Oakland A's ~ I want to seem like I know baseball......any stats?

Don't worry about it. I too am an A's fan, and was really into them for a couple of seasons, maybe 4 years ago. Used to know who all the players were, and the stupid things the manager would do. Almost bought a season ticket package. Now, I don't know anything.

Here's some good rules of thumbs. It's a good bet the A's will make the playoffs. They usually do. It's also a good bet they'll lose the first round of playoffs.

Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco were the Bash Brothers and were totally cool as A's. McGwire went on to ever lasting fame as home run champ. Canseco went on to make one of the most humiliating plays ever, that being the ball bouncing off his head over the wall to score a home run for the other team.

The A's are cheap. They develop young players into greatness, then won't renew their contracts for high dollar amounts, letting other teams pick up their great talent. They are well known for winning 3 world series in a row, in 1972 thru 74 I believe. Early 70's anyway.

The A's are likely to move to Fremont in the next few years. Yeah!

No conversation about the A's would be complete without bringing up Charlie Finley. He was the owner during the A's dynasty in the 70's when they won the World Series in 72, 73 and 74. Among other things he made the A's wear gold and green uniforms and brought about a style change in baseball uniforms that lasted 20 years until teams came to their senses and pretty much went back to white uniforms at home and grey or dark on the road. He also suggested the use of orange baseballs, had a mule (named Charlie O) as a team mascot. Great players from those A's teams included Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, Bert Campaneris, Sal Bando, Joe Rudi and Rollie Fingers. A notable incident of Finley's regime was his trying to throw infielder Mike Andrews off the team for poor play during a post season series, I believe he claimed the player was injured but the commissioner, the late Bowie Kuhn ruled Andrews had to stay with the team for the series whether Finley liked it or not. If I remember correctly Andrews drew wild cheers every time he appeared on the field during the rest of the series.

I think that the success is reaped by both sides of the bay. The Athletics have tons of World Championship rings where the Giants have one. The Athletics has great pitching, a good farm system, as well as excellent sluggers in the past. The Giants have a potential record breaker, playoff experience and a history of Hall of Fame players. The fans are the winners because no metropolitan area other than NY has two teams in close proximity to each other. The SF Bay Area has three baseball teams (Oakland/Fremont, San Francisco and Single A San Jose), Cal and Stanford NCAA sports, an NBA championship winning basketball team, World championship winning professional arena football, two Super Bowl winning NFL teams, a playoff experienced hockey team and professional lacrosse.

they have the best GM in baseball Billy Beane, they constantly make the playoffs even though they lose their top players every year, for stats just go to www.oaklandas.com. they play at The Coliseum (its really called like McAfee Stadium or whatever) The Colliseum is the original name, they won the world series in 89 and mark mcgwire and jose canseco got their start there, ricky henderson got the stolen bases record playing for them passing lou brock. the develop awesome talent through their triple a team Sacramento Rivercats!!!! which is always a fun team to watch

lol that is so damn cute.

They have a really good history actually even though Oakland is a football town first.

Jack Cust is doing awesome for them lately. And they always seem to make the playoffs with less than other teams. They do alot with little.

Well start watching the games,

and then go to the web site every team site has all the info you need: http://mlb.mlb.com/index.jsp?c_id=oak

then on google type in "Oakland A's" and there is your pure answer

They won 29 straight games back in 2003? Don't count me on that date, you can try googling Oakland Athletics 29 wins straight or something.

This is all you need to know they SUCK!!!!!