You may be wondering what’s with the picture of the fans in Oakland. I’ll get to that…

It took 97 games, but Kim and I finally got to see the Sox in person. And they decided to put on a show for us. Being the good Sox fans we are, we arrived at the park 2 full hours before hand. Even in Oakland the place is a mob of autograph-hungry scalpers. I saw one guy wearing 3 jersey’s and asking players for autographs during BP. The Sox players were much quieter than the Oakland players and generally stayed away from the fans. As Houston Street walked by he had as close to a full on conversation with a fan as you can have without stopping. Seemed like a pretty nice guy, it’s too bad I only want to see him in losing situations for the next 3 days.

Oakland is famous for it’s raucous, scary, and often crazed fans. I think we should start a petition to move the “IS YOUR GUN LOADED? 1 OUT OF 5 PEOPLE IN MASSACHUSETTS HAVE AT LEAST 1 GUN.” sign from the Mass Pike to the 880 freeway.

You quickly realize that the A’s fans aren’t the same as the insane Radiers fans. They’re actually extremely bitter and passive aggressive (much like their announcers). The guy sitting in front of us had a nice line when Youks swung and missed at a Zito curve ball:

Guy: Ooooooh, meet the curve ball Youk-ilis.

Me (to Kim): It’s a good thing that’s his curve, cause at 75 mph if that was his fast ball he’s in trouble.

It’s also a lot funnier when you realize that he wasn’t talking to anyone. But I guess I wouldn’t be too pleased if my team’s stadium was taken over by the other team’s fans. But let’s be honest, “Let’s go Red Sox” just sounds better than “Let’s go Oak-land.”

The game turned out to be a great one. For the first four innings Beckett looked downright nasty. The speed differential between his fastball and his off speed pitches was close to 20mph. And he was throwing both for called and swinging strikes. He scuffled a little in the 5th and 6th innings, but managed to go six innings with under 100 pitches.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this game pretty much summarized the entire season:

• Mannny goes deep (The other way, of course.)
• Papi goes deep (If you turn away for a second you’ll wonder where the ball went. It gets out of the stadium VERY quickly.)
• Youks walks
• Doubles hits a…well…double
• A-Gon starts two double plays (The man is slick.)
• Beckett gives up a home run…
• …and still gets the win
• The bullpen bent, but did not break
• Papelbon strikes out 2 in the ninth

And for good measure, I got to see:

• Everybody’s favorite ex-Sox Jay Payton dive and miss Coco’s fly ball, turning it into a double
• Payton kill a rally in the 8th by grounding into a 5-4-3 DP
• A-Gon hit a bomb (I know, I shouldn’t be quite so shocked about this anymore)

But the most exciting part of the game, by far, was in the bottom of the 9th with 2 out, PBR got to an 0-2 count on Mark Ellis. Now the strike out was cool, but more exciting was that for some reason, NESN apparently showed Kim and I cheering (thanks to Paul for not only noticing, but being able to grab a screenshot)! So I guess I can check that off the list of things I should do before I die.

Tomorrow it’s Schilling vs. Windsor. Again Kim and I will be sitting in section 227. If you happen to be at the game, and want to meet the lovely Kim (I can’t understand why you’d want to meet me) feel free to come by and say hello. Let’s go Red Sox (clap, clap, clapclapclap)!

Oh, and Kim took a ton of great pictures. I posted a couple of them here.