by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

OAKLAND–The soccer fans came in droves and they were pumped up about World Soccer on Tuesday night at Candlesick Park as the U.S. Men’s team welcomed visiting Azerbaijan and this was an event that can facilitate 50-60,000 fans. This game was the first of three exhibition games before both teams take off to Brazil for the real deal next month at the World Cup.

This was special on the local angle as this is the last year before they blow up Candlestick Park and this tournament was something that the World Cup wanted to show case being at the Stick. This was an opportunity to say goodbye to the park with a big event.

The Brazil controversy: The citizens of Brazil or a great number of them have been protesting about the building of these new stadiums and villages in Rio that will accommodate the players, coaches, team personnel, media and the fans and after they leave these stadiums they will no longer be needed and be virtually a shell kind of like the Silver Dome in Pontiac.

What people forget that Brazil is larger than the United States territorial wise but it’s still a third world country. There’s a lot of poverty there, the Brazilian goverment has been criticized and FIFA will be selling tickets and concessions at top dollar and getting a hotel and dinning will be at top prices something the average citizen cannot afford and I read an article a couple weeks ago that the government of Brazil doesn’t know what is going to happen to those stadiums once the World Cup is done.

They are spending billions of dollars, it’s always controversial and most of those events make money and people seem to forget it’s a huge country and still it’s a third world country with profits going towards TV, FIFA and the hotels. It’s not a rich industrialized nation.

Media still talking about the A’s getting swept in Toronto: The Jays are very hot right now, they’re playing great ball especially at the Skydome and baseball is 162 games and you can have a team that can lose five, six or ten games in a row. Look what happened to the Boston Red Sox, they just ended a ten game losing streak it was the first team since the 1998 Miami Marlins to lose nine or more games in a row after winning the World Series.

So this happens to all of the teams and the A’s just ran into a very hot team like the Jays but look what happened they took the Detroit Tigers in the opening game of the homestand with a whopping 10-0 shutout laugher. One of the best teams in the American League and in first place in the A.L. Central. That’s baseball and the Tigers I think are the best team in the American League some other people might disagree and the A’s came back on Monday and scored ten runs.

Tuesday night the A’s are throwing Sonny Gray against the Tigers and Gray could be a future Cy Young winner against a guy who won the Cy Young last year the Tigers Max Scherzer. The Blue Jays they had something to prove when the A’s came to Toronto last week and thats what happened and then on Monday night everything went the A’s way. When your not playing well things go wrong the line drives over third base are foul, the potential doubles turn into long singles, and home runs hit the top of the wall or are grabbed just above the fence by the outfielder.

Baseball is a game of opportunities and when you grab that opportunity you keep winning and the Jays have a great line up with Melky Cabrera hitting .322, Edwin Encarnacion leading the Jays with 15 homers,Jaun Batista with 37 runs scored. My friend wrote about them and called them the Dominican Jays because they’ve filled that line up with six or seven Dominicans.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish radio voice of Oakland Athletics baseball and does News and Commentary weekly on http://www.sportsradioservice.com