*Fausto’s* Big Gamble and is The Super Bowl THIS Sunday?
If you’re named “Roberto Heredia” and you decide to assume a new identity to *make yourself younger* wouldn’t you go with something like “Juan Gomez” or something non-descript and under-the-radar? Ha, not Bobby H, he goes all-in with “Fausto Camona!”. Isn’t that a name that should always have an exclamation point after it, no matter what the context? Maybe he was planning on becoming a magician in the States if the baseball thing didn’t work out…..
I keep checking to see if the Super Bowl is being played at Candlestick this Sunday. That’s how the media has been covering it. The Merc and the Chron have already written articles on pretty much every individual or side story that could possibly be written. What will they write about if the Niners actually make it to the Super Bowl? It’s not a big surprise, this is an area that expects success when we get this close to the Super Bowl. Including ’81, by my count we are 5-5 in Conference Championship games (though I’ve read and heard 4-4 and I don’t understand why I’m counting it as 5-5) and are 5-0 in Super Bowls. If I was a Minnesota or Buffalo fan (combined 0-8 in Super Bowls) I would be like, “Uh oh, here we go again.”
I have to hand it to Alex Smith. He’s the anti-Flacco. While Flacco was busy running his mouth about how he won’t get any credit if the Ravens win the SB, Smith continues to be utterly silent on the topic of his remarkable success this year. Not one “I told you so” to the masses who never believed in him. No matter what happens this Sunday he has achieved a sense of peace that his hard work and perseverance has earned him. He is a brilliant role model for any young person on how to conduct yourself as a human being. I couldn’t be happier for him……..
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Retro Game of the Day!!!!!!!!!!!
April 30th, 1986. A Wednesday game that saw just 5,147 fans show up. They were treated to a thrilling extra inning affair that saw Chris Brown tie the game in the bottom of the 9th with a sac fly and win it with a single in the bottom of the 12th. The other day on his radio show, Krukow said that Chris Brown was the most talented player he ever saw in terms of potential unrealized.
A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
Flav…..Actually were only 4 and 4 in Championship games, losing twice to the Cowboys in the 70’s thank you Preston Riley in 72. Once to the Vikings, and the killer Roger Craig fumble against the Giants that could have given us 3 straight SB wins.
yeah, I’m gonna fix that in the main thread now. Thanks.
Ally– the dude on the radio said 4-4 too, but I counted 5 Conference Championship wins. And how would we win 5 super bowls if we only won 4 conference championship games? I’m sure there’s an easy answer that I’m missing here……
Yeah, I’m wondering about that myself. It’s 5. Also lost to Atlanta one yr.
My mistake. Atl game was a divisional playoff. But I think there was also a loss to Dallas in 94 NFC Championship game
uh, 93 season
..94 they went all the way
I’m lucky enough to have a short commute, and on the way home last night I caught a few minutes of Byrnes extolling the virtues of E Burriss…first round draft pick, lit up the minors, can steal bases, yadda yadda.
This guy might be a mlb player, but I haven’t seen it. His career OB is under mendoza line of .300 (mostly because of abysmal walk rate), and that number is higher than his slugging; last year his OPS was under .500 in 140 ABs. If he was in the LU with Crawford, this guy would hit 8th.
Not to mention he is a jittery unsure IF at every position. HIs only saving grace is that SF thought him such an unlikely SS they went out and signed Rent to the big contract. He does run well and can steal bases, he just hasn’t figured out how to get on them with a bat in his hands.
Lot of cool players in the retro game (johnny Ray, sliding Sid Bream), not the least of which was Big Daddy.
Yeah, I heard a couple of minutes of that Byrnes drivel and laughed. Burriss is a good kid, but he hasn’t shown much whatever that would generate hope he’s going to come to the rescue from a utility standpoint. He just hasn’t. He has no pop at all, doesn’t bunt for hits, and clearly the team was unhappy with his glove last year. This has all vastly improved in one offseason? I’m waiting to be shocked…
Tripping on the salaries back in 86. Kruk was making $745k, Vida $450k. (Seaver was at 1.1m)
Clark was making $60k. Wondering what his signing bonus was out of Miss St? $5K?
Uecker’s line was that his bonus was x thousand…and that it was, “A lot of money for his dad to have to come up with in those days.”
Yeah just play between the lines……Smith and the Niners don’t need to self-promote.
Harbaugh was a Walsh disciple. See a lot of similarities with this and those 80’s teams in the way they go about their business. No BS before the game and on the field antics were frowned upon.
Gomez
I guess I can see why some ball players want to go by a different name sometimes. I mean, I’d much rather be named Manny Mateo over Merkin Valdez.
Rememeber knocking off the Bears one year in snowy Chicago,kicking their asses with Joe Cool,and every fuckin idiot sport expert predicted the Bears would stomp the NINERS!!! Yeah Right That might have been a Championship game .
Jan 8. 1989, Soldiers Field, Chicago, NFL Championship Game. Wind chill -26.
Media gave Niners very little chance in the expected bad conditions in ChiTown against the too tough Ditka and Singletary Bears.
Result: The pansy Niners destroyed the Bears 28-3. Montana 288 yds, 3 TDs (2 to Rice, 1 to John Frank), 1 Rathman run TD. Scored a TD in every quarter. Defense held McMahon to 121 yards and 1 pick. IMO the most impressive Niner NFC championship game win. The other most impressive one IMO was the loss in DC to the Skins where the refs handed the Skins the win with that phantom PI call against Lott in the end zone….
btw, watched the replay of the niners-giants from oct/nov on the nfl network. maybe they didn’t show any punts but i sure didn’t see any. that offense just cruised down the field. the first quarter consisted of an 8 min giant drive for a field goal followed by a 7 min drive by the niners for a field goal. two drives and there was 25 seconds left on the clock.
this thing is going to be a barn burner.
ps. nice comeback with the bb of the day!
the revolt over the last one was so ferocious that I felt I had to nail the next one 🙂
for the record, there was no revolt from me on the last one, but you already know I have no standards whatsoever; and leave it at that, blogmeister
“Fausto Carmona” sounds like the name of a pony-tailed pornstar, an opera singer, or Italian prime minister. Take your pick. Maybe I’ll make it my nom de plume.
Good options on that name. Tough to pick just one
Or the captain of a cruise ship…
Just read things not going well for Gary Carter, not well at all, poor guy. Decent fellow, seems to me.
Just read that as well. Very sad
I agree it is very sad about Carter.
And, although it’s been expected for awhile, RIP Etta James.
The 5th NFC champ game loss was to the Packers in ’97…a rainy day, as this upcoming game-day is forecasted to be. Not to play devil’s advocate but if I’m not mistaken every time the Niners have played a conference championship game at home in rainy weather they’ve lost. I could be wrong, though…but that coupled with the fact that they haven’t played in bad weather all year might be worrisome.
Devil’s Advo to that stance would be that previous Niner teams were all offense dominant though with good to great defenses. This team is Defense dominant…
Ok it was bugging all morning when the idiots on knbr was saying the Niners werr 4-4 in Championship games.They are actually 5-7 with this game # 13.
Here’s the breakdown….1971 lost to the Cowboys 17-10 at Kezar….72 -lost to the Cowboys 14-3 in Texas….82 Beat the fuckin Cowboys at the Stick with the catch…84 lost to the Redskins 24-21 on a BS PI penalty in wash….85 beat the Bears 23-0 at the Stick….89 Beat the Bears 28-3 in Chicago…90 Beat the
Rams 30-3 at the.Stick….91 lost to the Giants 15-13 at
the Stick….93 Lost to the Cowboys 30-20 in Texas…..94 Lost to the Cowboys. 38-21 in
Texas….95 Beat the Cowboys 38_28 at the Stick…98 Lost to the Packers 23-10 at the Stick.
5 SB wins….. Only the Bears game in 89 was a road Championship Win.
Stop if I’m dickish here, but I always assoiciate the year of the season with the playoff game being referred to. So the 81 Catch game happened in 1982. That being said, 1972 was a divisional game. Not the NFC Championship. 1983 was the redskin game. 1984 was the Chicago game.
1997 was the loss to GB (I was there). 1998 was a divisional loss to Atl (not the NFC Champ game. Garrison Hears’s horrific injury on the 1st play). So I think 5-5 is right.
Believe it or not, the lasr road playoff victory was the Bear game. One of 2 road playoff wins for the Niners.
Chucky you are alittle dickish….I am just changing the calender year,since all the games started a New Year.And that was a Championship game at the Stick against the Packers in 98.Pretty sure the 71 game at Kezar was as well.
Well, I’m wrong. Yer right, AK.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFC_Championship_Game
5-7 in Champ games.
You could even add the loss in the 1957 playoffs. That was the game before the NFL championship game.
Wow, kinda weird looking that shit up. The Niners have the most NFC Championship losses since they started in 1970.
7 – SF
6 – LA Rams
6 – Dallas
5 – Vikings
I see our #1 draft pick has learned what it’s all about…
http://tinyurl.com/7fecoqz
The hokey pokey?
Choo Choo Coleman?
Can’t say i remember him . . .
AK, thanks for doing that. I only looked at ’81 and on and I came up with 5-5. Guys on KNBR saif all morning they were 4-4 and they WERE counting all the years, not just ’81 on. Not sure what they were looking at…….
That’s pretty retarded. You can’t win 5 Super Bowls and 4 NFC Championships. Not when the championship wins were all after 1970.
Yeah, the losses were:
1970 – Dallas
1971 – Dallas
1983 – Wash
1990 – NY
1992 – Dallas
1993 – Dallas
1997 – GB
Wins were:
1981 – Dallas
1984 – Chicago
1988 – Chicago
1989 – LA
1994 – Dallas
Funny, I remember the losses off the top of my head. The wins? Not so much.
Can’t get enough of that 4th quarter. I have NFL Game Rewind, pretty good deal. Can’t watch games live but I get every regular season and playoff game for all teams. 15 bucks.
This should get me to pitchers and catchers, anyway.
Hello, I’m a huge Giants fan and I follow this blog quite a bit but haven’t posted before. However, seeing those names in the retro game of the day line-up, and the pending niner game this Sunday, got me to thinking about Candlestick. Everyone always rips it, but I have nothing but great memories of the place. I grew up in Fresno, and my dad and I (sometimes the whole family) would drive up for games. I always remember the excitement I felt at the point on Hwy 101 north when the stadium first comes into to full view, and you knew you were really close to seeing a big league game. In 1986, if anyone remembers the old Giants tagline slogans, was “you gotta love these kids” or something like that. I got married in the 1990s and lived in Campell. My wife and were both school teachers at the time at had the summers off. We’d drive up to Candlestick, mid-week, tailgate with a charcoal bbq that you were always lucky to get started because of the wind, buy a $5 bleacher seat, and then be in lower box by the 3rd inning and the ushers could care less. And even if you had to sit in the bleachers, it was fun, and you had a good chance to get a batting practice HR ball if you were there early enough…..Great times. Go Niners!
What kind of wacky name is “Brian”?
great post, and I totally hear you about Candlestick. I felt the cold like everyone else but I never, ever hated the place. I had a brilliant idea to push for the Giants playing their games of the Bay Bridge Series at Candlestick each year just to re-live the old memories (I sent the idea to a DIckey ((who mocked it) and Jenkins (who loved it). Chuck burst that bubble by telling me something about the football bleachers being permanent now (or something like that). I wasn’t really paying attention to the reason why it wasn’t going to happen since I knew it never would. I just thought it’d be cool as Hell to tailgate at Candlestick for a Giants game one more time and sit (anywhere) in that vast land and watch a ballgame with my buddies and remember the days of The Thrill and Dravecky and The Ripper and Evans and Chili and….
welcome to these here this here place of camaraderie
How about: scoredwithgoldrushgirl ?
That one’s a lot better.
dude, easily your shortest post. You feelin’ ok? Flu? Ready for NIner game?
….and I love your take on Candlestick Park. To this day no edifice in the world has a more powerful hold on me than Candlestick. I can’t take my eyes off it when I drive past it or fly over it. During last weekend’s game I kept freezing the TIVO during the shots from above they kept showing and pointing out things to my son like the giant escalator, where home plate used to be etc.
Something about going to that place as a kid for my first games has stayed with me all these years.
that’s more like it. POTD if it weren’t for Brian’s post……..
I was there only once, 1974, but still craned my neck from the highway after arriving at SFO in 2009 and 2010 (for the Series). And in departing too. Shrines will do that.
’74? Murcer? He might have come a little later. Thomasson? Matthews? Maybe Gary Maddox. I didn’t see this team, I was only 4, but they were there for my first memories a couple of years later…….
I can’t believe some of the trivial shit from years ago that I still remember. I also can’t believe there was a time when I thought Chris Berman was funny and didn’t want to jump through the TV and strangle him. He was doing highlights of a Pirates game many years ago and Jim Morrison (from today’s retro game) had a big day. They showed 3 different highlights of him coming through with a big hit and each time Boomer used a different Doors song in the middle of his name. If memory serves (and for some unknown reason, I think it does) he used Jim “Love Me Two Times” Morrison the first time, Jim “20th Century Fox” Morrison the second time, and Jim “Wishful Sinful” Morrison the 3rd time.
My friends and I found that bit highly entertaining….especially the “Wishful Sinful” reference at the end.
Yes, I’m quite certain we were stoned, but I still think that was funny stuff all things considered.
dude, yer killin’ me. Brian shows up on the scene with an epic post and you keep daring me to replace him with gold (baby) of your own. I’ve said it before, I’ve always been amazed at how similar your life growing up (as it relates to the Giants) mirrored mine—-
Thanks man. Brian’ s post kicked ass—especially when you consider it was his first ever. It was the Claudell Washington of posts. (It may be tough for him to top his first) Please tell me we’re gonna get your dad out on the golf course again this summer.
Re: the thread today, I’m guessing that Tejada was also several years older than advertised. He was supposed to be what, 36 or 37? More like 40, probably, that’s why the wheels fell off, and his range at short was like he was dragging two 10-pound hemorrhoids. Are we sure his name was even Tejada?…
Brian(name made up?)’s post was excellent, the landmark, cool. I always thought the wind and cold thing came for some nebulous nay-sayers of negativeness, but then I heard the players take on it. Still it was 5 more years until I believed them.
BY THE WAY did you still this from a NY sports article about the Manning little brother, it sure fits for him:
[quote]continues to be utterly silent on the topic of his remarkable success this year. Not one “I told you so” to the masses who never believed in him. No matter what happens this Sunday he has achieved a sense of peace that his hard work and perseverance has earned him. He is a brilliant role model for any young person on how to conduct yourself as a human being. [/quote]