Le Bien, Le Mal

It’s a bittersweet day for me as a Bay Area sports fan. The bitter is quite bitter, as the Golden State Warriors were officially eliminated from making the play-offs yesterday, despite being on track to win 49 games. We’re going to miss the play-offs despite winning 49 games. I can’t imagine a universe for the NBA where that makes any sense. Add to the facts that this team was better in damn near every way than last year’s team, which made the second round of the play-offs. While we might not have been able to do it again this year, we’d have been a tough play-off challenge for the Lakers or the Hornets or whoever ends up in first place of the conference. Mostly, the whole situation makes me want to say FUCK DAVID STERN for suspending S. Jax for the first six games of the season. I hate playing the “if” game, but if he been playing, I imagine we’d over been able to win three, two, or even one of those games, and we’d have made the play-offs.

As for the sweet, THE A’S HAVE THE BEST RECORD IN THE A.L.!!!! 9-5!!!! FIRST PLACE IN THE DVISION!!! YEAH BITCH!!!!

This is all the more bizarre when you consider the circumstances: Two-thirds of the top- of-the-rotation are on the DL, we're unable to hit a long-ball, our team’s power-hitter isn’t hitting half his weight, and our third-baseman still hasn't played a game. And yet, the Red Sox and Cliff Fucking Lee account for our only losses so far. Go figure.

Sadly, I suspect my happiness will be fleeting. This is nice and surprising team and all, but I’m not going to fool myself into thinking this team is any sort of contender to make the play-offs or seriously make things interesting down the stretch. The young pitching looks pretty damn good right now, but these guys can expect some trouble as the season goes on, the throw more innings than they ever have before, and the hitters start to figure them out. Besides, we aren’t going anywhere if Harden stays injured all year, and yeah, I’ve seen this movie before. The A’s will start to swoon in June and July, and then we’ll get into trade the veterans mode. I’ll adjust my predictions from 72 wins to say we may flirt with a 0.500 record. Beyond that, I expect my fan experience is likely to continue to be fraught with frustration and disappointment.