The A's yesterday announced the "tarps that cover most of the third deck at the Coliseum won't be lifted for Tuesday night's game, or any game the A's might play in the American League Division Series," according to Pashelka & Lefkow of the SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS. A sellout crowd of 36,067 is expected for tonight's Game 3 -- the first playoff game in Oakland since '06 -- but "no more seats will be made available in the event of a Game 4 or Game 5." A’s VP/Broadcasting & Communications Ken Pries said, "Our feeling is that we hate to open it up and have maybe 2,000-3,000 people sit people up there." Pries said that the team "will make a decision in the next few days whether to remove the tarps for the league championship series should the A's advance." He also wrote in an e-mail that the team "would remove the tarps if the A's reach the World Series." Much of the third deck has been "tarped off since 2006 for A's games because of low attendance." But "public pressure to remove the tarps began growing last week during the final series of the regular season against the Texas Rangers, which the A's swept to win the A.L. West title." As of yesterday afternoon, "every available seat for Game 3 had been sold." Some tickets "remained available for Game 4" (SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, 10/9).
FROM THE OWNER'S BOX: In a Q&A with MLB.com's Barry Bloom, Owner Lew Wolff said it was "too late" to remove the tarp for today's game and there are "plenty of tickets left for Wednesday and Thursday if the games are played. If the fan interest was so large and pent up, which is not in evidence, those games would be all sold out by now. And while, I believe, games for all the other playoff teams are sold out, we have plenty of tickets available in case anyone is interested." Wolff said of extending the lease at the O.co Coliseum, "Whether we move or not, we would like to get another few years on our lease there. We're working on it. We have one more season to go." Wolff said of building a new stadium, "I better not comment on that. But any stadium anywhere would take three or four years to pull together." Wolff, when asked whether a new Oakland facility was a "dead issue," said, "We don't have any real options to build a new stadium there" (MLB.com, 10/7).
HERE WE GO AGAIN: The A's run to the postseason was profiled on last night’s edition of CBS’ “Evening News,” with CBS’ Jim Axelrod noting the club is the “poorest team in Major League Baseball with a roster stocked with rookies and low-paid veterans pulled off the junk heap.” A’s GM Bille Beane said, “Most people, I think, predicted not only would we lose 100, maybe 110 (games), so this has been satisfying.” Axelrod said, “If what General Manager Billy Beane has done sounds like a Hollywood story, well, it already was.” Axelrod was referring the Brad Pitt film “Moneyball” which was based on Michael Lewis’ best-selling book. Beane noted, “You essentially have to have players whose performance is better than what we're paying them.” Axelrod noted the A’s won 94 games this year with a $55M payroll while the Yankees won 95 games with a $200M payroll, so Beane "is now living a real-life sequel” (“Evening News,” CBS, 10/8).
