2-0 up against the Yankees in 2001 and 2-0 up against the Red Sox in 2003. A’s fans know all to well what happened on those two occasions, so no one in Oakland is going to be looking to the ALCS just yet. Still, the A’s couldn’t have dreamed for a better start heading back to their home patch. A 5-2 victory puts them in pole position to finally take the next step.

No one needs to tell Torii Hunter that he made a bad mistake. Diving full length for a ball he never looked like reaching was an error of judgement, the sort of thing you just do not expect from such a great outfielder. Mark Kotsay may have looked short of breath sitting on the bench following his inside the park home run, but it was the Twins who really had the air taken out of them on that play.

The Twins rally in the ninth ultimately failed to produce any runs so they will have to regroup and find a way to get back into the series. Every baseball fan knows that turning a 2-0 deficit into a 2-1 deficit can completely change the complexion of a five game series. Pulling yourself away from the brink helps to swing the momentum back in your favour and the Twins could just as easily find themselves heading back to Minnesota all square and with home field advantage in the decider. These two teams are very evenly matched, so it could still go either way.

Is it a foregone conclusion that the winner of the series will have to play the Yankees next? Not quite, but 2-0 would be a very deep hole to climb out of for a team who have been on a downward curve for a couple of months now. As with the A’s-Twins series, one start could turn every thing around. Should Justin Verlander find his pre-All Star break form tonight, the Tigers will head home full of confidence.

As for the National league, no surprises that Pujols and Carpenter were central to the Cards jumping out to a 1-0 lead in their series with the Padres; however I get the feeling that their future will be determined by how much help they get from the supporting players. Meanwhile, John Maine is pitching his third inning as I type this post having replaced the injured El Duque. What a great story it would be if he could get the win.

Random thoughts:

• Sacking your manager is currently the height of fashion it seems. Buck Showalter has joined the ever-growing list today. Even my football team, Norwich City, has joined in on the act by ditching Nigel Worthington (not before time it has to be said). Meanwhile, Phil Garner “bucks” the trend by bagging himself a year-long extension from the Astros. Imagine what his job security would be like if he worked out how to manage a successful club in the first half of the season rather than just the second.

• The A’s Eric Chavez has been playing while hurt for most of the season. It hasn’t affected his gold glove calibre defense, but Chavy has failed to record a hit in the series so far. His at-bats in the second and eighth innings in particular were disappointing. Take a look at the enhanced gameday footage of those two at-bats on MLB.com and you will see Chavy striking out chasing a couple of high fastballs. It’s a great example of what this enhanced gameday system can show you: the way pitchers set-up a batter during an at-bat. I’m sure Joe Mauer should take some credit for the pitch selection and so long as Chavy fails to lay off that pitch, the opposition are going to keep throwing it. Much easier said than done though.

• Finally we have some new MLB.TV advert breaks! I’m no Tom Petty fan at the best of times, but hearing him play the same bit of the same song virtually every half-inning (with as much enthusiasm as Gary Neville displays during the national anthem) drove me crazy. Having said that, how long will it be before I want to smack Tommy Lasorda? I’m very close already, but the A’s good play has put me in a good mood. If the Dodgers beat us in the World Series, I’m probably going to have to invest in a new monitor.

Like all baseball fans, I sat back and enjoyed a thrilling final month to the regular season. Now the play-offs are here and the intensity goes up yet another notch.

As an A’s fan, I have to be honest and say my heart sank a bit when the Tigers lost on Sunday. Yes, I know it was a bit gutless! Detroit have really struggled down the stretch, partly due to some of their young pitching (Bonderman and Verlander especially) seemingly hitting a brick wall. The Twins meanwhile have been on a hot streak for months. More to the point, the prospect of facing Johan Santana in a best of five series is daunting to say the least. Maybe if I’m kind to myself I would say that preferring to face the Tigers rather than the Twins was not so much being a chicken, more being pragmatic.

On paper it becomes a simple equation: you have to win the other three games because you won’t get any change out of Santana (except, of course, the one you can’t hit). Well, thanks to the Big Hurt that equation has been torn to shreds. Two more bombs by Frank Thomas have just helped the A’s take the first game 3-2. The A’s missed a good chance to tag on a few runs in the top of the seventh when they were 2-0 ahead and moments like that can often come back and bite you. Rondell White’s subsequent solo shot in the bottom of the inning confirmed my fears. Thomas’s second homer, this time off Jesse Crain in the ninth, was immediately labelled as an “insurance run” and it’s value became apparent when Milton Bradley lost a lead-off fly ball against the Metrodome ceiling, resulting in Cuddyer reaching third base. Huston Street was able to shake that moment off and brought the game home, albeit with Cuddyer coming home to make the final score 3-2.

Winning the first game in any series is important, particularly in a best of five series. Winning the first game when you are on the road is huge. Winning the first game, on the road, facing Santana? It’s almost too good to be true. By no means have the A’s won the series today though. There is still plenty of baseball to be played and any complacency will be jumped on by Minnesota. Boof Bonser will take the hill for the Twins tomorrow at 18.00 UK time and if the A’s let the idea of “a road split being a good result” enter their heads, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Random thoughts:

• A’s fans have (rightfully) complained about the scheduling of these opening games which begin at 10.00 in the morning Pacific time (the Yankees matches have to be on prime time of course!). I do have sympathy for them but how can I complain? What can be better than getting home from work and sitting down with a pizza to watch an evening of play-off baseball.

• And a full evening it is too! Barely has the first play-off game of 2006 finished when another starts. Peavy for the Padres against Carpenter for the Cardinals.

• The Enhanced Gameday service has just been launched today on MLB.com for the Padres-Cards game. Boy does it look good! It really takes you into the one-on-one battle between pitcher and hitter. According to the MLBlog Gameday site they are hoping to extend the service to cover more games during the 2007 season.

• Things are certainly turning bad for the Mets. It looks like El Duque may be scratched from his start tomorrow due to a calf injury. A season of great promise looks like being derailed in the post-season due to a shocking run of injuries.

(As Jim from the Vicar of Dibley might say)

Only a few days after Ramon Ortiz came so close on Monday, Anibal Sanchez pitched a no-hitter against the D-Backs last night.

The Fish are on the charge at the moment and this puts another landmark on the miraculous Marlins map of 2006. Sanchez relied on some excellent defensive plays to help him through, but that’s what the fielders are there for. Getting a no-hitter must be a dream come true for any pitcher. Achieving the feat in your rookie year? It can’t get much better than that.

Sanchez will rightfully be flooded with attention over the next few weeks and his on-field performances will come under far more scrutiny than they have so far. He has raised people’s expectations in him and a no-no in your rookie season is a hard thing to live up to. Mind you, inside he will know that whatever happens from now on he will always have a line in the baseball history books. That’s a very privileged position to be in as a 22 year old rookie.
Sports fans in Florida must be pretty excited right now. The Dolphins kick-off the NFL season tonight against the Steelers hoping that Daunte Culpepper can lead the team to a homecoming Superbowl next February. After Sanchez’s opening act, the Dolphins have a chance to cap-off a special couple of days tonight. Anything seems possible in Miami at the moment! What price a Marlins-Dolphins championship double?!

What a great evening’s entertainment. Never mind sitting down to watch mundane tripe on the telly after a day at work. Stick MLB.TV on and you could not only be watching a great ballgame, but also possibly watching history unfolding before your eyes.

My eyes lit up when I logged on to MLB.com and saw that Ramon Ortiz was six innings into a potential no-hitter. Without thinking I dialled up the Cards-Nats game. My conscience suddenly twitched a little: was I tempting fate?

I wasn’t the only person wondering whether my actions may have dire consequences. The commentators, struggling to contain their excitement, were desperately trying not to utter those little two words. The camera panned to Ortiz sitting alone in the dugout, his team mates not wanting to disturb him. The tension was palpable, but everything was going well. Ortiz wasn’t relying on steller-defensive plays; the Cards were struggling even to put a good swing on the ball. If he just kept pitching in this way, he would have a great chance.

Just when things couldn’t get any crazier, Ortiz strode to the plate as the lead-off batter in the bottom of the eighth. The crowd cheered wildly. The commentators joked about how he must be a good hitter. “What if he hit a home run?” they asked. They chuckled at the thought, I chuckled at the thought, probably everyone watching had a good laugh at that one. Well, it would be beyond belief if that happened, wouldn’t it?!

Straight off Ortiz gets a pitch in the strike zone and swings so hard he nearly comes out of his boots. It travels through the air in slow motion, giving everyone watching the chance to think to themselves; “it can’t”, before they realise it might, and then it has! Delirium descends on the RFK stadium. I’m on my feet (someone with no interest whatsoever in the result of the game) cheering along and waving my fist in the air, almost in disbelief.

Every now and then sport throws up these moments. Scenes that leave people saying to themselves; “no one would write a script like that”. If it happens in a movie, you shrug your shoulders and say “yeah, right”. You cannot swallow it down because the voice in your head says things like that don’t happen in real life.

Well, sometimes they do. And if you are lucky enough to witness it as it happens, whether in the stadium or watching it on a PC on the other side of the world, then the moment will stay with you for a long time. For some reason the planets aligned (however many there are nowadays) and Ortiz found the swing of his life. Right there in a moment: the perfect magic of sport.

Could he cap it off by securing his no-hitter? Sadly not. Aaron Miles led off the ninth with a single into the outfield and thousands cried “NO!” in anguish. Dejection soon turned to appreciation as Ortiz was given a rousing ovation for his efforts. Nick Johnson then turned a smart one-man double play to leave Ortiz facing Albert Pujols to secure a one-hit victory. The commentators pointed out that a one-hitter, when facing a line-up containing Pujols, wasn’t too shabby an effort. Finally, fate had been tempted once too often.

A wonderful display of the fine art of pitching was brutally curtailed by one bludgeoning, violent swipe of the bat. Pujols crushed a 2-1 pitch into the upper deck of the left-centre-field seats. I’ve only been watching baseball since 1998, so I don’t have the most extensive history to draw on. But I can’t remember seeing a more awe-inspiring home run. Never mind hearing it, you could feel the crowd gasping as the ball finally landed into the seats. The fact that it had no bearing on the result didn’t matter (the Nationals won 4-1). It was a heart-stopping moment; probably the most savage act I’ve ever witnessed on a baseball field. It was brutal, spine-chillingly brutal. Struck dumb by the act, when I finally regained my senses I could only muster a mumbled “wow”.

Much as I love football and many other sports (and what a great time of year this is: the football season up and running, the Baseball season reaching a climax and the NFL about to kick off), I don’t think they can match moments like this. A seemingly innocuous game ended up on the “unforgettable” list. Chances are it will take a while to get to sleep tonight, with the excitement still buzzing in my head. Does that make me sad? Maybe! Just think, I could have been watching Eastenders or University Challenge or Coronation Street instead.

I will stick with being a sad baseball fan, thanks all the same.

I’ve just finished watching the Daily Rewind for yesterday’s games and they left the best play until last. The D-Rays turned the first ever 2-6-2 triple play in MLB history against the Mariners.

Out 1 – J.P. Howell strikes out Raul Ibanez swinging.

Out 2 – D-Rays catcher Dioner Navarro immediately guns the ball to Ben Zobrist who tags out Adrian Beltre (who was attempting to steal second on the play).

Out 3 – Jose Lopez spotted Beltre was in a run down and tried to sneak his way from third base to home plate. Unfortunately for him Zobrist was alive to the threat and, having quickly tagged Beltre, threw him out at the plate.

This triple play was a credit to some heads-up defense by the D-Rays, and some ill-advised base-running by the Mariners (as evidenced by the faces in the M’s dugout! ). Triple plays are always exciting, but this one was extra special as it was a mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous; genius and madness. It was the second triple play the Mariners have hit into this season; suggesting they are either very unlucky or reckless on the base-pads. I’m going for the latter.

For all the info you could ever wish for about Triple Plays, head over to the Triple Play site by the Society for Baseball Research (SABR).

http://tripleplays.sabr.org/index.htm

No, nothing to do with that annoying Seattle fish market lot businesses like to show you training videos of. The real flying fish are the Florida Marlins, battling against the odds and many an experts’ pre-season prediction (as well as non-experts like myself). Their recent four game sweep of the Brewers has made it eight wins on the spin and they head into a series in St Louis two games out of the wild card. Nobody predicted this would happen.

Pouring a cold cup of reality on to proceedings, it has to be said that the Marlins have been helped by the overall mediocre standard in the NL this season. To still be in the wild card hunt without a .500 record (before today’s game they are 64-66) is fortunate to say the least; however that’s no concern of Florida at the moment. And of course, wherever it put them in the standings overall, the Marlins would have gladly taken that record if offered it before the season started. Many doom mongers were predicting one of the worst losing records in Major League history with a dreaded 100 loss season seemingly a foregone conclusion. To say they have been proved wrong would be an understatement.

Still, it’s hard to know how to react to the Marlins this season. It’s great to see a young group of players having a good season, but how do you cheer for a team owned by Jeffrey Loria? The fact that Joe Giradi seems destined to leave the club at the end of the season says it all.

In a system of thirty franchises, quite how a team can be allowed to off-load virtually all of their players during the winter to save money is beyond me. The Fish slashed their payroll from $60 million down to just under $15 million. It’s fair to say that Florida are receiving a lot more in income than $15 million this year from the central pot of money that is distributed to all the organizations, plus the “luxury tax” cash etc. The Marlins may have lost money over the past few years due to poor attendances and such, but that doesn’t make it right. Like many organizations, the Marlins are essentially on the blackmail path, trying to secure public money to build a new stadium. Essentially they are making a mockery out of MLB while wilfully pocketing millions.

What really stands out at the moment is that $15 million can apparently get you near the wild card. The Braves are sitting 2.5 games behind Florida, while spending six times as much for the privilege ($90 million). The Cubs are paying nearly $95 million for a 54-77 record, albeit with important parts of that payroll spending much of the season on the DL. So much for the Commissioner’s claims that small market teams cannot compete.

Well, teams can compete if they cash in on all their good players and can then fill their roster with lots of promising youngsters (on the MLB minimum wage). Rewarding someone for cheating baseball fans is the name of the game. Sadly this seems to be a theme in MLB: don’t spend money, perform badly, and you too can get the top draft picks while cashing in the benefits of revenue sharing.

Doesn’t really fit with the dog-eat-dog world that is America. Sounds a bit more like the “old boys network” of Britain (“Just finished exploiting Montreal have you Jeffrey? Jolly good old boy. Why not have a crack at Florida as well dear fellow? Pip, pip. Trousers down etc!”). Still, I’m not sure why the other old boys are willing to put up with it. Maybe it will be addressed along with the Collective Bargaining Agreement this winter?

No great insights into the cultural differences between Britain and America today (to make a change).

Just a brief note about the American League standings. Closing in on 130 games being played and there is an amazing symmetry in the AL at this moment. All three division leaders (the Yankees, Tigers and A’s) have a 5.5 game lead before tonight’s games. Does that mean they all have an equal chance of making the play-offs? Probably not. There are lots of variables that come into play, whether that be injuries or their respective schedules for the rest of the season.

The Yankees look to have taken a firm grip on the East and will be hoping for some reinforcements in the next couple of weeks in the form of Matsui and Sheffield (if “selfish Sheff” can be bothered that is). Meanwhile the Tigers are on a downward curve and have the White Sox and the Twins breathing down their necks. I don’t see them giving up their top spot, but there could be a few panics along the way.

As for my A’s, well somehow we are still leading the way. To say it has been a patchy season would be an understatement; the relative weakness of the AL West this season has proved a godsend though. Our pitching and defense has been extremely effective, our batting has by and large been woeful. Our luck with injuries has defied belief at times.

Thankfully just as August starts with an A, the A’s always start in August. There are still more questions than answers. Will Rich Harden return to the mound this season? Will Bobby Crosby ever stay healthy? Is Houston Street going to be fine when he comes off the DL? Is Loaiza for real? Not to mention the slightly longer term questions of whether Frank Thomas is going to cash in (elsewhere) on his good 2006 and which team’s games am I going to have to avoid so that I don’t suffer the pain of seeing Barry Zito in a different uniform (I’m guessing the Yankees – it’s always the Yankees!).

Anyway, the point is, each division is being lead by 5.5 games and I thought it was worth noting. You be the judge!

The box score from last night’s Indians-Royals match-up tells as cruel a baseball tale as you are likely to read. Smashing ten runs in the first inning would make many supporters confident that a glorious victory was on the cards. The sad thing is, it wouldn’t be a surprise if many of the 12,671 attendees retained a dash of pessimism at the time. Royals fans have suffered for long enough to know that a small positive sign is less likely to herald a moment of joy than lead to another disaster.

Losing a game when you are 10-1 up after the first frame is bad enough, but the Royals right now are able to lose in a way that other teams just can not match. Cleveland began to chip away at the deficit and by the middle of the sixth inning had moved to within one run. Yet just when everyone thought the Royals were going to let it slip, back they came. Three Kansas City runs in the bottom of the sixth had seemingly stemmed the tide. “No embarrassing defeats at our expense today”, they thought.

Rather than slamming the door on a charging Cleveland lineup, the Royals had merely set themselves up for a more painful fall. Fast forward to the top of the ninth where the Royals have a four run cushion and only need three outs to wrap up the game. Victory would be a mere formality for most home teams. The Royals are not “most” teams though. Cleveland put the four runs they need on the board to force the game into extra innings, and a depressing inevitability descended on Kauffman Stadium.

Top of the tenth: Cleveland score two runs.

Bottom of the tenth: no reply.

Final score: Indians 15, Royals 13.

MLB.com have enhanced their scoreboard recently by allowing the user to click on any inning of any game. Doing so allows MLB.TV subscribers to join the action at that exact point. Royals fans may want to take advantage of this function. Click on that first inning “10”, or even that sixth inning “3”, and enjoy the moment. Press stop and forget about the rest of the game. No Indians comeback. No embarrassment.

Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.

An interesting story popped up on the MLB section of the ESPN website on Sunday:

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2555073

According to reports, the San Francisco Giants have given a 16 year old third baseman (more accurately baseboy I guess) a $2.1 million signing-on bonus. The lucky lad is from the Dominican Republic and is called Angel Miguel Villalona. Apparently the Giants beat a host of clubs, including the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox and Mariners, to his signature.

The general idea of giving draft signings a load of cash has always seemed a bit strange to me anyway. Footballers might pocket a fair few quid for signing with a new club but only when they are actually established professional players. Handing out seven figure sums to players who might not play in the Majors for two or three years (if they make it at all) seems amazingly risky. The law of the market takes over though: if you don’t pay it, someone else will.

This move is far from without precedent of course. Adrian Beltre was a very similar case: a third baseman signed from the Dominican Republic as a 16 year old. Beltre’s deal proved to be controversial. As explained by Dayn Perry in the excellent “Baseball Between the Numbers” book (from the Baseball Prospectus team), top agent Scott Boras argued that Beltre’s contract was invalid. Perry states that according to MLB rules, Beltre was too young to sign a contract at the time. As he appears to have been the same age as Villalona is now, maybe the rules have changed? Anyway, the Dodgers agreed a new (more lucrative) contract with Beltre to bring an end to the dispute in which Boras wanted his client to be made a free agent. Beltre had several disappointing seasons before his monster year in 2004 that prompted the unsuspecting Mariners to give him a $65 million contract. To say he is “earning” $12.9 million this season is only accurate in a strict sense.

The tale of Brien Taylor is also worth considering when looking at Villalona’s deal. Like Beltre he was represented by Boras, and Dayn Perry also makes reference to him in the above mentioned book. In his essay “What happened to Todd Van Poppel?”, Perry recounts how the Yankees signed the 18 year old straight out of high school as the number one pick in the Amateur draft in 1991. Largely due to the now infamous negotiating skills of Boras, the Yankees moved from their signing-on offer of $850k (itself a large figure for the time) to eventually agree a fee of $1.55 million. This was by far the biggest signing-on fee received by an amateur at the time. If you are relatively new to MLB and wonder whether you’ve just missed this guy (now 33 years old) then don’t worry. Taylor didn’t pitch a single Major League inning. His struggles were primarily a consequence of injuries sustained in a bar room fight in 1993. Such an incident can certainly be put down as bad luck for both the player and the Yankees, but at the same time it shows how easily things can go wrong (particularly for youngsters with a considerable amount of money in their pockets and a considerable amount of adulation going to their head).

Villalona sounds like a tremendous talent and any baseball fan would want him to stay on the right path, to work hard and fulfil his potential in years to come. Staking $2.1 million on it is either very brave or very foolish. Time and fate will be the judge.

At least it makes a change from the Giants spending millions on geriatrics.