So, yeah, this is the first season I became an official season ticket holder (you know, cause buying 20-40 games a year at full or craigslist prices don’t count) and this was the first year since I found AN that I didn’t post a comment during the first half because, well, I was just waiting for that annual second half surge begin and I wanted to avoid as many foot-in-mouth statements as possible.  Maybe this season is MY FAULT!

Well, I was working on a fairy tale post about how the A’s should trade away Chavez and Gaudin for Mark Teixeira because Wash loves Eric, Blalock could play first and we need to find someone who could put up big numbers for us next season.  Of course, I know we’d only have Teixeira for a year and he’d be too expensive for us, even with the money Eric’s due and with Kendall gone, but it’d just be nice.

Then I was going to suggest we sell off the farm system (Barton, Meyer, whoever) to see if Florida really is dumb enough to trade Miguel Cabrera because, let’s face it, the kid is awesome and with him we’d actually have a legitimate number 3 hitter in the lineup.  Add a Dye/Dunn for a season and there’s the middle of the line up our pitching staff has always needed to win the World Series.

Of course, none of the above will happen and not just because we don’t have the right pieces to pull off such trades, but also because we don’t have the right owners to pay the players.  So, basically, this diary is now an open question to AN (those of you more knowledgeable about the subject): what exactly is going to change?  

I mean, I know that the new stadium is going to bring in more fans regularly and at A LOT higher prices, but, if the A’s don’t have the star player attractions and if they therefore continue to start out slow in May, fade in October...what’s the point of costing working class fans like myself the joy of going to 20-40 games a year for a team that still can’t win it all, even at a double the admission price?  Will moving from Oakland to FREMONT really make these owners stop playing the "small market" card or are we always going to have a team of small-ball-hitters-without-the-speed?

I grew up with teams of Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire and Ricky Henderson and at the time that was your A-Rod, Pujols and Ichiro.  And honestly, the only thing I see that I’ve seen really change is that instead of cold aluminum benches we’ve got this god awful Mt. Davis.  Maybe, BEFORE, the Oakland Athletics become the Fremont Athletics formerly known as the Oakland Athletics, this ownership can go out this off season and give this pitching staff some bombers.  I even wouldn’t mind giving A-Rod a ungodly amount of money to stick it to the Giants when he passes Barriod as the all-time HR King.

Obviously this will just sound like another rant because we’re losing, but the fact is, we lose because of our peanut budgeted offense, but our crackerjack budgeted pitching.