The A's deserve an 'F'

At the risk of looking a dead horse in the mouth, Seattle's victories over Oakland this season should come with an asterisk and an apology.

I know, I know. I butchered the phrase about examining a gift horse. Consider it an ode to Mark G., who was one of my five roommates my final two years of college in a house we rented on 15th Ave. NE, across from the reservoir. Mark had many talents from foosball to archery to the fact he once closed a wound on the forehead of another roommate using Scotch tape.

Mark also had a tendency to merge common phrases in a way that sounded poetic.

“I know this place like the back of my head.”

“Look at that dog sunning itself in the shade.”

I don’t know if Mark ever discussed the dangers of beating a dead gift horse in the mouth or I just decided that was the kind of thing he would say and so — for the past 25 years — have attributed it to him.

I tend to treat a good joke like the rest of baseball treats the A’s in that I beat them. Repeatedly. That’s not to take anything away from the Seattle Mariners and their back-to-back victories over Oakland, which have brought them back to .500. Good wins. Especially on Tuesday.

But watching Oakland this season makes me very sad because this franchise has come to embody two of the things that I found most loathsome in professional sports: civic extortion and premeditated losing.