Oakland A's 3, Los Angeles Angels 1

Started the day with photos at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, then lunch with a friend from ORHS before heading out to Anaheim to catch the Oakland A's for the second time this week playing the home standing Los Angeles Angels.

Angels fans still held hope of a wild card berth, but those hopes took a severe hit tonight as the A's defeated the Angels 3-1 behind a stellar pitching performance by Oakland's Gio Gonzalez.  Gonzalez pitched 7 1/3 innings yielding only 3 hits and an earned run courtesy of a 7th inning homer by LA's Torii Hunter.  Jered Weaver got off to an inauspicious start with a homer by the A's Jemile Weeks, his second of the season.  Weaver would settle down and threw 8 1/3 innings giving up 2 runs on 6 hits.

Along with Week's first inning homer, Oakland's David DeJesus would add the icing on the cake with a 9th inning homer off of Weaver who drops to 18-8 with the loss.  A's closer Andrew Bailey would pitch a perfect 9th for his 22nd save of the year.  Angels fans would cheer a great defensive play in the 5th with one out and Scott Sizemore at the plate.  Erick Aybar made a nifty diving stop and leaped up to gun Sizemore out at first.

Tomorrow's game is the Dodgers/Padres from Petco Park in San Diego.  Thus far, every visiting team has won, so I'll be interested to see if present trends continue.

LA State of Mind

Good off day in LA today.  First, a very short drive up the road from the hotel in Ontario to Rancho Cucamonga to take photos of the facility called the Epicenter, home of the Quakes who are the advanced class A affiliate of the Dodgers.  Then, I took a a short drive to Pasadena to take photos at the Rose Bowl.  It, like California Memorial Stadium in Berkeley is going through renovations.

Once that was done, had to satisfy a pilgrimage down to Carson to see Station 127, which was used for the exterior location for Station 51 in the NBC action drama Emergency!  I also made the short drive over to Torrance for a couple quick shots of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center which stood in for the fictional Rampart Hospital.

I also took a few minutes to run by Dodger Stadium again to check out the Top of the Park gift shop and take some last shots of the stadium.

Tomorrow, more photos in the morning and afternoon, then it's off to Anaheim to see the A's again for the second time this week as they face the LA Angels.  Gio Gonzalez (14-12, 3.33 ERA) takes the mound for the A's and will face off against the Angel's Jered Weaver (18-7, 2.41 ERA).

The starters for Saturday's game in San Diego have been named, Chad Billingsley (11-10, 4.23 ERA) starts for the Dodgers and Aaron Harang (13-7, 3.82 ERA) will get the nod for the Padres.