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.