(Thanks to Kim for the photo!)

Where would you rather be at 12:30 on a Wednesday: Sitting at a desk in an office arguing about whether or not a piece of code needs and extra semicolon, or out at a ballgame on an 80 degree day? Yeah, me too. That’s why I was “sick” yesterday.

Wednesday day games are “dollar dog” games. Limit 10 hot dogs per transaction, complete with free heart attack.

The A’s big promotion to draw fans to an afternoon game was Root Beer Float Day. Basically for $2 you get a mug and a root beer float. For $15 you get unlimited floats. The way people were diving over each other for these things you’d have thought they were filling the mugs with absynth.

Note to people singing the National Anthem: learn the words! The woman singing yesterday didn’t reach the level of Michael Bolton for game four of the 2003 ALCS. (He forgot the words, and had to look at a cheat sheet to remember them. I was there, and yes, I booed afterwards.) Her only gaffe was thinking the word “o’er” was actually “for.” Gotta love that California public school system. I might have been more forgiving if I wasn’t afraid of August starting before she finished singing.

Not a terribly good game for the Sox. Kyle Snyder looked good in his first three innings, but started falling apart in the fourth. He basically made two mistakes: one to Frank Thomas with nobody on, and one to Frank Thomas with two on. It looked like the same mediocre fastball both times. Considering the state of our rotation you can’t ask for too much more out of the fifth starter than 6 innings, 5 runs; I can ask for him to be smart enough to not throw the same pitch a man nicknamed “The Big Hurt” hit for 400+ yards the first time for the first pitch of the second at bat.

I don’t know if it was the sunlight or what, but I ended up talking with a lot more Sox fans at yesterday’s game than at the first two. I always thought the term “Red Sox Nation” was catchy, but until you start conversing with other fans you don’t quite realize how true the term is. I had to drive about 50 miles each way to get to Oakland. One man I met in line for the Root Beer floats (yeah, I got one…it was still cheaper than a soda at $3.75) who flew in from Salt Lake City for yesterday’s game. But that was nothing compared to the family sitting in front of us who drove 11 straight hours from Boise to get to the game. According to him, they left at about 11pm the night before and 11 hours later pulled into the Oakland/McAfee/California Penal System Coliseum parking lot. Amazing. Why do I not see many Yankee fans doing that?

So the Sox return home now to face the ANAHEIM Angels. It feels like when you have been looking forward to having a good friend come into town, you have a great time, and then there’s the depressing goodbye. At least I know they’ll be back in a month.