Source: USA TODAY

OAKLAND – Josh Donaldson tried to suppress his personality when he arrived in the majors with the Oakland Athletics, thinking that as a rookie he was better off being seen and not heard.

It wasn’t until his second recall from the minors last season, midway through August, that Donaldson decided to let go with his outgoing, sometimes-brash nature — a key component of his success — figuring he had nothing to lose after batting .153 over his first 28 games.

Turns out he need not have worried in the first place. Individuality is not only accepted but encouraged in Oakland’s famously loose clubhouse.

The A’s are up to their goofy antics again, adding a dugout canopy of arms as greeting for home run hitters to their previous assortment of Bernie Leans, hijacked mascot cars, hallway hockey contests and general wackiness.

More important, and once again most improbable, they’re back among the best clubs in baseball. With Donaldson leading the way offensively in a breakout season, the Athletics’ low-budget collection of role players will take a three-game lead in the American League West into today’s opener of a four-game series against the second-place Texas Rangers in Arlington, Texas.

“Our identity is a bunch of goof-offs who play the game hard and don’t care about the stigma of some things that we do being portrayed as bush league,” says Brandon Moss, a seven-year veteran on his fourth team who platoons at first base. “We just have fun. It’s a game, and winning has made it 10 times more fun.”

They’ve done plenty of that. Oakland has a major league-best 99-55 record since July 1, and it has won 22 of its last 29 games to again climb to the top of a division that was supposed to be dominated by the deep-pocketed Rangers and Los Angeles Angels. Both had opening-day payrolls roughly twice the size of the Athletics’ $60 million.

The club relies on young pitchers — four of the five starters were rookies last year — and platoons at designated hitter, catcher, first base and the second base-shortstop combination.

Manager Bob Melvin said that didn’t rankle his players: “They’re not a bunch of prima donnas who think they should play every day.”

The A’s don’t necessarily win because they might pepper the stands with 3-wood drives before a game, fly remote-control airplanes on the field or wear tiger-striped green-and-gold pants in the clubhouse.

Those have been hallmarks of recent clubs, but so has a strong pitching staff, which ranks third in the AL with a 3.64 ERA and has reduced that number to 2.60 in the last 28 games.

However, no less a figure than Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson thinks the playful environment helps.

“It carries on to the field that you’re relaxed,” says Henderson, a spring training instructor with his longtime club. “By relaxing, you play better. We put enough pressure on ourselves as it is.”

After wresting the AL West crown away from the Rangers by winning the last six games of the 2012 season, the A’s figured to regress to the mean. And yet the stat-savvy originators of the Moneyball revolution don’t seem to understand that concept.

‘Green collar baseball’

The completed a sweep of the New York Yankees on Thursday by outlasting them 3-2 in 18 innings, becoming the second team ever to win two home games of at least that length in one season. The A’s beat the visiting Angels 10-8 in 19 innings April 29.

Last year’s Athletics led the majors with 14 walkoff wins, and the marathon victory against the Yankees gave them five this season, tied for second in the AL. They’re 14-8 in one-run games, another example of what the A’s tout as “Green collar baseball.”

“They’re about as scrappy a team as you can find,” said Yankees outfielder Vernon Wells, who witnessed his share of the Athletics’ moxie the previous two seasons while with the Angels.

“They never seem to be out of games. Last year it was like clockwork. If it was a close game at the end, they were going to win it one way or another. You could see there was the makings of something special there. It’s a team of guys that truly enjoy being out there.”

That’s clearly the case with feisty Donaldson, a converted catcher who has developed into an outstanding defensive third baseman. Donaldson, 27, batted .290 with eight homers after his August call-up and started from the get-go this year.

He leads Oakland with a .307 batting average and 43 RBI, and his .878 on-base-plus-slugging percentage ranks third among AL third basemen, a stellar group that includes Miguel Cabrera, Evan Longoria, Adrian Beltre and Manny Machado.

Donaldson said letting his personality come out allowed his talent to blossom, although becoming more selective at the plate — he has doubled his walk rate while reducing his strikeouts — and matching his swing plane to the pitch have also helped.

“I didn’t feel like I was being myself, as far as being outspoken and having fun and showing it, because I didn’t want to step on anybody’s toes,” Donaldson said of his hesitant initial days. “For many years, way before my time … I feel like this organization has given the players the freedom to express themselves.”

Even if it means yelling at the opposing pitcher for having the temerity to strike him out with breaking pitches. That’s what Donaldson did May 21 against the Rangers, when their overpowering ace, Yu Darvish, twice got him to chase sliders.

Donaldson was irked that Darvish, who faces Oakland again Tuesday night, would not challenge him with his heater and shared his thoughts from the dugout.

“I like that, because there is that fight in him,” said hitting coach Chili Davis, who lauds Donaldson’s improved approach and situational hitting. “Instead of sitting on the bench and hanging your head, get mad, but don’t lose your awareness.”

Stadium not state-of-art

The A’s are aware of their status as baseball’s forgotten children. They rank 24th in the majors in attendance (21,556 average) while playing in O.co Coliseum, the only facility in the majors that doubles as an NFL stadium in the fall.

Their quest to move to San Jose, which has turned off many of the local fans, has been stalling in committee for more than four years as MLB avoids confronting the San Francisco Giants on the issue of territorial rights to the South Bay area.

Sunday, a flood of sewage drove the A’s to the Raiders’ locker room to shower, and clubhouse manager Steve Vucinich said the carpeting would have to be replaced.

But the A’s won’t stand for an outsider taking shots at their place of business, as CBS Sports columnist Jon Heyman did when he bemoaned that the home-and-home series in May between the A’s and Giants wasn’t exclusively contested at San Francisco’s AT&T Park.

Some Oakland players responded via Twitter, with the snarkiest — and most clever — retorts coming from reliever Sean Doolittle, including one that said, “I can see why you don’t like it. We have a strict No High Horse policy at (the Coliseum).”

“Trust me, we recognize the shortcomings of this place, and we know we don’t have the best stadium by any stretch of the imagination,” Doolittle told USA TODAY Sports. “But I think it gives us a little bit of character, and we kind of play off that.”

The Athletics’ plethora of young players, underdog mentality and relative anonymity — second-year outfielder Yoenis Cespedes qualifies as their biggest star — contribute to a loose clubhouse vibe that traces back several years and gained fame during the Jason Giambi frat-house days of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

The 1970s A’s, of course, broke with all decorum rules under late owner Charlie Finley, growing mustaches, sporting white cleats and wearing colorful uniforms.

And Henderson, who served four stints with his hometown team, recalls manager Billy Martin in the early 1980s telling players, “‘You can have as much fun as you want to, until you’re done winning. If you’re not winning, then you can’t have fun.”

Heck, when your iconic general manager (Billy Beane) can show up to work in shorts and flip flops, you know the atmosphere is not going to be terribly businesslike.

That was the word Moss and Josh Reddick used to describe the clubhouse in Boston, where both played before coming to Oakland. Reddick says he found the difference jarring but soon adjusted.

After the third or fourth walkoff win last year, Reddick delivered his first pie in the face to the unsuspecting game hero, and since then the Gold Glove right fielder has handled such duties.

Saturday, he and hyperactive Aussie closer Grant Balfour made off with the cart typically piloted by Stomper, the A’s mascot, and took it for a joy ride around the Coliseum field during batting practice.

“Everybody’s goofy in their own sort of way, and everybody shows off their personality,” Reddick says. “In Boston it wasn’t like that. Everybody was quiet, went about their business; a lot of veterans did their thing.

“Here we are letting everybody be themselves. And that’s what works for us.”

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Source: USA TODAY

OAKLAND – The ceremonial first pitch, often the purview of celebrities who can’t reach the plate and corporate fat cats, should provide for a touching, memorable moment before the Oakland Athletics host the New York Yankees this evening at the Oakland Coliseum.

In a unique marriage of technology and baseball, 13-year-old Nick LeGrande will throw out the first pitch from his hometown of Kansas City, Mo., with the help of a telerobotic pitching machine.

LeGrande, a fan of both the A’s and the Yankees, suffers from aplastic anemia, a rare blood disorder that induces fatigue and has rendered him unable to attend games with live crowds.

Instead, he will be joined in a miniature stadium by relatives, friends, doctors and former Little League teammates as he activates an app that will control the pitching machine on the Coliseum mound. The app will track LeGrande’s movements and will allow him to both throw the pitch and see where it goes.

The pitch will be caught by A’s reliever Ryan Cook, who was instrumental in bringing the team and the youngster together. The sister of Cook’s girlfriend has business dealings with Google, which has offices in Kansas City and is supplying the technology for the robot, as well as the mini-stadium.

A video tribute of LeGrande will play on the Coliseum scoreboard before he throws out the pitch, and afterward he and Cook will talk on camera.

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Source: USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO – Melky Cabrera was greeted with a majority of boos mixed in with some cheers in his first at-bat as a Toronto Blue Jay at AT&T Park.

The former San Francisco Giants star did not get any more popular the rest of the night.

The jeering intensified as the game went on, and Cabrera was a veritable enemy by the time he came up with the potential tying run on first base in the ninth inning. Cabrera flied out, and Sergio Romo got the save in a 2-1 Giants victory.

Cabrera was in San Francisco for the first time since being banned for 50 games last August after testing positive for elevated levels of testosterone.

“The fans pay to watch the game, and if they react that way, I won’t say anything bad about them,” Cabrera said.

Cabrera’s suspension lasted through the first series of the playoffs, and the Giants did not bring him back as they marched toward the World Series championship. He acknowledged that it pained him to miss the postseason, but said it was even tougher to tell his mother, Maria Teresa Astacio, that he had flunked a drug test.

They’re extremely close and she still joins him on homestands regardless of which team he’s playing for. Astacio was in Kansas City, Mo., last year when Cabrera won MVP honors in the All-Star Game.

“I didn’t want to tell her, but I had to,” Cabrera said in Spanish before going 2-for-4 in Toronto’s loss. “She felt really bad, as did the rest of my family. And I did, too. But I don’t want to talk about it much because it’s already in the past and I served my punishment, didn’t get to go to the playoffs.”

Cabrera’s return came with another steroid-related revelation, as ESPN reported that Major League Baseball will try to suspend up to 20 players linked to the Biogenesis clinic in Miami, which has been under investigation for allegedly supplying players with performance-enhancing drugs. Cabrera’s name is among the 20.

“I don’t know anything about it. This is the first I hear of it,” Cabrera told USA TODAY Sports. “If they suspend me again, I think that would be a harsh punishment because I already served my sentence. But it’s up to them.

“I believe I’ve already served my sentence, especially missing the playoffs. That’s what hurt me the most.”

Despite his quiet demeanor and lack of fluency in English, Cabrera established a strong bond with the fans in his 4½ months in San Francisco. A group called the “Melkmen” regularly attended home games dressed as old-fashioned milkmen and enthusiastically celebrated his exploits.

Jays manager John Gibbons said Cabrera has been heckled at road stadiums this season – “Sometimes it’s good to not speak a lot of English,” Gibbons joked – but that’s not the same as being jeered at the place where he enjoyed his most success.

Cabrera was batting .346 with a .906 on-base-plus-slugging percentage – both career highs – when he was suspended Aug. 15. This season, he’s batting .284 with a .703 OPS.

After Cabrera singled off Tim Lincecum in the first inning, the boos grew louder when he came up in the third.

“The fans here treated me really well,” Cabrera said before the game. “I was walking in the mall yesterday and several people said hello, treated me nicely. Some fans also said hello in the hotel and welcomed me back.”

The Giants saw Cabrera when they traveled to Toronto for a two-game series May 14-15, and manager Bruce Bochy handed him his World Series ring at the time.

Some of his ex-teammates, particularly close friends Gregor Blanco and Joaquin Arias, have expressed support. But Cabrera left behind a bitter taste by not addressing the team after the suspension.

Asked what he would tell his teammates, he said, “It was something I really regret. If I had a chance to say something to them, I would tell them they were very good teammates and I’m very sorry about what happened.”

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.