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The Oakland Telegraph
22 October 2030
Disappointing Oakland crash out as Detroit claim American League championship title
By Sue Nearandyetsofar, final hurdle correspondent
In an article a week ago, this newspaper implied that the A's run of success over the last decade may have been getting a little boring. Oakland GM Paulie Beane was deeply unhappy with this viewpoint, which he considered pretty much heresy from a Bay Area publication, and let us know his stance on the issue in no uncertain terms. His rant down the phone to our editor, where an impressive 75% of the words he used were unprintable expletives, is by far the most viewed item on our website. Given that it is the only item that isn't advertising on our dreadful website, which is, ahem, somewhat lacking in investment, this is perhaps unsurprising. In light of Oakland's crushing 4-1 defeat to Detroit in the American League championship series, we now recognise that Beane was right, winning isn't boring.
Beane was in a foul mood in his post-match press conference last night, his efforts to control his emotions and take a more balanced approach to his role apparently forgotten in the fallout from a painful postseason defeat. "Some of our key players just didn't sodding turn up", he bemoaned. "Not wishing to single anyone out, but this postseason Karl Dickson has an ERA of 4.56 and Lucio Vargas 4.61. William Morris is batting .152. Okay, that can happen in a short postseason, but it is very frustrating".
Truth be told, Oakland were unlucky against Detroit. They actually out-scored the Tigers across the five games, but came out on the losing side in all three 1-run games in the series. The first of those 1-run games was in the series opener, where Karl Dickson was again hit early on and the offense couldn't pull back the deficit. Detroit then won the next two games to take a 3-0 lead and put the A's in a hole. Nathan Hamilton had another fine day on the mound in game four, as the A's gave themselves a glimmer of hope with a stunning 9-0 win. But it wasn't to be this year, as, despite taking a 4-1 lead in the top of the 7th in game five, the Tigers reeled them in, winning 5-4.
So Beane and Oakland return home to lick their wounds, while Detroit advance to face St. Louis in the World Series. Both teams are making their first appearance in the fall classic since the Dynastic Era began in 2015.
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