As of this moment, I am going to assume that there will be a baseball game in Minnesota today.
The A's find themselves in unfamiliar territory: with a win over the Twins, they will have secured their first series victory of the young season. Only three times since moving to Oakland in 1968 have the A's dropped three consecutive series' to start the season: 1979, 1987, and 2001. For the record, those clubs finished 54-108, 81-81, and 102-60 respectively. So if the A's are to lose today's ball game, history tells us that they will either be woefully awful, meh-fully average, or insanely good. In short, it won't mean anything. Or everything. Or something in between.
That said, a win would be nice. Now we just need for Mother Nature to go bother someone else for three hours.
The A's send Brandon McCarthy to the mound against Minnesota, while Scott Baker takes the ball for the Twinkies. McCarthy, Twitter extraordinaire, has become a fan fave here at AN, but if his last start is an indication, he might actually gain some followers for his pitching as well. And the Big Four might have to make room for one more. My guess is he'd be welcomed to the club with open arms.
Offense has been sorely missing thus far this series, with the teams combining for a measly four runs. Yowsers. Let's see what creative ways the A's can muster up to score their run(s?) today.
A little history for you: on this exact date 30 31 years ago, Billy Martin made his managerial debut in Oakland. The A's fell to the Twins in 12 innings but Billy Ball was born before 24,415 at the Colisuem. Thanks Mom for keeping me home that night. All because I didn't go to school. I was fine by game time, you know.
