Where Will I Get My Cracker Jacks?

 Ah, the boys of summer. Now that school is out and the basketball and hockey playoffs are winding down, I can focus on Major League Baseball.

Except that the Oakland Athletics seems to have already taken a mulligan on this season. The long rumored and sadly anticipated removal of the team from the Bay Area has begun. This is happening even as they continue to play games just down the road from me. Their record is not just bad. It is the worst in both leagues. By a considerable margin.

Which wouldn't bother me so much if there was some character or some effort going on anywhere in the organization. From the top down, the once proud green and gold has become a franchise not even worth derision. It's a place where baseball goes to die. The plan seems to involve making local fans so monstrously disinterested in going out to watch a game that the powers that be can just slide what's left of the team out into the desert in Las Vegas where they promise to build a stadium that will be the envy of every other American League team located in the state of Nevada. 

That would be no one. And what about the once rabid fan base in Oakland? They'll get over it. They will forget the four World Series victories. The 1989 Earthquake. The 2002 season's twenty game winning streak that was so captivating to the world that Brad Pitt made a movie about it. Reggie Jackson, Rollie Fingers, Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue, Ricky Henderson. 

Never mind. It's a business, after all. Two months into this season this Oakland A's team has yet to win twenty games total, let alone in a row. So the reverse alchemy created by those at the top of the baseball food chain seems to have worked. The Green and Gold is now the dead and lead. Someone in Philadelphia might read this and point out that these things happen, and point out that there is no forever in baseball. The five World Series won by the Philadelphia Athletics are just part of a bygone era. Bye, Athletics. We'll miss you when you're gone.