Thursday was an off day, and off days are when a wandering team gets to stop wandering for a minute. So let’s sit a while with Wednesday night, when the Athletics beat the Dodgers 7-1 in front of 12,592 at Sutter Health Park — a modest congregation, a borrowed cathedral, a genuinely beautiful ballgame.
J.T. Ginn walked five Dodgers and never once paid the bill: six innings, three hits, one run. The lone blemish was a Freddie Freeman solo homer, his 14th, which is less a mistake than a tax — everyone pays Freeman eventually. Los Angeles went 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position because Ginn kept escaping rooms he’d locked himself inside. There’s a lesson in that for a franchise, probably.
The louder theology came from the catchers’ union. Shea Langeliers hit his 20th home run of the season in the fifth — twenty, on July 1, from a man employed by a team the sport keeps trying to misplace — and Jonah Heim added his eighth. Twelve hits in all against the richest roster money can assemble. The scoreboard doesn’t check payrolls. I love it for that.
The ledger, honestly kept: 41-46, fourth place, 3.5 games back — except the teams tied atop this division are 45-43, the flattest summit in baseball, and even a club that’s gone 3-7 over its last ten can see the top from here. And the hard part of the week: Brent Rooker‘s season is over — knee surgery, announced this week. A nomad team learns early that nothing is permanent: not ballparks, not cities, not the middle of the order. You grieve it, then somebody else grabs a bat.
The Dodgers flew home. The A’s stayed, briefly, which is its own kind of victory.
In a borrowed park,
the ball still finds the sweet spot —
home is where it lands.
