A's Brand Baseball Goes to Washington

Less than 24 hours later, Josh Towers and the Toronto Blue Jays demonstrated that they shared that estimation, walking Jason Kendall (67 HR and 488 RBI in 4805 career AB), with runners on second and third, in order to pitch to Chavez (170 and 574 in 3322) with the bases loaded. On KFRC, Ken Korach expressed disbelief that walking Kendall was an actual strategy, but Ken Korach was wrong. Eric Chavez promptly smoked Towers's first pitch over the centerfield wall. Grand slam home run, and in Whoville they say that the Grinch's small heart grew three sizes that day. Eric Chavez batted .357 with 3 home runs and 9 RBI last week, and the A's followed up their second 8-game losing streak by winning 6 of their last 7. That included a 12-4 win over Toronto on Rich Harden bobblehead day (see left) and 11-2 and 10-1 wins over Tampa Bay. If the A's could only play the Blue Jays and Devil Rays at home every day, they'd be in good shape.

Instead, the home team is off to the nation's capital to play the Washington Nationals, for whom we have been rooting a little bit this season. Baseball's return to the District is, for a number of reasons, one of the 2005 season's best stories. They're playing (and winning; they're 31-26) for the honor of the Montreal Expos. Way back in this space's natal stages, the Nats afforded us a backslap at San Jose. Their manager, Frank Robinson (McClymonds High class of 1953) is one of these incredibly dignified baseball lifers, distinguished by one of the game's greatest and least remembered playing careers, though lately the target of some mildly funny blogospheric (blogospherian?) manager-bashing.

Plus, there are so many things to hate about DC (we'd have put some links there, but talk about drops in buckets), and the Nationals seem not to be one of them. Santa Cruz, Washington correspondent for A's Brand Baseball, wrote to us back in April:

Got seats six rows back behind third base at the Nats second home game of the season Saturday. My god, I thought for one of the first times in two years, as a city learned to do the wave, and chant, and pass cash down the row for peanuts, this might be a great place to live. And the sun, and the seven run 7th, and the bleachers bounced up and down when we cheered. I sat in a sea of 10 year old boys in brand new red caps, each young enough to still idolize their fathers and old enough to know that a caught foul ball amounted to divine intervention. My life has improved. If I drive myself to bankruptcy buying tickets to RFK this summer, I will be happily ruined.

When we wrote to ask Santa Cruz's permission to run the above, uh, above, he responded:

Of course. If you buy me a ticket, I will also happily report from the stadium on the infernal disorganization of the nacho cheese makers. In my last visit to RFK, the Sunday afternoon 40K crowd in a soft drizzle against the Cubs, a victory on Cub fielding errors and Maddux’s bizarre discomfort with the curvature of the pitcher’s mound, the highlight was waiting 25 minutes for nachos, including a solid 10 minutes in which not a plate of nachos was served. Behind the booth were the following, an employee and a supervisor attaching peanuts to the peanut rack, a lady wiping down the counter of stray nacho cheese, a lady filling nacho plates with chips in anticipation of cheese, the cashier fiddling with the popcorn machine, a man who had come to change rolls of quarters for 10 dollar bills, a man putting beer in ice, and another man asking for water bottles to restock the water bottle supply. Ten minutes, not a single nacho, not a single sale. And then they named James Carville the fan of the game, to the apparent disapproval of Carville and about 300 boys who had been dancing wildly in the hopes that a ballpark camera would blow up their toothy heads on the scoreboard screen, winning them a t-shirt or whatever.

So he is a sucker; we totally didn't buy him a ticket. Citizen journalism, bitch. You can if you want, here. Zito (2-6, 4.52 and gathering steam) faces Tony "Yes, that Tony Armas" Armas, Jr. (1-3, 5.58) at 4:05 PT on Tuesday. Go A's.