The A's Open Without Steam

When I was in that scorched earth middle ground before becoming a college graduate, it really wasn't a good time. College for me was like a prison work-release program, because I was paying my own way with multiple jobs and escalating debt at a school (Syracuse) that kept raising the tuition rates to the point of scandal (up over 30% in my three years there).

A good chunk of the school are composed of very wealthy kids, as it's kind of the upstate party school for NYC and Long Island swells. I lived alone, didn't date (no time, no money, no car, no hope), and basically gritted my teeth through 33 months and 2 degrees. I'm not in touch with anyone from those days, and I wound up getting a newspaper journalism degree just in time for the Bush The Elder Recession. Probably for the best, given what's happened to newspapers since then.

Don't worry, this is all going somewhere sports-related.

The Shooter Mom goes all out for holidays. Halloweens get elaborate themed decorations. Christmas was always a big deal, even if the year was thin. And when her kids got old enough, she'd ask them what they wanted a couple of months before the event, just long enough so that you more or less forgot about what you asked for, and were thrilled when you got it. She's great at this.

One year during this time frame, she asked me what I wanted for Christmas. Seized with a dull work ethic and no better ideas, I asked for interviewing clothes. Ties, Suits. A briefcase. An iron and ironing board. While hoping, in the back of my heart and not nearly out loud enough, for a guitar, because I was deep enough into music to want to try my hand at it.

Come Christmas morning, I dutifully unwrapped my presents and realized what a colossal mistake I had made, to have drained the fun out of Christmas along with every other day of the year. Everything was exactly what I had asked for, and I still own the briefcase, 20+ years later. And peaking out at the back of the presents, there to possibly save me from the unrelenting decades of Not Fun that were to come, was a big present. A suspiciously large, rectangular but also mildly triangle-shaped box... the guitar! YES!

It was, of course, the ironing board. (The Shooter Brother, for the record, got me a Les Paul the next year.)

Which is more or less how I felt last night as I watched my all-new re-tooled now with actual offensive players Oakland A's look like the same old weak swingers as the past few years, in an Opening Day loss to the Angels and the ever-dominant Joe Saunders. If your fantasy baseball team is hurting for pitching, just start streaming against the A's now, and thank me later.

You got the sensible shoes of Jason Giambi not being able to catch up to anything fast. The briefcase of Matt Holiday looking more or less out of place with the other pieces. The ironing board of Nomar Garciaparra not catching the ball at first base, which is to say, not being able to man a defensive position that his bat couldn't carry five years ago, when he had a pulse. And the nice enough ties of starting pitching of Dallas Braden giving up a laser bomb to Howie Kendrick, who might escape the label of Failed Prospect if he only got to play Oakland enough.

So, um, woo, baseball's back. Yay. Maybe my fantasy teams won't stink, because land a'goshen, it really looks like my real one will. Again. And even if it doesn't, the ownership will pull the chutes in June and send out anyone of worth.

Now, if you don't mind, I've got some laundry to do. And maybe these ties can hold my body weight...