thoughts of enjoying a streak

shared by VJ Rabuy, her sister

In September 2002, Cindy was in The Bay for some reason. Coincidentally, it was towards the end of baseball season, smack dab in the middle of the historic 20 game win streak that the Oakland A’s achieved (as featured in Moneyball).

When the A’s reached 17 wins, Cindy got the idea to buy tickets to the would-be 20th win game. We didn’t know how many tickets we should buy, so we decided on five. Luckily, Cindy’s good friend Phi, my then boyfriend Ryan, and our cousin Theresa, said they could join us.

A few days before the game, we went to Target and found some kids’ sized A’s shirts. With the help of our sister Arlene, we went ahead and redesigned the shirts to our liking, cutting out the collars so we could fit our heads through. We decided to make Theresa’s a tube top!

I have tidbits of little details of the game day stored in my memory bank. I remember we were in the third deck and first row. We quickly realized that the first row wasn’t the best row to be in, because so many fans passed by in front of us as they found their way to their seats. It was “Double Play Wednesday”, so our tickets were only a dollar each.

We had a lot of fun in the car ride getting there. Ryan drove and Phi sat in front. The three of us girls were in the back in our A’s shirts, and Cindy was clad with yellow and green face paint. She painted a ‘2’ and a ‘0’ on her cheeks. She gave Theresa the A’s logo and put “Tejada MVP” across my face. We were so excited to have a chance to witness history!

After that game, I still wore my shirt. I kept it in my wardrobe up until the point where I stopped exposing my midriff. I know Theresa wore hers and even had it on at Angel’s stadium when they played the A’s. She wore it as a skirt.

I am thankful to have many memories of Cindy and A’s games. I even have memories of Cindy and Giant’s games. I like to think that Cindy would have continued to root for her home team, being a hometown girl and all. If there are SportCenter Score Alerts in Heaven, I imagine Cindy would have fun keeping track of the games.