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The Oakland Telegraph
20 October 2026
Fourth straight American League crown for Oakland as beaten Twins apply to join the National League
By Una Beatable, American League domination correspondent
Can anyone stop the Oakland A's juggernaut? Not the Twins, that's for sure. For the third year in a row, the A's have dumped Minnesota out of the playoffs. This time they were simply swatted aside by an Oakland team that is bang in form at exactly the right time. Last night's 6-3 victory completed a 4-1 series win that made Oakland the American League champs once again. It is their fourth consecutive and fifth overall of Paulie Beane's increasingly legendary tenure.
The series had been billed as a battle of irresistible force meets immovable object. In the end it was more like Barcelona versus Stockport County. The Twins would have had more success trying to stop Lewis Hamilton by whacking his onrushing car with a helium balloon. And leading the Oakland charge was none other than the wrinkly old man himself, withering ace Jose Fernandez. Karl Dickson has taken over as rotation lead this postseason, but it is the four-time Cy Young winner Fernandez who has stolen the headlines. In his two starts against Minnesota in the series, Fernandez threw 15 innings for just a single earned run.
Led by Fernandez, Oakland jumped out of the blocks and were 3-0 up in the series before Minnesota had barely time to blink. A 3-hit shutout in the fourth game kept the Twins in with a shout, and A's fans started to get rather twitchy when they fell behind early in game 5 and were shut out for the first seven innings. But Patrick Snel's fifth postseason home run tied it up in the 8th, and Oakland scored 3 runs in the top of the 11th inning to seal the series. After the conclusion of the match, reliable sources say Minnesota made an application to join the National League, citing as evidence that their repeated inability to beat Oakland in the postseason demonstrated that the American League had failed in its duty to ensure competitive balance between all teams, and so they wished to switch leagues. Commissioner Rob Manfred-Mann gave the idea short shrift, telling reporters that he had told Minnesota to "sod off" and "just man up" and "that's baseball, it goes in cycles, deal with it."
The A's now head to the World Series where they'll face a familiar and local foe, the San Francisco Giants. They overcame reigning NL champions Cincinnati 3-0 in the divisional series, and, more satisfyingly, thrashed arch rivals Los Angeles Dodgers 4-1 in the next round. In what will be a repeat of the "Bay Bridge World Series" of 2023, the Giants will fancy their chances, since they, like Oakland, have so far gone 7-1 in the postseason so far. Something has to give, and the A's won't have it all their own way. But they have the chance of an historic four-peat.
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