The Two Dolla Wednesday Alternative Four Dolla Tuesday Turned Ten Dolla Tuesday went OK. Our attempted aluminum can discount was not to be obtained, so we paid full price. Full price baseball! Heresy!
The A's won by seven runs, but that paled in comparison to the trouncing they gave the Giants on Sunday. The Giants can only beat the A's while wearing the "Gigantes" jerseys, it appears. Possibly the "Gigantes" retro look makes Giants players believe the game is taking place twenty years in the past, when many of these regulars were actually in their primes.
Dustin has figured out a reason for Oakland manager Ken Macha's success with a young team like the A's. He sees Macha as the ultimate Little League manager - always supportive, never angry, always supportive. One imagines that at Ken Macha's house, there is an entire cabinet full of Kudos bars, and there are always two varieties of Capri Sun to choose from (currently Surfer Cooler and Red Berry).
Later, when Mariners 6'8" first baseman Richie Sexson stood next to 5'9" second baseman Bret Boone, it was also very evocative of Little League. Sexson looks like a character out of folklore - he's a huge, bearded lumberjack-looking guy who hits lots of home runs, strikes out a lot, and towers over other players. Here, he also looked like he was going to take Boone and Ichiro out for ice cream after the game.
Sexson was the comedic highlight of the entire evening. He walked to the plate waving his telephone pole of a bat, and I may or may not have been yelling that this was a game for normal-sized human beings, not giants, when it hit me. His name is Richie Sexson, which could easily have been "Dick" Sexson. Dustin pointed out that, besides being hilarious, the name presents a causal chain: Dick. Sex. And then, Son.
The next two innings were a bit of a blur as we giggled and giggled over possible Sexson family members. What about his father, a religious-minded scholar named Oral Sexson? The other kids would make jokes, but Richie would get very indignant about it. "Oh, real mature, guys. It didn't mean that back then when my grandpa picked the name. 'Oral' is a Bible name!" Then they'd ask about his grandpa, and Richie would have to admit that his grandpa's name was Anal Sexson. "It's a German name!", he'd yell, to no avail, and the other guys wouldn't let up until Coach Macha started hitting grounders and promised they could go get root beer floats later if they'd stop screwing around already.
I'd also like to commend Marco Scutaro on his incredible play during games that I attend. In other games he is fairly ordinary, even kind of sucky, but he rises to the discount baseball spotlight like no other. He has had the walk-off, game-ending hit in three Two Dolla Wednesday excursions over the past year and a half. Tuesday night, perhaps unaware we had paid full price, he hit a home run. It's appropriate, because Scutaro is like the major league baseball player equivalent of Two Dolla Wednesday; he makes the minimum salary, he's better than people realize though still not all that great, and he doesn't mind waiting in long lines to get hot dogs for the veterans.
