That’s Amaury’s News and Commentary

ANAHEIM–Things seem to get tougher for the San Francisco 49ers after losing their second straight game last Sunday to the Indianapolis Colts 27-7 and after losing the proceeding week to the Seattle Seahawks now to make matters worse the NFC Champions are losing their star linebacker Aldon Smith due to driving under the influence of marijuana possession. 49ers CEO Jed York announced that Smith would miss at least one game this Thursday in St.Louis against the Rams.

York said that Smith who is in rehab for substance abuse in accordance with the NFL’s policy on abuse program is for this Thursday’s game and could miss more games. Smith released a statement Tuesday from the 49ers offices in Santa Clara, “first off I want to apologize to the team, the organization, my family, and everybody I let down, I also wanted it to be known that this is a problem and it’s something that I will get fixed, and I’ll do everything in my power to make sure that this never happens again. I also wanted to let everybody know I’m sorry.” said Smith

Smith a starter at linebacker had five tackles in the game versus the Colts last Sunday at Candlestick Park was arrested two days before Sunday’s game last Friday when his truck hit a tree. In spite of the arrest the 49ers allowed Smith to play and Smith after the game had to address concerns to his teammates and to the media. York feels everything will work out in the long run for Smith, “our opinion is if your sitting someone down and paying them to sit down when they’re going to seek treatment in the future we didn’t feel like that was the appropriate punishment. We’re not trying to circumvent what the NFL will do. This is about making sure that Aldon has the opportunity to work on something to get better, and he knows he has our support and hopefully he has everybody’s support in something that is going to be very difficult. I think Aldon is going to take steps on his own I’m not worried about that” said York.

Playoff bound A’s have everything going right: A’s General Manager Billy Beane believes in this new thing this Cybermetrics, he goes by on base percentage, he goes by what a guy can do and the A’s have very good scouting people never give credit to the A’s they get no respect from the east coast but they get terrific scouting. Here’s Jed Lowrie last year he was hurt all time they saw that he could be a good player, guess what he’s having a great season.

Lowrie’s got around 40 doubles, for A’s Eric Sogard it’s been Eric who? in places like in New York, Sogard is terrific at second base and Brandon Moss is leading the team in home runs and Yoenis Cespedes from Cuba in his second year with Oakland has been hurt still got about 25-26 bombs, so you have a team here that it’s almost written that they’re going to win, and they can win the ALCS too.

What impressed me the most about the A’s was the young pitchers like the Dan Strailys, Sonny Grays, Tommy Milones, A.J. Griffins, Jarrod Parkers, this is a very young pitching staff these guys are 23 and 24 and 25 the only guy whose over that age is Bartolo Colon whose 40 and by the way in a couple of days on Wednesday Colon here in Anaheim is going to try and beat his old team the Angels with his 18th game of the year and not to forget in 2005 Colon won the Cy Young Award for the Los Angeles Angels and Colon is a candidate for a Cy Young Award.

These A’s are really a big story and yes the Giants were on top and they had taken the air out of the room the last three years with two World Series. Everybody expected them to make the playoffs this October at least and there were doubts about making another World Series. In the A’s case I really have no prediction and this team could go all the way. They can blow up or go all the way in this series against Detroit. The A’s have a lot of confidence this year that is the difference.

Fans now just joining A’s playoff movement: There is a new corp of A’s fan that has joined the A’s playoff movement as it’s “move over season long die hard fans” time. You know the old saying “everyone loves a winner” and it’s true in the Bay Area you have the factor that the band wagon truck is getting filled with fans. A couple of months ago that my neighbor Bill whose a good guy who I saw with an A’s hat a brand new A’s hat and I asked him “what are doing with that?” and he used to wear a Giants hat now the Giants are terrible and the A’s are exciting but nobody knows their names but their playing like a unit and that’s what happens the Bay Area has a lot of those fans.

The Bay Area is not Boston or it’s not New York and when the Mets are in the World Series you won’t find Yankee fans there. In Northern California you have that mentality and a lot of people now are flocking and going to the A’s and their going to sell out all these post season games and their going to sell out and their going to open the upper deck and I’ll tell you what the Coliseum is not a pretty park like AT&T but people go there to see baseball there’s no garlic fries, there’s no coke bottle, there’s no baseball theme playground, this is just baseball folks.

It’s Ironic that the A’s don’t market this team yet their going to draw pretty well this year but not as good as they should but closer to two million fans. By the way the Angels are going to draw over three million and the Angels and the Yankees are the only teams in Major League Baseball in the last 11 years that have drawn three million or more every year. So congratulations to the A’s what else can you say.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish radio voice for Oakland Athletics baseball and does News and Commentary each week for Sportstalk radio