The Oakland A’s finally won a playoff series, and 24 hours later that reality is still sinking in. Let’s do the list again since we know it all by heart — and anyway, now that the sad streak has been broken, it feels more like a redemption origin story than a currently open wound.
The A’s hadn’t won a postseason series since the 2006 ALDS. Since then they’d lost six matchups in a row, and their last five trips to October had ended in the first round they played without advancing in the bracket — the ALDS in 2012 and 2013 to the Tigers, and the Wild Card Game in 2014, 2018, and 2019, to the Royals, Yankees, and Rays.