May the Doo be with you

A long time ago in a bullpen far, far away...

I’ve spent the last hour starting and restarting this post, but nothing seems quite right. What Sean Doolittle meant to us A’s fans can’t be expressed in words, it needs to be expressed in the ways he’s changed the lives of A’s fans. I don’t need to tell AN that, I don’t need to tell A’s fans that, it’s for the outside world to look in and see what our goofy, ginger-bearded reliever and his fiancée, Eireann Dolan (and of course their dogs), have meant to us over the past five years.

Doo wasn’t supposed to be a pitcher — he was snatched up by the A’s in the first round of the 2007 draft as a first baseman. It only took 26 innings of professional pitching before Doo was called up to the A’s on June 5th 2012.

On the final day of the season, the A’s won the AL West.

From the beginning, we’ve known Doo was a great dude. He and Eireann have a big collective heart for the troops, have hosted a family of 17 Syrian refugees for Thanksgiving dinner, and bought up a buttload (technical term) of tickets from grouchy A’s season ticket holders who didn’t want to attend Pride night and gave them back to a local LGBTQ youth community center. They do everything they do in the most humble way possible, always with their delightfully dorky disposition.

One of the things that makes Sean such a lovable dude is how passionate he is about everything he’s into. Be it Star Wars, baseball, his dogs, heavy metal, or shirts with wolves on them, his love is pure and never-ending. He cares so much he makes you care. You love what Doo loves because you love watching Doo love things.

Doo is the epitome of an A’s player. If we were asked to design a character to fit into our quirky little world, it would be Sean Doolittle. Sometimes I have to remind myself that he is, in fact a real person.

After the trade, Sean posted this on his Twitter. I’m not crying, you’re crying. I am crying. We’re all crying.

Eireann posted a farewell message, too, but I’d like to spotlight this instead, because it’s important and I laughed for hours.

Thank you Sean. Thank you Eireann. Thank you Stella and Sophia. Thank you for making our lives a lot better. Thank you for the commercials. Thank you for the headbanging in the bleachers. Thank you for the fun. And, of course, thank you for being the subjects/inspiration of so many Trade Daze comics. Good luck in Washington and ALL THE BEST TO YOU! You will never, ever, EVER be forgotten!

Some of you know this already, but as a gay trans guy, I’m a person that’s never really felt I could have a safe space in sports, but the A’s have been my rock since I was a teenager nonetheless. When I heard about what Eireann and Doo were doing for LGBTQ youth, I couldn’t believe it. It was the best thing that could have ever happened, and on my baseball team! It was later that year that I started posting here on AN, which was the first place I was able to publicly go by my name and pronouns, not the ones I’d been using all my life. Thanks to Sean and Eireann, the A’s had gone from my security blanket to my best friend, to put it in the warmest and fuzziest terms possible.