Ultimate Baseball Road Trip (135 page)

The A’s world championship banners fly proudly above the power alleys, behind the 367-foot markers on both the left- and right-field sides.

Kevin:
What I wouldn’t give for just one of those flying in Seattle.

Josh:
Keep dreaming, pal.

Kevin:
You know, I’m starting to understand why people are hating on the Red Sox and their fans these days.

Rather than just smothering the upper level with a basic Lowe’s-style green tarp, the A’s have gone to some small effort to make better use of all that space. White-and-blue ovals appear on the tarps to celebrate special years when the A’s won the World Series. These date back to the team’s years in Philadelphia. The first such marker remembers 1910, while the last recalls 1989.

Gold-colored retired numbers are painted onto the tarp across Mount Davis to honor A’s greats since their arrival in Oakland. These include No. 34 for Rollie Fingers, who was a four-time All-Star with the A’s, from 1973 to 1976, and was the MVP of the 1974 World Series; No. 27 for Hunter, who began his career with the Kansas City A’s in 1965 and won a Cy Young Award in Oakland in 1974; No. 24 for Henderson, who stole every base he saw; No. 43 for Eckersley, who saved fifty-one games and won a Cy Young and AL MVP Award with the A’s in 1992; and No. 9 for Jackson, who was the 1973 MVP.

Down the right-field line on the 300 Level, the Oakland Sports Hall of Fame honors local sons and daughters who excelled in a variety of sports. Among those in bronze are Jackson, Martin, Curt Flood, and Willie Stargell.

In light of all the massive high-def boards popping up at other ballparks, we were struck by how small the video screens are. They’re too small to allow a view of replays and the scoreboard is too small to list the players of both lineups. Instead, they only list the lineup of the team at bat (player numbers only, so you better have a media guide). They have flat-screen TVs in some of the concession areas, but the picture is not high-def and it’s a little bit fuzzy. The TV monitors for fans in obstructed seats are old monitors, not flat-screen and certainly not high-def.

While the restaurant scene in the neighborhood outside is poor at best, the food inside is pretty good.

Oakland specialty meat-maker Saag’s operates two stands at the O.co—behind Sections 118 and 223. At these locations fans scoop up several varieties of freshly made and freshly grilled sausages that come topped with onions and fried peppers. The options include Atomic Hot Links, Louisiana Hot Links, Polish, Italian, Bratwurst, and, most delightfully of all, Linguisa. This Portuguese sausage is both smoky and spicy. Josh used to eat the stuff in great abundance during his college years whenever he’d visit his friend Matt Guilbeault in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where they even put linguisa on their pizza.

Kevin:
So how does this compare to the linguisa of your glory years?

Josh:
Float me six bucks, I need to get another.

Thicker than nearly every other dog in the Majors and certainly juicier, the all-beef Miller’s dogs are grilled to
perfection. Prepared the same way since 1910, these delicious dogs made us want to skip all of the other ballpark treats and have another. And if we didn’t have to sample all the rest of the offerings for the purposes of this book, that’s exactly what we would have done. For big eaters who do want to skip the rest, we recommend the one-third-of-a-pound “big dog.”

Red’s All-Star Smoke House
(Section 104) serves ribs and pulled meat sandwiches, while
Rosa’s Fresh Mexican
(Section 115) is not greasy and is, well, fresh. Score one for truth in advertising. We also recommend the
Burrito Bowl. The Burger Shack
(Section 132) offers cheeseburgers, fast-food-style french fries and Texas Grilled Cheese. It may not be Coliseum Burger—a joint that used to cater to fans just outside—but it’s pretty good. The
Monster Chicken Nachos
come loaded with chicken and will keep you busy for a couple of innings anyway. Although you may be all-garlicked-out if you caught a game across the Bay the night before, the
Garlic Fries
at the O.co are awfully good too. As our friend Anne says, “Beware of the garlic hangover,” or in other words, have a bottle of Scope on hand for the morning. We tried the
Bacon and Meatloaf Sandwich
(Section 113), which comes with hand-cut bacon, jalapeno meatloaf, sharp cheddar cheese, and crispy fried onions on a brioche bun, and were impressed. Josh put ketchup on his half while Kevin ate his dry.

Shock Top, Corona, Dos Equis, Blue Moon, Sierra Nevada, Trumer Pils, Lagunitas, Widmer, Heineken, Kona, Fat Tire, Gordon Biersch, Sierra Nevada, and Pyramid Ale top the surprisingly impressive ballpark brew list. For ladies and gents who live by the adage “liquor is quicker,” the mixed drinks at the O.co are stiff and will treat you right.

The very idea of an Irish Pub might seem at odds with the O.co ethos, especially considering that most of the Irish in these parts settled across the Bay. Though not the authentic Irish pub experience offered at, say, The Plow and Stars in San Fran, we commend the A’s for their attempt. And Jameson’s tastes the same no matter where it’s served. The Guinness came in a plastic cup, and even so, it was not the worst pint Kevin had ever sampled.

Kevin:
Here’s to Connie Mack! And Charlie O. Finley!

Josh:
And to Charlie O., the Mule!

The huge East Club buried inside Mount Davis and the equally enormous West Club behind home plate on the 200 Level open their doors to plebeians such as us during the game. Full meals are served at the tables, complete with white tablecloths and views of the action. And the bar is open as well.

Josh:
I still would rather be down near the field.

Kevin:
Me too. Let’s get outta here.

Oakland is a city with an East Coast mentality stuck out West. It’s a hard-nosed town that loves its sports teams, so expect a rabid fan base to reemerge if and when the A’s finally get their new ballpark and a winning team to go with it. The gameday tradition of donning green and gold is carried on to an extreme, as you’ll notice even the average fan with his hair dyed or his face painted as you settle into your ballpark seat. He may be wearing yellow socks too! Any jersey with the right tint of green will do, regardless of what it says. Green Bay Packers fans may want to wear their cheese-head garb and call it “close enough.” Kevin tried wearing one of his old Seattle SuperSonics basketball jerseys, which the locals seemed to perceive more as an ironic gesture than any kind of political statement, though one guy yelled, “This is Oak-Town, not Oklahoma City.”

Oakland fans care deeply about their team and will boo even the greenest of their club’s rookies when they fail to deliver. In fact we saw a kid with a mitt drop a batting-practice line drive out near the foul pole that was hit pretty hard. He was harassed unmercifully by two ushers for the drop. “You shoulda brung two mitts wit ya,” one of them yelled derisively. And that brings us to the topic of the ushers. They weren’t particularly friendly to us. Not that they owed us anything, but we like to strike up conversations or at least say friendly hellos to the people we meet along the way and when we were at the O.co, neither the ushers nor the attendant at the ticket window were particularly pleasant. In this era when there’s plenty of competition for customers’ entertainment dollars, user-friendliness is one area in which the A’s might care to invest a little more effort. Like we said, the O.co has more of an East Coast vibe.

The left-field bleachers house the most famous A’s fans, though the Drum and Flag Corps can be seen and heard anywhere in the Coliseum. On most summer nights, an entire row of mad flag-waving fans hoist their green and gold banners
into the air over the railing, blowing horns and chanting obscenities, while behind them sit the A’s drummers, banging away at their broken down tom-toms with reckless abandon. They drum nothing special, a simple three-beat “Let’s Go, A’s.” But their enthusiasm and sheer volume are infectious. So popular did the drummers get at one point, that the team gave them all season tickets and used them in a series of TV ads. During the 2001 playoffs, Steinbrenner so feared the A’s that he tried to steal their mojo by having the drummers removed. He said that since they didn’t pay for their season tickets they were actually “employees of the team” bent on distracting his hitters. Though their season tickets may have been taken away because of this, the drummers remain, beating their skins. Though now they can only drum while the A’s are hitting.

Josh:
Is that the same guy who was banging a drum for dollars on the bridge outside?

Kevin:
Trust me when I say “No.”

When we visited in 2011 we observed these guys waving plenty of signs critical of management and of the notion the A’s might relocate to greener pastures. But no one from the A’s staff tried to remove them from the game. For example, one read, “Wolff Lied, He Never Tried” and another said, “Don’t Take Our A’s Away!”