"You kick up the leaves, but the magic is gone. `Cause you had a bad day, the cameras don't lie ..."
There are bad days, and then there are bad days. On most bad days, you can only lose once--heck, the last time the A's had a bad day they got outscored 14-0 and only lost once. Today, the A's lost twice. In the first game, they could only manage six hits and one run against the likes of against Luke Hudson, he of the near 6.00 ERA. In the second game, they managed just two hits in the first seven innings against Jorge De La Rosa, he of the 8.24 ERA, and Ambiorix Burgos, he of the 11 blown saves. Then Scutaro botched a routine play and the lead was gone, until Frank Thomas gave the A's hope. And then the A's best relievers completed an implosion you almost never see, and to compound it Scutaro made an ill-advised relay throw that allowed Sweeney to go to third (on a play where Huston Street didn't back up), and the A's were on their way to being swept in a double-header by the league's worst team.
And then Huston Street left injured.
How bad do you want a single day to be? I could add that the Rangers won and the Angels are winning. I guess it's time for a little bottom-line perspective. The A's will take the field tomorrow no less than 4.5 games ahead of the pack in the AL West, which is a lot better than any of us expected, so if Huston Street is ok, the A's are ok--more than ok, actually. But if not, well...then we all might just look back on August 18th, 2006 as a really bad day.
