Did Anyone Notice There Were Two Teams In Tokyo?

Tha fans that passed through the gates into the Tokyo Dome were largely sporting Red Sox gear. The cheering was loudest for the Red Sox it was almost as if the game was played back in Boston.

Did anyone notice the Oakland Athletics were also in town?

Major League Baseball scheduled the games at 6:00 AM ET which is a early rise for Sox fans on the east coast, but an even crazier 3:00 AM PT for those back in Oakland.

If that wasn't bad enough at one point during the second game Wednesday the Athletics flag hanging along with the Sox flag, Japanese, American and MLB flags in center field fell from the roof and had to be retrieved by a groundskeeper.

And to show just how little respect was paid to the Athletics, DirectTV in a statement apologizing for the outage of the game Tuesday morning said...

"We experienced some temporary technical difficulties early this morning that resulted in some channels not being available to customers. The majority of our channels were not affected and we have since corrected the problem. In the case of the Red Sox season opener, we were able to bring the NESN channel back up at the top of the seventh inning. ESPN2 came back on later, after the game was over. (Customers who have NESN or ESPN2 in HD were able to see the entire game.) We deeply apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused our customers - and particularly Red Sox fans. ESPN2 is planning to carry a repeat of the game at 2 p.m."

So DirectTV was particularly sorry to Red Sox fans, but Athletics fans, not so much.

Of course there's also the fact that this weekend, there wont be nearly as much talk about the resumption of the series with the Red Sox back in Oakland as there will be about the exhibition game between the Red Sox and Dodgers in Los Angeles on Saturday.

In the middle game of a three game set, the teams will travel over to the Los Angeles Coliseum to play in front of a crowd expected to surpass 115,000 fans.

What must the Athletics do to get some sort of respect? Their fans are certainly wondering.