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So the first week as a four-person family has gone reasonably well. One of our biggest concerns was how Justin would react to Chelsea’s arrival but so far so good. Having said that, with all four of us home, things did get a bit crazy a few times this past week. Justin has recently started rebelling against napping, even proclaiming yesterday “no more naps for Justin!” (Needless to say we are not on the same page as our 26-month-old on this issue.) He also can’t sit still, can’t stop talking, regularly climbs out of his crib, refuses to let us brush his teeth, etc., etc. I’m certainly not complaining, he’s a fantastic kid (he’s practically potty-trained after all!) but I think the combination of being at home rather than daycare, plus the new baby, has got him a little out of sorts.

So it was good timing when our friend Victoria offered us a couple of tickets to yesterday’s A’s game. The weather was great and it was a perfect excuse for father and son to get out of the house and leave Mom and baby with some (relative) peace and quiet. Justin is already a veteran of 4 or 5 A’s games when he was just a few months old. Those were the days when I could drop him into a sling and he’d sleep blissfully for hours while I watched the game with Mark or Brad or both. But once he got a bit older it just wasn’t feasible. In a related story, the 2007 season is two months old and I hadn’t been to a game yet before this one.

So yesterday was Justin’s first game in almost two years. We packed sandwiches for lunch, some chips, Goldfish, and Gatorade. And sunblock. Before leaving I searched high and low for his sun hat, which has a baseball-type brim and flaps to cover his neck and ears. I couldn’t find it anywhere so I tried his old baby A’s cap but it no longer fits his huge head. We were running late so we left with no hat for Justin, despite the warm sunny day and seats right behind the A’s dugout, with full sun exposure.

So imagine my delight after passing through the Coliseum turnstiles when I was handed a very sharp looking green and white A’s cap! What made this even funnier was when I asked for a second hat for Justin but was told that he already had his — it was ME who wasn’t getting one because it was only for the first 10,000 fans 14 and under. The serendipity was amazing, and Justin loves his new A’s lid!

Once we got to our seats we lathered on the sun block and Justin proceeded to walk up and down our row (we had some empty seats next to us) and make friends with the people sitting around us. When one woman asked him his name he said “Baby Chelsea!” which confused the woman but had me cracking up. It quickly became clear that he wasn’t going to have much interest in the game, despite the fact that Johan Santana was pitching for the Twins and Chad Gaudin was going for the A’s (2nd best ERA in the AL after Dan Haren). Justin’s frame of mind at the time could best be described as “when are we eating?”

I only managed to delay lunch until the 2nd inning. I didn’t want to eat too early because then I’d have nothing to distract him with for the rest of the game. But when he started getting restless right away I had no choice. He ate half of his PB & J and I ate my turkey sandwich. Then he had some Goldfish until he saw my salt and vinegar kettle chips, and everyone knows that whatever someone else is eating is better than what you’re eating. We washed it down with some Gatorade, a large amount of which he spilled down his A’s jersey leaving a nice red stain.

So lunch took about an inning and half, it was now the 3rd inning and he was clearly not going to last 6 innings, let alone 9. Over the next few innings we took some photos, had a bathroom break, ate some more Goldfish and a box drink, and managed to watch a bit of baseball. By the 5th inning Justin was really melting down, thumb in his mouth (meaning he’s ready to go to sleep), sitting down on the filthy floor under his seat, slumping in my lap, etc. It was hopeless. I called Susan to let her know we were coming home.

The A’s were up 4-2 when we left and went on to win by that score so we didn’t miss much. We ended up watching the rest of the game in HD later in the afternoon, after he had climbed out of his crib several times without ever napping. Just to recap, he basically sabotaged the game by practically falling asleep on the floor of the stadium, even telling me how tired he was on the way to the car, and then he refused to nap once we got home. Gotta love kids!

So it was a fun day despite being cut short. It’s better than not going at all and Susan at least had a couple of hours without the boys, but I think it’ll be another 6-8 months before Justin can appreciate going to a game. He’s already got a ball and a glove, thanks to Uncle Jimmy, and he definitely likes to play catch, and he does like to watch a game on TV once in a while, so it’s just a matter of time before he’s an A’s fan like his Dad.

Big thanks to Victoria for the tickets, we had a great time!

OK, so the Yankees ruined the A’s Opening Night celebration on Monday with an absolute demolishing of Barry Zito and the A’s, to the tune of 15-2, with the added insult being a grand slam from A-Fraud. Thankfully I watched that game on Tivo (actually on bush league Dish Network wanna-be Tivo) from the comfort of my bed, compressing the misery into a nicely manageable blur of 30 second skips. (The Big Hurt’s homer in his first at bat as an A was pretty cool though.) The beauty of baseball though is that the A’s could come back the next night and again tonight and win both games 1-0, take the series 2 games to 1, but be outscored in the series 15-4. While that’s not what happened, the point is that a 15-2 ass kicking doesn’t really matter over the course of a 162 game season. As the saying goes, in baseball you need to have a short memory. I’m sure Zito put on some velvet pants and Elvis sunglasses after the game, went home to the Marina, fired up some John Mayer, lit some candles, and maybe wrote a song or two. He’ll worry about Seattle in a couple of days.

I rarely go to Opening Night because the tickets are hard to get, traffic is bad, etc., and it’s usually the same night as the NCAA Championship game. But I did get tickets to game 2 on Tuesday and game 3 tonight. Last night I went with Brad “I don’t read blogs” Lipscomb, who along with Mark “Attorney at Law” Le Clerc, are my A’s buddies. Crappy weather all day on Tuesday gave way to partly cloudy skies in time for the game and I met Brad at the Coliseum at around 6:30. A great pitching matchup between Stanfurd’s Mike Mussina and Rich Harden was on tap, and while there’s no point in going into great detail about the game (you can read the recap here) the highlights were obviously Harden striking out Sheffield, A-Fraud, and Giambi with 2 on and of course Scutaro’s clutch walk-off hit in the bottom of the ninth. Despite the rain that had begun by then I had stuck it out until then, and I’m glad Scutaro saved me from having to decide how long to stick around in the freezing rain on a school night.

Mark was at the game with his Dad and brother Chris, so about the 6th inning we headed over to their seats to hang out for the rest of the game. That portion of the evening was highlighted by the debut of Mark’s sweet new Iron Maiden ballcap and Dr. Le Clerc’s discovery of ticket stubs from 49ers playoff games in 1992 and 1996 in his jacket pocket! Perhaps if he had dug a little deeper he might have found some weed he bought at the University of Michigan in 1965.

Game 3 was tonight with my bro’ Jason “what’s a double play?” Cole. Thankfully I got my quota of baseball discussion the previous night with Brad because, well, let’s just say that Jason and I didn’t discuss whether Dan Haren should throw a breaking ball to Sheffield with a 3-2 count. But I did get to hear all about Jason’s recent trip to Nashville and his rubbing elbows with some bigwigs in the songwriting industry, as well as hanging out with Richard Marx and Gunnar Nelson. I also got to check out Jason’s new beard, which was not any planned new look but rather a result of him leaving the charger for his shaver at home and then spending a week in Nashville.

So, quick game summary (read the real one here): A’s get down 4-0 early, rally back to tie it on a big hit by Milton Bradly, then score 5 runs in the 8th, capped off by a bases clearing double from the Big Hurt that was very nearly a grand slam. Utter pandemonium! Then Street shuts the door in the 9th. What a great game. So, skip the first game, they get blown out. Go to the next two games and see a walk-off win and an 5 run tie-breaking 8th inning on successive nights. Not too bad.

Go A’s!