Essay on turning off the Oakland-Tampa AL Wild Card game

The AL Wild Card game between Oakland and Tampa Bay featured four homers and little else besides one play to excite any fans but the most partisan.

I wanted to care about the AL Wild Card game, honestly. After all the Oakland Athletics had started out in Philly, and had once produced the best team not recognized as such by anybody but Sports Illustrated. I have a personal friend who is old enough to have seen the A’s play in Philly, and everybody knows about Moneyball.

The A’s are America’s Underdogs. Maybe the Tampa Bay Rays should be since they had an opening day payroll that was lower – 5th lowest in MLB, in fact – but Oakland has been America’s Underdog since Catfish Hunter and Sal Bando rode off into the sunset.

A sign in the horrid Oakland Coliseum – has it actually been renamed Rickey Henderson Field? – said it all: “OAKLAND VS EVERYBODY.” Apparently, the phrase is a thing out there.

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Additionally, this was an AL Wild Card game – big thrills. One and done, dammit! No pitchers bat. Also, reputed multiple geniuses were steering both squads. You need geniuses when you don’t have money to spend. Just ask Billy Beane.

Anyhow, Yandy Diaz, Tampa’s first batter, homered off Oakland’s starter, Sean Manaea, and then he did it again in the third inning. In the inning between Diaz’ shots, Avisail Garcia homered for two more runs.

Somewhere in there a Red Sox fan tweeted, “You could classify the foul territory in Oakland as a prairie,” so it was interesting to learn the people in Massachusetts know that term, but it still wasn’t exciting.

At 4-0, in the bottom of the third, Marcus Semien gave the game a jolt of excitement, reaching first on a throwing error, then dashing all the way to third base when the ball scooted into the prairie. The score became 4-1, and my bet was that would be the sum total of this game’s action.

“Is it over? Or are you just disgusted?”

“Nah. Not interested. You did miss the Rays play four outfielders against Matt Olson.”

“Did they get his ball?” (My wife, who is actually knowledgeable about baseball, still comes up with some odd phrasing about the sport here and there. She had been watching something on her phone.)

“Nah. He walked. There’s a 67 percent chance now there’s either a strikeout or walk.”

I trudged upstairs to bed, and jotted some notes. I checked the score. The Rays had increased their lead by a run by the middle of the 6th inning – on another solo home run. AL Wild Card seemed a misnomer.

The following morning, it was revealed no one scored after the home run that gave the Rays a 5-1 lead. There was talk of the exit velocity of Garcia’s home run and the hard-throwing Tampa relievers who followed their starter.

Now, the remark by the Red Sox fan about Oakland’s baseball field and, perhaps, this whole rumination may strike some as sour grapes by people who follow or write about teams that didn’t make the playoffs, but this game called to mind the remark of an undergraduate drama teacher many years ago. That comment went something like: In drama, there’s a reason it’s called rising action. It’s supposed to keep the interest of the audience. This game “featured” four balls that left the ballpark, an error, and one extended base-running play.

At least it produced an underdog to face the juggernaut Houston Astros. But then, that was foreordained for this AL Wild Card contest.