Orange Northern California Skies Make Weird Backdrop for A's-Astros Baseball

Wednesday saw the Oakland Athletics and Houston Astros play a game at the Coliseum under dark orange skies thanks to the smoke and ash in the air, byproducts of the many NorCal fires. It was, reliever Lou Trivino said, like playing baseball on Mars, although Astros manager Dusty Baker, a Northern Californian product, simply turned to Jimi Hendrix's `The Sky is Crying.'

You may have read something about Wednesday’s dark orange skies in Northern California, the result of smoke and ash from the state’s outbreak of wildfires.

Or maybe you’ve seen pictures or video on social media of the skies or of the ash that lightly covered the Coliseum’s green seats.

Relievers Lou Trivino and J.B. Wendelken are two of the many who’d never seen anything like it before. It was, to say the least, weird.

“I woke up to that yesterday, and it was kind of intimidating,” Wendelken said, “for about 2½ minutes, figuring out what was going on.”

The skies were dark, and so was the humor.

“There were a lot of jokes about the end of the world,” Wendelken said of sitting in the Coliseum stands during the A’s-Astros game. “There were a lot of Star Wars jokes or Mars jokes. It was the bullpen being the bullpen, and we made the best of it.”

Trivino said the experience was almost cinematic.

“I’ve seen a lot of movies with skies like that; it usually doesn’t end well,” Trivino said. “So honestly I was expecting the world … I have no idea. But it was surreal. I’ve never seen anything like that. I felt like I was on Mars playing baseball.

“I’m not taking away from the reason why it happened, but it was definitely weird, very odd, but cool at the same time.”

The Coliseum isn’t particularly close to any of the Northern California fires, but the number of them, the size of them and the directions of the air flow all combined to sock the Bay Area with the darkest, orangest daytime skies in memory.

“Honestly, I wasn’t sure,” Trivino said when asked if he thought the game would even be played. “I thought maybe I overslept. It was crazy.”

He wasn’t alone. Manager Dusty Baker, who grew up in Sacramento, about 90 miles from the Coliseum and later played for the A’s and played and managed the Giants, was wondering what was happening and turned to classic rock for some answers.

"I was actually playing Jimi Hendrix today: 'The Sky is Crying.’ The sky was crying today,” Baker said before the game. “It was orange. I thought I was going to go outside and see Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now. It’s a strange and eerie feeling.”

The air quality index was such that the game got played, Oakland getting a walkoff win when former Astro Ramon Laureano singled with two out in the bottom of the ninth.

The A’s have just Thursday’s game left against the Astros, the second-place team in the AL West. The 26-15 A’s have the biggest divisional lead going into the finale, 5 ½ games over the 22-22 Astros.

Follow Athletics insider John Hickey on Twitter: @JHickey3

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