Once upon a time, I had a photo in a 4×6 glass frame supported by a stand on top of my wardrobe. I would see it every day, but it was only occasionally that I actually looked at it. It made me smile, chills ran down my spine and it would all come back:
The line. The Home Run. The MVP.
The pitcher. The road trip.
Everything.
In the late summer of 2002, the A’s won 20 games in a row. Twenty years later, it’s just absurd to write that sentence. Because I mean, come on, no team wins that many games in a row. Not even by accident.
It was worth a book and a movie called ‘Moneyball’.
That’s what Sunday’s meeting at the Colosseum and that team’s 2002 reunion will feel like to me. Just like a movie, because until then you could have written 100 baseball scripts and come up with nothing as ridiculous as a team going 3 1/2 weeks without losing a game.
That’s why it will be so good to see Art Howe. Besides being one of the best gentlemen I’ve ever met, I want to remind the old birds and tell the youngsters that in 2002 he won 102 races, got no contract extension and won another 103 in 2003. If you think that’s an easy thing to do with 25 professional athletes, go find Brad Pitt and ask him to do it.
That’s why it will be so affirming to see Scott Hatteberg. His career was about to end in the winter of 2001. By the fall of ’02, he cemented his legacy. Life can run on a fastball.
Over those 20 straight wins, the last was a 12-11 roller coaster at the Oakland Coliseum and the most stressful night of my baseball writing life. The excitement of 50,000 people as Hatteberg launched his walk-off home run into the night sky only came after the torment of 50,000 people when they saw an 11-run lead turn into a zero lead.
At 11-0, I thought it might be one of the easiest nights of my baseball writing life. Conventional wisdom will get you nowhere with baseball.
Miguel Tejada would agree.
Few thought that Tejada could become an MVP. Even fewer thought he could reach the top echelon of AL shortstops, who starred at the time with Derek Jeter (Yankees), Alex Rodriguez (Rangers) and Nomar Garciaparra (Red Sox). When I brought up those possibilities in stories about the team, I got a lot of resistance
On the Sunday before Labor Day, Tejada trailed the A’s with one out in the ninth inning against the Minnesota Twins and hit a three-run homerun – “TEJADA WINS IT! DO YOU BELIEVE IT?!” radio broadcaster Ken Korach roared – for win No. 18. The next day he walked off the Royals with a blistering single in the middle – “TEJADA WINS ANOTHER BALLGAME!” roared Korach — finishing off a 7-6 win in a game that once left the A’s 5-0.
Tejada became the AL MVP that weekend. And I was the Chesire Cat.
This brings me back to the picture that used to sit on my dresser. In it my son Clayton is 8 weeks old and in a child seat near me on top of the dining table. I’m on the phone, pen in hand, notebook open, talking to Tejada who was announced as MVP that day.
Clayton’s mother took the photo as a symbolic reminder of how life and a baseball season alternate that you could never have imagined.
So can a winning streak.
The streak began on August 13, with a 5-4 win over the Toronto Blue Jays. The A’s got eight innings to Barry Zito and a three-run homer to David Justice. In the third win, the A’s shutout Cory Lidle for seven innings. Lidle, the fourth pitcher in the famous Big Three rotation, never gave up a run during the streak, which spanned 32 scoreless innings.
The Big Three — Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and Barry Zito — accounted for 57 of the team’s 103 victories that year, striking out 493 batters and totaling 3.05 ERA in 675 innings. It is worth noting that all three of them were ordinary during the streak and received no love in the film.
The Streak was at five when the A’s went out for four games in Cleveland, three in Detroit, three in Kansas City—three bad teams. Justice joked that the A’s couldn’t win them all unless they won the first. They did.
He said it again the next night. Then the next. Then the next. . .
They won all 10. In win No. 12, led by subs John Mabry and Greg Myers, the A’s overcame a five-run deficit in the final three innings to defeat the Tigers.
After extending the streak to 15 with three wins in KC, a labor dispute between the players and the owner came to a head. Within 48 hours a strike was imminent. The season and streak were in jeopardy.
Fortunately, the players and owners came to a compromise. The A’s returned home to sweep the Twins in front of three of the most electric crowds in Colosseum history.
I don’t know where that picture of me and my son has gone. Along the way, it got caught up in the tides of life and disappeared.
Tejada is 48 and this is the ninth season since he retired. He never won an MVP again.
Most people only know Hatteberg as Chris Pratt’s character in the movie. Lidle died in a plane crash in 2006. Hudson and Zito won World Series rings for the Giants. Mulder got his with the St. Louis Cardinals.
The A’s no longer have the distinction of having the longest winning streak. Cleveland won 22 games in a row in 2017.
But that doesn’t change anything for me.
“. . . And it’s gone, and it’s 20 consecutive wins. . . “
What a moment in time. Once. Long ago.
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