The Oakland Athletics might use a player not on the 40-man roster to replace Mark Ellis:

Mark Kiger spent the last three weeks teaching baseball to a group of teenagers in Temecula, which allowed him to play catch every day and hit every few days, but never in his wildest dreams did he expect to get the phone call he received last Wednesday.

"What?" Kiger said was his reaction to Pamela Pitts, the A's director of baseball administration, after she told him to report to Arizona. "What?"

Kiger, who has never been on the A's 40-man roster and never even participated in major-league spring training, is one of two candidates to join the A's roster for the American League Championship Series, due to the injury to Mark Ellis.

"Every year you battle, but you don't think after three weeks you'll get the call in October," Kiger said. "I didn't know the situation here. I knew they were doing well, but I didn't know about the depth of the infield."

The A's don't care about offense here. They want someone who can catch whatever is hit to him to act as a defensive backup.