I'm not talking about the "Making History...One Game at a Time" sign outside the Coliseum, although that is a nice sign (even though it was ripe for mocking on Monday night).
I'm talking about the games on Tuesday and Wednesday. Last season, those were exactly the kinds of games that the A's lost, especially in May. Remember the back-to-back losses to Boston last year in May? Remember Mussina and Kevin Brown shutting out the A's in back-to-back games? Remember the three-game sweep at the Coliseum by these same Yankees in May last year and then losing two of three to the Yankees at home in September? Or how about in 2004 when the Yankees and Ruben Sierra publicly exposed the A's bullpen like a trenchcoat-wearing pervert in Times Square?
It's only one series, so no one should draw conclusions that the A's are over that hump. Only time will tell if this is a new A's group or if they will regress. But when the Yankees took a 4-0 lead last night, in the past couple of seasons (not when Miggy was here), that would've meant the game was over. When the Yankees took that 3-2 lead in the sixth on Tuesday, A's fans have been preconditioned to thinking it was over. But then Eric Chavez hits the biggest home run of the young season to tie it, allowing Bradley and Scutaro to team up to score the winning run in the ninth.
So if you ask me what my impressions are of the first few games, it's that the A's finally played on the same level with the $220 million team after a couple of seaons of tucking their tails between their legs.
Hopefully it's a good harbinger of things to come. We'll find out May 12-14 when the A's go into Yankee Stadium.
