A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball

Fuck the Dodgers.

What a fabulous Sunday evening it was. We had barbecued salmon and I did it brilliantly. Nice Pinot to go with it. And hey, the Dodgers got no hit again. I guess that’s not really news. First Mike Fiers *Adrianza Cubed* them, then Jake Arrieta did it. There is debate about the second no hitter. The official scorer gave a error on ball hit in the 3rd inning that was probably a hit. But hey, after reading about how Halicki got his no hitter I suppose you just go with whatever an official scorer says about it. They are *official* it says it right there in the name….

Something I wish a reporter would ask these no hitter pitchers: How many does that make for you? Go all the way back to Little League. Ballpark it if you don’t know exactly. I’d be very interested in the answer and yet no one ever asks that.

Without question this is the biggest series of the year but we have played LA well this year and you’ve got to think that taking 2 of 3 is a possibility. Instead of stress out on what happens if they take 2 of 3 from us (or worse) here’s a pic for you to laugh at of me and my sister in front of the Birge Clark my parents owned in the 70’s. 1440 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto. I posted it on facebook yesterday and it got some pretty creative comments. Feel free to fire away here too. Life is too short, laugh at yourself as often as possible. But remember, that dork dressed like a clown has thrown a no hitter before…….

Oh goodie, Jaime Garcia Day. Never liked this guy.

If we trot out the same line up as yesterday, the same line up that Bochy basically HAD to write up, I don’t see how we do anything other than 000 000 000. I call that box score “Adrianza Cubed”.

The Cubs are worthless trolls who we can’t be counted on for anything. Even with Arrieta going tonight, I bet they find a way to screw up.

Gotta just win for ourselves and not worry about the stuff we can’t control…….

Another day, another W.

Specs makes good.

Day game today, Lynn v Voggy…….

Sure, the Dodgers won, Kershaw went bananas with his k’s, but unless LA’s game plan is to have each of their starters go 8 innings and then hand the ball to Jansen, they still have a bullpen full of problems.

I fully expect the Cubs to tee off on Latos and anyone else they pitch tonight.

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really enjoyed this quote by Peavy which some of you have probably already read:

The Giants pay attention to advanced analytics, but only to a point, relying mostly on instinct, visuals and character. “Some of these front offices crunch the numbers and they think they’ve got it all figured out,” Peavy said. “I don’t know the formula for winning, but I do know what it means when teams are inseparable and play for the higher cause. Until you get to know what’s inside a player, you don’t really know him.” On the subject of “Moneyball,” Peavy remarked, “How about let’s make a movie about the good old-fashioned baseball people, and how they judge team chemistry to put together guys that fit in? How about a movie about a team that actually wins in the end?”

Snarkk’s POTD brilliantly tied together a thought I had while driving home yesterday. Someone on the radio was wondering if Kris Bryant had jumped ahead of Matt Duffy for ROY award. I was having a hard time caring about his point. And I thought, I don’t give a shit if Duffy wins the ROY or not. What has happened to me? In the past that would have been an award that I really would have wanted him to win. But since those 3 beauties have conga-lined their way into my life, I’ve have a hard time getting worked up about individual awards for my Giants. Awards like that are for fans of teams who never win anything. It’s like a consolation prize for not winning the World Series. Again.

The Tomlinson story is something that we have the luxury to sit back and truly enjoy. It is, as was said by a few last night, the reason baseball is our favorite sport. But what if we don’t win it all this year! Are we somehow less entranced by the magic of the Tomlinson moment? No chance. If we don’t win it all, so be it. And I will be able to look back on days like yesterday and truly embrace them in my memories. And I didn’t even see the game! But with posts like this, I FELT like I was at the game, baking away on Summer’s Warning Track. I can put my hand out and almost feel the wall:

I did! Great game, great weather.
Great moment when Tomlinson ran onto the field after the Giants were finally retired after his grand slam. The other Giants, unbeknownst to Tomlinson, slowed down and stopped, leaving Tomlinson to run out there by himself. The crowd gave him a huge standing ovation. He stopped and turned around at second base and just marveled that the whole ovation was for him.

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Who didn’t love the Brian Dallimore grand slam moment of 2004? But a guy like Dallimore wasn’t ever a part of taking us to the promised land. Had he been, or had we had some recent trophies in the *fan bank* I might have been able to enjoy his weird, short ride in the major leagues a little more.

And I’m not trying to compare Tomlinson to a flash in the pan like Dallimore. I think Specs has a chance to easily turn into the next Joe Panik, possibly reincarnating himself as one of our starting outfielders next season……

Today’s POTD was also entered into “POTD-best of” which is, without question, the best part of the blog. Years from now I should turn this into a poetry book about baseball……

https://oneflapdown77.com/potw-archives/

If you’re Dan Haren, you’ve got to be pretty stoked today. I’ve got no idea what the Giants LU will look like but Haren will probably feel like he’s on a rehab start in AAA.

Of course, I thought the same thing about Hendricks yesterday and that game finished with an 8 pitch, 2K 9th inning gem from Casilla……

But it’s a day game and it’s going to be pretty warm today. Get the ball in the air, let ‘er fly…..

It’s time for Cain to hit the DL after he tweaked his knee playing with his kids. Oh, can’t use that one? Right, that’s what *happened* to Affeldt. I’ve never heard of a team getting busted for DL’ing a guy for a fake reason. So it’s time for Cain to hit the DL. For whatever reason they can come up with.If it was me, I’d have fun with it. “Matt Cain was DL’d after he sprained his labia skydiving.” See if you can come up with one better than that…….

Bagg’s put it best this morning, “The Giants don’t have time to wait for Matt Cain.” He’s pretty consistently our worst starter every week. And while I don’t share the love for Petit that our esteemed colleague James shares, he certainly couldn’t be any worse than Cain, right?

A lot is being written lately about teams that CAN make it to the World Series. Tweets giving fan bases hope. “The Cubs can win it all this year.” “Toronto can make the playoffs.” It all seems like so much BS to me. There’s a dozen teams that COULD make the playoffs. But saying that a team has what it takes to win the World Series, without having done it, just seems fake and baseless.

All of those same internet scribes who are enlightening us about all these teams that *could* win it all were the ones telling us that the Giants had no chance in 2010. 2012. 2014.

Truth is, no one knows if the Cubs can win it until they do it. Same with the Royals, no matter how many wins they pile up in the regular season.

Yesterday sucked. That was the first game in a while I felt like we just weren’t going to win. Too bad since Liriano was average at best. Everyone looked tired. Getting back to SF at 3am probably didn’t do them any favors but the day off couldn’t come at a better time. Re-charge, re-boot.

Still only 1.5 games out. Some how.

Sunday Night game on ESPN tonight. Voggy v Liriano. On the surface this seems to have all the makings of an embarrassing execution but Voggy has proven everyone wrong time and time again. I don’t know if it’s the enchiladas, the blow jobs, or divine intervention. Maybe a combo of all 3.

I can’t come up with a reasonable expectation for success tonight so I’ll just leave it to you guys to pump up the blog…….

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According to espn/stats, 14.1% of the pitches Matt Carpenter has taken out of the zone have been called as strikes, highest in the majors. I’m envisioning a St Louis fan version of James doing the slowest of burns about this…….

Yesterday, wow, what a day. We won. Byrd hit everything. Bumgarner homered. The Dodgers got no hit. My recurring lifelong dream did not come to pass. I’m sure some other pretty rad stuff happened, too…..

All in all, a pretty spectacular August 21st…..

My expectations for Leake tonight: low. Besides keeping his hammy in order he’s probably going to be on some kind of a pitch count. And then there’s the issue of hitting Gerrit Cole. But you know what? He’s been pretty bad for the entire month of August so…..

Yesterday was the 7th time in baseball history that a no hitter has been thrown on the same day a dude hit 3 bombs. But 3 of those 7 have happened THIS YEAR. What are the odds of that?

Doesn’t it feel like this every day that MudBum goes out there?

Marlon Byrd flies into the starting line up tonight and one less hologram takes the field.

Remember the day Kevin Mitchell arrived? Day after July 4th, he shows up in Chicago and bangs out 2 home runs. Maybe Byrd only hits one tonight but I think we’d all take that.

Did it get any better than the Kevin Mitchell trade for the Giants? At least in terms of in-season deals?

Three games v the Cardinals and only one win. All 3 games very winnable. The Cubs lost. AZ beat up on Pitt. And the lowly A’s exposed the Dodgers as what they are— a truly average team.

The division is RIGHT THERE for the taking. That is, as long as the Dodgers continue to ignore fixing their pathetic bullpen and continue to make pointless moves like adding Chase Utley.

Nothing else to do but take it one game at a time, starting tonight……..

On the one hand, man, what a great win. If you had told me that the bedraggled Voggy would have to hump up for another spot start and toss 30 pitches in the first inning and that we would go on to WIN 2-0, I woulda called you crazy. And yet, that’s what  happened. And then the lowly A’s manage to beat Kershaw and the Dodgers? Was that a dream?

Sadly, there is another hand. And that hand smacks us back to reality with the Hunter Pence to DL news. At some point, your team just takes too many blows to remain realistically in the race.

However, I absolutely think they are still in the race as long as Sabean puppeteers Evans into making a skilled waiver wire deal or two. We have experience and I don’t doubt a focused effort till the end, but we are not making the playoffs with Maxwell, Blanco and whatever hologram from AAA we might be shining into the final outfield spot.

So stay positive, but have it be contingent on the above mentioned moves that have to occur for us to pass the Dodgers in September……..

You know, one of those players who’s only good to go if he’s 100%? Because something is not adding up here. The Giants put Leake on the DL on August 7th with Bochy saying that “if it were late September, he might have been able to push through the injury.” That was 10 days ago and he was scheduled to pitch today. Now we find out he’s being pushed back again?

Was there a setback no one is talking about? Are Leake and the Giants not on the same page? Word last night was that he can pitch fine but that he’s at 65% and he has trouble getting off the mound to field the ball. Why would the Giants say he’s scheduled to start if he can’t field his position?

I couldn’t trust the Giants medicos less when it comes to diagnosing an injury so maybe this is just another case of them bungling a case. Or maybe Mike Leake is A Hundred Percenter. Now we trot out the bedraggled Voggy again and hope he can gut out another good start.

At this point, I think I’d rather have a pitcher go out there who I know has the guts to be out there than a guy who, frankly, I’m not certain wants to be out there……

We play the Cardinals tonight and Daniel Shoptaw and I decided to keep our Q/A going since it was always so well received in the past. Here’s the email I sent him with his responses. He put a link to his blog in his question 2 answer.

Daniel Shoptaw	7:37 AM (45 minutes ago)
to me

1) Flavor: The Cardinals are piling up the wins this year. Giants fans have learned to not get too caught up in regular season wins and losses. Just make the playoffs and then let Hunter, Buster and the rest of the gang take over. Is there a sense in the Cardinal fan community that winning just shouldn’t be this easy? Like the team is peaking too soon? Aside from your team, who do you think the best team in the NL is? Who would you least like to play in the NLCS? Feel free to say the Giants for obvious reasons. 🙂

Shoptalk: While the Cardinals may have 75 wins so far this season, to say it’s been easy is probably a bit of a misstatement.  There are a lot of 1-0, 2-1 type games in there, a lot of close games that require much more stress on pitchers and fans than would be preferable.  The Cards have been blessed with almost historic levels of great pitching, but the offense just isn’t generating that much.  I can think of some Giants teams that might have followed that formula a little bit!

 

I don’t think anyone is worried about peaking, but there are always concerns that the offense won’t be enough or the pitching will wind up finally stumbling in October.  On the flip side, we both know that postseason baseball is so often close and low-scoring, so this St. Louis team will have plenty of practice in those sorts of games, so much so that October may not feel much different than June or July.

 

Honestly, if I wasn’t picking St. Louis as the best team in the NL, I’d probably go with the Pirates.  Maybe that’s because we see them all the time, but they have a very strong pitching staff and some potent bats, plus at least three Cardinal killers in Pedro Alvarez, Aramis Ramirez and Francisco Liriano.  That’s a team I don’t really want to see, but there are a lot of teams that I’m not excited about either.  The Giants well could be one of those teams–I’m interested to see how the two clubs stack up over the next couple of weeks.

2) Flavor: You recently inherited your father in law’s 1962 Topps baseball card set. First of all, my condolences for your family’s loss. But regarding the cards, was this inheritance surprising? Why 1962? It looks like a complete team set, did he have other years/teams? If so, where are those sets? Was your father in law a big collector? Here is a pic of part of the set that I snagged from Daniel’s twitter feed:

Shoptalk: Thanks for your sympathy.  My father-in-law passed in April–here’s the post I put up at the time–and my wife just went back to Ohio this weekend to bring home some of his effects, including that 1962 set.  I’m not 100% sure why 1962, but my guess is that’s one of the first years he started collecting cards, as he would have been 10 at the time.  I know that he showed me that set the first time I ever met him and we talked about how he filled out the collection at card shows and the like over time.  I want to say he didn’t finish it until the early ’90s, though I couldn’t swear to it.

 

That’s the only complete set that he had, at least that I’m aware of.  He was a huge baseball fan in general (the Reds in particular) and he a number of unopened packs and baseball cards around.  He even had a poster up in his store of a card show he helped organize in 1990 that featured Jeff Montgomery, a local guy that had made the majors.  He sold baseball cards for a long while in his store, so while he wasn’t necessarily a big collector, he was appreciative of cards and what they meant.

Flavor: Sorry, we just had an earthquake while I was writing this….. but I’m back, everyone/everything is ok.

Shoptalk: (Glad to hear it! That’s one way to wake up in the morning!)

3) Flavor: I check out the Cardinal line up everyday (I play a fair amount of daily fantasy baseball). I have noticed that the St Louis LU changes A LOT. Grichuk and Piscotty, for example, seem to bat all over the line up. Do Matheny’s LU’s make sense to you? Or does it feel like he’s over-managing them?

Shoptalk: It’s funny, we as Cardinal fans sometimes complain about the Matheny lineups but when Tony La Russa was making out 155 different ones over a 162 game season, it was his way of playing all the percentages.  

 

I don’t think Matheny’s over-managing, at least not in this regard.  (Honestly, for the most part, I think Matheny’s improved as a manager this year, though he still has his faults.)  Matheny’s hampered by the fact that his regular #3 hitter, Matt Holliday, is out and has been out a good portion of the season.  Without having that bulwark, it allows and almost requires some experimentation to see how best to fill that gap.  It’s also a fact that the offense really has struggled, even though there’s plenty of talent up and down the lineup, and Matheny seems to be trying to find the best fit that will create a spark.  You could argue that he should leave them alone for a few days instead of shifting almost daily and that’d be a fair critique, I believe, but at least there’s some reason behind what he’s doing.

Hope that’ll work for you!  Let me know when they go up and I’ll link at my site.  I dropped a link to the site in general in today’s post.

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Daniel sent me some questions too, I’ll get to them as the work day allows this morning and will re-post here if he writes a thread about it.

I follow Bryce Harper on Twitter and a lot of his off season tweets are about *greatness* and the what it takes to dedicate yourself to greatness. It’s got a *Tony Robbins* tint to it. Colin Kaepernick tweets the same kind of stuff. Neither one of them seem to understand that their goal of achieving *greatness* has everything to do with themselves and nothing to do with the team. That’s one of the reasons I love guys like Pence and Buster. They understand that real goals in sports are team goals. Team wins. Championships.

I don’t like Harper or any other Nat. I don’t think Matt Williams deserved that MOY award. I laughed quietly to myself watching McCatty get thrown out of the game last night. Can you imagine Dave Righetti getting thrown out of a game on a visit to the mound?

The Nats are a joke and I am enjoying these games where the question isn’t are we going to beat them it’s by how much……

I’ll take Voggy and Cain, you take Strasburg and Scherzer. What kind of odds you give me that I go 2-0?

Nice, hot day here in the Bay. Get the ball up in the air and watch ‘er fly, high, HIGH.

After the first 2 games, it kinda feels like we’re playing with a little house money. Keep the pedal on the floor, there is no number of wins against the Nats and Williams that I would declare “too many.”

Why Not?

and that’s why they play the game and don’t just surrender as soon as a pitcher like Strasburg takes the mound……

Fun stat of the day: the 4 pitchers the Dodgers acquired on July 30th have allowed 35 runs in 35.1 innings…..

Sherzer vs Cain today and I’m feeling ok about this….

So lemme get this straight: a revitalized Stephen Strasburg comes to town to take on Voggy who’s just been snatched out of the bullpen. Most of our outfielders are hurt. It looks bad.Real bad.

S-Squared will probably get his K’s but he’s certainly not unhittable. And Matt Williams is more than half way to polishing off his WMOY award. I’m not a Williams fan. Liked him (not loved) as a player. Didn’t like him as a D-backs coach. Think he’s overrated as a manager. His players are all hotheads and Williams just stands by and watches. Or models it for them, I’m not sure which.

Washington is -126 today. Seems low.

Anyway, we could easily beat the Nats today because it’s baseball and no one knows what the fuck is going to happen……

Short memories are the standard during a baseball season but I think it’s pretty easy to argue that last night’s game was the best game of the year. Coming off The Nightmare in Chicago against a good Houston team, Bum k’s 12, Belt hits 2 bombs, and we cruise to a 3-1 victory.

Now we get to find out if Hest-by-Hest has hit the wall at the end of Summer’s Warning Track or if he’s ready to push through and take his game to yet another unseen level.

Day game today…..

The Astros come to town and this would be a good series to turn things around. Bum should pile up the K’s against a team that loves to swing and miss. The problem, for us, is when they don’t miss. But if we can’t feel confident with Bum going at home then this season is over. So, I feel good about tonight’s game.

3 things need to happen:

1. we need to stop thinking about the wildcard and focus 100% on winning the division. The Dodgers aren’t very good and starting in August 31st we play them 7 times. You want to chew up games at rototiller speed, that’s the time to do it.
2. We need to somehow make it to September within 6 games of LA. Our September schedule is a combination of Disneyland and a rolling daisy patch field. Get to September within hailing distance of LA and the last 30 days of the season could be exciting as hell.
3. In order for #1 and #2 to happen, we need to pick up James Shields and bench help immediately. The team as presently constructed has no chance…….

I tried to find something positive to spin into today’s thread but by 2:30pm (PST) it became clear that wasn’t going to happen. So, I’m throwing this out to all of you. After The Chicago Breakdown, what do you think we have to look forward to for the rest of this season? You can say “James Shields” and I will count that as an acceptable answer. 🙂 He passed through waivers today, unscathed. Go get him.

Losing 3 straight to the Cubs isn’t really the problem. It’s only 3 games. It’s HOW we are losing them. Basically, they are kicking our ass. Luck has not been beating us. They’ve been hitting better, they’ve been pitching better. The only thing we’ve been doing better is “Brandon Crawfording” them. He’s been brilliant, especially in the field. If it weren’t for him, the score differential would be much worse. They’ve scored first in every game. We’ve led for exactly one inning of one game (yesterday we led 2-1 in the 2nd inning, they jumped back ahead 3-2 the next inning).

So *Summer’s Warning Track* or whatever you want to call it has not started out well for us. There is no end to this any time soon. It’s going to be one tough series after another with very few days off. Our pitching is littered with question marks. Angel Pagan can barely still play baseball. We have several very good players and a team I trust implicitly in terms of chemistry, focus and experience.

The weather sucks in Chicago today, could take a while to get this one in…….

Sorry, out of pocket yesterday.

Look at it this way, as disappointing as these 2 games vs Chicago have been at least the Giants aren’t the Niners. Jeeeeezus, bad luck seems to not know a floor with them. But I’m not as down on the upcoming season as others are. I’m definitely in a wait and see approach with them.

Chris and his son Clayton were at the game yesterday sitting 5 rows behind the Giants on deck circle. Will try to post a pic of them later. Two Flappers representing in Chi Town. I was having trouble seeing them on tv even when I paused it. Either the guy in the on deck circle was blocking them or an usher was standing there or there were too many other Giants fans around them. I finally texted Chris “just tell Clayton to run naked out to the pitching mound so I can confirm you guys are sitting that close.” His response: “he still wants to go to college so he won’t be doing that.” lqtm.

Definitely worried about Cain today. These hitters can get the ball in the air and that’s something Cain needs to try to avoid today if we want any chance of a W. Losing 3 straight to them would be a big blow……

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representing.

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Here’s one of the pics he sent me. It’s Aoki and I didn’t recognize him so I asked Chris who it was. Pretty funny.

I’m not as impressed with the Cubs the same way everyone seems to be. Good core of young guys for sure. I just don’t think this is there year. And they aren’t very good against RH pitching. They strike out like a team-wide helicopter digging into the ground. If Heston keeps the ball down he should have his way with them. Wind should be blowing IN today to further help him.

How we are going to hit Jason Hammel is a more pressing problem. He’s really good. And I’m guessing our bats are a little limp tonight just from all the heat and travel.

Big, big 4 gamer though. If we can’t catch the Dodgers this is the team we need to beat to secure the #2 WC spot……

Shout out to Chris and his son Clayton who are flying out to Chicago from Portland for this series. Chris and Clayton are the two who Cody Ross through that ball to in the arcade back in the 2010 playoffs.

If you want to re-live a little 2010 magic, here’s their Cody Ross Story

https://oneflapdown77.com/2010/10/19/great-cody-ross-story/

I won’t call this game “must win” but it is definitely “should win.” We’ve got Red Ass going vs someone named “Williams Perez.” I don’t know much about this guy other than his Yahoo player pic suggests he’s a man who enjoys a good buffet.

It would be nice to go into Chicago with a little momentum.

Ah, Connecticut Avenue….seems like such a nice road on which to take a Sunday stroll. Tired from the day’s journey, you decide to check into a quaint B and B for the night. As dawn hits, you and your new bride wake up and prepare for the trip to Virginia Avenue, maybe even old St. James Place (where his wife is busily covering the furniture in plastic). But the inn keeper charges you triple what you thought it would cost. You can’t pay the bill! He informs you that there’s a jail for your kind right next door. Suddenly, that warm, Summer afternoon stroll turned into you getting your ass SandraBlanded and now you don’t know what the fuck is going on…..

That’s what last night felt like.

I’m not as down on the bullpen as everyone else is. I thought Voggy’s stuff was pretty good. Unfortunately they were pitching in a yard that was playing to the size of a large matchbox. I can’t remember a Giants game where there were more oppo-bombs. The one thing I’ll say about the bullpen is this: seems like every other team has gone to using gas-throwers and we keep trotting out the same core of old men who have gotten it done for the last half decade or so. But aside from Hunter Strickland, our bullpen is not mirroring what others are doing. This might be a case where we should be doing what others are doing. Easy to say, not so easy to put together quickly…..

Forget the “Dog Dayz of Auguzt”. These last 3 stress games have gotta be taking a big, big toll on the team. Just as I was more than ready for a no-doubt bomb on which to celebrate immediately off the crack of the bat, I could really use a nice and easy 5-2 victory today……

Kudos to you Diggity for inspiring the thread as well as motivating me to find our old monopoly game from the studio. Gonna fire that bad boy up as soon as Katie gets back home…..

What was your favorite block to own in Monopoly? I loved that yellow-ass Marvin Gardens row. Felt like King of the World when I owned that shit.

A new bauble arrived via the pony at Casa de Flavor’s this afternoon.

Behold:

That’s right. An autographed Candy Maldonado. Behind it sits an unautographed giraffe that my daughter played with when she was young. Belt won’t be signing that unless he dines with me in an upcoming evening. Even then…..

To the particulars: The picture cost me $3.05. But shipping was $3.20. This additional fee has soiled the score so I’ve decided to re-list the item on a site more telling of it’s hidden value. Starting tomorrow, you can find this rare collectible listed at https://www.hugginsandscott.com/

I am told they do skillful work with the rarest of baseball finds.

List price will be $1,400. Relax, for you guys I’ll be offering a today in-game price of $1,375. That’s a $25 Flap discount, do not sneeze at that. This offer closes at games end. No exceptions or B/O’s will be considered. At least, at the time this thread went to print……

How did I come up with the list price? Allow me to disclose the true value. For starters, the edges of the photo are impeccable. You could literally slice Gouda with this. And the ink from the pen is so shiny my eyes almost burn if I look at it too long. There are unwritten reports that he once declared this his “best signature ever”. His (and my) biceps are positively peaking. And do I even have to note the classic “Candy smile” that we all secretly admired back in the day? Finally, who among us could ever forget Candy flying in from the right side of the tv screen to protect the good name of Will the Thrill?

One hundred dollars for each letter signed. That’s a sexy, smooth 14 hundo, baby. And I’ll throw in the freaking giraffe just so your significant other doesn’t raise her brow at you…….

So who’s in for the in-game deal of $1,375?

text: “buy it now” or “I gotta have that shit” to my cell……..

Leave questions in the comment section below if you have any but I can’t believe you aren’t working with enough info to buy this bad boy like 10 seconds ago…….

Last night was fun. What a game. But there was one thing that consistently irritated me from beginning to win….

all those Giants fans. Doesn’t it kinda bug a little bit? Who are all these posers wearing Giants gear? And it’s not just Texas, it’s everywhere. There’s something wrong with so many new fans wearing the same gear that I earned all those years they were either not born yet or too busy to notice the Giants while they were wearing all their Green Bay Packer jerseys.

I hang with real fans, not the ones who spend their time scouring the internet for cutesy, sparkled SF Flags or foam ring hats or any of that other stupid shit……

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PK noted this last night:

none of the announcers said a thing, but I thought Panik was limping a bit (hamstring type limp) after one of those Tex-Mex leaguers near the end; he seemed to say something to Crawdad……maybe just my search-for-the-doom existential gloomy disposition…anyway, Kierkegaard can give him an existential rubdown in the locker room

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Kokonuts was absolutely right and in fact, when he ran out to try to catch that quail hit by (Fielder?) it was clear that he kept running past the play because he couldn’t stop. That is a classic sign of someone dealing with a back problem and I think it’s a lot worse than he’s letting on….

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I’ll let Loo introduce YOUR SF Giants starter for today. As usual, pure gold……

Looking forward to the debut of the shoplifting, kid hating, beady-eyed weasel tomorrow…

What did we learn yesterday? In an epic throwback day of Flap posting, I’ll try to recap:

1) Mad Bum is a hot head. I guess this one isn’t new. However, I’ve never really understood why he gets cheesed off at a guy flipping his bat after making an out. Zumiee and Snarkk supplied the answers:

To Bum, he takes it as the batter saying “I should have crushed that sorry pitch, and I’m going to say it to everyone.”

Let’s stop pussyfooting around. Bum is an idiot doing this feigned insult gig when somebody throws a bat or flips it or cuts a fart for being disgusted with himself for missing a hittable pitch. In the ’60s, guys like Mays and Aaron were getting buzzed regularly about the head and neck with inside heat. They didn’t rush the mound, like would happen today with far less talented hitters. These players, including Bum, need to get over themselves. Get somebody out, stop giving up dingers, and stop being an ass on the mound just when you’re getting pounded. It’s embarrassing…

2) We learned what Steve Rushin calls August:

Amen to that. And I’m still firmly planted in July here in San Diego. I’m not a huge Steve Rushin fan, but he had a great line in his Sports Illustrated column this week saying that August is “summer’s warning track.’

That is a fantastic line.

3) We finally cobbled together the 3 people who past away yesterday:

Lynn Anderson, Rowdy Roddy Piper and Billy Pierce

4) I was able to secure a signed Candy Maldonado 8 X10 courtesy of…..

What exactly made the ball a Photo Ball? I’m guessing there was a photo of a player on the ball? Different players…or everyone got the same guy? I tried ebay for answers, but came up empty.

By the way, this guy was never my cup of tea, but Flav or Loo or somebody needs to get on this asap….

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Candy-Maldonado-8×10-Baseball-Ball-Photo-Signed-Autographed-1989-WS-SF-Giants-/181798935158?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2a540f9a76

5) We got a great re-tell of the Deion signing balls during the game story

Deion was still with Atlanta, he’d already taken a beer to the face when going for a foul ball. Instead of playing catch before the inning started, a kid dropped a ball, he picked it up and signed it and spent the rest of his warm-up time signing balls. No more beer was thrown at him but he was out on the field when all those balls started flying from the stands. The umps almost forfeited the game to the Braves. We came back from being down by 5 runs twice (? or was it three times), an amazing day.
I know it was kind of fucked up for all those baseball being thrown from the stands (including the upper deck), but strangely, I found it to be a beautiful thing.

6) We saw Wilmer Flores stop crying long enough to knock out a walk off bomb, his first home run in 6 weeks. As he neared the plate he tugged at the front of his jersey as if to say “that’s right, this is my town.” And that was the coolest thing of the night, in my opinion….

7) We saw idiot Bryce Harper get thrown out of yet another game for arguing balls and strikes. But this toss was especially hilarious since it was a tie game in the 11th and the only position player still on the bench was Dan Uggla. Kudos to Matt Williams for finally not getting thrown out with him……

8) we discovered that newly acquired Mike Leake has an unusual way of exchanging shirts. He walks into Macy’s and whispers quietly to himself, “I am exchanging these shirts that are yours for shirts that are now mine…”

9) Twin sighting:

Hey, at 68, shaky hands, and a right side lean, I could still play third base better than “Long Ball Duvall” -as could the Dawg.
Way off subject, there’s something oddly comforting to see Eli in the dugout. Sort of like the Good Ol’ Shoe…

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Yes it was a full day of baseball and a full day of posting here at the Flap. I’m sure I missed a bunch including another education on wrestlers who wrestled on Sac-Town’s Channel 40 back in the early 70’s…..

But I’m tired of typing. Let’s see what today brings……