When the weather turns bad, it makes hard core night (Mondays) seem like a piece of cake. The announced paid attendance was 10,670. Obviously the number of people that actually showed up was only a small fraction of that. Blame it on a number of things: rain, ownership, team, stadium, whatever. The real implications of [...]

I put out a couple of questions on Twitter, and I figured I should have the conversation here as well. The #Athletics have traditionally had Opening Night – not Day – games. What do you think about having a day opener instead? — newballpark (@newballpark) April 6, 2012 and… There are also a few teams [...]

Haven’t done one of these for a while. Good links in here. Governor Jerry Brown will, in fact, sign that LA football stadium bill. Guess he’s not such a sports hater after all. /s The Merc’s Mike Rosenberg profiles Jack Hill, the Texas guy who gets things built. What things? Cowboys Stadium and American Airlines [...]

The Merc’s Daniel Brown wrote a bleak article on A’s attendance, grabbing a few choice quotes from Andy Dolich and A’s sales/marketing veep Jim Leahey. Dolich reflected on how the Coliseum used to be packed during the Bash Brothers era, and pointed a finger at how ownership’s constant desire to move out of Oakland has [...]

Lately baseball writers have been looking far and wide to figure out what is keeping fans away from ballparks this year. Poor weather is the most often blamed culprit, thanks to 30-and-counting rainouts this season, 9 more than the entire total in 2010. Frank McCourt is also shouldering much of the blame, since the malaise [...]

On Saturday I sat in section 130. This was the crowd during the game. For today’s game I sat in my regular Value Deck seat in section 317. This was the crowd as the A’s took the field just before first pitch. The announced paid crowd was 9,193, easily the smallest crowd of the season [...]

New KNBR host Eric Byrnes filled in for Ralph Barbieri on the blowtorch’s afternoon drivetime show on Thursday. Byrnes and Tom Tolbert interviewed SI’s Phil Taylor, who is writing a feature for the magazine on how difficult it is to be an A’s fan amidst the Giants’ recent success (sounds like a must-read). The interview [...]

Trib reporter Angela Woodall’s writeup of the Keep the A’s in Oakland tailgate ends with the following quote by Let’s Go Oakland’s Doug Boxer: “Now it’s up to the fans.” He’s absolutely right. It is up to the fans. It has always been up to the fans. If the A’s had 34,000 – heck, 30,000 [...]

Quick housekeeping note: If you were not aware, this blog is a self-hosted WordPress site. Ever since I moved to this platform in November 2009 after years with Blogger, I have been astonished at the rapid pace of third party development for WordPress. One feature came out today in the form of a server-side plugin [...]

One of the problems I have with Lew Wolff pleading his case in the media is that it gives the media plenty of fuel for columns – columns that are almost invariably anti-Wolff. Such is the case today, with a Bloomberg article followed up by a rejoinder by Tribune columnist Gary Peterson. None of it [...]