2014: Life as a MLB Season Ticket When the Team is Away, the Fans ...??

It’s a good question really. What do crazy fans who attend almost every ballgame do when their team is on a long road trip? Right now my Oakland A’s will have been gone 10 full days when they return Friday to take on the Houston Astros. (I threw out the ceremonial first pitch to Ryan Cook at the first A’s vs. Astros game in 2013 but that is another story for another time.)

Anyway, of course there are fans and season ticket holders who follow their teams on road trips, my self included (but again that’s another story for another time). Yet no one can follow their team to every city, unless of course they are a millionaire and can travel anywhere but the average, normal person who’s a crazy fan (so semi-normal people), what do they do when their team is away?

Well, I guess the first thing people like me do are all the normal things that you let go because there was that, Wednesday double header that you just couldn’t miss. Things like laundry, dishes, errands, making up for that day of work you may (most likely) have missed. But how do these obsessed fans cope?

Wanna read more about what I do when the A's are outta town? CLICK HERE! 

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You can find us on Twitter @OakAsSocksGrl and @SportsUnbiased1

2014: Life of a MLB Season Ticket Holder: What a Weird Week!

Most of the time I try to tailor my column to encompass the season ticket holder experience to all fans but this week was so strange that it's going to be all about the my week with the A's. In all my years of having tickets and going to games I have never encountered a week, especially an opening week, that played out quite like this. Whatever bizarre thing could happen did happen.

Mom and I on Opening Day! (Photo credit: A's Fan Photos)

First of all I live in Northern California. It has not rained since September (there was a rain delay at an A's game so I remember) and everyone is worried about a drought. So, the week leading up to Opening Day it rained. Thunder, lightening, small tornados the whole deal - this stuff never happens in NorCal at least not often. The last time the A's had a game rained out was in 1998.

Opening Night went great with the exception of having that freezing feeling that you can feel in your bones. It was literally bone chilling cold which most of you will laugh at because it was only in the upper 30's, lower 40's. So it was cold but there was not a whole lot of rain. A's lost but that is typical - finally! - one thing that was normal during the week. The A's have lost their last ten Opening Day games. True story. But we've been the the play-offs three times in the past nine years so I kind of look at it as batting .300!

The Tuesday the game was rained out but at least we were aware of this prior to heading out to the O,Co Coliseum in Oakland. I live about 30 minutes outside of Oakland, 20 minutes on a good day. Anyway, Wednesday there was sun and there was something else highly unusual, a double header to make up for Tuesday's game. I went to the day game on Wednesday but didn't stay for the night game. The A's went 1-1 which was fine with me. That left us at 1-2 after three days of the week. Could be worse but our supposedly awesome new closer acquired during the off season from the Baltimore Orioles blew the games both Monday and Wednesday night. He did not pitch in the day game we won! Coincidence? Maybe or maybe I am just cynical.

To read about the rest of my crAzy week (and see me "nerded out" in some major NERD POWER gear) ... CLICK HERE! Brought to you by Sports Unbiased

You can find us on Twitter @OakAsSocksGrl and @SportsUnbiased1

2014: Life as a MLB Season Ticket Holder: There's Always Hope

Hope is a part of baseball. One of my favorite things about baseball is that there are games almost everyday year-round and for all big-time baseball fans that accounts for about six to seven months of the year, for some much more. Even when your team is eliminated in the playoffs so close to the World Series, every fan can take solace in the fact that there will a new season just six months away. Some fans, Season Ticket Holders (STH) especially, take that hope for a new start and go to fall ball to watch the prospects play in Arizona, keep track of winter ball in other countries and countdown the days to that next trip to Spring Training.  It's something I especially love about being a STH. Your team loses one night, you will always be there the next day with a chance, a hope for your team to be victorious.....

Please CLICK HERE to read more of my column on Sports Unbiased!

2014: LIfe of a MLB Season Ticket Holder: STH Friends are Like Family

This week in the little story that is my Life of a Major League Baseball Season Ticket Holder I am going to pick up where I left off last time. I was in my hotel room at the DoubleTree and had to take off in order to get to an A's game at Phoenix Municipal Stadium against the Los Angeles Dodgers with the reigning Cy Young Award winner, Clayton Kershaw, on the mound. I couldn't be late to see Kershaw!

Lucky for me, I was there to see the southpaw get crushed by the A's offense! Kershaw cruised through the first two innings but wasn't able to get out of the third inning. The A's scored 5 runs off Kershaw and seven total in the inning. They eventually won the game 7-3. So that was a great game in my book.

Besides winning the game, another great part of going to spring training is that you get to see, what I like to call, your "Season Ticket Holder (STH) Neighbors.' STH neighbors started out for me as just the people who had tickets directly around where my seat is. I've seen families come and go, children grow up and go to college. Overtime you develop relationships with these people with whom you share a common love. I have to say that your direct STH neighbors are where the really deep friendships are formed. Some families do come and go (I mean, my family was new in 2002 when we moved our season tickets from section 219 to section 128.) but you end up staying in touch and develop friendships with new people. With so many games and weekends spent together it makes sense that STH would bond.

To Read the Rest of this article go to Sports Unbiased - Your Alternative Source for Sports!

2014 Oakland Athletics: Life of a MLB Season Ticket Holder

So this column is going to appear on Sports Unbiased every Monday at 12pm Eastern Time! I hope you guys will take a minute to read it and once it gets going, really enjoy it!! :-)

xx ~ Jen

Welcome to the first edition of 2014 Oakland A’s: Life of a MLB Season Ticket Holder. I’m Jen aka the original “Oakland A’s Socks Girl.” I’ve also had season tickets for well over a decade now. I sit down the third base line in Section 128, row two, seat eight, directly behind the Athletics’ bullpen. That’s my seat. I LOVE that seat. I could be buried with that seat and know that I died happy! My mom sits in seat nine and my dad in ten. Seat seven also belongs to the Rainwater family but being that my brother lives in Merced, CA, we usually have a guest. Technically we only have our season tickets for every weekend home stand. But lucky for my mom and me, the A’s have a great policy where you can turn in tickets that you aren’t going to use or that you didn’t use to be able to go to weekday games. So in essence, I usually make four to five games every home stand, which equals out to about 60 games per season....

Wanna Read More? Click here .... Sports Unbiased - Life of a MLB Season Ticket Holder