The A's are a young team - there's no doubt about it. But part of the team's allure to fans is their kiddish behavior, their smiles and laughter, and some have given the team's attitude and camaraderie a great deal of credit for their success. The pictures prove it - as we find our men in green and gold simply acting like kids. Explains why I feel so old when I see their birthdates on the DiamondVision.


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2005 Comics | 2006 Comics

Cross-posted at Athletics Nation...

I have to admit that for me, there was some anxiety around Jason Kendall smacking a home run earlier this season. That's not what we really what we expected, for in our mind, he fulfilled the role of "slap hitter with no home runs and many GIDPs", just as the Red Sox once filled the role of "the team who gets to the playoffs only to lose in heart-breaking fashion". As a baseball fan for nearly all my life, once you button-hole a player or a team in a spot, you expect them to stay there, and when they break the mold, you have to check your bearings and make sure all the other things you held true have not changed. But Jason has surprised a lot of us here beyond his solitary dinger, which still looks like a fluke.

As OaklandAthletics.com points out today, nobody has been swinging hotter lumber in these last few weeks than our gritty catcher.

In fact, in yesterday's win against the Rangers, Kendall had three hits, and both drove in and scored a run. And as the leadoff hitter, Kendall has done, all season, what you want a leadoff hitter to do - take pitches, get on base, and threaten to steal. In the leadoff position this year, Kendall is batting .304. But there's more!
Did you know...

* Kendall is batting .329 with runners on base in 2006?
* Kendall is batting .343 on the road in 2006?
* Kendall is fifth in the American league in BB/K at 1.03?
* Kendall is tied for the A's lead in steals?
* Kendall has more doubles (19) than Chavez (18) or Swisher (17)?

And if you somehow got the impression that Kendall hits a lot of ground balls, you wouldn't be alone in that thought. In fact, Kendall is also fifth in the American League in ground ball vs. fly balls, at 2.05. Lest you think that's a statistic for a slap hitter, other leading batters in this stat include Derek Jeter (#1), Pudge Rodriguez (#4), and Miguel Tejada (#6). That's right, Jason Kendall is ahead of Tejada in a number of batting categories!

I'm not saying I think the A's would be world-beaters if they featured Kendall in spots 1-9 in the batting order, but I don't cringe as often as I used to when he comes up to the plate with a mouthful of chaw,  his helmet slumped low on his eyes, and choking up on the bat, because in 2006, Kendall has been a major part of why the A's have forged their Western Division lead, and why after the All-Star break, the team has been practically unstoppable. We hope that this version of Jason Kendall is the one we get to keep.

Listening to ''Enervate (Original Mix)'', by Paul Oakenfold (Play Count: 6)

Although the most die hard of Mac fans were less than enthusiastic about the lack of product introductions at the recently-concluded Worldwide Developers Conference, the media continues to be abuzz about how Steve Jobs and others promised to take on Microsoft's Windows Vista directly, as the operating system release continues to be more about delays, unfulfilled promises and bugs than about real benefits for customers. While we didn't see an update iPod, or an iTunes Movie Store, everybody got the message that Apple, with Mac OS X, is delivering an operating system today that is already well ahead of Redmond's empty promises, while Leopard, coming soon, will take the Mac maker that much further into the lead.

Newsfactor, in a piece titled, "Can the Mac Counter Windows Vista?", says that the real operating system wars are not behind us, but instead are yet to come, and that with Leopard, Apple intends to "present a direct challenge to industry behemoth Microsoft". With the move to Intel processors, and the adoption of the ability to run Windows on the newest Macintoshes, Apple has eliminated any price differences once expected between Macs and PCs, while also pushing their strong television campaign comparing Macs vs. PCs. (Get A Mac archive)

An analyst from Forrester Research mentions in the article, "In many ways, Apple doesn't have to respond to Vista's specific functionality, since Apple is already ahead of it."

But that doesn't stop others from speculating Apple's next moves. Even as other companies make announcements around downloading full-length feature films to PCs, Apple has remained quiet. But nobody expects the company to sit still and let this market pass them by, as they continue to build out their music empire. The Investor's Business Daily says that it's expected Apple would bridge the gap between the Internet and television by introducing both an online movie store, and a set-top box, similar to today's Mac Mini, which would play the films on your television.

In fact, an independent survey stated that "many respondents who were interested in an Apple set-top box showed no interest in set-tops from other companies," meaning the Apple brand, behind the power of the iPod, has come a long way.

While we're huge TiVo fans, we don't see it as the end-all, be-all of options. If Apple could somehow debut a single device to act both as a movie conduit from the Internet to the television, and as our personal video recorder, we would have to give it significant consideration, and I don't imagine we would be the only ones to do so.

If Apple even debuts half of what people expect - a new iPod, a new cell phone, a new set top box, and powers past Vista with Leopard, the next six to twelve months will be very interesting in Cupertino. That's why we're long Apple (AAPL) shares.

Listening to ''Fifteenth Letter of the Alphabet'', by O (Play Count: 6)

When I moved to Belmont just after graduating from UC Berkeley in 1999, I certainly didn't have a whole lot of furniture, having been a starving student, so I started over from scratch - buying a new desk, a new bookcase, and a new dresser, assembling each at the apartment, after somehow squeezing them into my small car, and lugging them up three flights of stairs. While the desk didn't follow me along to my next two moves, the dresser and bookshelf did, so they've given me about 7 years of good service - at least until my dresser began to fall apart, making the morning's search for socks just that much more memorable each day.

After a few weeks of going into the other room to get my things out of each drawer individually, my wife and I set out to a number of different stores on the peninsula to see if we could find a good-quality solution for something less than what we pay each month on our mortgage. At our first stop, one of the more-promising dressers was $650, while others were $999 or above, and some peaked at $1,500. Our next two stops weren't much better. In fact, one store didn't have much below $2,000, which seemed a little steep for something I couldn't live in, drive around or surf the Web on. That left IKEA as one last stop. I was skeptical, knowing the low-price leader is often the high-crap leader, and it was certain to be a not-so-exciting experience.

After making our way through a series of parking garages, we entered the IKEA maze as hamsters in a Habitrail, missing only the sawdust and an exercise wheel. Packed in like sardines into narrow walkways, with arrows telling us which way to go, we darted past bunkbeds and stoves or dining sets, past housewares and beanbag chairs, to find anything that resembled a dresser - and to our surprise, we did find some options after all. They weren't nearly the quality of the previous stores, but the prices, in the range of $149 to $249, were significantly less. And as my wife has now mentally committed to our purchasing flat-screen TVs for the house, that's where any of our available money should go, not just a glorified wooden box for shirts, socks and pants.

Though we chose a good dresser, we didn't much feel like dragging it out of the store, packing it in the car, and taking it up the stairs today. But we marked it down, and will try IKEA's catalog or online store, and make someone else do the grunt work. But I am not so sure I want to step inside an IKEA again - to be pushed through like schools of fish among the masses, in a claustrophobic mess of wood, bright paint and screaming kids. I'd rather throw my things in cardboard boxes than do that.

Listening to ''Envio - Time to Say Goodbye'', by Armin Van Buuren (Play Count: 3)