by Charlie O Mallonee

We’ve been saying for a good month that Scott Kamir, Ben Zobrist and pitcher Tyler Clippard were gone when Clippard came up on the radar all things fortunately were 100 percent right. That’s not what we wanted because the A’s had shown some potential promise that maybe things could turn around and get to .500.

That they would be able to turn things around and get in contention and get a playoff spot and A’s general manager Billy Beane saying he’s going to keep things together. It’s doesn’t come as a shock and when you say the team’s not happy this is one of the problems not just with baseball it doesn’t hit football quite as hard but it hits basketball.

Relatively early in the season teams have to give up on themselves if their going to get anything that they want to have. You look at baseball they have the entire month of August and September for the A’s and everybody knows that Beane has raised the white flag and said “were out of it” so as an A’s fan that makes it difficult because you can’t get invested in the players too much.

This is like Josh Donaldson last season who got traded to the Toronto Blue Blues everybody in Oakland loved that guy and when they traded him away what’s does he do he goes to Toronto and he has another terrific part of the season and makes it tough to come up with loyalty. It’s 2015 it’s the business of pro sports is different than it was in the 60s and the 70s.

It’s still very difficult for fans who can’t invest in players. It’s tantamount for the Giants not doing well if they were to get rid of a guy like Mad Bum. Your invested in a guy, you love him, you think their a great player, Ben Zobrist who was traded to Kansas City how can you not love this guy. You plug him in anywhere you need to plug him in.

Even though Zobrist wasn’t hitting for high average he was getting key hits everywhere you go and you say, “this is a guy I would love to see into the next four or five seasons” and it’s “thanks for playing and here’s your parting gifts.” It’s difficult for fans but its got to be more difficult for the players. You just get into a rhythm of playing with each other, you get on base with Zobrist coming up and you know what to do because he’s going to put the bat on the ball he’s going to make things happen and now you have a new set of people that your playing with.

Charlie O does the A’s podcast each week at http://www.sportsradioservice.com