ShareThisOAKLAND, Calif. - It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
The Oakland A's are a major league club that fashions itself a legit contender, and, more than a third of the way through the season, why not? One that entered Monday a mere game out of first place in a down American League West, despite being a small-market club with just-as-thrifty payroll sensibilities. One of the best stories in baseball.
Yet one whose Class AAA affiliate in Sacramento [lays before crowds closer to capacity (57.9 percent) at intimate Raley Field than the parent club draws to the vast Coliseum (51.9 percent).
That a mere 10,071 (that was the announced crowd; it looked a lot smaller) bothered to show for the start of a critical four-game series against the rival Angels from down south spoke volumes about how disenfranchised the Athletics' fiercely loyal but shrinking fan base feels.
Too bad the A's seemed to stay home themselves in the lifeless 4-2 defeat.
Because with homemade signs flapping in the breeze above right field that read "Don't Take Our A's Away" and "Keep Our A's In Oakland," fans are weary of owner Lew Wolff's annual threats of relocation to A) Fremont, B) San Jose, C) parts unknown.
Or maybe they were just distracted by sports world goings-on, what with the seeming canonization of "Saint" John Wooden, despite his hear-no-evil, see-no-evil, speak-no-evil approach to booster Sam Gilbert's tawdry bankrolling of his program back in the day.
Or by the baseball draft.
Or even by the potential seismic shift in the college sports landscape with the Pacific 10 Conference tarnishing its legacy with so much shameless flirting with the Big 12 and expanding to a 16-Pac.
Huge sports stories all.
But the biggest on this day for A's fans was going down in the shadow of Mount Davis.
"The A.L. West is still up for grabs," A's catcher Kurt Suzuki told me before the game. "The fact that (the Angels have) dominated the division the past few years, it definitely puts a little more (juice) in it. You want to be the guys to dethrone them.
"It's kind of early to be talking about this because it is still June. But then, you wonder if at the end of the year you'll look back at some of these early games and go, 'You know, if we could have just won a few more of those ... '"
Facing the class of the division -- the Angels have won five of the past six division crowns and been in the playoffs six of the last eight seasons -- is the perfect litmus test.
"There's some extra incentive," A's manager Bob Geren said. "They are the champs."
Thing is, the third-place A's have now dropped five of seven and the smoke-and-mirrors-along-with-some-duct-tape-to-keep-the-ship-afloat approach 14 games into this 20-games-in-20-days stretch is waning.
Especially with speedy center fielder Rajai Davis the latest to pull up lame, as he did on his breathtaking fifth-inning triple. The A's have already used the disabled list 15 times this season.
The Angels, meanwhile, have done what good teams do -- beat up on the dregs -- in winning eight of nine against the Royals and Mariners before rolling into the East Bay. They finally look like, well, the Angels.
So are the A's for real or, to use one of Angels center fielder Torii Hunter's more unfortunate choice of words of late, imposters? This series will tell the tale. Whether the answer is funny, or sad.
(Contact Paul Gutierrez at pgutierrez@sacbee.com)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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