But for 10-year-old Jordan Louque, that first game included walking on the field, meeting Oakland A's coaches Ken Macha and Ron Washington and going home with a ball signed by A's star Scott Hatteberg--and all she had to do to get there was indulge her love of reading.

"It was fun being on the field because all my friends were cheering for me," Louque said. She was referring to the rest of the Lakewood Elementary School fifth-graders who took over the McAfee Coliseum section 328 on May 18.

Jordan accompanied her teacher, Lori Abrahams, onto the field as part of the A's Home Run Readers community program.

The program is an annual incentive for students to meet reading goals in their schools. Participants are eligible to have Oakland players come to their schools or to visit spring training. All participating students get to go to the game in May.

The A's donated tickets and team hats to each school student, so Lakewood only had to pay for the buses.

Abrahams and three other Bay Area teachers were honored for promoting reading through the A's program, and Jordan and one of her classmates got to go onto the field after writing essays for Abrahams' class about the value of reading.

Abrahams has participated in the program for nine years. She started when she taught in Newark. She brought the program to Lakewood with her three years ago.

"It was such a fabulous program that when I moved to Sunnyvale, I continued it at my new school," she said.

At the beginning of the year, fifth-graders at Lakewood set a pages-to-read goal for their school year and spend the year working toward that goal. The teacher gives them 20 minutes each day to read in class, and they are required to read at least 15 minutes for homework. Abrahams keeps track of her students' progress on a spreadsheet at the back of her classroom.

She estimates that each of her students reads an average of 6,000 pages, and many of them do so because they've heard about the end-of-the-year A's game from older siblings and friends.

"The game is the biggest hammer in my toolbox. It's my most powerful tool to get them to read," she said.

Jordan said she'd already read about 5,000 pages this year, mostly scary stories like R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series.

Another of Abrahams' students, who didn't want to be identified, said he had read close to 60 books during the year, and most of them were at least 200 pages long.

Abrahams said the A's program runs roughly through the first half of the school year, but she and Lakewood continue it year-round to take advantage of the A's game incentive.

"Every kid who participates gets to come and they all get hats," Abrahams said. "It makes kids try something new with their reading because they want to get to their set page count."

Only a handful of Lakewood's fifth-graders weren't able to attend the game because they did not keep up with their reading commitments, but those who did joined almost 9,000 other students in cheering on the A's as they beat defending world champions, the Boston Red Sox, 13-6.