I thought Blanton would have gotten traded before Harden.  I have an Oakland Athletics google alert, and I still had to be told about the news from a buddy in the office after word broke out.  I saw a picture of Harden in his new Cubs uniform today and it twisted in my guts.  It’s hard to lose the players you like, but pitchers are what’s keeping us in shape this year so we gotta go with what works. 

I subscribed to both Men’s Health and The Sports Business Journal today, and I think I may have sprouted some chest hair…  A feature article in the Sports Business Journal is “Path to the Corner Office: Part 1, Landing the Job“.  It’s all about the career path to running at team, but my career path is more along the lines of Managing a Marketing or Web Ops department for a sports team.  When I imagine myself in that position, I picture a cross between Drew Barrymore in Fever Pitch, that guy from SNL also in Fever Pitch, and a wealthy NYC socialite/eccentric who lives in a castle above Central Park but charges the battery to her phone, computer, and electric heater with a stationary bike.  That, my friends, is the dream.  The dream is also to have a crisp, clean white three piece suit that I would wear with gold and green stilettos.  Power business woman with Oakland flair.  Of course, I could easily wear a white suit to work any time I wanted to, just as I could get a stationary bike that powers random electrical appliances.  But at the core, I want to work in the sports industry because there’s so much going on: it’s poetry, it’s math, it’s music, it’s fashion, it’s wheeling, it’s dealing, it’s nonsense, and it’s — it’s baseball!  There’s the business side of things, pushing sales, working massive cross promotions, filling up stadiums almost every night, and being able to keep up a strong presence in new markets.  Then there’s catching and spreading that magical feeling of baseball.  School yard dreams, family tailgates; being an inspiration to people.  It’s so exciting to think of and to see the different ways that people catch the small glimpses of that excitement you get when you first step into a stadium in online media.  I mean, that’s what’s so cool about this blog, is that people get to share all their stories, theories, and hair-brained “meatball” marketing games with each other.  And it’s totally fascinating that blogging is such a solitary action, something people do alone and separated from the crowds and mess of baseball – but how we all completely gush over exactly that.

Man, if the A’s wanted me to work for free dressed up on some Fremont street corner, giving out hotdogs in green and gold buns, I would do it.  I’m so sad about the poor attendance at A’s games I’m about ready to buy 100 or so tickets and just give them out through different promotions like radio stations, boy and girl scout troops and the bad-attitude teenagers stuck in summer school, because they may be little jerks, but everyone needs to see a good game every now and again.

But seriously, what’s the best way for a fan outside of the organization to support a team?  Please don’t tell me to paint my face or put a flag on my car.
I could get some cheap fliers made with pictures of Jack Cust or Jack Hanahan that say: “They’re not Swishy or Chavez, but they’re A’s, so get out there and start cheering”.   I could start some community groups centered around going to A’s games.  I could do some marketing for all those goofy A’s blogs out there with a lot of traffic where every other link would be to the mlb shop or stubhub (I hate stubhub by the way)…

Hmmm. I’ll have to think about this more later.  For now, I’ll just set these three simple goals.

Goal #1: get more people to the Oakland Coliseum
Goal #2: get them to buy more beer and ice cream so the stands open back up.
Goal #3: beat the Angels for the AL West title — and then beat the Cubs to win the World Series