A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball

Harry Reid. John Madden. And a guy I didn’t know, ESPN Bears reporterJeff Dickerson who everyone declared to be the greatest guy in the world. He died of colon cancer and 2 years earlier his wife died of cancer and now they have an 11 year old son who will grow up without his parents. Jesus Christ….

Man, the John Madden death hit me hard. I can’t think of a single person who I knew of who was beloved by literally everyone. Genuine to his core, he was everything good about watching a football game. You’d tune in, hear his voice and know that you were in the perfect spot for the next 3 hours. While not a Raider fan I respected those iconic teams from the 70’s. And while i am not a video game player it’s amazing that he changed the video game world forever, almost as a side gig.

Him dying just makes me miss the things we no longer have. Football and the world of announcing is so much worse now than when he was part of the game.

Sad times, indeed.

It’s quiet here right now. But not for long. Oh boy, Santa Anita has put together their usual amazing opening day card. I saw this on twitter and thought I’d share it here for you guys to answer.

Merry Christmas Flap Nation. I just finished adjusting my NBA and NFL line ups for today. Sitting in the dark by the lit tree right now banging out a thread for you guys. Things generally suck right now. I have a personal thing going on that isn’t getting better and has a good chance of getting much worse in the future. But I’m not complaining I feel fortunate in many ways. Have a great day that is hopefully going to involve some good food, a drink of your choice and some people that make you smile.

This will be cathartic:

7th Worst loss: Colts. On the road, they’re a good team, Jimmy was terrible as usual but this loss didn’t have me tearing my hair out. Losses happen. This was one of them. This one also happened so long ago I barely remember it.

6th Worst Loss: 1st loss the the Cards. This was back when they had Kyler and he was playing great. Plus it was on the road, a divisional game, again losses happen.

5th Worst Loss: Green Bay. This was back when everyone thought GB was suspect and Rodgers just casually strolled past the team in the final seconds with no time outs left. This one stung.

4th Worst Loss: first Sea loss. Losing to them anytime sucks.

3rd Worse Loss: last night. We had that one in the bag. It would have been 24-0 if Jimmy had even been mildy competent. Kyle’s play calling to end the half was, as usual, puss-like and scared.

2nd Worst Loss: the second loss to Seattle. despite an absurd special teams fuck up to start the game the Niners still started up 14-7 and were in control with Russell running for his life most of the first half. This is the game where Kyle inexplicably had the terrible Jimmy throw 2 balls deep into the black night sky only to have Gould miss the FG. This loss was EXTREMELY painful.

Worst Loss: Second one to AZ. They looked like they didn’t care that game and got blown out by a team led by Colt McCoy.

Ah, that felt good…….quibble with this list if you want to. The common theme is that Jimmy G SUCKS. In certain schemes, with zero pressure, he is fine (as are most QB’s). But deep down Kyle doesn’t trust him and he shouldn’t.

It was 6:31am and my phone buzzed…..

45 minutes later I’m at the Millbrae Pancake House eating breakfast with this dude….

We chopped up a lot of shit in an hour including our collective desire to have the Kale garden removed and replaced with a Forever Giant Ring of Honor to include all of *our* hall of famers.

Thoughts?

In the dead zone for baseball news these days. Thought I’d keep the line moving with this cool Christmas tree pic I saw on twitter yesterday….

TedSpe sighting at FB. Seems like just yesterday I was mopping up his sweaty head at the ballpark bar.

I don’t want to hear anything about a *trap game* or no motivation or whatever. Atlanta stinks. Beat them soundly. If not, this is no playoff team.

Regarding the Showalter hire, I don’t know, seems risky to me. He’s got a bunch of weird rules and he’s overly controlling and I would be surprised if a bunch of vets who are worth 100 X what he’s worth will be interested in putting up with that shit.

Just a new thread to keep the week moving. The number of covid cases in the NBA and NFL is staggering. And the fact that they don’t have to comply with a booster shot indicates this is going to be a very disruptive season for sports….

I’ll be honest with you: until about ten days ago I had NO IDEA what the 3 point record was. You could have told me it was 5,001 and I woulda said “Damn, dats a lot of 3’s”.

Anyway, he did it. It’s been done. Steph, to me, is like the clean, likeable version of Barry Bonds. He’s given me SO MANY thrills over the last decade+. And he’s still rockin’. Such a fun ride to watch….

Everyone is saying how cool it is that Steph is going to break the record at MSG and I guess it’s cool. Personally, I’m not too jazzed about this record. It’s been obvious for many years that he’s the best 3 point shooter of all time. I guess it’s good to finally have the record behind him to prove it. It’s been funny watching these teams go to great lengths to try to stop him from taking it down on their floor. I don’t think New York has anyone who can slow him down though.

Maybe they’ll try this?

I don’t even want to know what Jimmy, Kyle and Robbie make this year. I’m guessing all 3 are the highest paid at their position. If you get paid the most you’re getting paid to deal with the pressures of higher expectations. And all 3 of those guys have not met those expectations in 2021.

I still can’t get over Kyle thinking a 47 yarder was going to just be a chip shot for the bedraggled Gould. Has he watched him at all this year? I know we were out of time outs but there was at least 30 seconds left on the clock, plenty of time for 2 quick short outs to try to make the FG 40 yards or closer. But no. He has Jimmy go out there and chuck two balls deep into the black night sky.

We won in spite of those 3 yesterday. We won because of Bosa and the miraculous catches of Kittle and the airborne dive of Aiuyk. Don’t kid yourself, if Aiyuk had stepped out on the 2 one of those 3 idiots would have figured out a way to fuck it all to hell….

I know he didn’t go nearly as high, but when Kittle did this his finger tip catch reminded me of this one…..

Honestly not sure how the Niners are going to deal with trying to cover 3 very good receivers with Josh Norman and 2 rookies. Bosa gonna have to get there a lot today. Each week I’ve learned not to expect anything from SF as they sometimes show up, sometimes don’t show up. Definition of a .500 team I guess.

Deebo back today….

We lost five Rule 5 guys yesterday. Conner Menez was the only name of note. We also lost Jon Duplantier. We had just signed him a couple of days ago and the Dodgers swiped him from us. Irritating, that guy is a former first rounder with electric stuff. Not sure of the Rule 5 rules but it’s surprising that’s allowed to happen or that a player like that isn’t protected so close to the Rule 5 draft. Three other guys I’ve never heard of got taken: Matt Seelinger, John Nogowski and Jacob Gonzalez.

We added a dude from Tampa Bay, MIchael Gigilotti. For now we’ll just call him *Giggles*. Remember Tom Gugliotta? That was a tough time to be a Warrior fan….

True dead zone in sports right now. NFL is impossible to watch with all the bullshit penalties. NBA is, eh, whatever. Hockey may or may not have started I have no idea. This is normally the time to take a big bite out of the hot stove nectarine but the lockout has stolen that from us.

So I will keep updating the blog periodically just to keep the line moving but there’s also a likelihood this devolves into a horse racing blog like it did for a week circa 2007 at The Splash…..

Tough to give Seattle a lot of credit for yesterday’s win. Missing both Deebo and Warner we seemed lost at times. Despite Kittle’s generational performance, Jimmy made too many mind blowing, incomprehensible mistakes. It seems impossible that this guy led us to a Super Bowl but don’t forget he blew that too missing the wide open Sanders for the win.

If it wasn’t for our double secret agent Gerald Everett we wouldn’t have even had a chance on the last drive so there’s that.

Did anyone see Jimmy’s press conference? He doesn’t seem to bothered by any of this. He knows he’s gone and he’s just running out the clock on his time here. Plus, he sucks.

Well, Harbs finally did it. Not happy for him but surprised he was able to get his team to do what it did this year and for that he deserves some type of credit.

Niners in Seattle today. No way in hell would I give 3.5. This is a sit back and just watch it game.

Meh. This isn’t really moving the needle for me. It’s the off season, nothing happens now, we are literally months away from the season starting. I suspect this will all get worked out in time. And I also think Farah will have his pick of a substantial litter of 2nd tier free agents after all the dust settles. They’ll work out the economics, about the only thing we as fans will notice next year is the universal DH. And I’m fine with that, too.

Lockout looming. Midnight tonight. Tons of free agents still on the board and the Giants payroll commitment currently around 100 million which is nothing for them. They won 107 games last year so you wouldn’t think there would be too many holes to fill but with Buster and Gasman leaving, coupled with the fact that 107 was a complete outlier, it is conceivable that Z will be quite active once the labor agreement comes together—whenever that will be.

Still, advantage us when it does re-start. I trust Z to finish off the roster with literally his picks of the remaining litter….