As Election Day draws ever so near, and with the A’s announcing their All-Time Oakland team last week (while urging followers of the Green-and-Gold to send a King to Cooperstown next July), I thought I would cast my write-in votes for two people for whom there is no ballot.  With the Anniversary Season coming to a close, allow me to salute the milestones of two All-Time A’s fans: my brother John who turns 50 on September 5, and my sister Tonianne, who celebrates twenty-five years of marriage on September 4.

John and Tonianne, my parents’ second and third children (of eight), were born less than eleven months apart.  California was just getting its first taste of Major League baseball by the time these two entered the world; with the Giants and Dodgers having moved from the East Coast following the 1957 season. The A’s were still in Kansas City, and the name Charlie Finley, instrumental in the team’s relocation to Oakland ten years later, had barely begun to surface.

No one in my family has better memories of the club’s first decade in the Bay Area than these two, as most of their experiences were up close and (very) personal.  John recalls my Dad taking the family in to the airport to greet the Bay Area’s new ball club in 1968:

"I asked dad where we were going and he said ‘to meet the Athletics’. I remember wondering what type of athletics he was talking about.  (At the airport) we were up on some sort of balcony and the A’s were being introduced by Finley.  I’m not sure who introduced him. Next thing I knew, we were going to ball games, and idols and heroes were born." 

"And idols and heroes were born" (John with Reggie, 1971)

One of those heroes was Vida Blue (Finley was unsuccessful in changing the left-hander’s first name to "True").  John was among the 4,281 fans to see Blue no-hit the Minnesota Twins late in the 1970 season.  He was also present for both World Series-clinching games in 1973 and 1974, and ran on the field afterwards (back when such things were allowed).  After beating the Mets in Game 7 of the ’73 Classic:

"There was no tension, no nail biting during the game. I was just waiting for the last out. Running on the field was a blur. I didn’t know which direction to go. I finally made it to the dugouts and only was able to grab a matchbook. I remember running onto the field after the game and taking some infield dirt.  I can't believe I actually planned for it by bringing baggies with me to stuff dirt in.  One of the ushers was trying to keep second base from being taken by fans. He was lying on the ground with his arms wrapped around it, crying as he was getting the pulp beat out of him.  The pitching rubber and home plate were dug up as well.  I also tore a chunk of sod from the A’s bullpen area. People were taking pieces off of it as I exited the stadium. Others who had followed suit were caught by security guards and had theirs taken away before making it out of the stadium so I hid the turf under my shirt." 

John was there when the A's repeated in 1973.

It was during the fifth and final game of the ’74 Series that Joe Rudi hit the tie-breaking homerun in the seventh inning, which set off a celebration that John called "the loudest sound I’ve ever heard."

My brother was like a baseball magnet; it didn’t seem to matter where we were sitting- bleachers, first deck- souvenirs seemed to find him.  And after the upstart A’s clinched the division on the last day of the 2000 season, John found me- I was sitting a few seats down- and wrapped me in one of the happiest- and hardest- hugs two brothers can share.  Six years later, following the "Scutaro Game", we celebrated with beers in the parking lot.  Nothing like A’s baseball to bring a family that much closer.

John turns fifty this Friday, but you wouldn’t know it to look at him; he’s the Dick Clark of our family.  His sons Xavier (3 years old) and Isaiah (19 months) keep him young, and before this month is over, there will be another addition to his ever-growing family of next-generation A’s fans. 

***

Baseball was Tonianne’s first love and she did not leave it (even partially) until meeting her truest love, Michael, her husband of the last quarter-century. Like John, Tonianne doesn’t get out to as many games as in her youth, but her heart remains as loyal to the A’s as it did when she was growing up.  For all the magic moments during Oakland’s first dynasty, I think that Tonianne might have liked it best during the lean years of the late 70’s because she didn’t have to share her A’s with anyone else.  Thankfully she dragged me along with her. 

Tonianne walks up the steps of "her" bleachers, 1980

Tonianne was a fanatic in every sense of the word.  She’d mark her calendar to count down the days from the end of the previous season until pitchers and catchers reported to Spring Training the following March.  She had a notebook that logged each game with the score, winning and losing pitcher, and attendance (pre-AN, obviously).  Ticket stubs were tagged in similar fashion and she kept every single one of them.  In her pocket schedules, she’d pen a "W" or "L", depending what the A’s did on that particular day.  She even had me include the A’s in our nightly prayers!  ("God Bless Mommy, God Bless Daddy, and please God, help Reggie break out of that awful slump of his.") And if you think that is over the top, she once made our cousin Marci cry because she accused her of being a "jinx".  More from Tone: 

"I would fight with people.  What was I thinking?  At school, I always had people telling me that the A’s were going down and I’d argue with them.  Some were Giant’s fans but others were just people who thought they knew everything.  At the games I’d yell at the fans for leaving early, asking them how they could be so unfaithful and fair-weathered and other stupid stuff like that." 

It’s true; regardless of score or situation; you could not get Tonianne to leave until the final out: 

"I remember one game; it was July, freezing cold as usual. I think it was the top of the 9th and we were losing like 10-0. Dad wanted to leave and started up the stairs. I sat there (all I had for warmth was a crocheted poncho mom had made) and I was shivering so badly, but I wouldn't leave. Dad stood at the top of stairs calling me a "stubborn woman" and saying he was going to leave.  But he got himself a cup of coffee as the bottom of the 9th started.  Still yelling down at me.  And then I looked up and saw him walking away- he was leaving without me!  So I went after him.  I don’t know why he couldn’t have waited for one more out." 

                  Typically tagged ticket stub by Tonianne

Even getting to the games was cause for A’s-anxiety:

Another time Dad told me he was going to take me and my girlfriends to the game, but he had to go into work first.  (Yeah, she had turned all her friends into A’s fans).  But it seemed like he was taking forever to come home and I stood at the front window saying over and over, ‘He’s not coming, he’s not coming.’  And then Mom would call out from the kitchen, ‘He’ll be here!  Did he say he was going to be here?’  ‘Yes.’  ‘Has he ever not shown?’  ‘No.’  ‘Then he’ll be here!’  And sure enough he drove up and I started jumping up and down and hugged him when he got inside and he’s standing there wondering what the heck is going on. I kept telling him over and over, ‘You made it!’  Of course in the car he told jokes to my friends all the way to the game and I sat there kicking myself for not taking BART."

I doubt it was as hard as I kicked myself when newlyweds Tonianne and Michael invited me to a ballgame late in the 1983 season.  Maybe I was just burnt out- I missed only fifteen games that year- but I declined, even though they were field-level seats.  That was the night that Mike Warren no-hit the White Sox, and the entire student body at my high school rode me for a whole month for missing that lousy game.  Michael still does, too, from time to time.  But he needs to get his licks in when he can; my Chicago-born brother-in-law is a lifelong Cubs fan. 

Tone's Wedding Day: proof that champagne and goodbyes don't mix.

Michael, one of San Leandro’s finest, has stood by my oldest sister for 25 years, through the very best and worst of times; the worst when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1989, which coincided with the A’s last World Series win: 

"The Friday (the 13th) before the Series began was my last chemo.  I ran into Uncle Rick at Safeway on my way to the appointment.  He was so excited; I don't ever remember Uncle Rick being excited about anything, but he was about this Series.  I was on tranquilizers for the first two games and I didn't see a single inning. I was finally able to go back to work on Tuesday the 17th, but I left as soon as the bank closed because I was feeling sick.  As I walked across the parking lot to my car I looked up at the sky and said out loud, ‘Yuck, earthquake weather.’  I don't even remember where I watched the final two games.  The thing that sticks out about that Series is that when I needed it most, after the crappiest year of my life, I didn't get to enjoy it. I feel empty to this day." 

***

I want to close this salute in the way my book begins:

They were no different than any other adolescent male, two young men emulating their baseball heroes on a sunny summer afternoon in 1973.  And on this particular day, 15 year-old John Marquez’ imitation of Oakland’s Jim "Catfish" Hunter was, well, perfect.  He and lifelong pal Tony Lopez were engaged in a typical one-on-one battle of "fast pitch", the back wall of the restroom at Cherry Grove Park serving as the catcher’s area, the strike zone a poorly spray-painted box. 

Typical this day with one glaring exception: today John was dealing that rarest of diamond gems, a perfect game through seven innings. Making this task even more daunting was the fact that there were no fielders behind him to bail him out.  (When the real Catfish Hunter etched his name in the record books against the formidable Minnesota Twins in May 1968, he had eight gloves worth of help in the yard. To his credit, he hardly needed them).  But John, in his quest for excellence, had only his trusty left arm and overused mitt to count on.  And after retiring the side in order midway through the game, he made a not-so-subtle mention of what was transpiring to Tony.

"We’d switch each day between being the A's or the opposing team.  Well on this day it was my turn to be the A's. We were going along (both announcing) when after about five innings, I realized he hadn't had a hit.  Since there were no walks that meant ‘Catfish’, who was on the mound that day, was pitching a perfecto. I let Tony know as I passed him on my way to the plate."

Tony, for his part, needed to hit just one fair ball past the pitcher, or in the words of Crash Davis of Bull Durham fame, "a flare, a gork, a ground ball with eyes."  Up to now he had failed to do even that.  As the top of the 8th inning got underway, Tony had nary a hope of catching John on the scoreboard ("I was beating him something like, 12-0").  In fact, with but six chances to get a man on base, the game itself had become a foregone conclusion and the score the furthest thing from either teenagers’ mind…

A block or so away, John’s youngest brother, Don, was belting out the National Anthem in his backyard, which was followed by the starting lineups for that afternoon’s "game" between the Oakland A’s and the Detroit Tigers.  The six-year old gave the play-by-play, pitched, batted, fielded, ran the bases, and pretty much handled all the duties save for peanut vendor. 

As little Don rested on the front yard lawn after his game of solitary baseball, sipping cherry flavored Kool-Aid and impatiently waiting for the sports page to be delivered, he heard Mr. King call to him from across the street.

"Don Min-yon!  How’d we do today?"

"5-4, Oakland, on Reggie’s dinger in the ninth", Don answered his favorite neighbor.

Mr. King grinned.  "They always pull it out in the end, don’t they?  Now let’s see Reggie do that in the real game tonight." 

Inside the house, Don’s oldest sister, Tonianne, sat transfixed in her bedroom, ear to her transistor radio, listening as Monte Moore got set to call the action for tonight’s real game between the World Champion A’s and the Kansas City Royals. Mom called out that dinner was not only ready; it was getting cold.  But dinner could wait as far as Toni was concerned.  The first pitch was only moments away and besides, Jim "Catfish" Hunter was on the mound.

Ah, yes.  Catfish.  The sun was beginning to set on Cherry Grove Park as John Marquez walked out to the mound to pitch the 8th inning.  He was flirting ever so dangerously with "history".  After retiring the first two batters, John made a diving stop on a ball for the third out, preserving the perfecto.  Tony Lopez, now acting the part of the crowd, cheered wildly.  (John: "I didn't even try to get a hit in the ninth and he couldn't wait to get up.")  Finally, with two outs in the final frame, Tony hit a line drive back to John who caught it for the final out.  In one motion, Tony the opposing batter became Tony the ecstatic teammate as he leaped into John’s waiting arms, cheering and screaming at the top of his lungs: "Catfish is Perfect! Catfish is Perfect!" 

Catfish Hunter was indeed perfect in May 1968.

Flash forward thirty years to September 2003.  The Oakland A’s are in first place, desperately trying to stave off the Seattle Mariners for supremacy in the American League West, and wouldn’t you know it, their closest pursuers are in for a late-season, three-game showdown that could very well decide who plays past September.  Oakland’s magic number to clinch a thirteenth division crown- and fourteenth playoff berth- is down to five, and although Seattle is making things difficult, the title is still theirs for the taking.  The season is drawing to a close, yet the weather has a definitive summer feel to it, very much the kind of day that six-year old Don Marquez would "play ball" in back in ’73.  Only now Don Marquez is thirty-six, though his boyish looks belie that number.  Nothing thrills him more than a pennant race and he itches for the chance to see his team clinch at home, like they did for him in ’88 and ’89 and again on the final day of that incredible 2000 season.  But right now it’s pre-game and the goose bumps are not for the A’s, but for his oldest sister, Tonianne.  For today is Breast Cancer Awareness day at the Network Associates Coliseum and Tonianne and Don’s Aunt Marie are stationed in centerfield with hundreds of other women who have been diagnosed with this disease.  Don is in the stands with his mom, his Uncle Dan, and Tonianne’s son, Patrick. As two of the bravest women he has ever known wave to him from the field, tears well up in Don’s eyes.  Countless memories spent in the precise vicinity of where he was standing, cheering on his heroes, so many of those times spent with Tonianne, and now he was cheering her.  Saluting her.  Thanking her.  When Tonianne joined her not-so little brother and the rest of her family in the bleachers following the pre-game ceremony, all she could talk about was slapping five with Miguel Tejada, the reigning American League Most Valuable Player and a fan favorite in Oakland.  And once again the clock was turned back.  Tonianne wasn’t in her forties anymore; she was a teenager, gushing about Reggie Jackson, who too had won an MVP while wearing an "A" stitched to his uniform.  There was a wonderful sense of déjà vu as she talked of "never washing her hand again", the one that touched Miguel Tejada as he passed her in the field.  That the Seattle Mariners inched closer to the A’s with a second consecutive convincing victory did little to dampen Don’s mood.  Like "Catfish" in ’68 and his brother John setting down 27 in a row against his pal Tony, this day was indeed perfect.

Thank you John and Tonianne, for putting perfection into my imperfect world.

Tonianne (far right) and family at BCA Day, 2002.