Life of Wry

Jim and I went to the old Raley Field (now something about Sutter Health) last night to see the A’s play the Tigers. The A’s — no longer an Oakland team — are playing in Sacramento as they wait for their new stadium to get built in Las Vegas. This makes sense because their AAA team is the Sac Rivercats. So the Rivercats and A’s are sharing the stadium for the time being.

Our motivation for attending this particular game — besides the fact it’d been too long since we’d been to a darn baseball game — was to see Ryan Kreidler play. Ryan, of course, was Peter’s teammate on the varsity baseball team at Davis High (an exceptional talent we knew would go places). He first played college ball at UCLA, then got drafted 4-5 years ago by the Tigers organization. While he made the 40-man roster this year (fantastic!), his chronic injuries have meant he’s played most of his games as a Mudhen (Detroit’s AAA team). However…. as it turns out, just a few days ago, he was let go by the Tigers and was picked up by the Pittsburgh Pirates. So, sadly, he did not play last night.

We still rooted for the Tigers. Partly because with Peter living in Ann Arbor, we’ve seen the Tigers play a few times, and felt a bit of allegiance. For most of this time, the Tigers have had one of the worst records in the MLB.

But now, the Tigers are the best team in the American League, amazingly (too bad Ryan’s leaving them now). The A’s are at the bottom of their American League bracket. But on this night, the A’s came out on top. It was a 20-hit game, including a grand slam.. so lots of excitement.

I think the final score was 8-3.

A few pics of a perfect night of baseball.. did I mention it was in the 80s for most of this night game?

One of the main attractions… dogs and beer (and peanuts and redvines)…

A sweet father son group was in front of us… this is them singing and swaying to Take Me Out to the Ballgame during the 7th inning stretch..