



View photos Jonny Gomes celebrates the A's AL West championship. (Getty) More

OAKLAND, Calif. – There is no perfect explanation for the Oakland A’s as champions of the American League West, having run the twice-defending AL champions off the field on Wednesday afternoon in this old, dark, creepy stadium.





So, you go for the metaphor.

The celebration had wound down toward something like sanity. They’d sent the Texas Rangers into the most frightening game in sports, three hours that will validate 162 games of work, or not. They’d come back from 13 games over three months, from five games over nine days.

The economical, anonymous, ratty-assed A’s had done all this. On Wednesday they went down 5-1 in the game that might determine the rest of their October, then scored the next 11 runs, and they drank to that. They drank to themselves, whoever they are, and they filled their clubhouse with cigar smoke, and they tried not to look at the guy running around in the leopard bikini underwear.

And along came Jonny Gomes, who, at 31, seems ancient in a place where 19 rookies have come through, 15 of them still on the roster. He wore a bright yellow robe with his name across the back like a boxer, because of course he did. He came upon a gentleman standing sedately off to the side. This gentleman was dry and minding his own business in a room where everyone’s business was everyone else’s business.

So Gomes pulled a fresh beer from a tub of ice.

“Check this out,” he said.





Gomes placed the beer on the floor between the gentleman’s shoes. The gentleman stared curiously down at the beer and then at Gomes crouched beside it. His eyebrow wrinkled. Gomes squeezed the beer can as hard as he could.





The cold and golden liquid shot straight up, drenching the gentleman’s pants from front belt buckle to back belt loop. At which point the gentleman howled. He left the floor in the way a grasshopper does a branch, with no discernible flex or preparation, like gravity had momentarily released him.

When he landed in that bowlegged way people do when something terrible has occurred in their inseam region. He spread his hands, then gazed upon his dripping pants, then lifted his eyes to meet Gomes’.

“What the …” was all that came out.

[Related: Oakland seizes AL West title on final day of the season]

Gomes squealed with delight, the clubhouse denizens roared with laughter, and Gomes padded away, the tail of his yellow robe chasing him.

Here’s the metaphor.

“That,” Gomes said, “is called a shocker. That’s a shocker right there.”

Those are the A’s.

From nowhere – other than perhaps Billy Beane’s imagination – came the A’s. From 88 losses last season. From predictions of the same, at best, for this one. From veteran starters being lost to injury or drug suspension, from an offense that batted .238 for the entire season, from a handful of trades that appeared more suited to easing owner Lew Wolff’s financial burden than winning championships.

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