by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

OAKLAND–Unless the Athletics win 40 of their next 45 games of the season and the four teams on top totally collapse, there will be not World Series in Oakland this year.

This 2015 season has been a disappointment from the very beginning. Somebody once said that you cannot win the pennant in April and May, but you sure can lose it. The Athletics fell into a hole so deep, so early, that they just have not been able to get out of it.

2015 is not as bad as 1979(I remember that) when they won 54 games and lost 108. Nobody (that I know)picked the A’s to win their division this season, but most people in the baseball world picked them to be a competitive team. And they can be competitive, especially when Sonny Gray is starting a game, he is one of the very best young hurlers in the game today, and he will be in sole possession of the Athletics for a few years to come, until he can become a free agent, and then everybody and their grandmother, knows what happens. Adalberto, aka Ucho, is a good friend of mine who has been an A’s fan and followed the A’S since they moved to Oakland in 1968, he told me last winter that the A’s should sell their Jerseys blank- with no specific name of a player– and sell the names of the players individually in Velcro so fans can buy the Jerseys and then just inter-change the name of the players as they come and leave. He told me he had just bought a Céspedes jersey and two weeks later he got traded. Maybe I will tell that to the A’s marketing department, but then…

So is the life in Oaktown these days. I do feel for A’s skipper Bob Melvin, a very good manager and a class human being. Like in the movie The Godfather Part II, Melvin will be like Hayman Roth telling Michael Corleone: “this is the business we have chosen!”. Melvin knows that from the first moment he took the job as manager of the A’s, Players are discarded regularly in the A’s system when things do not work, players in Oakland have to do well in a short amount of time, or they are gone. Right now the way Josh Donaldson and the Toronto Blue Jays are playing(they beat the A’s today and have an 11-game winning streak, second 11-game winning streak for them in 2015)Josh could be the favorite, with the Angels Mike Trout to win the American League Most Valuable Player. Yes, that same Josh Donaldson that played here, has talent, star-power and lots of class and I feel great for him.

Just like a strike out for a player these days is not really a dishonor, a team finishing in the cellar is also no big deal, because we live in times when you can finish last one year and win it all the next. The Oakland Athletics could finish last this season and that is not a regular situation for them these past few years, but then that would not be that bad at all. The American League west doesn’t have a perfect team, and I could easily see the A’s competing in 2016, with some more trades and some luck, all is possible.

Athletics fanaticos have to put things in perspective, there are teams that have never even been in a World Series; right in their division. The Seattle Mariners, who in the last two off seasons spent enough money to bail out Greece, are competing with the A’s to finish out of last place. And then the Chicago Cubs, of course, who are looking like a postseason team this year, they are the biggest example of long time suffering, since 1908. Manager Joe Maddon(first season with the Cubs) was the perfect RX for this organization, he brought a winning culture to the north side of Chicago, but most important the Cubs ownership cultivated some great young talent and the Cubs look deep and very much competitive for the near future.

Soon in time, the A’s will be the only residents at the OCO. I cannot see the Raiders staying much longer at Oakland, they are a prime candidate to move and return to Los Angeles, for a second time, and this time to stay.

The Oakland A’s organization and the stadium situation is hanging on like a bad disease, although the Oakland Coliseum is not the oldest park in major league baseball, Dodger Stadium is older, so is Fenway Park in Boston and Wrigley Field in Chicago. Still the Coliseum at Oakland is not a positive for the organization, when you win, that is forgotten, but when you do not win, that plays another part into the problem. Some say that they need a new ballpark so they can increase their revenues and build a winning organization, while others would say, they have been winning in the recent past and doing decently at the gate, and always making money.

I have friend that tells me the ownership is fine, because it is a business and they’re in business to make money, others tell me, this ownership is happy finishing over .500 even if they do not play deep in October. The problem is that this year there is a very good chance they will finish under.500.

In the end baseball is entertainment. When you go to a movie and you pay $10 to see a first run movie, you expect the movie to be good, but if it isn’t you are not allowed to ask for your money back, same principle in baseball. A’s fans hope the 2015 A’S movie is not back in 2016.

Finally, the best thing to say about the Oakland A’S of 2015 is a very common saying these days: “It is what it is.”

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish radio voice for the A’s and Spanish TV voice for the Angels and does News and Commentary at http://www.sportsradioservice.com