There's a few things I've missed while being negligent in my Game Summary duties. The first is the knock-down drag-out debates I have in my own skull over who should get Star of the Game honors in situations like Wednesday's 4-0 win over the White Sox when multiple players can lay claim to the title. For example, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more worthy recipient than Chad Gaudin, who turned in 7 1/3 innings of shutout ball to drive his ERA down to 2.58... except Gaudin can direct much of the thanks for his fourth win of the year to my main man Jay Marshall, who entered the game to face a bases-loaded jam. Marshall induced a pair of feeble ground outs and preserved the clean sheet. Gaudin or Marshall? Marshall or Gaudin? In the end, Chad Gaudin was the Albertson's Reduced Fat Milk Star of the Game on the strength of his starting performance, but boy, was Marshall's relief stint sweet.

Yes -- Albertson's Reduced Fat Milk. My bones have felt especially flinty as of late.

The other thing I miss is coming up with the Phun Phacts, especially when one falls into my lap, like it did Wednesday. Whether Jon Weisman knows it or not, he supplied me with this inadvertent Phun Phact: two of Hiram Bocachica's 14 career home runs have come on May 23 -- one of them on Wednesday at Comiskey II, and the other five years ago at Miller Park, when the best-named outfielder in baseball homered off Jose Cabrera.

I propose that the wall calendar in the A's clubhouse be permanently set to May 23 in an effort to spark similar longball heroics from Mr. Bocachica.

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I need to devote some of the attention I'm paying to the A's to baseball games being played literally in my own backyard.

Alameda 7, Berkeley 6: Wes Moyer's bases-loaded single past a drawn-in infield brought in the winning run in the bottom of the seventh of an NCS 3A East Bay first-round game at Alameda's Lincoln Park.

Moyer's hit completed a two-run rally that saw the sixth-seeded Hornets (21-4) fight back from a 6-5 deficit.

Seriously -- Lincoln Park is like a block from my home. I could hear the cheering from my kitchen while I made dinner Wednesday. Why the hell didn't I go?

Saturday's quarterfinal -- also to be contested at Lincoln Park -- poses an interesting dilemma for yours truly. The Alameda Hornets -- last year's Class 3A champions, incidentally -- will be taking on the San Ramon Valley Wolves. I graduated from San Ramon Valley. I live in Alameda. Who, oh who, shall I root for? The alma mater? The home-town nine? Be true to my school? Root, root, root for the home team? Oh, cruel baseball gods -- whatever shall I do?

Well, I'm going to Modesto watch a minor league game, actually. But I tell you, on that drive down Highway 99, I'll be torn up inside!

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Judging by comments to the San Francisco Chronicle, Eric Chavez is not a dedicated reader of Catfish Stew.

"Billy (Beane) put together a good team. We're just falling apart physically."

Chavy, Chavy, Chavy -- an occasionally insightful man might suggest that the reality of the second sentence negates the accuracy of the first.