I went out for a bike ride in the afternoon and when I arrived home and checked Twitter I saw that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had passed away.

This must be said first and foremost: she lived a remarkable life. May she rest in peace.

Having now said that, I can now also say this: GAH!

I was already concerned about a constitutional crisis if the Presidential election was close and there were shenanigans around it, regardless of the winner. But now I’m certain there will be one, no matter what happens. Because the Republicans will try to pack the Supreme Court with another conservative, the Democrats will be angry about the Republicans dirty but legal tricks, and so the Democrats will do some dirty but legal tricks of their own the first chance they get, like adding four more Supreme Court justices, or adding DC and Puerto Rico as new states, etc. One cynical move gets met with another cynical move. And so what does all that mean for the upcoming election?

Who knows exactly how this will play out, but the instant the news hit, it became certain chaos was about to follow.

As if we needed more chaos in the year 2020.

The news reached me about an hour before the A’s-Giants game, so I didn’t have much time before first pitch to talk about it with my family and process the news.

The news was the elephant in the room, but the A’s broadcast made no mention of it whatsoever. The A’s broadcast was focused on the possibility that the A’s could clinch a playoff berth this evening if they won AND Seattle lost.

That’s what they kept saying, but the actual mathematical truth was that the A’s could clinch a playoff berth this even if they won OR Seattle lost, because Seattle has three games left against the Astros. If Seattle would win the rest of their games, that would mean that Houston would lose at least three of theirs and couldn’t catch the A’s.

In the end, it didn’t matter, because the A’s won and Seattle lost, so either way, the A’s are now in the playoffs. They now have a magic number of 2 to clinch the AL West.

The game was an undramatic 6-0 victory. The A’s scratched out a run in the first, and when Matt Olson hit a 3-run homer in the third, the game lost its edge. Chris Bassitt was in dominant form, so it seemed unlikely that the Giants would be able to put up much of a challenge the rest of the way. He ran out of gas a bit in the seventh, but the A’s bullpen closed the rest of the game out rather cleanly.

An easy A’s victory was quite welcome. My mind was elsewhere all night. I didn’t need any more complicated emotions, thank you.