The A's were very sharp, both on the field and in the clubhouse, where they got into dress-code mode for a special flight home on the lavishly appointed custom plane of Mark Cuban, the spare-no-expense owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks.

"Sweet way to end a trip, huh?" Crosby said. "Life's pretty good right now."
http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/gameday_recap.jsp?ymd=20050724&content_id=1143486&vkey=re cap&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb

Anyone know what this is about?  I find it interesting that NBA's craziest manager would be giving us a custom plane ride home.  Maybe Mark Cuban can get in contact with Lew Wolff and convince him to fly A's fans to road games (like Cuban did for the Mavericks every now and then).  

"Everybody was a [dummy] in May. Now everyone's a genius," he said before the finale of a four-game series with the Rangers at Ameriquest Field. "I'm not going to ride that roller coaster. I'm going to stay on an even keel." -Ken "Fire" Macha
http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/article.jsp?ymd=20050724&content_id=1143178&vkey=news_oak &fext=.jsp&c_id=oak

Who isn't peeved at the people who said, "I KNEW the A's would be back.  Billy Beane is a genius!" after saying "Well, moneyball is a myth.  Look at the A's now, without 2 of the Big 3 - an obviously lucky stroke for Beane.  Go Giants!"?

Speaking of bandwagoners...
Q: Which AL Team has the best young talent?
Athletics (Harden, Street)
Indians (Hafner, Martinez)
Rangers (Blalock, Tex)
Tigers (Bonderman, Shelton)
  -ESPN Poll
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/index

Is it just me or is this poll not even close?  A's by a land slide, though the Ranger's twosome is pretty fearsome.  But the thing is, the question asked about the best young talent, not the two best young talents.  Have they not heard of Haren, Swisher, Croz, or Dan Johnson?  Not to mention, our "veterans" are not too old either...

``This team isn't going to stop,'' third baseman Eric Chavez said. ``I'd be really surprised if it did. I don't think this team is hot. This has been going on way too long to call it a hot streak. We've won at home, we've won on the road, we've come from behind, we've dominated with pitching, we've won with bloop hit, we've won with home runs. We've won in way too many ways to say this is a fluke.''

uh oh...seems like someone disagrees...

``It's almost impossible to keep playing like this,'' Crosby said. ``You just want to minimize the rough spots. We're playing so good that it's almost easy, and we can't expect that continue.''
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/sports/12213896.htm

Is it just me or are those contradicting statements?  Our grizzled superstar Chavez is the dreamer while a young pipsqueak Crosby is the one being a pessimistic "realist".  Seems like the divide on AN ("we ARE this good and will continue to be this good" vs "we HAVE to come back down to earth eventually") is also in the clubhouse as well.  Well...I don't mind waiting as long as possible for us to cool off, do you?

Any other links?  I haven't heard from street's espn journal recently.  I wonder what happened to that.  

By the way, I'm having more fun watching this comeback than the 20 game win streak....how about you?