Coco Crisp coming back to the A's in about a week would be great. Cody Ross was never going to be more than a stopgap and he hasn't exactly carped the diem in his brief time in an Oakland uniform, so there will be neither performance nor emotional reasons to worry about cutting him and letting him try to find another team to catch on with. Crisp, meanwhile, can resume his place in the outfield and at the top of the order, pushing Sam Fuld to a more appropriate place at the end of the batting order (or, I guess, hitting second, which is almost worse than him hitting first, but we'll let that play out before we start criticizing -- yeah, I did just go royal, what of it) and Mark Canha to a more appropriate place in the constellation of lineups (playing almost exclusively against lefties with occasional fill-in duty in left field when Crisp needs a breather).

Crisp isn't suddenly going to make this look like a playoff team where it hasn't looked anything like that over the last few weeks, but I think he'll make the pieces fit together a little better, a little more naturally, a little more in keeping with their best roles. That's worth being happy about.

Plus, it's Coco Crisp! Get excited!