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.

Tweet Up

Last night the Oakland A’s held their annual Tweet Up.  Naturally I was there.  Damn you Twitter for sucking me in and making me co-dependent on you.

It was a lot of fun, Sean Doolittle and Jerry Blevins came to talk with us all first.  Those guys, aside from being amazing pitchers, are funny as all hell.  We were cracking up at their answers to the fan submitted questions.  Plus, somebody suggested making Doolittling a thing, like Tebowing and Kapernicking.  If you have ever seen Doolittle pitch, you know exactly what I’m talking about.  He pulls his glove hand into his neck, almost like he’s playing the violin with his elbow out.  Naturally, we all jumped on board and are trying to make it a thing.  We were then joined by some members of the A’s media and got their take on how Twitter has changed their jobs. It’s amazing what Twitter has done for the world of sports, it’s truly the best way to get information out to your fans right now.

If you bought tickets to the Tweet Up, or the #GreenCollarSocial, as it was also called, you got tickets to the game as well.  You know, I would never miss this.  Twitter event with players and tickets to the game, that’s like a home run of events right there.  The A’s were giving away prizes during the Tweet Up for answers to A’s trivia.  Being me, I didn’t win anything.  If bad luck were a sport, I’d be the champion.  They continued giving stuff away during the game if you were checking their Twitter feed.  The first contest was to tweet a picture of the field from your seat.  I tweeted mine out, finished eating, and went to meet up with my friends that were sitting out in Sec 149.  As I got out there, my phone goes off.  Not only did the A’s start following me on Twitter (yes, I’m beyond stoked about that), but I won the contest for my seat and I needed to provide them my seat location so they could deliver my prize.  I raced back to my seat and within minutes, the A’s delivered my prize- a Scott Hatteberg bobble head from last season. I was so excited that I didn’t care I already had one.  I returned to 149 and finally met up with the cool kids.  Ben, the cool dude from the MLB Fan Cave last year, was in town for the series so I asked if he had the bobble head, in which he responded he’d been trying to find one and really wanted one.  Ta-Da!  I pulled in out and gave it to him.  It’s always nice to make other people smile.

This was my first time ever sitting in the bleachers and it was so much fun.  I was trying not to let them all down with their extreme fandom.  I even Raged with them.  I have never raged ever.  I tried it once and I got funny looks because I was the only person doing it, other than the Right Field crew.  I will definitely have to make it back out there for another game this season.  Top notch group of people out there.  True fans.

Even better was that the A’s won the game.  Tommy Milone was more than shaky to start the game, like 60+ pitches in 2 innings shaky, but settled down.  He allowed up one run in 6 innings of work.  The bullpen did their thing, including Doolittle, who threw a perfect inning while we all were Dolittling it up in RF.  For the second night in a row, the A’s came back from behind to take the late lead.  This is what we have been looking for lately. They’re a comeback team, down but never out.  Today they won again, completing the sweep of the Kansas City Royals and are now winners of three straight!  So excited.

Since I was at a Tweet Up and have rambled on about Twitter, my handle is @_kimms_ so check me out!  I post a lot of baseball stuff and a ton of Athletics stuff.  Plus I’m funny.  Hope you all had a great weekend too!

View from my first seat of the night

My fancy Tweet Up shirt. Jealousy is to be expected

Sean Doolittle and Jerry Blevins during the Q&A session

From the A’s Twitter page: the crowd Doolittling. You can see part of my head in the photo

Baseball is Back

Baseball is back and in full swing, and I’m LOVING it!

This season has been amazing so far, and its only 5 days into it!  Yesterday there was 4 walk=off wins, with the best being in Arizona.  Also last night, the Oakland A’s got into the win column, finally, and the bats are back.

Walk-off wins, ah the memories.  There are few things I love more than walk-off wins.  The emotions are indescribable.  Last season, the A’s were the Kings of the walk-offs, and it was incredible.  Yesterday, the Rays walked off against the Orioles, the Reds did it against the Angels (sweeeeeet), the Twins  did it to the Tigers (sweeeet), and the Diamondbacks had the best walk-off ever against the Cards.  What makes the DBacks the best of them all?  Where to start.  The game was the longest game time wise in Chase Field history lasting five hours and thirty-two minutes while going 16 innings.  That’s right, 16 innings.  The best part of the win for me was who had the walk-off hit that won the game- Cliff Pennington.  PENNY!  So happy for Pennington, just wish that Brandon McCarthy had gotten the win in his first start since the line drive to the head.  Speaking of McCarthy, it was a nice sight to see him on the mound pitching in a game again, even if it was in Sedona Red rather than Athletics Green.

While I’m on the topic of Athletics Green, the Oakland Athletics officially have a win in the win column (two now after a solid win this afternoon).  After watching the A’s struggle offensively against the Seattle Mariners the first two games, the A’s bats finally came to life last night, which was highlighted on back-to-back jacks by off-season pick ups Jed Lowrie and Chris Young.  The Mariners got on the board early with two solo shots in the first inning before Tommy Milone settled down to throw shut-out baseball through the seventh inning.

It was great to see, but I wish there were fans in the stand to see the game in person.  The A’s are known for having attendance issues, but you would think that the bandwagon fans that were out in full force in September and October would be out now to show support.  Plus, it’s spring break for most of the schools in the Bay Area right now, so the excuse of school is not valid.  The Tampa Bay Rays have issues with attendance too, but their tickets are more than double the cost of A’s tickets, so that might be their issue.  At today’s game, there was a grand total of 12,134 in attendance.  Sure, it was raining this morning with a chance of rain this afternoon, but still.  That’s not OK.  Support your team people!

I hope you are enjoying the season so far, and check back tomorrow for more updates.