect. It was overall much better than I expected — perhaps even very good, which is as high a complement as a Nebraskan beef-lover as I can give to raw fish.

After almost mistakenly disembarking on the island of Alameda on the trip back across the Bay, we made out way back to the hotel, where Kevin quickly crashed in preparation for his early morning flight. I looked through the 550+ pictures I took over the weekend, sifting out the mediocre from the fairly good. Some of the better ones have peppered this story, and some are destined to end up at Catfish Stew or A Minor Consideration.

On Monday morning, I awoke at 9:30, slowly packed my things, and made my way towards the nearest BART station — Lake Merritt — 12 blocks from my hotel. On my way, I passed through Oakland’s Chinatown, and the vibrant, busy produce market on 8th Street.

After a two-stop BART ride, the AirBART shuttle to the airport, and a shockingly long line for the security checkpoint, I now sit writing at Gate 27 in the Oakland Airport, waiting for my flight back to Omaha by way of Phoenix. Instead of paying $9.99 for access to the WiFi network here, I think I’ll just wait until I arrive home — or find free access — to post this travelogue to The Pastime.

Continuing my month-long period of hectic travel, I’ll be heading off on a weeklong trip to Glacier National Park in Montana on Thursday, and I don’t anticipate writing too much about baseball while I’m gone — though I’m sure I’ll try.