Open Thread! Game #39! Seattle Milquetoast @ Oakland Ambulatory!

Welcome to the Perfect Homestand. Hopefully it's better than the Less-Than-Perfect Road Trip.

I'll be perfectly honest: I think we are still in this thing, despite injuries and other evidence to the contrary.

OK, salutations VORPlords, and welcome to the Perfect Homestand... a different promotion honoring the still-mind-blowing-a-week-later achievement of our crafty Stocktonian on each night of the 'stand. Tonight is $2.09 Plaza Level tickets apparently... unfortunately the team did not take heed of my idea for one promotion, cleverly entitled "F*ck Alex Rodriguez Night," in which the A's would give away a commemorative pitching rubber inscribed with the words "Stay the F off my mound, you preening steroid-gobbling prima donna!" Oh, well... at least there's a nice T-shirt on Wednesday LOLOL

Hopefully Double G has that head-scratching curveball tonight.

Yes, the injuries make you wonder if the A's medical team is in fact 100 monkeys with stethoscopes. Yes, our offense falls under the California "Three Strikes and You're Out" statute and our team should probably be incarcerated at San Quentin by now, such is the near-criminal offensiveness on display. Yes, having Eric Patterson in CF is somewhat akin to what Mike V would look like out there, if he had to use his Large Knife for a glove, anyway. Yes, Eric Chavez now has the bat speed he had in 2004, only now he is swinging under 6 feet of water only he can see. All these things are obvious and painful, yet here we are, just 2 games out in what's traditionally the most horrific Month of Woe for A's fans... bringing to mind the old Leonard Cohen song "Who By Fire":

"...who in your very merry month of May?
who by very slow decay?
and who shall I say is calling?"

All of this is agonizingly true... the A's are an awful road team with a thoroughly-ineffectual medical staff and a bat attack that has many a fan staring at the grass growing under the players' feet cuz that is more exciting at this point. But be all that as it May (there's that month again), here we are opening up with the even-more-pathetic Mariners, whose season thusfar has made ours look like 1989 by comparison... no run support for Cliff Lee, Milton Bradley is off the team and under observation, Eric Byrnes lasted a week before he went off to play Beer League Softball, OMG the list goes on. The hated Halos open with the Strangers tonight for 3, so they will in all likelihood cancel each other out and not move too much one way or another in the standings. Then it's interleague play, which our lads traditionally do pretty well at, so I'd quote The Who here and admonish every A's fan to Don't Let Go the Coat and keep tuned cuz it's a long grinding season and we're just 6 weeks into it right now.

This is no social crisis, just Another Tricky Day for you...

Tonight (if the rain I am staring at out my window in West Oakland abates) the Athletics will send out Gio Gonzalez, to be opposed by the M's thoroughly hyphenated Aussie lefty Ryan Rowland-Smith.... and your lineups are as follows:

OK, let's see our boys get off the deck after a roadie that made Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle look like a smooth and error-free journey... come on now, you know in your heart that despite everything that has happened (and will probably continue to happen until May's over LOLOL) this is a team on the upswing whose trajectory, originally planned to peak again in 2011-12, has got us thinking thoughts of 2010 and October baseball nonetheless. That's right, my glass is so half-full at this point that I can craft a more effectively optimistic marketing message (sitting here naked with a blanket wrapped around me and not having eaten anything yet today) than the actual team's Marketing Department (with an actual budget, fed, and in all likelihood clothed) can probably muster at this point, but what's an Emperor if he's not just a wee bit Imperial, right?

This means you! Lemme hear ya!!
LET'S GO, OAK-LAND!!!!