One Game to Rule them All…

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I’ve been saying along with a lot of other die hard A’s fans that the Wildcard is great but I want the Division. I’m greedy at this point and I don’t see why this team can’t finish off the Texas Rangers in Wednesday’s game and lock up an ALDS birth which to me is a lot less stressful than the daunting and unruly 1 game Wildcard playoff. Maybe this is how it’s is supposed to be, contemplating leaving work early just to get out the the yard and watch this team do the impossible, win the AL West Division. Even I, the pre-season optimist, never envisioned what is happening right now in Oakland and honestly I don’t even care. Players like Travis Blackley, Brandon Moss, and Grant Balfour are laying the foundation for hallowed stories to be retold about them in the annals of A’s history as integral parts of a much larger baseball machine.

Season’s like this are the types of season’s that find their way into all the nooks and crannies of your baseball soul. These are the games that when you look back on your Fandom and reminisce, you remember exactly where you were when the A’s clinched or hit another Walk-off homerun to win a game.  Your mind becomes a hard drive that downloads the euphoria of those games and relives them through bad owners, down seasons, and through the doldrums that are inevitable when following a team that no one believes in. This is the plight of every die-hard A’s fan as over the last couple of years and this is the time to revel in every single bit of amazing craziness that is happening right now at the Oakland Coliseum.

So Wednesday is the game that will rule them all because it will not only decide the AL West championship but also decide the fate of the A’s in terms of their path of resistance. During the playoffs all roads always lead to the World Series but some roads are more strife with peril and despair than others. Some roads lead a team down a path of no return and are strewn with the carcasses of mediocre playoff  teams or over-rated powerhouses.

Like a Robert Frost poem, the A’s season has been one of the path less traveled and Wednesday is no exception. The Oakland Athletics have to go out and leave everything out on the field tomorrow and come away with a win because this is exactly the path that they are supposed to be on because it will fortify their ever increasing confidence in the days and weeks to come in the playoffs and quest for another World Series championship.

Two Roads diverged in a wood, and I -

I took the one less traveled by,

And That has made all the difference.

(Robert Frost – The Road Not Taken)

Truer words have never been spoken this season, now finish this chapter Oakland Athletics there is still much work to be done!