Dog days

 ... or, lame duck days. 

It's Choose Your Own Species time out in Oakland, Calif., and that is a sad deal for anyone with a working appreciation for baseball  lore. The Oakland A's are about to become the Las Vegas A's thanks to their garden slug of an owner, and it's enough to uncurl Rollie Fingers' fabled 'stache. That the A's of Rollie and Reggie and Catfish Hunter and Joe Rudi have now become the Nays is the worst kind of betrayal, of both the fan base and history.

As of this morning the A's stand 10-43 on the current campaign, and they're schlepping a nine-game losing streak into Memorial Day weekend. Five days before June rolls in, they're already 23-and-a-half games out of first in the AL West. And if geography got drunk and the A's were suddenly in the AL East, they'd be 28 games adrift of the front-running Tampa Bay Rays.

I  can't imagine how it must feel to be an A's fan these days. And that's saying something considering I'm a fan of the eternally pitiful Pittsburgh Pirates.

At least the owner of my Cruds is just a penny-strangling Scrooge, and not a seemingly vindictive SOB like the Garden Slug (whose straight name is John Fisher). Not content with just fleeing the fan base that got to see the glory days of Rollie and Reggie 'n' them, the Garden Slug decided to give it an extra kick on his way out the door. It's about as unconscionable as unconscionable gets.

Hey, Oakland, guess what? I'm gettin' outta Dodge. You can keep your s***hole of a ballpark that's only a s***hole because, as the anchor tenant, I refused to put any dough into it. And as a parting gift, here's a garbage Triple A team to watch as I head out the door.

Adios, mother(bleepers)!

Yeesh. Upon further review, "garden slug" might be too generous.

Surely we can assign a more vile creature to this sort of cruelty, as the dog days settle into Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum two months early. Or as the lame duck days do.

Choose your species. Both work, sadly.