Folks, I’ve got a problem.
As you may know, today is the last day at Deadspin for my friend and boss and colleague Megan Greenwell, and Megan is an Oakland Athletics fan, and I am a fan of the team that just got swept by the Athletics in the midst of a playoff race, and Megan has spent probably 40 percent of her waking hours this week telling me to write an Oakland Athletics blog. (The exact details of this “discussion” are in dispute. It started with her saying it’d be a nice thing for me to do for her going-away. Then, out of nowhere, she claimed we had made an agreement that if the A’s won the series against the Yankees I’d write about them—I never agreed to this. Finally it escalated to her ordering me to write the blog, noting, correctly, that she’s my boss for one more day.)
As you may also know, we have a new corporate boss, who you can read more about here if you are so inclined. (What a guy, that Jim! Am I right, folks?) And Jim has some ideas for the future of this website. One of them is to increase traffic. Double it? Quadruple it? No one knows the target, because he keeps making up new ones! (That Jim, always keeps you on your toes.)
You’re starting to see the problem. Because no one, absolutely no one, wants to click on a blog about the Oakland A’s.
No one wants to read about a franchise supposedly hamstrung by its small market (the fifth largest in America) and its minuscule budget (ninety million dollars) yet which has consistently overcome the odds to ... win nothing of note this century. People don’t care. The A’s are blog poison. I know this because I’ve been at this website for a long time, much longer than Megan has. People would much rather read about a squad of plucky underdogs like the New York Yankees.
But, alas, I’m not allowed to write a Yankees blog. This is an Oakland A’s blog. Here are some things that happened in last night’s Oakland A’s game.
A fielder’s choice!
A strikeout!
Joakim Soria: still in the majors, apparently! Good for him!
A’s Fever: catch it and pray it goes into remission!
And so I’m relying on you, gentle reader. Clicking on this A’s blog, despite your certain knowledge that literally anything else on the internet would have been of more interest to you, has both helped make Megan Greenwell happy and helped G/O Media meet its unrealistic and ever-rising traffic targets. You can help even more by clicking on every ad you see on the page (and thanks to Jim, you may see more and more ads every day!). If there’s an autoplay ad, watch that—not that you have any choice. Turn off your ad-blocker and be drowned in a 2011-era wave of pop-ups! And click on some other blogs while you’re here: may I suggest these?
Thank you for your continued support of A’spin. Let us hope we never have to do this again.