Rise and shine, campers

It's 6:08 a.m. and it's on for a three-inning live blog.

6:09: JD Drew has already been scratched.

6:10: Strike to littly Dusty and we're on! Then LITTLE DUSTY SINGLES UP THE MIDDLE, and now the Japanese fans are "Youk"-ing!

6:12: Youk grounds out, Pedroia to second, Papi up. Watch your heads. Popout. Man-ny. Man-ny. The first hint of sunlight over here. Manny fouls out. Dice-K time.

6:18: T-Buck time. Grounds to LITTLE DUSTY and he's out. Then Mark Ellis hits the absolute crap out of the ball, homer to left center, 1-0 A's. And all of a sudden Dice-K cannot find the strike zone, and I'm quite a bit more tired than I was 10 minutes ago.

6:22: Jack Cust, the legend, is hit by a pitch. Then there's a wild pitch. And Emil Brown walks (on a full count, at least), loading the bases. Looked to me like Bobby Crosby just struck out, but they didn't get the call. On the next pitch Crosby bounces back to somewhere not all that near the pitcher and Dice-K makes a silly play to get him at first and it's 2-0. Restart! Nevermind, strikeout, and its Mikey Lowell time. One inning in the books!

6:35: Single for Mikey-poo. Brandon Moss is up. He's no Randy Moss. Fielder's choice and Moss is on first, so I'm looking for the stolen base. Oakland gets a little DP therapy on the grounder to short. Now I'm REALLY tired. I'm going to have some coffee and some of the $40 worth of breakfast food I bought yesterday.

6:42: Kurt Suzuki hits a single to center, giving us our first Jacoby sighting of the year. He fields it exquisitely, like The Natural. Ryan Sweeney flies out to right. Travis Buck strikes out by Suzuki steals second. Varitek's throw ain't great but we get our first Lugo sighting. Dice-K's first strike to Mark Ellis is an awesome fastball. He's dealing now... straight into a full-count walk.

6:53: Get your crazy on. Throw down some sake bombs. Tavarez is warming up. Another full-count walk leading straight into Jack "Pedro Cerrano" Cust with Dice-K only throwing fastballs and his new change-up. Cust is swinging like Robb Deer. Cust strikes out looking.

6:58: I just took a tape recorder out of my bag to do some work and my bag smells like Trident Watermelon Twist gum. Holy crap, I have a lot of transcribing to do.

7:01: JACOBY. Strikes out looking. But Lugo singles. This is the year. LITTLE DUSTY shows off some opposite-field warning track power, which is promising despite the out. Youk grounds it to the far side of third and Jack Hannahan gets it but can't get Youk out, which is dangerous for everyone involved for Papial purposes. Ortiz watches the first strike like it's nothing and eventually rocks it — right into the shift. We'll take the solid contact, I guess.

7:10: Dice-K comes out for the final half-inning of your live blog (sorry kids). Emil Brown aims to make it a quick one by popping to Youk, who drops it, equaling his error total from last year. Wow, that was unexpected. And a lie. Youk caught it. Sidney Bubba Bobby Crosby grounds back to Dice-K and he's out. Full count to Jack Hannahan, and a walk.

7:18: Kurt Suzuki lines out to a leaping LUGO! That's it for me. Work and breakfast beckon. Enjoy the next 161 and two-thirds. Baseball season.

View from the Bay

A’s enthusiastic over trip to Japan

"It'll be a great experience going over there," right-hander Joe Blanton said. "I like eating sushi. It'll be nice getting to see what they bring as far as that goes. It will just be a cool experience. Something new is always good."

Tokyo-bound, five years later

Five years ago, the A's were all packed and ready to go to Tokyo. Equipment manager Steve Vucinich was preparing to ship 14,000 pounds of gear and baggage with the team, and director of travel Mickey Morabito had passports and visas at the ready.

The onset of the war in Iraq canceled that trip one day before Oakland and the Seattle Mariners were scheduled to leave, disappointing many of the players and support staff. So the A's requested to be considered for future international travel, and here they are again, packing up after Wednesday's split-squad games in Phoenix and Mesa and taking off for Tokyo.

Know Thy Enemy: Oakland Athletics

"Know Thy Enemy: Oakland Athletics" is third in a twenty-eight part series of season previews. Today our resident A's expert, Jesse Ducker, stops by to give us his thoughts on Oakland's 2008 season.

Yeah, this is a last place team.

Oakland Athletics' GM Billy Beane is world renowned for being the smartest GM in baseball. Back when Theo Epstein was parking Kevin Towers' car in San Diego, Beane was putting together a strategy for putting together winning teams on the cheap. You might have read a book about it. First, draft players out of college (not high school) that most scouts haven't heard of, and that do things like walk a lot or not throw a fastball very fast. Second, stock your roster with cast-offs from other teams that fill essential "roles." You get one or two good years out of the cast-offs and eventually replace them with your homegrown talent. And suddenly, a few years removed from looking absolutely pathetic, you're back in the playoffs. Well, generally the first round of the playoffs, but you get the point.

So this worked out pretty well for the A's between 1999 and 2006, but Beane again has gotten antsy. After merely toying with the idea of dealing from the bottom over the last few seasons, Beane decided to embrace it whole-heartedly this off-season, and commenced with the scorching of the Earth.

Beane took a wrecking ball to the roster under the guise of "going young," standard code for any GM who wants to say, "We weren't going to make the playoffs this year anyway." I mean, it's not like he could say, "We're shedding salary," because none of these guys get paid much anyway. All of this fine and dandy, except that Dan Haren and Nick Swisher, the best pitcher and hitter on the team, were already young. Mark Kotsay was the only player over 30 that the A's shipped out. Haren, Swisher, and Kotsay were traded for players who probably won't be ready until 2009 or 2010. So, for the 2008 season, the A's will be looking up at the Texas Rangers in the standings. The humanity.

The A's roster is a scary and disturbing place. The pitching rotation, under the absolute best circumstances, consists of Joe Blanton, Rich Harden (still injured), Chad Gaudin (also injured), Justin Duchscherer, and either Lenny DiNardo or Dallas Braden. Doesn't really hearken back to the 2001 or 2002 season rotations, does it? Also, if Blanton and Harden pitch with any sort of competence (and the latter stays healthy), they'll be gone by July.

The top off-season acquisitions were Mike Sweeney, Keith Foulke, and Emil Brown, all of who are decidedly not young. Sweeney hasn't played more than 125 games since 2002, but was really ahead of the Rockies' curve when it comes to loving Jesus. So he's got that going for him. He'll be better than John Jaha in 2000, but not as good Mike Piazza last year. If it wasn't for that minor thing of being part of a World Championship team, Foulke probably wishes he never left Oakland in the first place. He'll be sharing time as the set-up man with Alan Embree, who's also old and slightly useless. Brown has never hit more than 20 HRs or had more than 90 RBIs in a season, yet he'll be the starting center fielder.

As for players actually on the roster last year, Bobby Crosby is likely still hurt, so there will be lots of Donnie Murphy. Joining Emil Brown in the outfield is the returning Jersey kid Jack Cust. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he hit 26 HRs last year in only 124 games. He also managed to strike out 164 times in only 124 games. Oh, and he can't field and is in all likelihood mildly retarded. Eric Chavez is still around, but still hurt, and still basically a $10 million a year glove, which he's been ever since Miguel Tejada left town. And to put a big red cherry on top, the Moneyball poster-child, Jeremy Brown (no relation to Emil), decided to retire after only racking up five games in his major league career; the A's replaced him with Matt LeCroy. Yerp.

There are a few bright spots on the roster. Left-fielder Travis Buck looks legit. He only played half a season due to injuries, but the second-year player put up respectable numbers and is good with the glove. There's a chance catcher Kurt Suzuki might turn into a respectable player. Mark Ellis is still the best fielding second basemen that gets absolutely zero respect. Huston Street, if he can remain healthy, has as good stuff as most of the closers in the league. And we have finally arrived at the point where Daric Barton gets to show if he's any good. The A's got the highly touted prospect back in 2006 in a trade that brought them Milton Bradley. They've been bringing him up slowly in the minors since. The question is whether he's a 25 to 30 HR kind of guy, or a 15 to 20.

I guess we A's fans should feel somewhat lucky, as this is the first time in about a decade that you can't feel any optimism about their chances. Some teams have scrapped and rebuilt their rosters two or three times in that timespan. But unless you're a diehard fan of the Oakland Athletics, or you really want to see what Ground Zero looks like for Beane, there's nothing to see here. In 2008, the A's win 72 games and like it.

Jesse Ducker was born and raised in Oakland, California, and has been going to A's games since 1982. He has been in the stands to witness some of the team's highs (sweeping the Red Sox in the 1988 ALCS) and the lows (getting swept by the Reds in the 1990 World Series). He makes his living writing about music for various local and national publications.