The Oakland A’s opened the MLB  season in Tokyo back in March against the Mariners.  Their season ended at home in Oakland losing to the Tigers and  one of the best pitcher in the game in Justin Verlander.

The SF Giants ended the MLB season with a sweep over those same Tigers beating Verlander in the process for a little Bay Area revenge.  At least as an A’s fan, that’s how I see it!

And in between March and October, the A’s (and Giants) put on the most fun, enjoyable, entertaining, and exciting season a baseball fan could ask for.  (By my photos, you can tell I’m a huge A’s fan, so this post is mostly about the A’s. Maybe a Giants post at a later date.  We’ll see.)

YOUR Oakland A’s!

I followed my A’s mostly by listening on the radio at home or in the car.  Since I don’t have Comcast’s sports package, I didn’t see them much on TV.  Ken Korach, Vince Cotroneo, Johnny Doskow filling in early in the season, and Ray Fosse were the voices I heard on the radio on KGMZ 95.7, The Game, calling all the balls and strikes, double plays, clutch hits, home runs, final outs, and all those walk-offs.  You could hear the roar of the crowd with every big play, the orchestrated drums, cowbells, and vuvuzelas from the bleachers throughout the entire game.

If you didn’t know any better, you’d have thought every game was sold out just listening to the rumbling din of the crowd and the erupting cheers throughout the game.  We make 10,000 sound like 30,000.  We cheer our heads off whether we’re up 5 runs or down 5 runs.  We know this is baseball, and anything could happen.

And anything did happen.  How about those 15 walk-off wins, the most in all of baseball this year.  It turned out that they needed every last one of those wins because it came down to a final duel between the A’s and the Rangers on the last day of the regular season to determine the A.L West Champions.

Oakland, CA: The Walk-Off Capital of Baseball

Being there to see your team win on a walk-off home run is a unique and incredibly fun experience.  I was lucky to be there for one of them this year against the S.F. Giants.   Down 2-1, rookie catcher Derek Norris sends 3-run dinger into the left field bleachers in the bottom of the 9th sending a rare sell-out crowd into a frenzy and earning himself a pie in the face and Gatorade bath.

The first months and the last months of the season were like night and day.  A horrendous April and May saw them endure a 9-game losing streak, and they were something like 13 games behind the Texas Rangers in the AL West on June 1.  But they hung in there and started to win a lot of close games thanks to their outstanding pitching and timely late-inning heroics.  But even at the All-Star break, most people, including myself, were just hoping for them to finish above .500– for the first time in 5 freaking years! Yeah you, Bob Geren.

After having the best record in baseball in July, August saw the A’s level off allowing those darn Angels to quietly creep up on them in the standings.  I was pulling my hair out!  The Rangers, meanwhile, had the A.L. West well in hand.

Those streaking Angels were hot on the A’s tails come September when a suddenly cooled-off A’s squad went to New York and dropped game 1 of their 3-game set.  Meanwhile, the Orioles created some separation for the first Wild Card spot.  My head was about to explode at this point.

It was during that 3-game series in New York when my head almost did explode.  They lost an excruciating 14-inning game 10-9 in which they gave up a 9-5 lead in the 13th inning.

That was it!  I was done for the season after that loss.  I even proclaimed on Facebook that I was done, and that pretty much makes it official these days.   I’d take my winning record and go home happy no matter what happened– if the Angels overtook the A’s for the Wild Card, if the Orioles pulled away, if the A’s didn’t win another game!  I’d take it and run!

I actually abstained (for a whopping 10 days) from listening to or watching the A’s on TV, radio, or following scores online.  I’d actually change the channel when sports came on the evening news.  My wife thought I was an idiot– more so than she already does.

But I could only avoid it for so long.  The A’s had held off the Angels, went on a mini winning streak, including an extra-inning thriller against the Mariners, somehow clinched a playoff spot (playoffs?!), and STILL had a chance to win the A.L. West outright over the Rangers on the last day.

Just when I had freed myself from the insanity, they pull me right back in!

I followed that last game at work hitting refresh on my browser every 2 minutes.  They were down 5-1 when I had a meeting to go to.  When I got back from my meeting, it was 8-5!  What the heck just happened?  They tacked on 4 more run for a resounding 12-5 win and the AL. West championship.  To borrow a line from the great Bill King, “Crazy. Just plain crazy.”

“And they’re going nuts!”

It was on to the postseason.  I actually didn’t watch the first 2 playoff games against the Tigers but went about my normal weekend routine.  Too nervous.  I followed surreptitiously on my phone and caught updates on the radio.  That Game 2 was a killer!  I caught Game 3 at home, a big win for the raucous Coliseum crowd, who represented well at the end of the season and the playoffs.

Then Game 4.  Then the bottom of the 9th down 3-1 facing elimination.  The A’s knew and everyone in the stands knew that they weren’t out of it yet.  Not an inkling of doubt.

Josh Reddick singles into right field to get things started.  Then Josh Donaldson doubles off the left field wall.  The Coliseum, according to Ken Korach on the radio, was literally shaking.  Then, when DH Seth Smith ripped a game-tying  2-run double into right-center field, the Coliseum erupted.

It’s just what they knew would happen.  It’s just what they’ve done all year. Never give up.  And they weren’t going to give up because the game wasn’t over yet.  After George Kotaras and Cliff Pennington couldn’t bring home Smith, Coco Crisp came to the plate and wasted no time.

Coco scalded the first pitch into left field, Detroit’s left fielder couldn’t come up with the ball cleanly, and Seth Smith comes home with the winning run in one of the most dramatic post season wins in Oakland A’s history.

Exciting! Heart-pounding! And if you love baseball, just so fun and entertaining!

They would go on to lose Game 5 to Justin Verlander.  But if they were going to be eliminated, it was going to take a near flawless effort from one of the best pitchers on the planet to do it, and they weren’t going down without a fight in front of their faithful and loyal fans.

After the final out of the game, naturally there was some booing as the Tigers  celebrated on our home field, but that lasted for maybe 10 seconds.  The grumbling quickly turned to cheering love and appreciation for the A’s on a tremendous season.  I’ve watched this clip countless time, and I still get goose bumps every time I see it and hear it.  The game’s over, the season’s over, but the fans refuse to stop cheering. Incredible.

Nothing could keep all the feelings, all the emotions, all the overwhelming joy and happiness after 162+ games from spilling over onto the field.  The players gave everything they had for a full season, entertained their fans beyond our imagination and certainly our expectations, and we return the favor with our gratitude.  To me, this embodies everything good about being a sports fan, what being a sports fan ought to be. This is why I’m an A’s fan, and this is why we cheer, “Let’s go, Oakland!”