Here's what's been going on in the wide world of sports while we've been fighting off the flu......

As the baseball season is now a quarter done, our occasional A's contributor, Christy of Athletics Nation, takes us through a team that somehow is managing to stay afloat despite the fact everyone on the team is on the DL except one of the ball girls and a coke vendor. Today, we'll go through the infield, and then we'll continue on with outfielders and pitchers...

-Cal took down #4 ranked UCLA in their quarterfinal match of the Pac 10 tournament. They had a big lead at halftime and blew the big lead but managed to hold on to force overtime. It sounds like a great game, actually, as UCLA fought their way back and then the teams traded leads up until the end. They now go to the quarterfinals and play #16 ranked Oregon. At 16-16, Cal has no way......

Hey now-- the Warriors are on a bit of a roll as they won their second game in a row, beating the Nugs 110-96. Sure, Carmelo didn't play, but for the Warriors, they have to be happy with the game as it's the first time this season the exact same Warriors mentioned in the Warriors press guide actually all appeared in a game. All of this is making Bruce Jenkins and Tim Kawakami drink from of the very same sippy cup of Kool Aid SFist Chris drank from as they are all now having visions of being crushed by the Mavs in the first round of the playoffs. And hey, if that doesn't add some shine to your day, the Warriors, East Coast Edition, are sucking up the joint these days. ...

-Sharks finally come home after a long road trip to play the first team in their division and their arch-nemesis, the Ducks, and lose. Ann Killion says the Sharks aren't making it any easier on themselves. -Scott Ostler has a new "Knucklehead of the Day" bit on the Sports Columnist blog on SFGate. His latest two knuckleheads are Peter Magowan for positioning Brian Sabaen in just the right way to be thrown off the......

The Detroit Tigers look like a team of destiny. It's usually a bad sign for any opponent when a team finds several ways to beat you. Instead of completely shutting the A's down like they did Tuesday evening, the Tigers matched each A's offensive threat with a flurry of runs of their own without a blink or stammer. And they showed us all why they, indeed, have the best bullpen in the Major Leagues. They slowed the A's momentum down just enough to deliver a decisive knockout blow in the eighth and ninth innings, a tribute to their indomitable will and Fernando Rodney's 96 mph fastballs and Todd Jones' craftiness. They are clearly this year’s Chicago White Sox, able to find the slimmest cracks and crannies in a team’s defenses and exploiting the hell out of them. ...

The Oakland Athletics this afternoon showed why this year’s team is infinitely grittier and more determined than playoff teams of years past. This collection of misfits and guys barely above the legal drinking age simply know how to win. They’ve outplayed and out-executed the Twins in the Metroblob, and showed the baseball world why they’ll go deep into the playoffs. Instead of Frank Thomas hammering the Twins into submission this afternoon, it was the likes of Nick Swisher, Marco Scutaro and Mark Kotsay running the Twins ragged. The 5-2 final score doesn’t reflect the way the A’s controlled this game. Boof Bonser, the Twins starting pitcher, never really had a chance against the highly selective, pitch-conscious A’s batters. They nitpicked the poor guy like vultures picking at an animal carcass. And in the end it came down to the basics: hitting, pitching, defense and the big play (something the Twins were touted as superior to the A’s). Esteban Loiaza, a man we’ve called out in the past, pitched like he’s been sipping on stud juice—he was simply outstanding before running into a couple of homerun blasts. It was also Swisher making adjustments and not swinging for the fences, but using that crappy dome for less glamorous doubles. Smart move, Swish! And it was Mark Kotsay’s brilliant inside-the-park homerun that sealed the deal on this little affair in Minneapolis. ...

Soy un perdedor, the Bay Area teams are winners, baby.......

Baseball is, like, so weird. A 6-game homestand that included Barry Zito’s first win since last July, Rich Harden’s first major league complete game and the catch of Eric Byrnes's life all sounds good, and the A’s got exactly that this week but still managed to drop 4 of those 6 to Seattle and Texas. This week alone, they went from Z’s W over Seattle in front of 30,634 fans on the kind of......

Sunday night, the A’s finished a 3-4 road trip with a frustrating 0-1 loss to Los Los Angeles Angeles de Anaheim Anaheim. Joe Blanton pitched the first complete game of his career, giving up 6 hits and a run and making everyone who hyped him going into this season look good, but the offense didn’t bring in the two runs it would have taken to win the game. The anemic run production—3 shutouts and......