This is a weird day. It's more than peculiar, it’s weird and it’s
barely begun. When I started this, I had no clue, no vaguest hint of what I would put down or where it would go so let's see what happens.
I woke up early, about twenty minutes before my alarm was set to go off at 4:45. For whatever reason, when
I stopped sleeping and my brain kicked in, I felt a sense of foreboding. Like something momentous and
not so good is going to happen. It makes me a bit nervous. It's nothing I can pin down, nothing I can point to. Just a weird feeling that something is not right or something won't be right. It's like the heavy weight that is the prelude to a massive thunder storm.
Since I did get up without injuring myself, turned off the alarm without incident and made it
downstairs safely, it’s none of those things. I didn’t electrocute myself when
I turned on the coffeemaker. So it’s not that. I turned on my computer and nothing bad happened there. So far, so good.
Well, we’ll see. In life, at times like this, I find it’s best to hunker
down in my seat and just be a passenger. What will come will come and que sera
sera.
What is a very pleasant surprise this morning is that the
team’s fans didn’t burn down half the city in celebration last night. Oakland
is a blue collar community with a history and reputation as being ‘rough’.
Kudos to the residents for not getting stupid and ruining a great party.
Upon checking, it doesn’t look like the Chicago Blackhawk fans did anything
silly in Chicago, either, which is also great news. But I guess they're kind of used to it, three Stanley Cup wins in six years. I guess they're a bit blase these days.
The reason I sound cynical is because when sports teams win something
important, like a title, it seems that some fans take that as a sign to riot. I
think a lot of people expected something bad to happen in Oakland if they won,
and it didn’t, and that’s great. Particularly since the Oakland Athletics are
doing so poorly. The juxtaposition between one team and the other this year is stark.
Last year, the Warriors got into the playoffs but got
knocked out. This year they won the championship
Last year the A’s looked
like they might get to the championships, except things started to fall apart
with trades and injuries in the last third of the season, so they missed. This year, after trading away some of their
better players last season, the A’s, in a word, suck. The poor players can’t catch a break
even though most of them are playing their hearts out, but management, through
its trade decisions, gutted a very good team.
Now I don’t know why they made the choices they did because
I wasn’t in the room when things were decided. Perhaps the players were
unhappy. Rumor has it that Josh Donaldson said some pretty inexcusable things
to the manager, and that’s why he’s gone. No one with whom I’ve spoken understands why Yoenis Cespedes
was traded, though. The guy was a solid outfielder and downright amazing at the
All Star Home Run Derby two years straight but pffft off he went. Maybe he asked for the trade? I don’t know. Perhaps the team management just thought someone else might
do better in those positions. Perhaps it was a combination. I don’t know. All I
know is the result. Last year the A’s had walk-off after walk-off and they looked really strong through most of the year.
Oh! Excuse
me for being rude. For non-fans, when a team is trailing or tied in the last
half of the last inning and they win, it’s called a walk-off.
The Giants did that to get to the World Series last year –
if someone had written a script for that team in the playoffs – start to finish
– it would have been laughed at by a potential agent or publisher and pitched in the bin. It really
was, in a lot of ways, a fairytale.
Travis Ishikawa, who hit the game winning walk-off in the
bottom of the ninth inning against the St. Louis Cardinals to get the Giants to the World Series had talked about
quitting baseball altogether before being signed by the team. Then he does
this (it's short and it's great because there is such a feeling of tension and then - jubilation):
And the Giants go to the World Series, which they won.
Thanks Warriors and Giants. I feel better now.
Have a lovely day!
Best~
Philippa
Follow me at Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
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