"JUST A few weeks ago, Jason Giambi spent $50,000 to buy his old Yankee Stadium locker. Now he has something to put in it - all his gear from his sad, short-lived return to Oakland.

Of course, Giambi also could store the money the A's will continue to pay him even though he was waived Friday after just 83 games in an Oakland uniform, during which he hit .193.

Giambi still will get the $4 million he was signed for this year, plus another $1.25 million for the buyout of his option next year. While he surely was disappointed to get his walking papers, he won't be too put out for buying that locker. But the A's might be feeling the pinch for what now can be regarded as a very expensive mistake by Billy Beane and owner Lew Wolff, who signed off on it.

A $5.25 million gamble that failed might seem small in this era of seven-digit baseball salaries. It may not be a lot of dough in New York or Boston, but it's still a sizable chunk of change in Oakland. And regardless of how Beane and the A's spin it, it was a far more costly roll of the dice than that.

In reality, the expunging of a mostly washed-up 38-year-old Giambi was the second shoe-drop in a greater waste of the A's limited financial coffers. The investment in Matt Holliday, in retrospect, was the first, and the two have to be linked as a disaster that further shakes Beane's credibility as a master rebuilder of the franchise."