During the past offseason, the Giants seemed to have addressed their weaknesses and acquired a few good players. On the contrary, the A's have traded away a bunch of their stars for unproven players. Critics thought that Billy Beane has lost "it" and they seem to have given up on this season just to wait for relocation and a new ball park. That's what I thought too. I had high hopes for the Giants while not expecting much from the A's. Man, we're so wrong. Billy Beane was right again! The star closer he traded away is currently on DL and had zero contribution to his new team. On the other hand, the newcomers like Josh Reddick and Ryan Cook have performed admirably. I still remember looking up who the A's got from the Andrew Bailey trade and found a completely unfamiliar name: Josh Reddick. Well, he has hit 9 HR so far. Much better than I expected!
It's always a dilemma when they play against each other. I tended to root for the underdog in the series. However, since the Giants underachieved and the A's overachieved, both have nearly identical records entering the series. In this case, all I can root for are good games!
It has been a busy week for me as evident by the low volume of posts I wrote. I took a day off to follow the riders of Tour of California, the top bicycle race in US, at its Stage 3, between San Jose and Livermore. Even though the riders just zoomed by us in no time, it's really not about watching the race in the strict sense 'coz the atmosphere was awesome.
Another race that definitely worth watching was Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix, won by the underdog driver with the underdog team, Paster Maldonado from the Williams, beating out 6 other former champs (Alonzo, Raikkonen, Button, Vettel, Hamilton and Schumacher) Also worth mentioning was that Lewis Hamilton started from the last place (24th) and finished 8th, which was another amazing feat. He was the original polesitter instead of Maldonado but he was penalized for breaking the rule for fuel level (too few) in his car.
The Williams team winning it was specially a feel-good story. The telecast mentioned the last F1 winner from this team was current NASCAR driver Juan Pablo Montoya, whose F1 days seems ages ago. From this NYTimes article:
Williams is the third most successful team in Formula One, behind Ferrari and McLaren. But it has not won a championship since 1997, and had not even made it to the podium — the top three finishers — since the Singapore Grand Prix in Sept. 2008.
