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The Oakland Telegraph
29 October 2028
Brilliant A's regain American League championship crown, face Cubs in the World Series
By Ho-Li Cao, comebacks correspondent
At the start of this season, this newspaper's traditionally ill-informed and sensationalist correspondents predicted that Oakland general manager Paulie Beane had a long road ahead of him to return his club to the top of the game. Well, what on earth do we know? In fact, it's taken him only a season. Oakland have won their showdown against Houston in the American League championship series, and progress to meet the Chicago Cubs in the World Series. The wildcard Cubs squeaked past hot favourites St. Louis 4-3 to reclaim the National League championship pennant that they won last year. It will be their third fall classic of the Dynastic Era but they failed to win either of their previous two, losing to Minnesota in 2021 and Cleveland a year ago. Oakland, by contrast, are making their sixth appearance, and won their previous five.
As the championship series began, it looked like the nervous tension which built up during the Boston marathons was affecting the A's, and things looked bleak when the Astros won the first two games at the Coliseum 4-3 and 8-1. The two teams headed to Houston for the next three games, and the day off for travelling eastwards seemed to give the A's time to gather themselves. Some of Oakland's key batters, such as Luis Guzman, Patrick Snel and Dennis Hawkins, had had disappointing postseasons up to that point, but then suddenly sprang to life. Oakland easily won the next, critical game 11-1, with starter Karl Dickson throwing a complete game in which he generally made the Astros batters look rather silly, and tied the series at 2-2 with a solid 9-6 win in the next.
The next game, then, was crucial. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Starting pitcher Lucio Vargas showed just why he's so good and why Beane coveted him so much, as he threw a complete game shutout, allowing only 4 hits and no walks. Having won all three games in Minute Maid Park, Oakland were on a roll, and completed the series turnaround with a narrow 3-2 win in the next game, back at the Coliseum. The 34,700 crowd went absolutely bananas when closer Roy Ellis threw a 1-2-3 ninth inning to secure their passage to the World Series.
"I'm not sure my nerves can take much more of this", Beane joked at the post-match press conference. "It would be much less tense if I was just playing this on a computer game rather than managing a real baseball franchise. Wait a minute, this is a computer game. How confusing. Am I myself real or not?" After this remarkable season, A's fans will forgive Beane having a temporary existential crisis.
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