I was at the Yankees game Mussina v. Blanton on Saterday.  I thought it my duty to share some observations with A's fans less fortunate (or more fortunate if you like winnign baseball).  I took some pictures to share, and I might add them later, but honestly, from the third tier with a 3x optical zoom, I did not think I was adding much to the board that you cannot imagine by chasing ants on your kitchen floor.  

It was a pleasant suprise to get to see Blanton.  As a Bostonian transplant from Oakland, without cable, this marks the first time this year I have seen the A's in the green and gold flesh, though I have heard almost every game on MLB radio. I had never seen Blanton, but even from 2 hundred feet away I could tell that was no rich Harden on the mound.  

I though Blanton was agressive.  He kept bringing that ball right inside, and the Yankees crowd boo-ed him when he did, but he was persistant, and seemed undaunted by the novelty of pitching in Yankee stadium.  He consistently was touching 94, but left those awful hanging pitches up that were just hammered into the cheap seats.  Well, not my cheap seats, but the ones in right field.  This is all information you could and did get from watching or listening to the game so I will not go on in this.  

A's fan in the 70's green hat and jersey in the back of section 1...strong strong work.  I hope you post here, or read here.  If you do, A's nation salutes you.  This guy was taunting an entire section of yankees fans the whole game.  I kept looking up to see if he was dead yet, but there he was, yelling at them in his Hudson jersey and keping them riled up despite the mounting loss.  He stayed through the 8th, and the yankees fans, cowed by recent ineptitude, just let him do it to them in their on house.  

There were not that many other fnas flashing the green and gold.  Not like games in Fenway where you can see streaks of gold in the stands.  

Chavez looked like he was sleep walking though his plate appearances, but it occured to me that this might be a good thing.  If this season is a season of breaking in the new kids, then having Chavez face the first prolonged slump of his career now is good timeing even if it is bad baseball.  Baseball players talk about slumps in an existential sense.  Something that must be worked through.  I think Mulder might become a better pitcher for his failures in 04.  So maybe Chavez is finding himslef.  Harnessing that inner Bad*ss.  

Hatte is pure Zen.  He is limited only by ability, but never does anythign stupid.  While I think we get 70% of Chavez's potential, I think we get 95% of hatte's potential every night.  That is all.  Sitting right over home plate, I would see the pitches slicing by the corners.  1 mm off the plate, and Hatte's body did not even tense.  It was weird.  Even the Yankees fans gave him the respect of silence.  They remember him from his Boston days.  

Everyone warms up with that stupid weighted bat.  I have to imagine it is killing our bat speed as we were pushing everything to Jeter.  An extensive experiement with the KC royals in the 80s established conclusively that swinging a weighted bat before going to the plate decreases bat speed, I wonder why they still allow it.  

Kendall drops a lot of pitches.  Does Blanton have that much movement?

Finally.

So after the game, my boy Jeff, who is a Yankees fan from Staten but still remembers the dark times fo the 80s and so is sypathetic to bad hitting, and I head to the team store becuase Jeff has worn through another Yankees cap.  We go the short way, but are stopped by the police, because the area is cordoned off for players.  we are walking back and these two guys pass us.  I say to Jeff, "check it out, that s Mark Kotsay and Mark Ellis". Sure enough.  they looked glum enough that I did not want to bother them, but Jeff was needling me to go say hey so long that when I saw an enourmous red afro climbing the stairs to the 4-5-6 train, I ran up to catch him.  "Excuse me, are you Bobby Keilty", I asked.  "yes" he said.  "You had a nice nice game" I lied.  "thanks...we'll get them tommrrow".  

Ok, nothign groudnbrekaing.  I would have taken a picture, but he looked devestated from the game.  What am I going to do with a picture of Bobby Keilty- you know?  still, it was cool to see him, cool the players take the subway, and terrifying that he dresses that badly.  Seriously, the drunk bums outside the stadium were avoiding him.  

I will end with this.  I am an A's fan becuase I love baseball.  And I love the A's.  And I learned to love the A's in the dark years on the mid nineties.  And I lived in Oakland but now I live far away, so sometimes when you are having dry heaves watching our team, keep this in mind: thre are those of us so desperate to see our boys that we will travel 3 hundred miles to catch a game and we sit in the stands with gris on our faces through 9 innings of getting shut out becuase we had the privilege of seeing them out there on the grass making plays, making throws, grounding into double plays.  They are just boys, playing a game, and I love the game, and I love seeing them play it.  Even when they are playing it badly.