Day baseball while we are all working (yeah, right) strikes again. Tampa makes its debut in the post season today against the Sox of the White variety. Here are the lineups - no Swisher again, fark you, Ozzie.

White Sox

Cabrera - SS
Wise -LF
Dye - RF
Thome - DH
Konerko - 1B
Griffey, Jr - CF
Ramirez - 2B
AssJack - C
Uribe - 3B

Vazquez - SP

Rays

Iwamura - 2B
Upton - CF
Pena - 1B
Longoria - 3B
Crawford - LF
Floyd - DH
Navarro - C
Gross - RF

Shields - SP

It is 1-0 Rays going into the 3rd inning on a HR by the Longoria guy from the TV show about lonely MILFs (or something like that).

OK, so I know the 'he Foulked it up' gag is a hackneyed cliche, so sue me.

I went to Thursday's little matinee with the miehanA fo slegnA selegnA soL, hoping beyond hope for a sweep. Alas, things were not to be as we hoped.

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In case you missed it, the A's beat the slegnA last night courtesy of K-Fraud's fastball to the bullpen heater. Let's call this one the Boot-off. Video can be seen here - select the video tab and click on 'Oakland walks off on an error'.

via farm4.static.flickr.com

The A's go for the sweep today.

Today is Mrs doctorK's birthday. I'm celebrating by taking the day off and going to today's game.

Don't forget to stuff the ballot box for Bill.

OK folks, dump away.

That's right, folks. Instead of enduring the agony of another butt-kicking at the hands of the Rangers, last Friday night, Mrs doctorK and I went to see the Doobie Brothers at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga. I had never been to a concert at this place, and was pleasantly surprised by the venue.

This would've been a nice shot except for our typical south bay haze augmented by our beautiful California wildfire smoke. After finding our $70 seats, and paying $15 to park and $29 for "dinner", we got a good look at the concert venue.

I loved the audience for this concert - they made me feel young. There was, however, an over-abundance of victims of too many plastic surgeries. In fact, I've never been around so many expensive faces (note the dreadful creature in gold in this shot, possibly NSFE (eyes)).

The Doobie Brothers are something of a family affair - opening for the concert was Patrick Simmons, Jr., who played a 20-minute set, mainly of covers, but one song of his own. On his closing number, he was accompanied by his dad.

The house filled up by the time the Doobs took the stage. Below is a (really crummy) video of their second-to-last encore number, Without You.

The closing number was Listen to the Music, and, in keeping with the family nature, Tom Johnston's and Patrick Simmons' kids took the stage with the band. Here they are, taking a final bow.

Dump away, but don't bogart my bandwidth, dude.

Back in May, I posted this diary about an upcoming visit to Denver which would include my first visit to your beautiful ballpark. I thought that I'd share my experiences with you PR'ers, along with some pictures. BTW, my wife (aka Mrs doctorK) and I went to that tense pitchers' duel on July 4. I posted another version of this diary on AN - you can read it here if you like. The AN version only stayed on the front page for about 15 hours today before it got consigned to the archives due to a bunch of incoherent rage and nonsensical angst over the Rich Harden trade.

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Last winter, Mrs doctorK informed me of her desire to attend a meeting of a bunch of really smart people in Denver during the week of the 4th of July. I quickly checked to see if the Rockies had a homestand during that time (I've got my priorities straight, after all), and happily they did, so I agreed to go along. I absolutely detest flying, so I thought we would go there on the California Zephyr, and fly home. I had taken that train a few times while in grad school, when I was able to handle a two-day train ride in coach. Now that I'm no longer in my twenties, and am merely poor instead of destitute, we sprang for a roomette in the sleeper car ($185 for the two of us - an absolute bargain). Here's how our little journey to Denver went.

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Hi there, Purple Row. This is doctorK from Athletics Nation. My wife and I are making a week-long visit to Denver the first week of July, and, seeing as the Rockies are hosting a couple of series that week, and me being a big baseball fan (as well as a fan of run-on sentences), I figured that I'd just have to pay a visit to your place and catch a little NL baseball. The way our schedule works out, we will probably go to either of the July 3 or July 4 games against the Marlins. I have a few questions for you about your ballpark.

1. Recommended seat locations (edit: due to my choice of games, I went straight to Stub Hub and got two seats in section 206).
   
2. Are there any must-see attractions at the ballpark (other than the game)?
3. Where is the best food at the park?
4. Anything else I should know about?

By the way, we live in Sunnyvale, less than a half mile from Fremont High School, which of course is where Troy Tulowitzki is from. Thanks for your help, and hope to see some of you at the game.

And thanks to Silverblood for correcting my errors in the initial version of this post. :)