the Swingin' A's (Kurt hits a dinger!)

Tonight was throwback night at the Oakland Coliseum in the game between the Oakland A's and the Pittsburgh Pirates. Not only were the A's wearing throwback uniforms (a garish yellow for both their jerseys as well as their pants), but the Pirates wore old-style uniforms too. The green on the A's caps were the lighter lime green they used to have; the Pirates had the boxier-shaped caps with the horizontal lines on them. And the A's coaches even wore the white caps that the coaches of yesteryear wore.

Players from the World Championship teams from the 70's also participated in festivities, with many of them riding around the field in convertibles prior to the game. The television broadcast featured appearances from Billy North and Vida Blue joining Glen Kuiper (who wore spot-on 70's clothing, a wig and a mustache) and Ray Fosse (himself a member of those championship A's teams) in the booth. Also in the booth to call play-by-play for the 5th inning was longtime favorite A's broadcaster, Monte Moore. It brought back great memories of way-back-when, when he and Fosse worked as a team calling A's games.

In a perfect synchronicity, as Monte Moore was describing the origin of him using the word 'dinger' to describe home runs hit by the A's back then while having an actual favorite bell he used to ring that he brought on a whim to tonight's visit to the booth, with two outs, A's catcher Kurt Suzuki hit a home run! So both Moore and Fosse got to ring the bell as Suzuki was circling the bases - just like old times.

The entire broadcast was geared towards recreating the 70's, including the graphics that were used during the game: the old-style box scores using yellow-colored type was really well done. Many fans dressed for the occasion wearing wigs and donning mustaches, some wearing the Joe Rudi (#26) jerseys that were given out to early arriving fans.

It was one of the most enjoyable games I've watched in a long time... and by the way, the A's won too. :-)

P.S. - as I mentioned in my previous entry, I've signed up to submit articles to a website called Associated Content (recently bought by Yahoo!). My first submission was an entry I posted on this blog first (with minor changes). Here's the link if you're interested in checking it out.