As Red Sox fans revel, Oakland cruising on easy

West Coast view of playoff may be `been there, done that'

By Joanna Weiss, Globe Staff, 10/1/2003

OAKLAND, Calif. -- There has been talk in these parts about how it seemed funny -- funny meaning "weird" -- that a certain Boston baseball team would celebrate clinching a playoff spot with a full-on, joyful, undulating bear hug on the field.

As if it were silly to get so excited about a little-bitty division series.

This, it appears, is the West Coast view of baseball. Sure, there are fans out here, and they profess to love their hometown boys, and they get indignant if you walk up and blithely insult their team. But there's something missing.

Picture one Darrell Williams, 36, a sharp-dressed accountant sitting at the Golden Bear sports bar Monday night, assessing playoff odds and the intricacies of Red Sox pitching, inexorably calm.

"I guess we're not going too crazy right now," Williams said, with one eye on the NFL game on the TV close by, "because I guess this is what we expect."

Expecting the playoffs! Such are the baseball riches in a city that has seen postseason play in each of the last four years, and 14 times since 1969 -- in a region that has not one, but two division-leading teams, two separate playoff series in town today.

But while Boston is all Red Sox all the time, the biggest talk on Bay Area sports radio yesterday wasn't about baseball at all.

It was the San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Terrell Owens, who practically trash-talked his quarterback after an ugly loss.

And while Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino is slinging his political clout to get the Citgo sign turned on in time for home games, Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown will not, repeat, not, be attending the game tonight.

"This mayor's not quite so gung-ho," conceded his spokeswoman, T.T. Nhu. "There are a number of things that are going on in Oakland that are more pressing today."

Here is what Official Oakland finds more pressing than a baseball game: next week's recall election, which could determine the future of California; the long-awaited verdict in a police brutality trial that has been described as the city's Rodney King case.

In Boston, a 300-pound gorilla can escape from the zoo and attack a child, and people still obsess more about the playoffs.

But then, the Bay Area is all about distractions. There are other things to do out here, people explain: tramp around outdoors in fine weather, work for computer companies.

And when it comes to sports, they say, football is where the attention goes, where the rivalries stick.

Fans rarely cross the line between the 49ers and the Oakland Raiders. But when the A's play exhibition and interleague games against the San Francisco Giants, people have been known to show up wearing hats split down the middle, one half representing each team.

"That would never happen in Boston," mused Bob Agnew, program director of KNBR, the San Francisco sports radio station.

Um, no. But then, in Boston, baseball fandom is religion, a manifestation of hope, a test of endurance. If you've built up the strength to bear years of cruel defeats, you don't have another favorite team. You have a community of fellow sufferers, and you can't let them down.

Being an A's fan, by contrast, can be lonely. Brandon Cantack, 43, has been to games where the crowd in the Network Associates Coliseum was a shade over 2,000. When he finally started traveling East for baseball games -- to places like Fenway Park -- "I was blown away," he said. In Oakland, "it's not at all like it is on the East Coast. It's not even close."

And this latest trend of sold-out seats at Pac Bell Stadium, the deluxe bayside home of the Giants?

It's not baseball at all, Cantack contended yesterday, sitting in the sports bar in the Airport Hilton.

"Going to Giants games became trendy," he said. "Sort of a fad thing."

This is the cross Oakland fans have to bear -- not losing, but being out of style. Ever since Barry Bonds emerged as a slugging superstar, ever since the Giants moved from Candlestick Park to their fancy new digs ("from a garbage dump to Taj Mahal," Agnew says), the Giants have been cool.

The A's are the cheap date, and we're talking very cheap. On Wednesday nights, you can go to the game for $2, and buy a hot dog for $1.

The Giants are the "older, prettier sister that always had her way. We're the ugly sister," said Jose Torres, 40, another A's fan at the Golden Bear. "That's one thing we're fighting for. Respect."

Yes, it turns out A's fans have their own litany of complaints. About their low payroll, $56.6 million compared with Boston's $104.9 million.

About their concrete monstrosity of a stadium, a baseball/football monolith in an industrial zone. About the fact that they keep losing star players -- Johnny Damon to the Sox, Jason Giambi to the Yankees.

So, if you can imagine it, these people are jealous of the folks on Yawkey Way.

"Man, you got too much," says Sean Thomas, 32, a youth counselor and security guard at the Golden Bear. "Come on, man. Bring us Damon back. Our team is on welfare. You can say that the A's get WIC, and they still win."

That's the thing. They win. To truly understand the joy and suffering, you might just need to be in Boston.