On a chilly Friday night in Oakland, there were the sub five hundred A’s celebrating Kurt Suzuki walk-off home run like they had just won the World Series. You can forgive their excitement, as they are a team whose once promising season has turned ugly in the second half.
For the White Sox it was more of the same in their west coast house of horrors that goes by the name MacAfee Coliseum. Coming into the weekend series with the hapless A’s the White Sox had won just one series in Oakland since the start of the 2001 season. That series win, ironically came during the early part of the disastrous 2007 season.
Sometimes in baseball it’s not so much that you lose, but how you lose. Not only do the Sox lose in Oakland, they lose in the strangest and ugliest of ways. Whether it’s Jermaine Dye dropping a routine fly ball, or Damaso Marte balking in the tying run, frightening things happen in this stadium.
Friday night’s game was no exception. Behind a workmen like outing by Gavin Floyd the Sox were seemingly cruising with a 3-0 lead into the sixth. Frank Thomas led the inning off with a high popup just out in front of home plate. If it were anywhere else the Sox would have had a quick out.
Enter the demons of the coliseum. For some reason catcher AJ Pierzynski decided to give up on the ball, forcing Juan Uribe to sprint in from third and drop the ball in foul territory.
Thomas would single and later score on a mammoth Jack Cust home run to cut the Sox lead to one run. Two solo blasts in the eighth off former A’s closer “Oh do Tell” had the game tied. That set up Suzuki’s heroics in the ninth.
As I stumbled out of the stadium I thought the curse of the coliseum was alive and well. Personally I had attended five Sox-A’s games dating back to 2004. The Sox had lost all of them, including four walk off A’s victories. Brutal.
But as my uncle always says, curses are for Cub fans. Nevertheless Saturday’s game shaped up like a classic Sox meltdown in Oakland.
There was Nick Swisher dropping a routine Frank Thomas fly ball, setting up a potential rally. But Jon Danks fought through it all, with the help of some bad Big Hurt base running and a key Big Hurt double play a few innings later.
By the end of the game I was rubbing my eyes in disbelief, I had finally seen them win in Oakland. On Sunday the love fest continued and the Sox got out of Oakland with their first set of back to back wins since 2000 and stayed in a first place tie with the Minnesota Twins.
Curses are for Cub fans. The hot Sox return to the Cell where they need to clean up the trash and sweep the Mariners.
In a possible first round playoff preview they take on the Rays this weekend. At the very least they got out of Oakland alive and well, something they don't do very often.
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