Sept. 16--In a season in which so much has gone so wrong for the Oakland Athletics, the team did something absolutely right on Wednesday: The A's called up Barry Zito.
Zito, 37, gets his one last shot at the major leagues. He did not play at all last season, then toiled at triple-A Nashville this season, posting a 3.46 earned-run average. As he has watched and waited, the A's have used 12 starters this season.
The A's, with the worst record in the American League, play the San Francisco Giants next week. I hope the A's start Zito against his former Oakland teammate, Tim Hudson. The 40-year-old Hudson already has announced this season is his last, so he and Zito could face off next week and head into retirement together.
Zito is the last Oakland pitcher to win the Cy Young Award, in 2002. That was the year that served as the backdrop for "Moneyball" -- but with strangely little mention of rotation stars Zito, Hudson and Mark Mulder.
"Nobody ever really talked too much about our pitching in the movie," Hudson told The Times last year. "But that's not really what the book was about. The book was about having that different look, trying a different offensive philosophy. Because our pitching was so good at the time, they were afforded the chance to try something different."
In his seven seasons with the A's -- the last in 2006 -- Zito won 102 games. That ranks fourth on the all-time Oakland list, behind Catfish Hunter (131), Vida Blue (124) and Dave Stewart (119).
Zito beat the Angels in his major league debut, on July 22, 2000. The first batter he faced, Darin Erstad, is about to start his fifth season as head baseball coach at the University of Nebraska.
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