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.

About Ready To Kick This Thing Off...

Just ignoring the score from last night's Braves game (if you want to find out the score, you'll just have to look it up yourself).

Trip begins with a flight out on Monday to San Francisco, then I run the California gauntlet.  Every MLB park in Cali between Monday and next Monday.  The menu for this week's festivites...

Tuesday night:  Texas vs Oakland at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum
Wednesday night:  San Francisco vs Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium
Friday night:  Oakland vs Los Angeles Angels at Angel Stadium
Late Saturday afternoon:  Los Angeles Dodgers vs San Diego Padres at Petco Park
Monday night:  Colorado Rockies vs San Francisco Giants at AT&T Park

In between, will take in the sights and take photos.  Lots of prep work for a trip like this, but that's not all that bad when we're talking about baseball.