Baseball in Oakland

Last night, I went to see the Oakland Athletics take on the Seattle Mariners at the Oakland Coliseum with Edna, Erik, and Rae. It was the first time that I went to a sporting event at the famed Coliseum. Rae and I drove to Union City and took the Bart over to the stadium. This was way more convenient than braving the traffic up 880 and paying $12 for parking.

Earlier in the day, I prepared dinner for the evening: chicken/tuna salad, hand-picked plums from our backyard plum tree, hummus and bread. The bag that I put all the food stuff in wasn’t allowed the first time we tried to enter the stadium — the lady said that it was too big. Poppycock! It wasn’t over the upper limite of 16x16x8! She wouldn’t listen to my explanation so we left, turned the corner, and rearranged a few things. Then, we went to the other stadium entrance and were let in by the nice man manning the entrance. Take that!

We had seats right behind home plate, meaning we had the lovely foul ball netting in front of us to obscure the view. It wasn’t that bad, but the photos could have been better without it. We enjoyed eating our salad, plums, and Edna’s yummy cookies while watching the Mariners clip the A’s 3-1. The game was a pitching duel with 40-year old Jamie Moyer pitching a no-hitter into the 7th inning.

The highlight of the game also came in the 7th inning when Mariner’s third baseman, Jeff Cirillo, was ejected. I’ll let the Associate Press explain what happened:

Jeff Cirillo then bunted home a run, diving and rolling to touch first. He was initially called safe but then was ruled out because he ran about 5 feet out of the baseline. A’s manager Ken Macha sprinted onto the field to argue the original call and Hatteberg pointed out to first base umpire Jerry Layne that Cirillo had run out of bounds.

Cirillo angrily threw his batting helmet back toward the first-base line as he stomped into the dugout and home plate umpire Greg Gibson immediately ejected him. Cirillo briefly went into the dugout then came charging back out toward Gibson and had to be restrained by manager Bob Melvin and shortstop Carlos Guillen .

Rae got a kick out of the near-brawl between Cirillo and Gibson. Let the fists fly next time!

We had some interesting people sitting in our area Monday night. In front of us were scouts for some American League team. One of the guys was using a radar gun on the A’s pitchers, and the other two guys were taking notes throughout the evening. I had a nice discussion with Judi, who runs Skyline Ranch Equestrian Center. Judy and her daughter, Jackie, were sitting next to us during the game. The people directly behind us were really, really loud. Half of them were cheering for the Mariners and the other half were cheering for the A’s. They weren’t annoying, mind you, just really loud. Next time, we need to bring some ear plugs! We also noticed a number of Japanese fans in the crowd, cheering whenever Ichiro came up to bat (he went hitless in 3 or 4 at-bats).