Unexpected: Melvin new Giants manager

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The Warriors lost their first game, which was unexpected. The 49ers lost their last game, which was unexpected. And, oh yeah somewhere among Steph Curry and Brock Purdy, the Giants named Bob Melvin their manager. 

Which was unexpected until a few days ago when it was disclosed that Melvin was unhappy in his role as manager of the San Diego Padres.

Then things became what they are in baseball, an activity that one of its practitioners, the late, great Yogi Berra, once told us “You don’t know nothing.” Melvin was expected to be available, if not necessarily in that order.

A manager can’t get hits or throw shutouts, but he can be a hit, and that’s what the Giants, searching for their place in the Bay Area’s crowded sporting landscape, very much need.

If not as much as a home run hitter.

Bo Mel, as he’s called, knows the territory, and growing up on the Peninsula while also playing ball at Cal and no less managing Oakland Athletics to the playoffs (if never the World Series), we know him.

  

What we don’t know is what sort of roster he’ll have. But you presume he wouldn’t have taken the job, even for a former colleague of Giants president of baseball operations, Farhan Zaidi, with whom Mevin worked at the A’s unless changes would occur.

The Giants’ wish to sign Aaron Judge (yet another Northern Californian)  disappeared last spring, but there are other sluggers around, several on the Padres.

Maybe Melvin could help pry loose one of those high-priced players from the Padres, not that the Giants should expect help from the team that Melvin just extricated himself after a rumored strained relationship with A.J. Preller, head of baseball operations in San Diego.

Still, as everyone knows—and was verified in the two league championships that elevated the Texas Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks to the World Series—pitching wins.

The Giants have some pitching. They just need more.  

Apropos of nothing, but perhaps pertinent to everything, is the man who preceded Melvin as Padres manager in Bruce Bochy, who moved on to win three World Series for the Giants and now is in another with Texas.

San Francisco, the season of 2023 was rolling along until it mattered in September, then it tumbled from leading the wild card race to nowhere. How much that had to do with their very disciplined and analytics-based manager, Gabe Kapler being fired, is debatable.

Unless you’re Zaidi, who if only to prove he and the organization were intent on both keeping the Giants competitive and in a tough market, relevant.

Bob Melvin seems to be both the fortunate choice and the perfect one. No question he will get attention. Will he be able to get wins?

Warm weather, big crowds: Spring training finally Marches in

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By Art Spander
For Maven Sports

MESA, Ariz. — They’ve been at it for weeks, as Bob Melvin reminded. But with the temperature rising, the stands filling and the mood as perfect as the weather, for the Oakland A’s this glorious Friday, March 1, was the first day that spring training 2019 felt like spring training.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2019, The Maven 

Melvin on A’s 17-5 loss: ‘No one wants to get beat like that’

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By Art Spander
For Maven Sports

MESA, Ariz. — The oft-repeated idea is that the final score of spring training games is irrelevant. The late Hall of Fame manager Earl Weaver said what happens in Florida in March — where the Orioles played their exhibition games — didn’t mean anything at Fenway Park in July.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2019, The Maven

Tough teams ahead, but A’s Melvin wants to savor a sweep

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By Art Spander

OAKLAND, Calif. — So there was Bob Melvin, a few moments after Oakland beat the Baltimore Orioles 2-1 Sunday at the Coliseum, sweeping the three-game series, getting an earful.

Yes, the pitching had been excellent, the defense effective. But, Bob, that was the O’s, who are “O-ful,” or worse than that. Now you’ve got some real major-league teams to play, starting Monday night with Houston, the World Series champion.

And after three games against the Astros, you go on the road, Bob, to play the Yankees, Red Sox and Blue Jays, the three best teams in the American League.  

That ought to bring you back to reality, if not back to the lower reaches of the standings.

“I was going to try to enjoy the win today,” said the A’s manager, “before I get to that.”

The Orioles are a bad team — only eight wins in the last 34 games, 17 games behind the Red Sox and we’re barely into the merry month of May.

Still, as the axiom advises, wins over the patsies count as much as wins over the contenders. And a year ago, the A’s were the patsy.

Now, they’re two games above .500, capable, respectable.

In the last two games against the O’s, Oakland pitching allowed one run total, which was necessary since the A’s only scored four. Yet good teams find a way, especially if they have pitching. 

“We didn’t swing the bats all that well,” agreed Melvin after the last two victories, 2-0 on Saturday, on Khris Davis’ two-run homer in the 12th, then 2-1 on Sunday. “That happens during the course of the season. But the pitching was there. It’s all a matter of timing.”

Someone asked about the sweep, unusual in baseball, where two out of three gets you to the postseason. “You go into the series looking at each game individually,” said Melvin, “but once you win the first two, you obviously want to sweep the series.”

A matter of timing. And control. In his last start, Andrew Triggs went 4 2/3 innings and gave up three walks and four runs. On Sunday, Triggs pitched seven innings and didn’t allow a walk and just the one run, a homer by Pedro Alvarez in the second.

“He went deeper in the game than I’ve seen him go,” said Melvin. Well, since he hadn’t gone past the sixth this season, deeper in the game than anyone’s seen him go.

“He kept his pitch count low,” said Melvin of Triggs, who threw 96 pitches. “And he kept batters off balance both sides of the plate.”

Lou Trivino, up from Triple-A Nashville only a few days ago, pitched the eighth and was no less efficient than Triggs, retiring three batters in order.

Then things got interesting in the ninth when, with Blake Treinen having replaced Trivino, pinch hitter Trey Mancini hit a ball that went too far but not far enough and, before A’s catcher Jonathan Lucroy could field it, became an infield hit.

“It took a high hop and came back,” said Melvin, “like a sand wedge shot.”

Help! Send in Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson. Nah, Treinen could handle it. After a fashion.

A Treinen wild pitch got Mancini to second. He then was sacrificed to third. After Jace Peterson grounded out, Mancini holding, up came Manny Machado, who at .354 (with 9 homers) literally was one of only two Baltimore starters bating above .209.

Melvin, no dummy, ordered Machado walked. 

Then — exhale — Chris Davis (not to be confused with Oakland’s Khris Davis) flied out. 

“You don’t want to be in that situation,” Melvin said of the ninth-inning troubles, “but if there’s anybody with the weapons to get the ball down on the ground, it’s Treinen.”

Triggs said his previous game, against the Mariners, “stuck in his craw.” It’s now unstuck, and the A’s are creeping forward.

Which certainly is better than the reverse.

The week that was for the suddenly relevant A’s

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By Art Spander

OAKLAND, Calif. — The problem was irrelevancy. The Oakland Athletics seemed less in danger of dropping in the standings than dropping out of sight. Or out of mind.

Virtually the only stories about the A’s were negative, dealing with the search for a ballpark location and attendance woes. What, only 9,157 against the World Series champion Astros? Even fewer against the Rangers and White Sox?

Then came the Week That Was, the week the A’s made noise and made news, from a let-’em-watch-for-free capacity crowd of 46,000-plus at the Coliseum to that 14-inning, nearly six-hour win, to a no-hitter by Sean Manaea, to a series victory over the supposedly unbeatable Boston Red Sox.

Yes, after Sunday’s 4-1 win over Boston, the A’s had won six of seven, one at Seattle (that was Manaea’s also) and then five of the six at Oakland; had evened their record at 11-11; had a clubhouse full of media asking how all this happened and had manager Bob Melvin agreeing as the team prepared to fly to Texas, “This was a nice home stand.”

Absolutely. This was a home stand when the pitching caught up with the hitting. In the last two games, the Red Sox scored just two runs. It’s well understood in whatever sport you choose, if the opponent doesn’t score you can’t lose.

Fans? After the Tuesday freebie — if nothing else, that proved there are people out there who will come to A’s games, night or day, warm or cold, short or long — the gate slipped to 13,321 in that marathon on Wednesday, then 23,473 on Friday night against Boston, 25,746 for the no-hit night against Boston and 29,804 on Sunday against Boston.

True, a decent percentage were those semi-obnoxious New England expatriates who fled the weather and congestion back east and show up in California as if they’re the only people who know the difference between Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio (both California natives, of course). But as Oakland management understands, a ticket sold is a ticket sold, no matter the buyer’s personal preferences.

This is what the A’s got on a Sunday when the first-pitch temperature was in the 70s and the post-game music as the kids (and not a few parents) ran the bases was from the Beatles:

  • A beautiful job of pitching by starter Daniel Mengden (he of waxed mustache and fine curve) and, after he came out after 6 1/3 innings, by relievers Yusmeiro Petit, Ryan Buchter and Blake Treinen (the winner).
  • Great leadoff batting by shortstop Marcus Semien, who began the first with a single and scored, then with one out in the eighth singled and scored. “He hits anywhere in the lineup,” said Melvin. “Leadoff against lefties, and he has power.”
  • A big blast by Khris Davis, whose home run over the left field fence scored Semien and Stephen Piscotty, who had followed Semien’s single with one of his own. ”Khris hammered the ball,” said Melvin, sounding like a TV producer. “He’s a three-run homer waiting to happen.”

Have to use that line. Hello sweetheart. Get me rewrite.

What Davis got was his sixth home run of the season. “That was one of his biggest,” said Semien of Davis. “I’ve seen him hit walkoffs, grand slams. He has real power.”

What the A’s now have is a feeling of confidence. The Red Sox arrived with a 17-2 record. Accolades were being flung like tea into Boston Harbor back in colonial days. Then poor little stepped-on Oakland takes two out of three, including Sunday's defeat of lefthander David Price, who entered the game with a 1-0 record and a 2.25 earned run average.

Mengden started the day at 2-2 with a 4.50 ERA. It’s now 3.86. ”He’s able to go deep in the game,” said Melvin of Mengden. “He’s learned over the last year not to drown the strike zone.”

Pitching, pitching, pitching.

“It started with us holding them down,” said Melvin. “We know we can score. When we get pitching, our chances are good.”

They got pitching. They got hitting. No less important, they got attention. What a week.

 

One of 162, but for A’s — in 14 innings — one of a kind

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By Art Spander

OAKLAND, Calif. — It was just one of 162 games, but one of a kind. One that lasted seemingly forever. One the Oakland Athletics could have lost — and should have lost. But one to be remembered.

The long season. That’s baseball, but what also is baseball is one game that shows a team’s courage, a team’s ability, a team’s determination. For the A’s, that game very well may have been Wednesday afternoon, in front of a Coliseum crowd that was too small but with a result that was oh so big.

The numbers are remarkable, more than 500 pitches, more than five hours — in fact, at 5:48 very close to six — 49 players used, 14 innings played.

But the number that mattered most was one, the differential that the A’s — once behind 6-1, if early — and trailing most of the game, had in beating the Chicago White Sox, 12-11.

The ultimate run, with two out and the bases loaded in the bottom of the 14th, with darkness approaching, with a position player, Jake Smolinski, warming up in the bullpen because Oakland was out of pitchers, was driven in on a single by Matt Olson, scoring Marcus Semien from third.

A crowd that, including some 3,000 Science of Baseball Education students, was announced at 13,321 but had dwindled to maybe 500. After all, it was 6:25 p.m., long after the first pitch at 12:37.

“Take Me Out to the Ballgame” had been sung twice, in the seventh inning and again in the 14th.

“You come back, you use your entire bullpen, you’re one inning away from using a position player (to pitch),” said A’s manager Bob Melvin, “after fighting that hard, one game seems to mean a little more than the others. This is one of them.”

The night before, the A’s celebrated their 50th anniversary in Oakland, moving from Kansas City to start the 1968 season. The gates at the Coliseum figuratively were flung open. Tickets were free. Attendance was enormous, 48,592.

In a season of getting off the mat, of possible progress for a needed stadium, of re-grabbing the interest and success of the 1980s, even of the mid 2000s, that game was momentous. Unlike so much of the Athletics' struggle, it could not be ignored.

And yet it could be argued that from a standpoint of pure baseball, playing the game, no less significantly winning the game, the victory on Wednesday, in the afterglow of Tuesday's excitement, was more newsworthy.

In a virtual vacuum, with the talk about the Sharks and the Warriors, the A’s, apparently headed for a loss, instead swept the White Sox. Not a broom in sight.

“These games,” said Melvin. “I remember I was with the Diamondbacks, we went 18 innings in a 1-0 game at San Francisco. Guys get antsy as the game goes along. They really want to end it and have a tendency to want to be that guy. That’s why the games go on a little bit longer. You don’t have the typical approach. But we did in the last inning.”

With two out and no one on in the 14th, Semien, a Cal guy as is Melvin, singled to left. Jed Lowrie, who had hit a two-run homer in the eighth for a brief 11-10 Oakland lead, came to bat and Semien stole second. Then Lowrie walked and so did Khris Davis, loading the bases.

“In that situation,” Melvin reminded, “it doesn’t take a home run, just finding a patch of grass somewhere.”

That patch was in left field, and Olson, with his fourth hit, found it. Oakland had won its fourth straight.

“It was like a heavyweight fight,” said Olson. “We just kept trading blows the whole game until we found a way to put one across. I’d never been in a game that long. That was a good win for us.

“I had been feeling a little off at the plate and did some extra work in the morning. As the game went on, I started feeling better.”

He went with the pitch by James Shields, the starter forced to pitch relief, and instantly seemed to be swarmed by more teammates than there were people in the stands.

Among the elated was the man who hours before had been the A’s starter, Andrew Triggs, who lasted a mere one and a third innings, getting pummeled for six runs including a grand slam in the second by Yoan Moncada.

“I didn’t have any feel on my pitches and didn’t have command,” said Triggs. “That’s a bad combination. I put us in a hole for sure. I didn’t do my job. But there was a silver lining. We won the game, which hands down is the most important thing.”

Even if it takes a long 14 innings.

A’s Melvin: ‘We feel like it’s trending back up’

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By Art Spander

MESA, Ariz. — The wall where players enter the clubhouse is lined with history, at least with posters of those who made history for the Oakland Athletics — Rickey Henderson, Dennis Eckersley, Catfish, Reggie, Rollie, and with those players who really who needs last names?

Oh, the glory days when the A’s were on top, not just on top of the Giants but all of baseball.

These, however, are the frustrating days, the days when every good player on the A’s — and they’ve had a ton — leaves, when Josh Donaldson, Yoenis Cespedes, Josh Reddick and Sonny Gray go to another team because Oakland cannot afford to keep them.

Bob Melvin has been through this from top to bottom as the A’s manager since June 2011, six and two-thirds seasons heading into 2018. Time flies, until the roster flies apart.

“The first three (seasons) went a lot quicker than the last three; we were, much more successful then,” said Melvin, confirming the obvious. “For us it’s difficult to trend up all the time when we have to get rid of some players.

“So the trend line went down. We feel like it’s trending back up. We like the younger group we have here right now. We’re excited about it. So after three difficult years, I’m looking forward to being with this group for a while — and hopefully it’s longer than one more year.”

Melvin, “Bo Mel” as we came to know him, the Menlo-Atherton High kid, the Cal guy, was sitting Sunday in the dugout at Hohokam Stadium, the Athletics’ spring home, a few minutes after Oakland and Kansas City played to one of those exhibition anomalies, a tie, 4-4 in this case. Hey, the Royals had to motor 45 miles west to Surprise, and the game already was only four minutes short of three hours. So, adios.

Which too often is what the A’s have said, figuratively, of course, to their stars. Now they have another group with potential to make it big, to make the A’s very good. One of those players, 6-foot-7 lefthander, A.J. Puk, pitched the first two innings. Didn’t allow anyone to reach base. Did allow Melvin to dream.

“What we saw last year,” said Melvin of Puk in spring 2017, the pitcher’s second season of pro ball, “today was even a better mix of pitches.”

Puk has added a two-seam fastball. Of the six batters he faced, four grounded out and one struck out. He threw only 20 pitches.

"Great command, great poise, throwing strikes, easy innings,” said Melvin, a former catcher. "I told (pitching coach Scott Emerson), 'Why are you taking him out?' He was only going to pitch two regardless, so off to a really good start.”

Puk is 22, from Iowa (yes, so was Bob Feller, but please, no comparisons) and went to the University of Florida. He’s learning. He’s improving. The A’s very well also might be improving. But then a key player is dispatched. Whoosh, gone.

“That’s one of the chief complaints,” Melvin conceded of the turnover of personnel. “Hopefully that all changes with the new ballpark. I know we’re still counting on that but just haven’t found a site yet.”

This is 50 years for the A’s in Oakland, and for almost the entire half-century, since they moved here from Kansas City before the 1968 season, since they won three World Series in a row in 1972-74, since they had their decent stadium, the Oakland Coliseum, horribly transformed for a football team now preparing to desert, there hung the question whether the team would belong to Oakland.

They were going to move to Portland. To Sacramento. To Las Vegas. To San Jose. They were as restless as a willow in a windstorm, to steal from Oscar Hammerstein.

Tarps covered seats, and in some years, such as 2016 when almost nobody in the infield could play defense properly, fans covered their eyes.

Spring training is for optimists. Every team is undefeated. Bob Melvin and the A’s have gone through good times and bad times. Maybe this time won’t be better, but the suspicion is it won’t be worse.

Dramatic A’s win, and now Coliseum belongs to Raiders

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By Art Spander

OAKLAND — That’s it for baseball at Oakland. This year, at least. A dramatic conclusion, a successful end. Now the Coliseum will be in sole possession of the Raiders.

The pitching rubber was dug out almost before the before the ball Mark Canha smacked in the bottom of the ninth Wednesday cleared the left field fence.

The next day or two, the infield will disappear. No more dirt. No more ground balls. No more home runs. Until next spring.

Until baseball returns to the East Bay.

Before that, the merchants and politicians can debate the proposed A’s stadium near Lake Merritt that, knowing how things work in Nor Cal — or maybe that should be don’t work — might never be constructed.

Whatever, the ball club has been built — and disassembled and rebuilt — and with only four road games remaining this season of ’17, all against the Rangers, the A's seem destined to be considerably better in the years ahead. Depending on the whims and needs of the front office.

It’s a long season. We know that, 162 games, from the end of March until the end of September. Yet, it’s not the grind we remember, it’s the moments.

The little things. Franklin Barreto, sprinting around the bases in the third — “out of the box, running hard,”  said A’s manager Bob Melvin — a double and getting to third on an error. He would score on Jed Lowrie’s sacrifice fly.

The big things. Canha, a Cal guy as is Melvin, hitting his second walk-off of the year, on a 1-0 pitch in the last of the ninth that gave Oakland a 6-5 win over Seattle, which Melvin in so many words indicated was huge.

This had been a good month, September, 14-10 for an A’s team with a bad overall record, 72-85. But add a victory in each category.

”We had a lot of good things going, and then to get swept the last series at home ... ” sighed Melvin. Which, after dropping the first two games to Seattle and then losing a two-run, eighth-inning lead Wednesday, appeared a strong possibility.

Then Canha came to bat with one out, nobody on and the score tied, 5-5. He was 0-for-8 in the series. Wham. He was 1-for-9 and being swarmed at home plate by jubilant teammates.

“It was a fun way to end it,” he said.

An appropriate way to end it, according to Melvin. This was the A’s 11th walkoff win of the season (out of the 73 so far) and the eighth by a homer.

Yet Melvin didn’t approach it as enjoyment as much as relief.

“We’ve been consistent at home all year,” said Melvin, “and to get swept the last series would have been pretty disheartening. And of course we wanted to win for our home fans on this last day."

Few as there might have been, the announced attendance of 13,132 perhaps a bit misleading. But the gate was not the issue, the game result was.

Finale or not, it still was an autumn, midweek afternoon game against a team with talent but not much charisma. Maybe not even the Yankees or Red Sox would draw, given the particulars.

The A’s players found contentment in the score and their contribution.

“I had a tough series until (the home run),” said Canha. He’s from San Jose and Bellarmine Prep. After Cal, he was taken by the Miami Marlins, then chosen in the Rule 5 draft by Colorado, which traded him to Oakland for Austin House. Canha led the A’s in home runs in spring training 2015 and that year led all American League rookies in RBIs.

But 2016 brought hip surgery, and then this year he was optioned to Nashville April 15. He came back. In a big way, a walkoff home run in May, and now another.

“It happened so fast,” he said of the pitch from Shane Simmons and the swing that produced only his fifth homer of the year. “It’s been an up-and-down season for us as a team and for me personally. Nice to cap it off with that.”

Very, very nice.

One day, but a day of homers and brilliance for the A’s

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By Art Spander

OAKLAND — Sometimes you have to take a day out of context, have to appreciate what happened in those few innings or few hours, forget about what it means in the great scheme of things, the standings, the record book, and revel in what happened.

At the Coliseum on maybe the warmest Saturday of the season — the temperature hit 80 — and for the Oakland Athletics unquestionably the most exciting, seemingly everything happened, from a ton of home runs to an 8-3 victory over the Red Sox that all but silenced all those expatriate New Englanders.

Fine pitching? Absolutely. From Oakland starter Sean Manea, who went five innings, allowed three runs and got the win (he’s now 2-3), and relievers Frankie Montas and Josh Smith, who extended the A’s bullpen streak of scoreless innings at home to 25.

Power hitting? Certainly. Four Oakland home runs, including one to dead center in the fifth by Chad Pinder that landed in the seats of the plaza level, some 460 feet away. He joins Mark McGwire, Larry Walker and Jarrett Parker to have landed balls there in the lower region of Mt. Davis since the area opened in 1996.

Consternation? Indeed. A’s manager Bob Melvin was angry after a ruling in the second on a ball that was thrown by Boston catcher Christian Vazquez (for an error) into the right field visitors bullpen. Everyone believed that Melvin argued because he wanted an extra base, but he said after being ejected by crew chief Mike Winters that he had another issue.

The A’s are last in the American League West. Boston is in the middle of the AL East. So this one didn’t exactly quite change the standings. But it was wonderful for entertainment, and isn’t that what we most demand of sports?

The Red Sox fans who once filled the Coliseum are not quite what they used to be, in numbers or voice. Game one of this four-game series Thursday night drew only around 14,000 people — a number that you might expect for the Rangers. The gate was 24,378 Friday night, but Saturday, as fine an afternoon as one could imagine, there were only 20,235. Did Red Sox Nation shrink?

Oakland had home runs by Jed Lowrie, Khris Davis, Mark Canha and that monster by Pinder. Well, shrugged Melvin, when the A’s are hitting, that’s their game. Especially when the weather is hot. Over the years, the cold nights in Oakland cost Reggie Jackson, Jose Canseco and McGwire so many chances on balls that were hit hard. But on a day like Saturday, everything takes off — as Melvin agreed.

”Everybody just sat up and watched,” said Manea. “We had a good time in the dugout. Never seen a ball hit as far as Pinder hit. He’s really built.”

Melvin said Pinder is no surprise, although he hardly expected that sort of shot. “Everybody raved about him,” Melvin said. “We just have to find a position for him.” On Saturday Pinder was the designated hitter — emphasis on the word hitter.

Pinder’s homer followed those of Canha and Khris Davis in a five-run A’s fifth. There were some walks and a single in the mix. What do we call these guys, the Lash Brothers?

"Day games, the ball carries a little more, but I don't know if any of them would have been affected," said Melvin. "It seems like they got longer and longer. Canha crushed that ball. K.D. (Khris Davis not Kevin Durant, Warriors fans), we've seen it, and the Pinder one, I don't even know how to explain that.”

Neither does Pinder, but he doesn’t need to. "It's one of those swings where you kind of just black out," Pinder said. "You see it and you hit it, and you don't know what happens after."

What happens is the ball goes forever, and people who have seen it grab their head in disbelief. Including Khris Davis, who now has 13 homers himself.

"That was amazing," Davis said of the Pinder bomb. "He's got a great swing. That was impressive."

So, on this warm day of excitement and long balls, were the Oakland A’s.

Are these the new Swingin’ A’s?

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By Art Spander

OAKLAND — Well, all was quiet on the western front. Also in the East Bay clubhouse. No punches. No concussions. No conversation either. All reminders of the Swingin’ A’s of the 1970s are only coincidental.

Those guys could play baseball. They won three consecutive World Series, ’72-73-74. Those guys also could fight. Each other. There’s nothing wrong with teammates smacking each other around, as long as when the umpire yells “Play ball,” the priorities are reassessed.

As the Hall of Famer Rollie Fingers said two years ago when the ’74 champions had a reunion at the Coliseum, “We had some characters and, we were beating the bleep out of each other. But still we won.”

The ’16 A’s have not for the most part, although Oakland looked more than competent Tuesday night at the Coliseum, defeating the AL Central-leading Cleveland Indians, 9-1.

Solid pitching, timely hitting. Which is the way it used to be.

Minus an attempted haymaker or two. Ah, such memories of the glory and gory days.

Game One of the ’74 Series was at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Writers from around the country stood around the cage during batting practice, most skeptical of the Athletics’ reputation.

“I don’t believe all those stories of the fighting,” a journalist told the late Ron Bergman, in those days the only correspondent who covered every A’s game. At almost that very moment, Fingers and fellow pitcher John “Blue Moon” Odom began to brawl in the visitors’ clubhouse.

Ray Fosse was a catcher on the ’73 and ’74 A’s. Now at 69, he works with Glenn Kuiper as the Oakland television commentator. Fosse became famous for being run over by Pete Rose in the 1970 All-Star Game — and for breaking up a fight between Billy North and Reggie Jackson in that ’74 A’s title season.

“I just tried to pull Billy away,” said Fosse, who having incurred a crushed disk in his neck that still hurts, is reluctant to say much more about that battle.

Ballplayers are with each other virtually every day from February until October, on buses and planes, in cramped clubhouses. Nerves fray, tempers explode.

Jeff Kent once took a swing at Barry Bonds in the Giants’ dugout at AT&T. That Danny Valencia of the A’s conked teammate Billy Butler wouldn’t have been particularly noteworthy except that Butler was diagnosed with a concussion, a serious condition.

In fact, while one offers condolences to Butler — who must have taken a beating from Valencia — the incident has for a brief moment made the A’s relevant once again. Consigned to the back pages of the Bay Area’s dailies, they suddenly became front-page news.

They would prefer to do it by being successful, but until then any sort of attention will do.

“It’s not the first time guys have gotten in a fight in the clubhouse,” said Oakland general manager David Forst correctly.

“Unfortunately, when we’re having the kind of season we’re having, it’s a big story. If we were winning, it would be colorful, but we’re not.”

Precisely, and even though the A’s fined both Valencia and Butler, Forst and manager Bob Melvin perhaps were not displeased in their athletes showing some fire, if they didn’t appreciate Butler getting concussed.

Oakland team chemistry has been lacking — “not great” is the way Forst described it — which is hardly unexpected the way the A’s repeatedly ship people from Oakland to Triple A Nashville, and vice versa.

The insecurity has to have an effect on young players. How can there be chemistry when there’s no stability?

Through it all, Melvin, the A’s manager, has remained resolute and pleasant. While it’s true any manager is only as good as his players, the entire business, from lack of talent to losing a player because he was socked by a teammate, must be a downer. 

The rare triumph, such as Tuesday night’s — after loses in eight of the previous nine games — allows Melvin a brief chance to escape the craziness of the past few days, not to mention the season.

“Certainly we had this incident, but when you have losing seasons and you’re not playing well, it’s not going to go as well as when you’re winning,” Melvin conceded when asked about the fight.

“And we’ve had two tough seasons. So in that respect, you don’t expect everything to be warm and fuzzy all the time.”

As men such as Rollie Fingers and Billy North from those 1970s teams readily would confirm.

A’s pull a number on the Royals

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By Art Spander

OAKLAND — He was wearing a Warriors T-shirt, as seemingly half the Bay Area is these days, the gold one passed out a day before, the one reading “Strength in Numbers.” But for Chris Bassitt, a Cleveland Cavaliers fan under that shirt — understandably, since he’s from Ohio — there was only one number Sunday, 114, the career-high number of pitches he threw for the Athletics.

He didn’t get a win for that effort, but the A’s did, beating the World Series champion Kansas City Royals 3-2, and suddenly everything was as joyful and upbeat at the Coliseum as it had been some 24 hours earlier next door at Oracle Arena.

The weather was the best of the weeks-old baseball season, only 70 degrees at first pitch but climbing to 79 at the final out of an efficient, tidy game that required only 2 hours 37 minutes. The A’s closed out a home stand that began with four straight losses and ended with two wins, both over K.C., of course. And the stadium, often as lonely as a graveyard at midnight, was nearly full, 29,668 fans, after 25,584 on Saturday.

John Axford got the pitching victory. He was the one in the lineup when, in the bottom of the eighth, Billy Burns tripled down the right field line. “It was this close to going foul,”  said Burns, pinching his fingers together, “and that close to being caught.” Burns then scored the tie-breaking, winning run on pinch hitter Josh Reddick’s sacrifice fly.

But the 6-foot-5 Bassitt was no less responsible for the victory than anyone in the Oakland clubhouse. He went the first seven innings, giving up two runs, one a homer by Mike Moustakas. “I was not committed on the pitch,” said Bassitt. That’s acceptable. The A’s — every team in the majors — would delight in their starter allowing only two runs.  

Sunshine and success alter everything at the Coliseum. Maybe it’s not AT&T Park, and yes, the A’s still need a ballpark, but with blue skies the figurative atmosphere is changed. So too are the A’s fortunes. Now, one game below .500, they head to New York for three games at Yankee Stadium.

“We’ve got some momentum,” said Burns. “Scratching out a win against (the Royals) is big.”

The Royals pride themselves on their late-inning relief. Their template for winning the World Series was to get through the sixth inning in front or tied, then call on a bullpen some would say is the best in the majors. So A’s manager Bob Melvin was particularly pleased the way his team, trailing 2-1 into the seventh, rallied to tie and win.

“Coming back against this team is something,” said Melvin. “Typically, in the seventh, eighth and ninth, it’s a big challenge.”

So many games in baseball, 162, and yet this one game, especially at home, where the A’s were 2-7, the second-worst home record in the American League, was important. Teams need to do well at home to make believers of the ticket buyers. People want to leave a ballpark in a good mood. And Sunday at the Coliseum, most of the people did.

“We’d been struggling at home,” confirmed Melvin. “Now we’re going on a 10-game trip against good teams.” Those teams, in order, are the Yankees, Blue Jays and Tigers. “This was significant,” Melvin added.

Ryan Madson pitched the ninth to get his fourth save (and the A’s only have six wins).

“He did the job,” said Melvin the onetime catcher.

Which Madson considered ordinary, or at least nothing out of the usual. Just get on the mound and throw strikes, whether it’s the Royals — with whom he won a World Series last season — or the Mariners. “The idea,” said Madson, “is to keep the pressure on the hitters.”

The pressure’s been on the A’s in many ways. They’ll always be in the shadow of the club across the Bay until they get that ballpark and then have the revenue to retain their stars. Also, having bottomed out in 2015, the Athletics need to prove they’ve put together a team that can win and also be attractive, not that one doesn’t follow the other.

So there’s Bassitt, wearing his shirt for the most attractive, winningest team in the region — and in basketball — that of the Warriors. “I’ll root for them until the finals,” said Bassitt, who played at the University of Akron, close to Cleveland. “Then I’ll root for the Cavs.”

Everybody makes mistakes.

Greatness of the A's lives on in Mesa

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By Art Spander

MESA, Ariz. — Spring training is supposed to be about the future, about preparation for the season ahead. And while the Oakland Athletics are no less diligent than any other major league team in that assignment, so much here at their home ballpark, Hohokam Stadium, is about a glorious past.

Along the main concourse that leads from the entrance to the stands are posted huge photo murals of former A’s greats, Rickey Henderson, Reggie Jackson, the late Catfish Hunter and others, memories of the championship years, of the last franchise in baseball to win three World Series in succession.

So far away, and these days apparently so unattainable. In 2015, the A’s had the worst record in the American League. Such a contrast to the success reflected in the photos. Still, this is the time of hope and optimism in baseball. And on Friday afternoon, with the A's 9-4 winners over the Colorado Rockies, there was a great deal of both.

Now in his sixth year as manager of the A’s, Bob Melvin sees last year as an aberration, a failure unusual for the organization, a failure created by an obscenely high number of injuries.

“We were in the postseason three years in a row, so last year did not sit well with anybody who’s still here,” said Melvin. “Look at the injuries we had to the guys who were performing well. We’re completely redoing our bullpen, which was a big issue for us. So we didn’t feel like we were that far off.”

Melvin is 54, a onetime catcher from Cal whose career began with Detroit and continued with the Giants. “My first day at Candlestick Park in 1986,” recalled Melvin, “and Willie Mays (coaching) and Willie McCovey have the lockers on either side of me.” If that wouldn’t intimidate a young player, nothing would.

The trades by A’s GM Billy Beane are just another issue, part of the job. Melvin managed the Diamondbacks to first place in the National League West in 2006, then did the same thing with the A’s in the AL West in 2012 and 2013.

“We didn’t feel we were that far off,” said Melvin about the current A’s. “Shore up a couple areas, and we feel we’ll be a lot better.”

The area where the A’s were supreme was pitching, and Melvin, hardly alone in the dugout or the clubhouse, was enthralled with the performance of Sean Manaea, the lefthander Oakland obtained last July from Kansas City who was making his first start. It was impressive.

Manaea went two innings, allowed one hit and struck out four.

“Up to 97,” said Melvin, “throwing four changeups in a row, which is kind of his work-on pitch to get a strikeout, breaking balls, two-seamer (fastball), four-seamer. We were impressed with him before, but even more so right now.”

Manaea is from Indiana State, Larry Bird’s school. Maybe he can’t hit 20-foot jumpers, but he can hit the corners of the plate. He did miss the first baseman on a pickoff, but that didn’t bother Melvin, who said, “He likes to throw over, and he had him off balance, he would have picked him off.

“When you see a young kid like that trying to perfect his game, something we talked about early in camp, the little things to get yourself ready, get better every day, it’s definitely impressive.”

So the A’s have pitching, they believe. They also have hitting. Franklin Barreto, who was with Stockton in the Cal League last season, homered as a pinch hitter. “Didn’t take him time to get going,” said Melvin.

Asked if it were a surprise, Melvin said, “No. When you watch him take batting practice, watch him go about his business here, he knows what he’s doing. When he steps up like that, first time up, that was...”

That was what's making the A’s impatient for this season and beyond. Khris Davis, picked up only a couple weeks ago in a trade, had a double and three runs batted in.

“We’re always optimistic here,” said Melvin.

Just keep looking at those photos of the good old days. If the A’s could do it then, certainly they could do it now.

Joy is gone from the A’s season

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By Art Spander

OAKLAND — The joy is gone from the Athletics’ season. There’s a sense of helplessness at O.co Coliseum, a feeling that no matter what happens — and technically, they even could get to the World Series — the ending will be gloomy.

They’ll never catch the Angels, who remarkably about a month ago they led by 3½ games and now trail by 10½. That’s a given. The Angels got hot as the A’s went cold. And even by losing, the Angels on Tuesday night reduced their magic number to two.

What the A’s needed in their return home after a tough road trip with a decent ending was not only a victory but an efficiently played game, one that their fans — starting with the 19,385 in attendance — could use as a benchmark. Hey, they’re out of it, but they’re in it.

No, they’re not.

The A’s were dreadful Tuesday. Scott Kazmir threw two wild pitches. The infielders threw balls all over the place, charged with only two errors. The Texas Rangers, the team with the worst record in the majors, beat Oakland, 6-3. And everyone including A’s manager Bob Melvin was rocked mentally.

It’s like dressing up in a new suit and five minutes at dinner spilling ketchup on the trousers. It’s embarrassing. Or in Melvin’s words, “It’s disappointing.”

Poor Bo Mel. All a manager can to is encourage his players and fill out the lineup card. OK, in that madding lefty-right business, in the eighth, he can yank Brandon Moss, who had homered in the sixth, for righthanded batting Nate Freiman, who struck out. But playing percentages isn’t entirely sinful. Playing as did the A’s — spaced out, it seems — is very sinful. And very irritating.

“We just didn’t look like we were ready to play,” said Melvin, “for whatever reason. We got beat all the way around.”

The A’s yet may get to the wild card game. Then what? Do they perform as they did Tuesday night, watching Rangers' grounders bounce their way to hits and then watch Jake Smolinski hit his first major-league home run? Or are they able to reach back to the team they used to be in May and June?

“It was a hard thing to do,” Melvin said of pinch-hitting for Moss. Moss hasn’t had much success against lefties, and the Rangers had brought in Neal Cotts. Well and good, but a guy puts one into the seats his previous at bat, even against starter Nick Tepesch, and you figure he’s doing something right.

Then again, pulling Moss and inserting Freiman wasn’t the reason the A’s got bounced. They were, in a word, inept. They were too much like the team that lost 21 of its last 31 games. Whatever happened to the team that won 30 of its first 51?

“We didn’t play very good defense tonight,” said Melvin. “That’s the disappointing part. There’s an urgency.”

There’s also a mystery, or is there? The A’s have not been the same since they traded Yoenis Cespedes for Jon Lester the last day of July.

The A’s surmised with their budget they couldn’t sign Cespedes when his contract expired at the end of the 2015 season. The A’s — general manager Billy Beane — surmised, as the last two years in the playoffs they couldn’t beat Detroit without one more great starting pitcher.

Everything flip-flopped. Now the A’s not only might not face the Tigers, they might not even make the postseason. And the young A’s, who were built both physically and mentally around the enthusiastic Cespedes, fell apart after the deal.

The other kids start thinking, “If they trade him, what’s going to happen to me?” They lose their confidence. The team starts losing games.

So, Cespedes, a fan favorite, is gone. Lester probably also will be gone. And worst of all, the A’s postseason chances may be gone. Such a fragile balance.

Melvin, who’s been through the good times and bad times, with Arizona before coming over to manage the A’s, was asked how he deals with what happened to the A’s against Texas.

“Yes,” he admitted, “it bothers you. But you have to come back and play another game.”

And, they hope, play it far better than the last one.

Firing of Warrior coach disappoints A’s Bob Melvin

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By Art Spander

OAKLAND — Bob Melvin has been there. Has heard the phone ring the way Mark Jackson did. Heard the order to come to the office the way Mark Jackson did. Heard the words he was fired the way Mark Jackson did.

Melvin is a baseball man, who played for the Giants and others, and has been the Athletics' manager a month short of three years.

Melvin, who grew up in the Bay Area, also is a basketball fan, a Warrior fan “all my life,” as he phrases it. 

So we talk to the guy nicknamed BoMel, grab him outside the dugout at O.Co Coliseum Tuesday before the A’s were beaten by Seattle, 8-3.

Because of the nature of the Coliseum complex — Oracle Arena attached to the big stadium — the Warriors, A’s and Raiders are in a way connected symbolically.

Maybe 100 yards over Melvin’s shoulder is the court where Thursday Mark Jackson coached his final home game for the Warriors, offering cryptic words before tip-off that nothing after this season would be the same.

Now he’s gone. Now Oracle is empty. Now Bob Melvin, A’s manager and Warriors fan, is disappointed. He is not alone.

Melvin, fired as manager of the Mariners after the 2004 season, fired as manager of the Diamondbacks after 2009, might have offered a different viewpoint, been more noncommittal or simply mused, “That’s the business.” He did not.

“I know Mark Jackson,” said Melvin. “Consider him a friend. I’m surprised, a little disappointed as a Warrior fan. But I’m certainly not an expert, and I don’t know what went on inside.”

We’re told that inside, Jackson was not trusted by the front office. Told that Jackson argued with the son of Warriors owner Joe Lacob. We know Jackson dispatched two of his assistant coaches. There was conflict. There was inevitability.

Not for Melvin, who graduated from Menlo-Atherton High down the Peninsula and then played baseball at Cal. He didn’t want Jackson ousted. On the contrary.

Melvin remembers the Warriors' years in the wilderness, the stretch of 17 seasons when they made the playoffs only once. This year under Jackson, last year under Jackson, the Warriors were a delight, a link back some 40 years when in 1974-75 they won the NBA title.

“I would like to thank (Jackson) for his unbelievable contributions in getting the organization to this point and the success that they had,” said Melvin. “And I believe he’s going to have a lot of choices afterwards.”

Jackson never had been a head coach at any level, much less the NBA, the top of the heap, when chosen out of the ABC-ESPN broadcast booth in June 2011. Now he’s experienced. Yet that doesn’t mean there will be an opening.

Or that a team that needs a coach will accept Jackson, a pastor in southern California, who may have been a bit too religious for those who controlled his destiny.

Melvin’s rookie managerial season was 2003 with the Seattle Mariners. He made it only through 2004.

“I expected to be fired,” he said. “I was with a team that was on its last legs. We won 93 games my first year. We lost 99 the second year. They needed to start fresh. I understood.”

He took over the Diamondbacks almost immediately, managing Arizona from 2005 through 2008 and winning the National League West in 2007. But when the D-Backs started 2009 a disappointing 12-17, Melvin was dumped.

“I didn’t understand that one as much, because of some of the success we had,” said Melvin. “It’s never been an ego thing. I’m not an ego guy. It’s all about the players anyway. But there’s disappointment because you feel you’re working hard and doing a job, and at least in the Arizona situation I felt we made some big strides to get where we were.”

Mark Jackson’s strides with the Warriors were plenty large, but that sign of progress became irrelevant to those in command.

“The old adage, that you’re hired to be fired, I don’t necessarily agree with that,” Melvin insisted. “The intent is to stay there for a long period of time. So I kind of take exception when people say you’re going to get fired anyway.

“That’s kind of a of a defeatist attitude.”

It’s also reality. As Bob Melvin and now Mark Jackson realize.

A's don't play ball, they work it

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By Art Spander

OAKLAND — Another one of those "tote that barge, lift that bale" situations for the Oakland Athletics, another game that was worked and not played, agonized and not enjoyed.

“Our type of baseball,” said Josh Donaldson.

On Tuesday night, however, that type, the type that drags on when most of the fans have dragged themselves home — and when the announced attendance is 12,969, that doesn’t leave many in the stands — wasn’t successful.

The Texas Rangers got a couple of home runs in the 10th off a star-crossed A’s reliever named Chris Resop, and when this one came to a close, long after every other game in the majors already had done so, 3 hours 43 minutes after the first pitch, the Rangers were 6-5 winners.

Resop was the sixth A’s pitcher. He came in for the 10th, got Lance Berkman to ground out. Then he went 3-0 on Adrian Beltre. It’s like baiting a lion.

“I was just trying to get back in the strike zone,” Resop would say quietly, his right shoulder encased in ice.

The ball stayed there for a blink of an eye, then Beltre, who already had a double and a single in the game, powered it over the center field fence to break a 4-4 tie. After Nelson Cruz was retired, Resop threw another over the plate, and Mitch Moreland, who had hit one out in the fourth off Bartolo Colon, hit one out in the 10th off Resop.

“It’s not what I wanted,” said Resop.

“Rough,” someone sympathized. Resop disagreed. “This is worse than rough,” he said. “This is tough. This is not fun at all. You hate to let the others down. It’s a team game, but at the end of the day, there’s one person who could make the difference. I was trying to be too fine.”

The Swingin’ A’s, they used to call the franchise in a different time. Now it’s the Plodding A’s, the team that turns a sporting event into a seven-act production of Shakespeare. Nothing is easy. Nothing is quick. Nothing is brief.

There was that 19-inning game a couple weeks ago, right here at O.Co Coliseum. Then Tuesday night, when the pace was acceptable, everything slowed and slowed.

The A’s trailed 3-0. The A’s led 4-3. Seven innings had passed. It wasn’t going to be tidy, but at least it would be a win, and in regulation. The A’s needed it. Oh, did the Bay Area need it. The Warriors had lost. The Sharks had lost. The Giants had lost. Saved by the A’s? It was to dream.

The Rangers tied the game in the eighth, and then, boom (Beltre), boom (Moreland), they led by two in the 10th, 6-4, and they held on despite an Oakland run.

Maybe 1,500 fans were left. Maybe 30 or so beat their drums and blew their horns. So few people, so much noise. So little satisfaction.

“(Resop) is just going through a bad stretch,” said Bob Melvin, the A’s manager. Melvin has gone through his own bad stretch.

Last week he was ejected in Cleveland for arguing, correctly, that a ball hit by Oakland’s Adam Rosales was a home run, not a double. Tuesday night he was ejected, incorrectly, for arguing that Daric Barton beat out a grounder to short in the eighth.

“I probably deserved to go,” said Melvin of getting thumbed over the Barton play. “From where I was, I thought he was safe. But he (umpire D.J. Reyburn) got the call right, so I deserved it.”

The A’s have lost seven of nine. Sometimes it’s the hitting, or lack of it. Sometimes it’s the pitching. Or lack of it. When a team rallies from being down 3-0, goes ahead and then squanders a lead and a game, the feelings are mixed.

“We continue to battle,” reminded Melvin, “especially here at home.”

That’s admirable, but moral victories are of little use, especially for a team that was in the playoffs last season and is expected — was expected — to return in 2013.

Josh Donaldson, the A’s third baseman, had four straight hits, including two doubles, before flying out in the 10th. He’s hitting .315. He’s optimistic, not about his numbers but about his team.

“We feel competitive,” said Donaldson. “We’re aggressive. We play hard.”

Unquestionably. Now, if they only could play faster and with less stress.

King Felix rules over A’s

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By Art Spander

OAKLAND, Calif.  –-  There’s a reason they call him King Felix. “He can throw any pitch on any count,” said Bob Melvin. He’s the Oakland Athletics' manager. He was in the other dugout Monday night, opening night, a disappointing night for Melvin and the A’s.
    
A losing night.
  
“Opening night,” Melvin reminded, not that anyone needed reminding, “you’re always going to face the other team’s best pitcher.”
   
The Seattle Mariners’ best pitcher. One of baseball’s best pitchers. Felix Hernandez, who’s won an American League Cy Young Award, who last season threw a perfect game, who by anyone’s definition is pure baseball royalty.
   
“Maybe he didn’t have his best velocity,” said Melvin, a former catcher who knows all about pitching and too much about Hernandez, “but he was great.”
   
What Hernandez did was retire the first 10 batters of the game, really of the season, and although Hernandez would allow three hits – one to his former battery mate, John Jaso, whose double in the fourth was end of the no-hitter – the A’s never scored, losing 2-0.
   
An opening day and night without runs from teams by the Bay. Down in Los Angeles, the Giants – the World Series champion Giants, if you will – were blanked by the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw, 4-0. A few hours later, up at this end of the state, the A’s, the American League West Champions, were just as ineffective.
  
Two teams, two winning teams from 2012, zero runs.
   
“You always get somebody’s ace,” said Melvin.
    
The A’s similarly had one of their aces pitching, Brett Anderson. He struck out the first four Mariners. He went seven innings. Permitted only four hits and two runs.
   
“You’re going to take seven innings and two runs anytime from your starter,” Melvin insisted. Absolutely. But when your team gets no runs, you’re in trouble.
    
The A’s traded for Jaso in January. So long, Felix. “It’s easier catching him than batting against him,” said Jaso. But he did get that double. He did halt any chance for more perfection.
   
Before the game, Hernandez sent his former catcher a remembrance from the perfect game against Tampa Bay last August, a Rolex watch. Those beauties don’t come cheaply, starting a $5,000 or so and climbing exorbitantly depending on the number of diamonds on the face. Then again, Hernandez signed a $175-million, seven-year contract in January, so he has a bit of spare cash.
  
Someone asked Jaso whether it meant more getting a watch from Hernandez or a hit. “The hit,” he said, not all that seriously. “Then he struck me out.”
  
Hernandez struck out eight in his 7 2/3 innings, walking only one. “He had his stuff,” agreed Jaso. “He was really fun to catch when I was in Seattle. But today, so was Brett.”
 
Anderson is the medical miracle. The lefthander underwent Tommy John surgery in June 2011 and didn’t pitch again until last August. Then he strained an oblique muscle in September and missed more time. But on October 10, with the A’s trailing the Detroit Tigers two games to none in the best-of-five American League Division Series, Anderson, in his first start in six weeks, went six scoreless innings.
   
Monday night, opening night, was the next time Anderson pitched in competition. He liked the way he threw, for the most part. He didn’t like giving up the runs.

“A couple of mistakes,” said Anderson, analyzing the performance. “We had a chance to win it. I walked the leadoff batter (in the fifth). I hate walking people. That was my biggest downfall.”
   
The O.Co Coliseum was a wild place, a sellout – if with an asterisk, because the tarped rows of seats restrict attendance to 36,067 – the fans coming out with their rally towels and high hopes.
    
Where the A’s go from here – no jokes about San Jose – nobody is certain, but they won’t be going up against Hernandez at least for a few days, maybe a few weeks.
    
“We kept feeling we would pull it out,” said Melvin, the 2012 American League manager of the year. “In close games you have to have that feeling. We had it all last year, and it worked. A lot of times, one hit makes the difference.”
    
Hernandez wouldn’t let it work Monday night. The fans could chant “Let’s go Oakland.” The A’s couldn’t get that one hit. The A’s couldn’t get any runs.
    
“Felix is probably as good a pitcher as anyone as getting guys to swing at pitches,” said Melvin. He meant pitches at which they shouldn’t have swung. Pitches which they couldn’t hit.
   
At least when thrown by King Felix, as he threw them Monday night. So disappointing.

A’s Melvin wants winners, even in exhibitions

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By Art Spander

PHOENIX – It isn’t as if the final score is inconsequential. The games indeed are exhibitions in the candid description of baseball’s warm-ups.
  
Yet A’s manager Bob Melvin wants players who understand the importance of winning, even at the time of year when it isn’t important.
  
He cares about the thought process, the attempt even more than the result.
   
The idea in exhibitions is to perfect techniques, for the pitcher to work on, say, fastballs to the left side of the plate for a righthander such as Dan Straily, Oakland’s starter Wednesday against San Diego.
    
“Even if they had a lot of lefthander batters in the lineup,” said Straily.
   
In the regular season, it doesn’t matter who does what, just that the team does what it needs to do -- win.
   
In the exhibition season, the individual takes precedence, which is why final scores are so high, Oakland beating San Diego, 11-6.
  
“But,” cautioned Melvin, “I don’t want people who don’t come out in any game and try to win.”
  
It was one of those almost afternoons in the desert, the temperature finally climbing – the first pitch came with the thermometer at a cool 63 degrees – and the balls finally flying.
  
Sure a couple of 80-degree days would be welcome, but as Melvin reminded, “not every night at the Coliseum is warm.”
   
The A’s, as February heads into March, still are trying to get hot with the public. There were those sellout crowds at Oakland at the end of the regular season and the playoffs, but down here, midweek at least, not many seem interested.
  
Attendance Wednesday was 1,867 at 10,000-seat Phoenix Muni.
  
The Athletics continue as the Great Unknown. They were the Cinderella team of 2012, but other than Yoenis Cespedes, the Cuban, star quality is lacking.
   
Players such Jemile Weeks (who led off with a home run in a four-run first), Seth Smith and Josh Reddick are on the cusp of fame. They also are ignored by ESPN and, as Wednesday’s embarrassing crowd indicated, by the fans.
 
Phoenix and Scottsdale – and Mesa – belong to the Giants and Cubs. Even the Dodgers, with their modern complex 25 freeway miles to the west in Glendale, don’t draw like San Francisco and Chicago, well established physically and psychologically.
   
At least, on Friday the Giants come to Phoenix, bringing their cachet – a World Series championship gets attention – and their fans. Better to have a crowd even if it's an opposition crowd.
    
The A’s at the least are building on the field. Only three and a half weeks ago, late for a trade unless Billy Beane is doing the trading, Oakland acquired Jed Lowrie from Houston in exchange for Chris Carter, with a few other individuals tossed in.
   
Lowrie, who was drafted out of Stanford by the Red Sox, then went to the Astros, in theory would play “all over the place” in the infield, according to Beane. On Wednesday, he was at third, and in his first two at-bats had a double and single,  respectively.
  
“He swung the bat well,” confirmed Melvin, “but for me what counts is he can play multiple positions. The ball he made a play on in the first inning was just as important as his offense.”

In his first spring training in Arizona after time in Florida, Lowrie, 28, said he is “just trying to get himself ready to be an everyday guy.”
  
He’s ready. He knows his status.
   
“There are guys here trying to make the team,” Lowrie said, “trying to impress. I’m not in that . . .”
  
The word Lowrie might have chosen is “category.” He’s a starter, a switch hitter, a second baseman, third baseman and shortstop. He’s not a star, but we know how little that seems to matter in Oakland.
   
The A’s, as the cover of their media guide emphasizes in words and a wonderful photo of players celebrating, are the 2012 AL West Champions. And that end-of-September run last year, when they overtook Texas, has gained them respect.
    
Stories about the renaissance have been everywhere. The nothing A’s are now the special A’s. They are being predicted to battle the Angels for the division, just as in the National League the Dodgers are figured to match up against the Giants.
     
Last February, such a suggestion would have seemed absurd, but now it’s expected. Oakland proved it could win.

Bob Melvin doesn’t want his team to forget that, even in exhibition games.

Fans Give the A’s a Last Hurrah

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By Art Spander

OAKLAND – It was over, but it wasn’t over. Not for the fans, so appreciative, so loud. The Detroit Tigers had won, and were celebrating out there on the A’s mound, on Oakland’s mound. But that didn’t shut down or shut up the fans.
  
“Let’s go Oakland. Let’s go Oakland.’’ The chant kept repeating. Kept reverberating.
   
“Let’s go Oakland.’’ Even though Oakland, the A’s, weren’t going anywhere except to the finish of a season that never will be forgotten.
  
“Let’s go Oakland. Let’s go Oakland.’’ And there went Oakland, there went the A’s, out of the home dugout and onto the field, a last hurrah, a last thank you, waving their hats as the crowd, stubborn, persistent, grateful, waved those yellow rally towels in response.
   
A difficult ending, the Tigers winning 6-0 Thursday in the deciding fifth game of the American League Division Series. Domination by one of the most dominating pitchers in the sport, Justin Verlander, who never gave the A’s a chance. A tough climax to a rewarding season.
   
But in a way a great climax for fans who understood, for fans who wanted to show they understood.
  
“It was great,’’ said Michael Crowley, the A’s president, plopped into a post-game chair in the clubhouse office of equipment chief Steve Vucinich. “And they were all fans of the A’s.’’
   
Absolutely. No traitors in Red Sox or Yankee shirts, who during the regular season turn O.co Coliseum into one of their temporary homes. No Giants partisans who cross the Bay Bridge for the interleague games.

They were all fans of the A’s, all loud, all hopeful, all disappointed, all empathetic.

“They wouldn’t have been doing that in New York or Boston,” said Evan Scribner, who pitched the eighth and ninth for the A’s. No, they wouldn’t have. Not a chance.
   
“These fans are amazing,’’ said Scribner.
   
The word has been overused the last month, an adjective reflecting the surprising run of the A’s as they overtook the Rangers to win the AL West, as they came back from two games down – and two runs down in the ninth on Wednesday – to get equal with the Tigers.
   
They were the miracle workers, the youngest, second-lowest-paid team in the majors, winning games only the faithful dared dream they would win, bringing life to a franchise too long moribund, owned by a man too long determined to move to San Jose.
  
But eventually the slipper becomes a pumpkin. Eventually the miracles run out and a team with a Triple Crown winner, Miguel Cabrera, a team with a Verlander, both an American League MVP and Cy Young winner, a team with a $122-million payroll, more than twice that of the A’s, proves its worth.
    
The longer a series goes, the longer a golf tournament goes, the longer a Super Bowl goes, the greater the odds the favorite will prevail. As in this playoff, which went one game too many for the A’s, Detroit prevailed.
  
How the A’s even got to the fifth game seems remarkable. They had a combined 50 strikeouts – 11 alone Thursday against Verlander – in the five games, an average of 10 a game.
  
They needed that spectacular ninth-inning rally to win Game Four.  
   
They were courageous. They were selfless. They just weren’t quite as good as the Tigers.
  
Oakland, the maligned city, where the police have problems, where the murder rate is high, the blue-collar town with the blue-collar team, the town from which the A’s, the Warriors and maybe even the Raiders want to move, needed this team. This team needed Oakland, needed the whole East Bay, and finally it got it.
   
Suddenly there was hope. Suddenly there was joy. The franchise that in March was supposed to lose 100 games in October got close to winning 100, got close to winning a first-round playoff. That it did not, that it lost, was not lost on the fans, who know the game, who know their team.
  
“We didn’t think it was going to end today,’’ said Bob Melvin, the Oakland manager. “Not for a second.” He’s as special as the club, a Bay Area guy who went to Cal, who used to watch events at the Coliseum.
  
As much as anyone, he grasped the significance of this season of unexpected triumph – and inevitable defeat.
  
“We knew we were going up against a good pitcher,’’ agreed Melvin. “That didn’t mean we didn’t think we were going to win. We’ve gone up against good pitchers this year.
 
“Our crowd was looking for just about anything, a walk, a three-ball count. They were looking for anything to pick us up and try and help us out. We really appreciate it. They stayed there and kind of gave us a curtain call. We really appreciate that. It truly was the 10th man for us.”
  
One man for Detroit was too much for 10 men from Oakland. But that didn’t still the chanting. “Let’s go Oakland. Let’s go Oakland.”

Improbable Weather, Improbable A’s

in ,

By Art Spander

OAKLAND -- It was 87 degrees at the first pitch. On October 2. In Oakland. If that makes sense, then why shouldn’t the A’s? “Nobody saw this coming,’’ both Tim Kurkjian and Terry Francona said on ESPN Tuesday morning about the miracle.

What they and everyone else saw Tuesday evening were the Oakland Athletics tied for first place in the American League West with Texas, and one last game, the biggest game of arguably the most improbable season, a few hours away.

“The fact that we won (Monday),’’ said Bob Melvin, the homegrown A’s manager, “we were in better position (Tuesday). Now both teams have to go out and see what they can do.’’

The story is what the A’s already have done. After the 3-1 win over the Rangers, after 30,660 spectators shouted and screamed, after the drummers out in the bleachers had finished, Oakland was locked with the Rangers at the top of the division.

In three months, they had gained 13 games on Texas. In three months, they had destroyed the theory that in baseball, like in wine and cars, you get what you pay for.

Because compared to other franchises, the people who run the A’s – owner Lew Wolff and GM Billy Beane (and can you imagine his inner smile?) – paid almost nothing for the players on the roster and, no matter what happens Wednesday, have received everything.

“We’ve had a nice run,’’ said Melvin, in the understatement of the year. BoMel, as he is known, wants to stay as low-key as imaginable for the express purpose of keeping his young athletes just as low-key.

If, after the sparkling wine spritzing on Monday night when the A’s clinched at least a wild card place, if after a celebration that back in March – hell, back in May when Oakland lost nine in a row – seemed as unlikely as 87-degree night in October.

Night baseball by the bay is supposed to be cold, and in Oakland this season it was supposed to be bad. “People said the A’s might lose 100 games,’’ said Ray Fosse, their former catcher and current TV analyst.

The question in spring was whether the Angels, who spent $240 million for Albert Pujols and another $77 million for pitcher C.J. Wilson, could overtake the Rangers, the 2011 and 2010 American League champions. But it was the A’s who caught the Angels, after going 56-26 since June 30 -- which was a day Oakland lost to Texas -- while the Rangers went 43-39.

On Monday night, Melvin found it difficult to speak, overtaken by emotion, doused in bubbly, and thinking about the past.

Melvin will be 51 in another month. He grew up on the Peninsula, went to Menlo-Atherton High, then played at Cal, then after a bit with the Detroit Tigers came for a while to the Giants. You can’t get more local than that. Or more connected to the region.

“What I was thinking of,’’ Melvin explained later, “was the times I had been to the Coliseum, the rock concerts – The Who – the postseason games the A’s played in the early 70s when I was a kid. It all was coming back."

Lew Wolff, the A’s owner, the man who desperately is trying to move the team to San Jose some 30 miles down the freeway, has been a despised figure in Oakland. But suddenly, the image has changed, as that of his ball club.

Wolff properly was part of the Monday jubilation, and he said to a television camera, wonderfully candid, “I didn’t think we’d be here.’’ He meant in the playoffs. Maybe he also meant in Oakland.

That war between Wolff and the cross-bay San Francisco Giants, who won’t relinquish their territorial rights on San Jose to the A’s, is at a temporary truce. The battles will be on the diamonds, the Giants and A’s both in the postseason in what most be the giddiest time in years for Bay Area baseball lovers.

The Giants’ success was expected. Needless to add, the A’s was not. Tuesday night, they got the victory using four pitchers, two of whom, starter Travis Blackley and closer Grant Balfour, are Australian. But why not? Baseball has been called the national pastime, but the nation was never specified.

Blackley, picked up from the Giants off waivers in May, went two innings against the Yankees and one inning against the Rangers in his previous two games. Tuesday night, he pitched six innings, allowing three hits and a run. Balfour came in for the ninth and in order retired Josh Hamilton, Adrian Beltre and Nelson Cruz, the heart of the order.

That’s a baseball term. The order for the A’s is one with plenty of heart.

“We got better as the year went along,’’ said Melvin. Nobody saw it coming.