If you don’t know me that well than you probably don’t know that I am a huge Oakland Athletics baseball fan. When we moved from the LA area to the Bay Area in 1988 I was nine years old and a huge Dodgers fan. That was the year the Dodgers played the A’s in the World Series and the famous Kirk Gibson pinch-hit home run game that the A’s never recovered from. I was a very happy kid. One thing with kids though is that your loyalty changes pretty quickly and by the time we had attended a few games at the Oakland Coliseum I was hooked on McGwire, Canseco, Henderson (x2), Gallego, Lansford, Wiess, Steinbach, Eckersley, Welch, Honeycut, and Stewart, along with many others. My dad loves to talk about the times he would take the family to baseball games and my younger brother would eat his way through the game and I would just be absolutely glued to the action, my emotions hanging on every pitch. As the glory years faded, however, the A’s of the mid to late 90′s put together some of the worst seasons in franchise history and when Mark Mcgwire was traded to the Cardinals it was truly the end of an era, and there was little reason to head out to the Coliseum (which by this time had become the monstrosity that Al Davis built). As a fan those were tough years but I couldn’t stay away from going to games, watching them on TV or listening on the radio.
When I moved back to the southland to attend college at Long Beach State in 2000 something exciting was happening in Oakland. Billy Beane took over as GM and a number of talented prospects started to bring some excitement and a string of playoff visits, culminating with a defeat to the Tigers in the 2006 ALCS. Those were awesome years to be an A’s fan but also heartbreaking as the team lost four consecutive ALDS series two games to three. I vividly remember breaking down in tears after the A’s went up 2-0 on the Red Sox in 2003 then lost three in a row, including the clinching game when Barry Zito was cruising until the sixth inning and was shelled for four runs, they ultimately lost 4-3. I cried, like really cried with a lot of tears. Just ask my wife.
The last few years have been a tough time to be a fan, however, it has been a blast to live down the street from where the A’s play their spring training games. Melissa and I have enjoyed going to spring games, meeting places, getting autographs, and having a chance to get a glimpse at the system’s prospects that you usually only see if you go to minor league games.
So I’m not sure you can really understand from a my perspective what happened last Sunday, May 9, 2010, without knowing the above history of my life as an Oakland Athletics fan. When I tuned into Sunday’s game vs. Tampa Bay through the home radio feed on my MLB.com iPhone app it was the seventh inning and one of the announcers noted that A’s pitcher Dallas Braden had a perfect game going. Now, I have watched and listened to tons of MLB games where a guy brought perfection into the late innings only to give-up a hit, walk, hit batsmen, or error before the twenty-seventh out in a row. In fact, perfection had only been achieved eighteen times in MLB history and an A’s pitcher hadn’t done it just about thirty-two years to the day when Catfish Hunter sat down the Twins twenty-seven times in a row.
Braden stayed perfect through seven and I thought, well, maybe. Then he got the first out in the eighth and I started to get antsy. Then another out and I started pacing, then when he got the third out in the eighth I knew something special might happen. By the time there were two outs in the ninth and Braden was still perfect my heart was pounding and I was pleading on behalf of every A’s fan ever for the next batter to make an out. The count got to 3-1 on Tampa Bay’s Gabe Kapler and I could not stand it anymore. On the next pitch Kapler hit a grounder to Cliff Pennington who had to make the most important throw in his life. Pennington fired a strike to Daric Barton at first base and I leapt around the kitchen pumping my fist in the air. Dallas Braden had pitched a perfect game. It was the nineteenth perfect game in MLB history and the second in A’s history, making Oakland only the third team to have multiple perfect games in MLB history.
The story, however, does not end there. If you recall, May 9th was Mother’s Day this year. It was probably an emotional day already for Dallas Braden when he took the mound because his mother had passed away his senior year of high school from cancer. His Grandmother, however, was at the stadium that day to watch Dallas pitch. The picture above is of Dallas hugging his grandmother after the game and holding his mother’s wedding ring. Dallas grew up in Stockton, CA in a rough neighborhood and only made it to the major leagues through pure grit and determination to be a professional ballplayer when just about everyone said he would never be more than a so-so reliever.
Needless to say that this is a remarkable feel-good kind of story for more than just baseball fans. As an A’s fan, however, this ranks right up there with a World Series win and I hope it is something that brings more fans back to the Coliseum this season to scream at the top of their lungs, “Lets Go Oakland!” Thanks, Dallas, for giving this fan and all A’s fans something really, really, special and something I will never forget. Go get ‘em Dallas. Go A’s!
