Pedo State's Running Back Silas Redd transfers to USC... Que the quitter chants!!!

Well this doesn't make life any easier for the Oregon D when they have to travel to the Coliseum on November 3rd. Here's a LINK to the news break.

The thing I don't get is that these players can transfer to where ever they want because of what happened.  The Pedo State scandal had nothing to do with the football players yet they get an exemption because of some stupid rule the NCAA tacked on to the sanctions the school received last week.  Doesn't make sense to me.  You committed to your school to play football for Pedo State.  Suck it up, stay healthy, and play well so you can make it to the NFL in a couple years. Also, of all the schools to choose from he chooses USC?  Lane Kiffin makes me sick.  During the Pac-12 news conference last week the reports were asking him about Redd and whether he would transfer to USC.  Kiffin responded with, I can't comment or talk to him or anyone about that.  Well, less than a week later Kiffin and Redd are talking on the phone and texting each other?  This guy Kiffin is a joke and a cheater!  Only fitting that a QUITTER is going to join him on the side lines.

Can't wait for all of this to unfold and crumble up in the USC's face. 32 more days until we start our run to the Natty... which goes through SC and I love it!!!

Time to get hyped, again!!!

Cheers,

Mr. A

Pence lands a one way ticket to SF!

UPDATE!!!  The deal is final!  Philly sends Pence to SF for Nasty Nate, catching prospect Tommy Joesph, and 6'6" 250 lb RHP prospect Seth Rosin from Fargo, ND who has been in the Giants farm system since 2010.  It's been fun Nate, but bring on the susPENCE!

The deal is not final yet but the San Francisco Giants have made a splash in the trade market by potentially landing Hunter Pence from Philly!  The likes of Nasty Nate, catching prospect Tommy Joesph, and maybe something else will be headed to Philly for Pence if this deal goes through.

More details to come when and if the deal goes final!

Cheers,

Mr. A

#SFGiants
@HunterPence3

Big series by the bay with the roster up in the air

The Giants have the day off today and it couldn't have come at a better time.  On Tuesday the Giants were making top play after top play.  One of those plays was a double play turned by Theriot, Crawford, and then across to the Panda.  Panda finished the play on the ground doing the splits.  Though he made the play and the crowd was going nuts, I instantly became concerned that the big boy would not get up.  Even my fiance said OMG, he did the splits, he's got to be hurt.  Well, she was right.  The Panda left the game after that and it turned out he strained his hammy.  This is horrible news for a Giants team that is playing great baseball right  now with their arch rivals coming into town for a weekend series.  If Sandoval has to go on the DL, Boch and company have some major decisions to make.  Going into this weekend's series against the Dodgers, the Giants options at the corners are suspect at best.  Arias will most likely get the start at third with the Panda out through the weekend.  At 1st, it's a whole other story.  Belt is in an ultimate funk.  Posey could play there but then that means Eli Whitehair would be behind the dish.  The word on the street is that Huff might be ready to come back, but he isn't any better than Belt which means he is garbage.

With all this happening, you have got to hope that Sabean is trying to make some calls to see what kind of deal they can swing for a 1st baseman out there.  Every year it feels like the Giants have a chance to fill a void they have on the field and Sabean can't pull the trigger.  Maybe I'm dreaming but here's another chance for Sabs to prove us wrong.  Go out there and get a bat.  Someone like Corey Hart or Edwin Encarnacion. Having to pick from Huff or Belt just kills me.

Anway, no matter who is out there the Giants will be pumped and AT&T will be rockin this weekend.  The last time the Doyers were in town they were swept by the Giants and didn't even manage to get one freakin run.  ESPN is going to be and is already all over the Dodgers nuts for picking up Haley Ramirez.  He's a good player and all but he can't do everything.   I can't wait for another sweep.

Giants are going with Cain, Zito, and Vogey!

Sunday's Vogey/Kershaw match up should be a dandy!


Go Giants and wear your orange tomorrow for orange Friday's!

Cheers,

Mr. A


Here's a couple pics from some classic Giants Doyers brawl over the years,

Winning doesn't change everything

The Oakland A's are playing some of the best baseball of any team in the bigs right now and I'm happy for the team, but I'm happier for the fans. Quick background for those who don't know my back story. When all my friends were growing up Giants fans, I was an A's fan. I've been through the highs and lows of this franchise and a few years back, I went on strike. I jumped ship in year 6 of a 3 year rebuilding plan. I haven't been to a game at O.Co since April of 2008, I haven't watched an entire game on TV since around the same time and my passion for this franchise, which was once strong enough to get me out to games 5 hours before first pitch, 25-30 times a season has faded completely.

I know how easy it would be to follow them now, to watch them while they are playing their best brand of baseball since they were murdered and swept by Detroit in the 2006 ALCS. It would be so easy to buy a ticket to the weekend series against the New York Yankees, head out on Sunday and just sit there. Not cheering, not yelling and not hating, just observing. I'm not going to do that because I am a stubborn sob, to put it lightly. When I jumped ship, it was a way of expressing my concerns about the greater good of this once proud franchise. A franchise with more world series trophies than all but 2 teams in baseball. Rumors of the team moving to Las Vegas, Portland and other cities have circulated for years now. The fantasy of a downtown ballpark have wet the appetite of many an A's fan. The possibility of the San Jose A's was once a nearly done deal and now has become an absolute disaster. The list of excuses made by ownership is so long and pathetic that even good ole Bud Selig won't do anything about it, despite the fact that he and Lou Wolff have been friends for the better part of 40 years.

I'm glad this team is playing a good brand of baseball because the fans deserve some excitement during the baseball season. However, this doesn't erase all the factors that lead me to run away from this team in the first place. When I made that decision, I told myself I wouldn't drift back just because the team played better, won some games and made progress. My issues with this team do not have short term resolutions, they are long term problems that will need to be addressed over a long period of time and until I see progress on a new stadium, an answer on territorial rights with San Francisco and the owners are not named Wolff and Fisher, I refuse to play ball. It's highly likely that my days of wearing green and gold, tailgating in the parking lot, screaming and yelling at Red Sox fans as they overflow the stadium, are in the rear view mirror. Those days are behind me now and as I look back on my experience as an A's fan, aside from the bitterness, resentment and anger, I am reminded of the love I had for my team. The passion I shared with so many great fans can never be forgotten or replaced and as I write this today, I am able to accept that somewhere in the Bay Area, there is a kid visiting the stadium for the first time. Watching his or her first baseball game and the love for the team is growing inside of them. I'm hopeful that the A's and their ownership group are thinking of them too, but based on my experience, it's unlikely and that's a shame.

"The most valuable commodity I know of is information." Gordon Gecko

Ah yes folks. Another great quote from the one, the only Gordon Gecko. The MLB All Star balloting has been the topic of conversation among baseball fans for the past few days and I wanted so badly to write about Giants fan. Not the fan that actually understands the game of baseball, focuses tons of energy on being a good fan and does the right thing. The corporate manufactured Giants fan who bought their first hat, jersey and Panda mask around November 4, 2010. You know the guy. He is face deep in that shiny Ipad to catch up on nothing whatsoever during the games at AT&T Park and refuses to actually watch the game in front of him. I wanted to rip into those fans with both hands, string up up in the courtyard for all to see and hang em with their orange and black shoelaces. However, after further review, I've come to terms with the idea that each and every one of us has just been made a fool of. 


You see, when I was a kid way back in the 1980's All Star ballots were punched at the ballpark and  only at the ballpark. You actually had to show up to a game in order to cast a vote and it was done by hand, well before automation became the way of the world. In recent years the game has changed dramatically and the votes are cast electronically. Each email address is allowed 25 votes and for the record, the majority of sports fans have numerous email accounts. One for fantasy football, one for personal use and of course, one for porn. At least that's the structure you should have in place. When you cast your vote online, your email address is captured by MLB.com and when you enter your two favorite teams in the ballot box, you start to get email spam almost immediately. Considering that everything in this era centers around cash, I have a difficult time believing that MLB.com has not sold our addresses to a third party who's sole purpose in business is to capture as many email addresses as possible, sell them off and "market" products directly to us, the consumer. 


If you want to point the finger at the bad guy, point it not at Giants fan or baseball fans in general,  but at MLB and Uncle Selig. Without his discretion and that of major league baseball, we'd be allowed to vote for our favorite players in a unique and modern way without the prospect of being suckered into the biggest scam on the internet. Ok, maybe that's extreme because I can't even open my porn dedicated email address any longer for fear of clicking on the ad that informs me that "Daisy in San Francisco would like to hang out with you" and seeing thousands of emails directed to my sick brain. The reality of the situation is simple and clearly that's the biggest problem. We, as Americans, are suckers. Young and old, man and woman, educated and uneducated. Anyone who has ever entered their email address on a sketchy website, then thought "is this a good idea" prior to clicking submit has been victim of the scam on consumers. That's what happened here. The votes we cast may in fact have selected an all star starting roster. No doubt Giants fan should be sick inside after voting for Freddy Sanchez 2.75 million times, simply because he's one of your guys and ignoring the idea that he hasn't laced up in almost a year without injuring himself. But the bigger problem we face is the false advertisement provided by MLB and it's "business" partners. That my friends is just another negative component of being an American and sadly, we all suffer as corporate titans get rich while we starve. 

On the All-Star Voting Machine

We all remember in 2009 when Pablo Sandoval was the deserving All-Star candidate, but the Giants' marketing department got trounced by Philadelphia's, and Shane Victorino was voted into the final roster spot. Three years later, the marketing staff has put those lessons to work more effectively than Boss Tweed did in the "Gangs of New York" days. It makes you wonder whether the marketing department has "All-Star Selection" bonus clauses in their contracts just like many players do. If not, maybe they should.

Melky Cabrera will start the ASG in the outfield. You won't find many people arguing against that. Buster Posey will start at catcher. Even though Carlos Ruiz and Yadier Molina are arguably having better years, the Posey selection is nothing to rail against. Pablo Sandoval will start at 3rd Base. Frankly, this makes me uncomfortable.

Outside of the 1957 Reds selections, and those cases where an aging veteran gets voted in as some sort of lifetime achievement award, the choice of Pablo Sandoval over David Wright has got to be up there with the worst choices the fans have ever made (from a numbers point of view). Wright is a surefire MVP candidate, while Pablo Sandoval has missed nearly half the season. And not only did Sandoval beat Wright, he trounced him, surging ahead in the final week to a 1.6 million vote margin of victory.

Many folks will say this proves the Giants fans are the "best in baseball", or that we are "passionate". Unfortunately, I think this makes us look like maleable, gimmiky, front-running bandwaggoners. Any sound baseball mind knows that Pablo has no business starting this game, and so all across the country this week, people will be pointing out how San Franciscans deprived Wright of a deserving honor in favor of a fun-loving guy with a catchy nickname.

None of this means anything, except for the fact that it does. As Jay Bruce proved yesterday, the Giants have a significant home field advantage. With the ASG determining who gets home-field in the World Series*, this shit is important. Luckily, fans don't vote on playing time, so Tony La Russa can correct this error during the game, but really, it was in the interest of Giants fans to vote in Wright. He's better. Simple as that.

The goal for the entire Giants organization, including the fans, should be to win the World Series. Root for the name on the front of the jersey, not the back.



*This, by the way, is incredibly stupid. A significant advantage in the World Series is determined by a game that is organized, managed, and played like it's a meaningless exhibition. Home-field in the WS should be determined by which league has the better record in interleague play. Logically, this makes perfect sense. If the AL beats the NL in interleague play, it's perfectly reasonable to say the AL is the better league. The team that makes it through that tougher league to the World Series should be rewarded. Simple.

P.S. As long as we're voting in record numbers, Giants fans would do well to vote for Michael Bourn in the Final Vote. He'd be the most useful to the team.

Sweep LA! Sweep LA!

I thought about going with the headline "Giants Castrate Dodgers in 3-game Sweep," but I thought that might be a bit too jarring. That being said, the Giants castrated the Dodgers in a 3-game sweep, knotting up the NL West as we near the half-way point of the season.

Maybe I'm just forever scarred from that late 1993 series against the Braves, where the Giants' lead was reduced from 7.5 to 4.5 games in what felt like 5 minutes, but it seems to me that whenever the Giants go into a big series against a division rival like this, they come out on the losing end. Of course you have to omit 1997 from this train of thought, but not every team can have Rod Beck and Brian Johnson (and Barry Bonds) on it. 5 minutes ago, the Giants were 3 games out. Now they're tied. Are things actually going well for the Giants?

When Zito and Lincecum combine for 14 shutout innings, sandwiched around 7 innings of Voglesong castrating the Dodgers, I'd say that's a pretty resounding "yes". Plus the bullpen totally castrated the Dodgers. All series, only one Dodger reached so far as third base. And when that runner (Dodgers' pitcher Chad Billingsly) tried to score on a wild pitch, Lincecum castrated him. (Loved this quote from Timmy: "I'm not much to go through, but he was going to have to go through me to get to the plate").

So, this all begs the question: Is Timmy back? My gut feeling is no, not quite. I'm not going to get my hopes up over 1 really nice start. I wasn't able to watch the game, but I did see see his Got 'em Reel. And he sure did look impressive. But my prediction is that his next start will consist of 3 or 4 solid innings, Mike Krukow will emphatically declare that "Tim Lincecum is back, folks", and then he'll have another one of his patented disaster innings. But then he'll calm down again, and by his next start, he will be back. Just a gut feeling. "Don't hate", as they say.

With the historic 3-game shutout sweep behind them, the Giants now welcome in another first place team in the Cincinnati Reds. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles EunuchsImeanDodgers head to Who-cares-ville. Adding injury to insult, Andre Eithier left the game today with some sort of groin issue and he could be joining Matt Kemp on the DL! In the month of June, the Dodgers are slugging (SLUGGING!) .295! It sure is a shitty day to be a Dodger fan! Which, by definition, makes it a great day to be a Giants fan. Keep it up, boys.

P.S. Read Andrew Baggarly to learn about about all the franchise history the Giants made in their castration of the Dodgers.

One down, Seven to go

"Not one, not two, not three, not four, NOT FIVE, not six NOT SEVEN." Those were the words uttered by Lebron Raymone James on July 8, 2010 when he joined Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami. Allow me to start by saying, congrats Lebron. The first ring is said to be the hardest one to obtain and countless hall of famers played their entire career and made tons of money, enjoyed the fame and lifestyle of a professional athlete and would trade it all today for one ring. This is a great win for the Miami Heat franchise and for their fans, but is it a great win for Bron Bron?? 

It's no secret that I can't stand the sight of Lebron James, the sound of his voice, the cut of his jib and the simple idea that so many declared him the greatest basketball player of all time before he stepped foot on the hardwood of The Association. All of those things were starting to dissipate when he took the Cleveland Cavs on his back and nearly won a championship ring for his hometown. I felt like he was doing it the right way, building something special in Cleveland and the idea of hating a guy for doing that started to seem a bit ridiculous. Had he chosen to stay in Cleveland, forced owner Dan Gilbert to spend some serious money to get top flight players to join him, I would probably have stopped hating him so much and settled for disliking him. Hell, if he would have left Cleveland respectfully instead of in the middle of the night with a bunch of Mayflower moving trucks like Art Model, maybe I would respect that. But he didn't and he felt the need to make a spectacle unlike any other athlete in the history of professional sports. I don't need to rehash The Decision and go into great detail about how pathetic that was, but I do need to address the insanity of predicting eight championship victories. If Rafa Nadal predicted 8 grand slams, nobody would care. Not only because he plays tennis and few people care about that sport, but he plays an individual sport. It doesn't take an MIT Graduate to recognize that the odds of winning 8 championships in a team sport is highly unlikely. That being said, I will answer the question I posed earlier. Is this a great win for Bron Bron? No, it's not. Had he kept his mouth shut and predicted that he would bust his ass for this franchise, leave everything on the court and make sure he got a ring, I'd say it was an incredible victory, but he didn't do any of that. He flat predicted 8 championships and for that, I have to point out that he's only an 1/8th of the way to the promise land. 

To make matters worse Lebron is delusional enough to believe his own bullshit after he won his first ringwhen he said and I quote "I'm really glad I did this the right way, no shortcuts and because of that it makes it that much more special." I disagree with all of that and feel like this is one of the reasons why I can't be onboard the Bron Bron train and never will. You did this the right way? You joined forces with 2 of the best ballers in the league and ditched your hometown team to buy a ring. You didn't take any shortcuts? You are the same guy who deflected blame after you tanked the 2011 NBA Finals and said "At the end of the day, all of the people that were rooting for me to fail, tomorrow they'll have to wake up and have the same life that [they had] before they woke up today. They got the same personal problems they had today and I'm going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things I want to do." That's a shortcut. That's taking out frustrations on the fans and attempting to blame anyone and everyone but yourself for choking away a chance at your first ring. I'm confident that Lebron James handles success better than most professional athletes do and I also know he handles adversity with very little class and respect. Now that you won the first ring I gotta ask you Bron Bron, can you do it again?

Is the no-hitter becoming so common that it's losing its luster?

The title of this blog post is stolen from a professional sports writer named Tom (Todd) Verducci. More often than not I prefer to think up a creative (or not so creative) title that's original and fresh. However, the article featured below was not posted today or even over the weekend. It was posted Thursday June 14, just hours after Matt Cain turned in the performance of his lifetime, tossed only the 22nd perfect game in the history of major league baseball and his feet hadn't even hit the ground, but ole Tom was already puking all over this amazing accomplishment.

I'm a young guy with an old heart and old soul. I have learned that I was likely born in the wrong generation because for all of my life I've wanted my baseball served up the way it was generations ago. Simple, clean, by the "book" and stats are for fans to enjoy while sipping coffee. Currently, statistics in baseball have become completely out of touch with the game that's played on the field and I refuse to indulge any further than that. What I will say is that I don't care that of the twenty-two perfect games in major league baseball history, five of them have been thrown in the last three years. That's none of my business and I refuse to play ball here. In my book, a perfect game is an amazing accomplishment and each and every time a guy gets one, it should be given the respect and credit it deserves. Reading this article the day after Matt Cain pitched the best game of his life, the first perfect game in the history of one of the proudest franchises in baseball history, made me sick and I am not even a Giants fan. If you have enjoyed any of my work over the years, you know a few things. I don't toe the line and I refuse to take marching orders. I am not the guy who forms an opinion based on what the majority feels or thinks; I think for myself and I know my thoughts are in the minority, but I do know this. Diminishing a perfect game is something I will never engage in and I can't help but think that because Matt Cain plays on the West Coast, this article hit the internet before the fans at AT&T Park made their way home. I know for a fact that if Josh Beckett or CC Sabathia threw a perfect game last week, Tom Verducci would be sucking knee caps not pointing a fire arm at them.



http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/tom_verducci/06/14/no.hitter.craze/index.html

Here Comes the Story of the HurriCain

Prior to Wednesday night, no pitcher in Giants baseball history had thrown a perfect game. It took nearly 130 years, and yet it's not surprising that it was Matthew Thomas Cain who got it done. His whole career he's been flirting with Destiny. Buying her drinks, charming her friends, and she laughed at all of his jokes. He'd put his hand on her lower back to gauge the interest level, and she'd never even flinch. But every time he'd lean in to close the deal, she'd back away, claiming she couldn't for reasons like "I'm meeting my parents early tomorrow for breakfast" and "I'm out with my friends; I can't just leave them." Still, as she was leaving the bar each time, Destiny would glance back at Matt and smile lovingly. Even lustily. So you got the idea that there was something special going on between these two, and it was only a matter of time before they finally gave into each other. And special it was. This was not your ho-hum 8-walk no-hitter, where Destiny is just stumbling drunk because all her friends are getting married and she's looking for the nearest Edwin Jackson to make out with. Last night, Destiny didn't even have a chance, and she knew it. It was Perfect.

But this was even more than that. We're talking about one of the greatest games ever pitched. Repeat: EVER. In the history of baseball. Cain's "game score" was 101, tying him for second highest ever for a 9-inning game*. That's the part that's hard to wrap your head around. Out of all the games that have EVER been pitched in the Major Leagues, Cain's performance is very near the top of the list. 

Big Game Matt Cain now has to be considered the leading candidate to start the All-Star game. He leads the league in Innings Pitched and in WHIP. That means not only has he pitched the most innings, but they've been, like, the best innings, with the fewest base runners per.

It's amazing how good he his, and at the same time how take-for-grantedable he is. It's a shame that it took a perfecto for me to realize this, but he needs to be considered amongst the great pitchers in Giants history. Maybe even the great players in Giants history. Ever since he entered the big leagues in 2005, he's been good. Has he ever even had a bad stretch? Not a single earned run in the 2010 post-season. This is stuff of Giants legends. He's the longest-tenured Giant, and he will be for years to come. He's never shown a sign of slowing down, nor of disgust with his team when they certainly deserved it due to offensive impotence. The contract extension he signed a couple of months ago is still in its fetal stages, but right now, it looks like a steal for the Giants. He's ours.

It won't take long for the Giants to honor this achievement with one of those walk-of-fame plaques on the boardwalk that runs along McCovey Cove. When it's all said and done, he may just have a statue.

 

*He's tied with Sandy Koufax's 14-strike-out perfect game in 1965 and Nolan Ryan's 16-strike-out no-hitter in 1991. Kerry Wood holds the Game Score record for a 9-inning game at 105 with his 20-strike-out 1-hitter back in 1998. There have been other old-timey, extra-inning masterpieces that have game scores significantly over 100.