Cheap Baseball, Good Baseball

We went to the Oakland Coliseum with the promise of a two-dollar ticket. This, for a transplanted Red Sox fan (used to paying $20 for a bleacher seat), sounded implausible in the extreme. But it was Tigers at A's. Justin Verlander versus Dallas Braden in first home game since his perfect game a week and a half ago. How can you pass that up?

When I moved to Berkeley from Boston, my brother Tony gave me an Oakland A's cap, and I wore it for the first time last night. It felt very strange to have folks walk by me, glance at my cap, and imagine they thought I was an A's fan; some strange anxiety moved through me as if they could tell I was a fraud. And if someone struck up a conversation and started some chatter about Rollie Fingers or the Bash Brothers, I knew I'd be found out.

So I went with my friend Rex, a Tigers fan from childhood. When we got there at about 6:20 (for a 7:05 start), we found out that the two-dollar tickets had sold out. Dang. So we asked for the next best, but cheap deal. This is what we got: $12 for a seat in the way upper deck, but with a $6 food credit and a free t-shirt - still ridiculously cheap. And we had a great time.

First, the free shirt commemorated Braden's Mothers' Day perfecto, and is pretty sharp. Next, two dogs and a water (at Fenway might have been about $10) were included in my ticket with change left over. Then the seats themselves, in the vertigo section behind home plate, gave us a good, if fairly distant view of the game. Still, the Coliseum was fairly empty, and despite the misty weather, I was disappointed that more folks had not turned out.

We got the pitchers' duel that was expected. Braden threw very well, but Verlander was awesome - with a one-hitter into the 5th, he had faced the minimum to that point because of some double-play defense behind him. The game was scoreless into the 7th, when, in the top of the frame, Brandon Inge lead off. The scoreboard flashed that today, May 19th, was his birthday, and Rex began serenading him with "happy birthdays". He immediately hit a rope over the left field wall. The next batter was the catcher, Gerald Laird, who hit a bunt down the first baseline which Braden could not field.

The A's held a team meeting on the mound. We could not figure out what was happening. I suggested that Braden had to be injured, or they would not be permitted to meet like that - but the bunt did not seem to cause him any obvious strain. Later we found out he had "flu-like symptoms". In came the A's relief corps, and the Tigers jumped, plating three more runs to give Verlander a 4-0 cushion. The Tigers would add an insurance run in the top of the 8th, and the A's would prevent the shut-out in the bottom with a run.

Verlander (9-4-1-1-5, 116 / 80 strikes) was throwing 97-98 all night, faced 30-A's, and got the complete game win. His final pitch was 96-mph heater that Ryan Sweeney cut on and missed. The Red Sox beat the Twins, so the Tigers pulled within a game of first.

Not bad for $12.