Game Report: A's 6, M's 2

Things were tight early, brutal late.

The M's flashed a lot of leather in the first few innings. Jeremy Reed made two nice catches at the wall and Lopez had a nice diving catch at second in the third. The Mariners took the lead at 2-1 on an Ibanez single, a JR double and and Ichiro single.

The A's tied it up in the 5th when NIck Swisher homered. Sele later gave up another hit and a walk, but got Bobby Crosby to tap weakly to third to end the threat.

A's starer Danny Haren had looked shaky up to this point, having baserunners in every inning. This continued in the fifth when he gave up a one out walk to Beltre. At this point Haren had thrown 81 pitchers and it looked like with Sexson and Raul coming up that we had a chance to chase him from the game and get into the surprisingly tasty A's bullpen.

Cue the Price is Right sorry music! From there, Haren retired 11 in a row. He only struck out one of those 11, but otherwise looked electric. Tons of movement on his fastball.

Too bad Sele wasn't able to go 8! Villone gave up a solo homer to Kielty, then got two outs. Nellie came in: single, walk, 3 run bomb to Kotsay, ballgame. At least half the crowd left after the homer. The rest stayed almost exclusively to boo Nellie.

At the risk of repeating myself, despite their decent ERA's Nellie and Villone are the wrong guys to pitch in a tie game. Lots of people criticized Grover for letting Nelson pitch to Kotsay (a left hander) but what was he going to do? Go get Thornton? I'd rather see Nellie! Mateo, Shiggy and Putz are the guys he should be using in the 8th, but instead he's rolling out Villone, Nellie, and Thornton. Ugh.

The A's scored 6 runs. That's their highest output in over a week. Yeesh.

Best moment from the 5th row. Boonie comes out to stand at the top of the dugout. Girl behind us shrieks, "I still love you Boonie!" Boonie turns, smiles and girlishly waves at her. Priceless.