A’s at Brewers

Yesterday morning sucked. And not just because I got up at 3 for my 6am flight, but that does suck pretty bad. Monday night, the Oakland A’s greeted me and the large amount of other A’s fans to a beautiful game in Milwaukee. The hot A’s crushed the struggling Brewers 10-2.

I love my job, but wish I could have stayed for the whole series. Plus people there are really nice, aside from the several times I was asked where my accent was from. No joke. Somebody asked if that was a California accent I had.

I had planned on making a sign for my beloved Josh Donaldson to get some All-Star Game votes, but didn’t know what to do. Sign making isn’t really my thing. Not by hand at least- I blame my design degree. I also wanted to do a brewery tour while I was there. Sadly, it came down to sign making or brewery tour, and signing making won. I walked to Walgreens for supplies and quickly got started. A pencil would have been smart. Free handing with a sharpie is risky. My sign came out ok, not horrible, but not great. Or so I thought.

I got to the stadium and quickly found the Robin Yount bronze statue. I’ve been lucky enough to have met Robin through the Doug Davis Foundation and even have an autographed bat. While there, I started talking to some Wisconsin A’s fans. Great guys.

Robin Yount statue outside of Miller Park

I hurried inside, hoping to catch a glance of Donaldson before the game to show him my sign. He was out signing stuff for a massive mob of people. Hopefully they all vote for him now! Another A’s fan say my sign and waved Donaldson over to have him sign the sign. His face lit up with a huge smile, I wish I had taken a picture. He signed it and thanked me. My day, ok week, was made. I went to grab food and ran into some A’s fans from the bay that wanted a picture with me and the sign. One of them was telling me he was going to wear his Bringer Of Rain shirt to the game on Tuesday. We’re all trying to get his name out there and pick up some votes.

Donaldson signing autographs for fans

My seat was in row two behind the on deck circle for the A’s. It was AMAZING. It didn’t take long for the boys to get on the board as Coco Crisp took the second pitch of the game out of the yard. I knew it was going to be a good game. With the A’s getting to Marco Estrada early that meant one thing: Donaldson was going to be in the on deck circle and maybe batting. I quickly put my sign up and started getting tweets that I was on TV with my sign behind Donaldson. Month made.

View from my seat

The A’s who have been rolling as of late, looked great, but you know who really looked great? Tommy Milone. Milone was dealing on the mound and at the plate. The bar was officially set. Milone pitched 7 innings, allowing 5 hits and two runs just 2 runs on a home run by Rickie Weeks. His batting line was 2-4 with an RBI and a run scored- even had a beautiful pop up slide at home plate. National League, you’ve been warned. Next time we have an 18 inning game, I nominate Milone to be our DH.

Tommy Milone is batting .286. Not too shabby!

Of the A’s 10 runs in the game, only two were from home runs, the one by Coco in the 1st and one by Brandon Moss, cause Moss is Boss, in the 2nd inning. Something cool to see was in the 9th inning when Brewers second baseman, Scooter Gennett, made his Major League Debut. He grounded out, but received cheers from everybody in the stands, myself included.

Scooter Gennett making his Major League Debut

I have seen the A’s on the road six times since 2011. I’m 3-3 after Monday’s game; happy to be back to .500!

If you have a chance, I recommend that you go to Miller Park. It’s a nice stadium and a great city. The people are really nice and they have amazing cheese products! I love cheese, so I was in heaven. I got cheese fries at the game and they were hands down the best fries ever. Yum-o! I also got a bratwurst and it was hands down the best one I’ve ever had. Ah, I almost forgot! The Sausage Race! I think those races are kind of silly, but they are a lot of fun to watch when I see them on the road. My first race was the Presidents Race in Washington D.C. last season which was pretty cool, so I was really excited for the famous Sausage Race. Italian won! As an Italian girl, I loved it.

Bat Crazy

I collect baseball bats.  I can’t hit a baseball to save my life, but I love baseball bats.

Several years ago, my sister got me a baseball bat for Christmas.  Not just any bat though, it was a game used autographed Bobby Crosby bat.  I should mention, I had a huge crush on Crosby back in the day.  My first bat and I was hooked.

Since that lovely Christmas morning, the collection has grown quite a bit.  I now have ten beautiful collectible baseball bats, and a constantly growing mini bat collection.  I get myself a mini bat from each stadium I go to-  my bag gets rather heavy along the way.

This year at the Doug Davis Foundation, I got my picture taken with Rollie Fingers and my dad sent it on to my cousin who is also a huge A’s fan.  Back in the day, she was the head of the A’s booster team so she got to meet all the players and what not.  Earlier this year, she gave me a Tony La Russa autographed poster of a painting done by LeRoy Neiman.  For Christmas this year, she gave me a 1972 Oakland Athletics World Champions bat with the autographs of the entire team engraved into the bat.  Needless to say, I was a happy girl this Christmas.

I needed to take photos of all my babies for insurance purposes, so here’s pictures of some of them.