Author: the A man88

By Alex Fitzsimmons, email [email protected]

It’s the worst feeling in the world. The kind of feeling you get when you step in an airplane and breathe in a whiff of unfiltered gook mixed with dead skin and a glut of infectious bacteria. Whether you dominate for 8 2/3 innings or get smacked around for 1 1/3, it doesn’t matter–you feel helpless, vulnerable.

With two on and two out in the top of the fifth inning, Wednesday, St. Louis Cardinals skipper Tony Larussa trotted out to the pitcher’s mound, lifted his finger, signaled to the bullpen, and sent starter Mark Mulder down the lonely, shameful walk to the clubhouse.

“All great things come to an end,” however clichéd and unoriginal it may sound, it’s true. Even in baseball: players age, teams rebuild–it’s an inevitable cycle.

While high-market clubs like the Yankees and Red Sox may have more flare and sizzle than lowlier, modest clubs like the A’s, it’s teams like the A’s who avoid lengthy, piteous rebuilding stages because they consistently maintain a nucleus of young talent and don’t spend frivolous dollars on over-the-hill, washed up veterans.

It comes down to promoting from within–maintaining a zealous, fervent farm system of young guys who are committed to winning. The teams that do that will never be out of contention.

The following clubs will be talked about long after the Yankees and Red Sox recede into mediocrity.

I wonder how Billy Beane will feel when he’s watching the MLB playoffs at home, with his Oakland A’s floundering to the deep, cold, piteous cellar of the AL West, after he single-handedly abolished any chance of his team making the playoffs when he traded away two of his most electrifying starters, thus entrusting his reputation with the less-than-proven likes of Rich Harden and Danny Haren.

Probably humiliated.