"Baseball teams have self-esteem, just like a teen-ager. Sometimes it can be high, and sometimes low. When you build success, it helps build self-esteem, and that creates those intangibles that allow momentum to happen."
With a perennially sparse budget -- US$55 million this season -- Beane has had to use a judicious eye for intangible qualities like maturity, toughness and energy.
"It's an aura," said Rex Hudler, the Angels broadcaster, who had a 13-year major league career. "Once you catch it, you ride it because you know it's not going to last forever. They're feeding off what they read now, and they're too dumb to know. This team should be called the Idiots. Boston made a killing on that attitude last year."
No offense intended; none taken.
"I know idiot is in a different context," said Barry Zito, the ace of the A's pitching staff. "But you know the bigger idiot is one who looks at the big picture, who takes into account all of the circumstances, who takes on all the pressures and starts to feel those and gets beaten down on an everyday basis. The smart ones choose not to do that. They look inside themselves and know that their skills and their visions will take them where they need to go."
Yet other teams have smart players with skill and vision. Tampa Bay has had several first-round draft choices over the years. Texas is loaded with young talent, as are Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and others. But those teams do not get off the ground, while Oakland soars.
Perhaps another potent stealth force is inside the A's clubhouse. "It's clubhouse chemistry," Zito said. "What it does is bring every ounce of talent out of these guys."
When Eric Chavez, now 27, arrived in 1998, he entered a mature clubhouse. "Now it has leveled out," he said. "I'm finally playing baseball with my peers. It took me six years to do so. We're always youthful. We're always young."
What the forever-young Athletics also have accomplished with their resurgence is a threat to the playoff path of the two AL East powers, the Red Sox and the Yankees. The Athletics and the Angels, the 2002 world champions, have better rotations and bullpens that should hold up down the stretch. The Angels entered Thursday's games with a three-and-a-half-game lead in the wild-card race.
"They're up on the high wire now, with no net," Hudler said of the Yankees and Red Sox. "The sentiment out here is that they're battling among themselves" for one playoff spot.
Zito added: "If we had our choice, the wild card would come out of our division every year. That's something we prefer, and if there's any way to take an edge on Boston or New York, that's what our goal is."
These A's, whose payroll is US$150 million less than the Yankees,' are underdogs with a bite.
"As a team, we look at ourselves as good players and a great team right now," left fielder Bobby Kielty said. "We're not looking like we're underdogs; we're kicking everyone's butt right now. We've been doing it for the last two months."
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