The weekend was great.

The game... eh, not so much.

I should start off by stating for the record that we didn't really have any illusions about this game.  The Colorado Rockies are currently the hottest team in baseball, and the A's... well, we love our A's.  Even when they do the baseball equivalent of knocking us down a flight of stairs.  In case anybody thinks I am shoveling dirt on my team, I am most assuredly not, but I also don't believe in gilding the lilly.  There's a reason why going into last Saturday's game we were the third-worst team in the league, lording it over only the Cleveland Indians (Tom Berenger can't save these stiffs) and the Washington Nationals, who are so grotesquely inept that when they recently had Teddy Roosevelt Bobblehead Night (WTF?), they handed out a bunch of awful plastic statues that said ROSEVELT across the bases.

Also, this was not the first time they had terribly misspelled something in the public eye.  I shit thee not.

Anyway, we knew that there was a good chance that we were going down in defeat, but we were okay with that.  We even managed to get over the minor gaffe of leaving the sliced tri-tip for sandwiches at home; thankfully, my dad had put it in the fridge before we left so it was delicious when we got home.  And boy, we needed those sandwiches to wash the taste of defeat out of our mouths.

The A's sent young Trevor Cahill to the mound and I would remiss if I didn't point out for the record that young Mr. Cahill is just that; young.  As in, he recently celebrated being old enough to grab a beer after a game in a legal manner rather than having it slipped to him outside the back exit of a liquor store.  Young, folks.  The thing about young pitchers is that they have a hell of a lot of potential and can throw lights-out sometimes...  but when things go wrong for the young bucks, it usually snowballs with amazing speed.  The major league game is at least fifty pecent mental, and it takes time to develop the strength of will necessary to rise above such things as serving up a home run in each inning for four innings.

Once again, I shit thee not.

The Rockies are a hard-slugging team, so the dinger rapped smartly over the wall in the first inning was perhaps to be expected.  The Oakland offense retreated to its typical prone position (once again, there's a reason we're in the cellar, folks) and after going meekly down before a Colorado pitcher with a 3-7 record and an earned run average somewhere between five and a half and "holy shit, what are you still doing in the rotation," the Rockies came back up again.

CRACK!  Out went home run number two.  This provoked a general muttering from the crowd, since now it was 3-0 Colorado and the A's have demonstrated as much ability to come back from early deficits of this type as Marcus the Backup Kitty does in resisting a fire hose.  However, one never knows, until it gets grinded right in your face by once again having the A's batters go three and aout as though they were trying to patent the concept.  This brought young Mr. Cahill back to his own personal Waterloo, aka the pitcher's mound.

I'm sure you can guess what happened next.  At least, you'd better be able to.  After all, I alluded to it four paragraphs ago.

The home crowd stopped muttering and began booing instead.  I, however, had gone right for the throat last inning and began to yell such inspiring things as "Bullpen doormat!"  There was also a "Fire Bob Geren" chant I attempted to lead (with as much success as Cahill had in keeping the ball in the yard), the "If I had paid full price for these seats, I'd riot!" blast, and after the next inning...

...aw, you know what happened the next inning, right?  That's right.  Another dinger, A's are now down 7-2 in the fourth inning, and I completely lost it for about as long as it took to scream:

"DAMN YOU TO HELL, TREVOR CAHILL!"

Whereupon I then sat down and buried my face in my hands.

Good thing those seats were only ten bucks each, right?  For love of the game, folks.  For love of the game.