Ah, nothing like a meaningless meeting between Bay Area "rivals" to get us ready for next week's meaningless meetings, which will then get us ready for only slightly more meaningful meetings in May and June.
Oh, who am I kidding?
The A's and Giants could stage a pillow fight, and I'd still care who wins.
And sure it's a little silly, A's fans and their massive inferiority complex, and Giants fans who pretend not to care about their brethren to the east, even as they endure not-so-subtle reminders of World Series tallies (it's us 4, them 0):
67M: I see that your avatar is Charlie Brown. I can't help but notice the irony in that. But to be fair, I'll allow you this: if the A's were a Peanuts character, who would they be, and why?
Grant: Violet. Nobody cares or pays attention to her, but for some reason she's a total jerk to Charlie Brown.
OK, maybe Giants fans are too preoccupied with Dodger Blue to go green with envy over the A's, but it still strikes me as peculiar that they behave in many ways like Yankee fans, only in New York their team actually wins.
Anyways, I guess I should add something baseball-y here, so if you haven't yet, please read Taj's Thursday Thidbits. It's pretty thweet. Then come back for the game. Here are the A's lineups:
Davis CF
Barton 1B
Sweeney RF
Kouzmanoff 3B
Suzuki C
Ellis 2B
Buck LF
Pennington SS
Jennings P
It sounds as if manager Bob Geren is now leaning toward batting Sweeney third and Suzuki fifth during the regular season, and hitting Coco Crisp leadoff and Rajai Davis second. He liked the job Davis did hitting second last year, he said, and to follow the right-handed hitter with a lefty, he's moved Sweeney up.
Since Suzuki has a little power (at least for this lineup), hitting him fifth isn't a bad move.