Thursday, September 30

Brendo Woo finagled some tickets from one of the printing vendors and she and her husband Darryl and I went to see the afternoon game at the Coliseum. The A's were tied for first place in the American League West Division, but the attendance was only 19,201, even though Ichiro Suzuki was in town with the visiting Seattle Mariners and he was only a couple base hits away from the all-time single-season hits record.

Our seats were in row 9 behind the Mariner's bullpen, pretty good. We got to see Mariners reliever J.J. Putz warming up, but he didn't get into the game. If I had a name like that, I'd change it.

Ichiro Suzuki went 1-for-5, stalling at 256 hits for season--I was hoping to see him tie for the record, or maybe beat the record. George Sisler had 257 hits for St. Louis in the 1920 season. About half the fans in our section were Japanese. Lots of people were holding up signs in Japanese writing.

Ichiro at bat

Ichiro throwing

Ichiro in the field (note "256" sign)

Beer was $7.50 a glass, cripes.

Oakland's rookie of the year candidate Bobby Crosby hit a home run in the bottom of the 9th to give the A's a 3-2 victory over the Seattle Mariners.