Jiminy Jillikers

The Fall Out of the 2002 Season Continues

In all manner of manifestation the anger and resentment from the A's front office is outwardly directed inward.

Huh?

They're mad at each other through themselves.

What?

They screwed up big time and don't have anyone else to blame and they are racked with guilt.

Oh.

Billy Koch is Fallout Boy

Billy Koch wants to kill himself.

From ESPN.COM:

Koch: 'I cost us'
How will closer Billy Koch handle his disastrous Game 5 performance in the ALDS? Give him 5½ months. Koch was called on to start the ninth inning to keep Oakland's 2-1 deficit at just that against the underdog Twins. But he allowed a two-run home run to A.J. Pierzynski, then a single, walk and run-scoring double that left the A's trailing by four runs. "I cost us," Koch said Oct. 7 in an interview with The San Jose Mercury News. "We played hard and I don't think any guy has a reason to hold his head low except for me, because I want to kill myself." Koch, who did not talk to reporters after the game, told the newspaper he watched video of his performance so many times afterward that general manager Billy Beane had to leave the room.

That's what he told reporters on Monday . If Billy wants to come out of this with a solid reputation the A's need to get on the horn to Dennis Eckersley in a hurry. In 1988, when Eck gave up the shot to Kirk Gibson, he stayed and answered every last question from the media. From reporters to beat writers to the clean up crew. He stayed until everyone was satisfied. It was Eck's first full season as a closer, but it certainly wasn't his first year as a professional.

No, it didn't help the A's win the series, but it did help Eckersley as a person and a player. The next year he had what amounted to the best season ever for a closer until he topped that in 1990 and again in 1992.

Billy is not handling the situation well and the psyche of a closer is of a delicate nature. Ray Ratto chimes in with his take on the tragedy. The most telling line, "His (Koch's) were not the only fingerprints on the body".

We aren't too worried about Koch. This is a guy who wears a "My parents told me I could grow up to be whatever I wanted...so I became an asshole" T-Shirt."

Even Jason Isringhausen decided he had enough clout to chip in: "I don't think the Twins beat the A's. I think the A's beat themselves. I'm sure they're still a little bitter. The last three years they've been beaten in the first round. They've got to figure out something different."

Radioactive Man

I don't know who the bigger jerk is right now, Steve Schott, Ken Hoffman or the Billy Beane. Schott and Beane both criticized the Oakland fans for not turning out in force for the playoffs . Apparently the A's front office didn't realize that they were gouging a public already gouged to their ends. We wrote about this a lot and apparently there are still people who don't get the picture.

Look, the A's played all of their playoff games during the day. That is not good, especially during the first few weeks of school. You're not going to get the age 15-25 crowd you normally would. The economy stinks. After spending hundred of dollars just to watch the A's in the regular season, you're suddenly expected to fork over hundreds more just for the opportunity to buy tickets to possibly watch a handful of games.

The push for season tickets by the front office in conjunction with the playoff tickets was shameful. A $50 deposit for 2003 tickets was not so bad, but coughing up $730 on the spot for a playoff ticket strip was asking too much. Even $660 for just the ALCS and World Series.

Do you want to know how expensive seats were? Tickets for the San Francisco Giants in the NLCS are still cheaper than tickets for the A's in the ALDS.

Their operators actually said that it would be hard to get individual tickets to playoff games and that Mt Davis seats were the most likely scenario. Further, the A's shut down their ticket operations 12 hours before Game 1 essentially forcing everyone into a walk-up sale situation or giving the notion that the game was already sold out.

To complicate matters more, Game 5 fell on a day in which the Giants were playing as well as the 49ers and there was an anti-war protest that pulled in a few hundred thousand people. The traffic was so bad that people were being urged to drive to the stadiums before 6:00 am or even getting a room at one of the nearby hotels.

The bottom line is this; the A's lost the last two ALDS. Why should their fans be subjected to more disappointment? Win the ALDS and then watch the stadium sell-out. Most fans were in the same boat we were, waiting out the storm. Had the A's gone onto the ALCS we would have been in the front row of rightfield with our "Player to be Named Later Fan Club" banner and Elephants in Oakland ID badges.

A few writers have picked up the cause celebrate and have started to beat the drums of Disgruntled Fan VS Idiot Millionaires. David Steele writes about the cheap Schott delivered by the A's owner.

In a rare move we are printing a Mark Kreidler piece. We don't like Kreidler because for the most part...well, for 90% of the part, he is an idiot and usually tries to be funny but fails miserably.

Sometimes they'll let anyone use a computer, including morons who don't even know how to follow a timeline.
Because of this article and some general misconceptions surrounding this issue, we are going to offer our report on the situation this weekend.