Shared Newspaper

The guy came up to me at the Mammography Center at Kaiser, leaned over and said, boldly, "Is that your newspaper?" "Yes," I said, as I was squirting Systane into my eye. "Can I read your Sports section?" he said again.

"I'm sorry," I replied, "but I'm reading it." I hate it when men do that to me, assume I'm not going to read the Sports section because I'm a woman. There it was, lying there pristinely, the Oakland Tribune sports section. I hadn't even opened it yet.

"Mr. Jackson," the nurse then called from the counter, "you're in the wrong section." "Damn!" he said, and he shuffled off.

Hey, I can't blame people in Oakland for wanting to read the sports section. It ain't about the Oakland Raiders, or the San Francisco 49ers, two non-entities who are so bad that they're having discussions like, "Gee, if the Raiders' offense played the Raiders' defense, do you think anyone would win?" Nope, it's all about the Oakland Athletics, who finished their season by winning the ALCS, smashing the Twins, but losing the Division Series, being smashed by the Tigers.

The A's have just unceremoniously dropped their manager, Ken Macha, not really blaming him for the lack of oomph at the end, but, rather, blaming him for not saying hi to the back-up catcher.

And now there's a lot of speculation about who will take his place. The waiter at the Montclair Egg Kitchen this morning asked me about it today. "Do you think it's Wash? Lache? How about Geren?" I like all those guys, I replied. What an exciting time in baseball -- ironic, isn't it, that the exciting time happens days AFTER the season is over?

I was on the last bit of my newspaper when the lady sitting across from me in the Optometry section of Kaiser asked me, "Is that your paper?"