A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball

There are a lot of things I’d like Hunter Pence to stop doing with that wacky chick he’s been engaged to FOREVER but this video made me laugh.

Of course I’d like to see his focus get back on to baseball, something that seems to take second place in his life since he started making stupid videos with his goofy girlfriend, but that was gold. Solid gold. Great movie, too.

Here’s a family man with a lot of shit going on but it’s nice, normal shit. And he still has plenty of time to focus on his craft:

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#FreeStix! RPOTD–probably not feeling in the catbird’s seat these days  😦

Consider the fate of the Yankees fans. They were on top of the world for decades, to the point where they all took it for granite and became blase about the whole matter. Now that the Giants may be virgin on being the dominant team in baseball those of us who went through nothing less than DECADES of futility and floundering finally find ourselves in the catbird seat. And it feels good.

Before last night’s game I was hoping Cleveland would bounce the Cubs and end this series once and for all. I am not really feelin’ baseball right now and will be just as happy to start focusing on the hot stove. But now I am hoping this goes 7 and *Cubbie* fans get the full blown feeling of losing. Their nervous angst, hand wringing and praying in every tv shot is beyond annoying.

I wonder if their are any Brown’s fans who aren’t Indians or Cavs fans. There have to be, right? Suckers.

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#FreeStix! RPOTD– this one was in response to the MadBum signing—that team friendly deal that Loo loves to loath so much. As usual, this is a Stix post with a LOT going on in it.

One of your best postings Steve ~ a real cri de coeur. Being an albeit moderately well travelled countryboy myself i maybe have an insight or two into this myself. Our ace is simply not much ensorcelled by the buzzers and bells of materialist toys and fun and games. He’s real. Down-home. Once the place is paid for, the wife is happy and plenty of hay in the barn the dude is satisfied. He doesn’t even hafta pursue the bitch goddess fame. She came to him with open arms.

Watching Dan Otero finish off the Cubs brought back a lot of those old (3 weeks) bullpen feelings. Before the 9th inning started last night the scoreboard guy in Chicago played this:

….I actually don’t find this funny, I find it irritating and another reason why I want the Cubs to lose this thing as soon as possible……

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#FreeStix! RPOTD:

WordPress was acting up so i did a shorty. This year’s offense looks to be the virtual opposite of the one the Giants trundled out in ’11. Belt is a basher and Buster a blaster. Dynamic duo at the plate, i think. Pence and Panda pop those peas too. Contributions from Crawford, Pagan and Adrianza cannot be overlooked either. Morse is a masher, Blanco a dasher and Perez an up and comer.

All in all there are no perceivable holes in the SF attack. Defense will come around. Last night was a combination of Opening Day heebiejeebies combined with parking lot field conditions.

Have the feeling there will be at least one position player making apologies to Bumgarner ~ either already last night or before this evening’s game. Hard to be an Ace with a swisscheese defense. Bochy pulled him for Blanco’s bat and that worked out a bit. Petit coughed up hairballs and then uprighted the liferaft before things got totally out of hand. Machi EARNED the win. Romo so-so but held on. Pitching is bound to improve, particularly when the team plays in venues more kind to the moundsmen.

Important thing is the Giants lead off with a win vs a powerful offensive team in their own Snakepit. Get on top and stay there. How do you do that? Beat up on your closest rivals. Snakes will be desperate tonight. Cain’s gotta make sure nobody’s on base if he reverts to surrendering taters. A vintage performance by the Horse would calm a lotta nerves around here.

I’m going to nominate Bill Murray’s rendition of “Take me out to the ballgame” to replace Roseanne Barr’s national anthem as *Worst Thing I’ve Ever Seen a Comedian Do in Public.” I couldn’t believe what I was watching. Daffy Duck? Are you fucking kidding me? If his goal was to look like a moron, he nailed it.

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#FreeStix! RPOTD

This one was just before one of the 2010 WS games. Zumiee has a pretty great response, so I included it. Stix used to really set those bowling pins up, didn’t he?

• zumarust said, on October 31, 2010 at 3:02 pm (Edit)

  “Gonna actually WATCH the game tonight at a friend’s place.”

  Now, we’re talking, Stix! No more of this “I climbed a tree, and hung up a short-wave radio antenna made out of recycled bees hives, and used an ax to fight off an angry grizzly bear in the process” stuff. (grin)

Doesn’t it seem like an unusual amount of press is going to this Schwarber dude? I get it, he’s a good hitter. But the Cubs have the most stacked line up in baseball. The media is acting like the Cubs have no chance if Cornfield Schwarber isn’t playing. Uh, they did manage to get here without him just fine. Just sayin’.

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I completely forgot that Stix offered to gift me one of his wooden sculptures after we won the 2010 series. He is apparently quite an accomplished wood uh… sculpturist? Sadly, he flaked on it and never finished it or sent it or whatever. Stony days turn into stony nights and it’s easy to hit that repeat button every day.

Anyway, here is today’s #FreeStix! RPOTD:

Depth of winter here in the Northwoods. Sposta drop to thirty below zero overnight. Burning extra oak before i hit the sack. Cookstove been going all day with a slow-cooking stew on its second day and some homemade clam chowder simmering away. Finally got to carving on my ‘One Flap Down’ piece for the first time in months. Hoping the chowder has a sufficiently large flavor to match the recipient of the piece. Maybe it will get finished and shipped before that 30-odd day calendar on the Flap runs outta numbers.

I tried to watch Game 2, I really did. But, I petered out. Heard the Cubs won.
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#FreeStix! RPOTD. This one comes with a classic TedSpe reply.

• TedSpe said, on January 27, 2011 at 10:35 am (Edit)

  I take it you’re not a big Christopher Cross fan, Stix

Cleveland: “Well, that was easy…”

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Today’s #FreeStix! RPOTD is brought to us by the Jan 25th, 2015 thread. It’s short but I liked it because pitch forks and hoe’s are found in the same backyard tool shed and the image of him shaking a pitch fork is nearly as good as him shaking the hoe. I would have liked to have been a fly on the backyard fence as Stix was trying to decide what gardening tool to shake at the Feds……

STRIKE ONE on the new commissioner. If he backs the Dink Hitter rule for the NL that will be strike four and time for torches and pitchforks.

Dave Roberts won the Sporting News Manager of the Year and that’s not a surprise. He deserved it. As a fan, I used to care about those individual awards a lot. Then 3 in 5 happened and I literally couldn’t care less about them.

World Series starts TONIGHT. No more false starts right? Tonight is the night?

I don’t want to send anyone (Loo) into an obsessive search but I am pretty fixated on finding that Stix post about *pussy all over his bed*. I am guessing it was in one of the Winter months but I don’t want to send anyone down the wrong path. Anyway, here’s today’s #FreeStix! RPOTD:

28 below zero hereabouts at sunup this morning but only -2 now. So i’m basking, basking, basking. Opened up the monday sports section in the as previously unread October 27 edition of the New York Times. Their front cover story read “A Giant among Giants”, a very nice piece on Sabean and his trail of successes. They must have been reading tealeaves. Series was tied at 2-2 with Bumgarner going against that loser at San Diego, now.

Friend who did 22 heavy years time living in Manhattan still gets the NYT and i get them after a few weeks. Love the crossword puzzles ~ though Schortz should not ALLOW popkultch krap in the Friday and Saturday ones as they’re hard enough to do already without having to know the identity of some goddamn boobtoob booby starring in some 1986 mindrot. In any event, i saved up the critical mid-October and early November issues for pre-S.T. enjoyment. And man did i enjoy that October 27th one.

World Series starts tonight if that does anything for ya. I would be rooting harder for Cleveland if it weren’t for 1) that stupid racist logo and 2) the bad taste still in my mouth from the Warriors incomprehensible meltdown after being up 3-1 last year. I still haven’t come close to letting that go….

But yeah, I’m rooting for the Indians. I liked the Cubs and their fans much more when they were losing every year.

How about a Retro Stix post? There is so much gold in this one I don’t know where to start:

Easy to see why Spring training is not held here in northern Minnesota. Finally coaxed myself outta the sack upstairs at around nine this a.m. Heating stove got a refill. Ice floes atop the water buckets on the kitchen floor. Cat-water frozen almost solid.
Turned on this machine and hooked into Yahoo weather report for this area. Twenty-four below zero. It’s getting a bit old. Betcha if they were playing up here yesterday that Red Dick guy would not have scaled that fence even once. Not much bounce when there are two feet of snow on the ground and a howling north-northwesterly at about 30 MPH driving the one-below temp into a windshield factor i do not even wanna contemplate. That was yesterday afternoon’s lead-in to last night.
Looks like March is NOT gonna come in like a lamb. Not even a sour old goat. The original Frostbite Falls (aka International Falls) some 130 miles NNE of me set their all-time low for last night at -33. We probably did not bottom that, but probably neared -30. Saturday night, March 1st is projected for a comparatively balmy -26 degrees. Couple more cold ones after that and then we start getting more snow with the milder temps.
So my question is this~~ why do MLB schedule makers even consider early season starts in venues like Minneapolis, Boston. Chicago and Milwaukee when cities like Miami, Tampa, Atlanta, Houston, Arlington, Phoenix, L.A., S.F., Dago and Oakland usually enjoy decent to fine weather in early Spring?

It’s no secret that during the off season it’s a grind to find things to *main thread* about every day. But this one is easy.

I dialed the number someone kindly shared with me. [Long-ish story I can’t get into. The info was handed to me. My first thought was: What? No way I can call him. I was told I had to tell him about the book. I demurred. Until today.] I was that nine-year-old boy trying to call Willie Mays, as described at the outset of ‘Chasing Willie Mays.’

What would I say?

He answered right away. I knew it was him.

‘Hello, who is this?’
‘This is Paul Kocak. I wrote a book…’
‘Wait a second, I can’t hear you.’
His voice was high-pitched, almost plaintive, but calm, cordial, familiar. Comfortable and conversational.

As I was intoning the familiar ‘can you hear me now?,’ I realized it wasn’t just me or my phone, though I might’ve been mumbling a little from nerves. His TV was too loud. The curse of old people. He had left his phone to turn down the television. I could hear the volume receding.

‘I had to turn the TV down.’

‘What can I do for you, sir?’

‘I just wanted to let you know I wrote this book. It’s about you, and my love for the Giants. When I was nine years old I tried to call you, and here I am calling you now from Syracuse, New York.’

‘I heard about that book.’

‘Really? I…’

‘…yeah, it was on a New York station.’

I had yet to be interviewed on a NY station, though a station in Stamford, Connecticut, had interviewed me the day before. But who knows?

‘So, I was wondering if I could send you a copy.’

‘Sure, send it to the ballpark.’

‘Oh, okay. At 24 Willie Mays Plaza.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I don’t want to intrude on your day. Thank you so much, sir. Thank you, sir. Bye now.’

Clearly, my ‘thank yous’ extended over decades and went deeper than this call and far beyond me.

That was it, more or less. I cannot describe how welcoming, charming, easy, and gracious he was. If some stranger had called my number out of the blue, I would be more suspicious, apprehensive, annoyed. He left the feeling we could’ve talked longer. I didn’t want to abuse the privilege. It went easy once I made up my mind to do it. Oh yeah. There was a tiny voice in the back of my head saying: This is Willie Mays. You’re talking to Willie Mays. Live. This is your childhood reenacted with a different ending.

He couldn’t have been sweeter or more hospitable.

So, aside from a nap or two on a day with torrential rains, that was my day.

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If you want to read Pawlie’s book “Chasing Willie Mays” you can find it online here:

Well, all that jizz the networks blow on eachother’s faces when they get to broadcast a Kershaw game is going to get tested on Saturday. He’s the greatest pitcher of all time, right? Nobody even a close second, right? Dodgers backs against the wall and their guy has to come through or it’s another lost season and the dealin’ is DONE in LA for the year…..

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#FreeStix! RPOTD!

This one came from this year. He and I nailed it, didn’t we? Here was the end of my thread on on February 24th:

“I like our bullpen a lot. Nice mix of experience and young flame throwers. And hey, if the bullpen falters the one thing I KNOW the Giants will do is go get help. They aren’t spending 165 million on 2016 salaries and complement it with a leaky bullpen that gives away games. So, nothing to stress on here. Cautious optimism warranted…….”

And then Stix response….

Appears that Derek Law has come back strong from an injury situation. Smith, Romero and Gearin are also champing at the bit. In other words, the pen has not only excellence from the outset but also plenty of depth in the pipeline with a combination of quality experience and young flamethrowers. Bullpen is the least of our worries going into the season.”

Double lulz……

Tonight is the first post season game (non-Giant) that I’ve looked forward to. This pivotal Game 5 in LA will determine the NL rep in the World Series and all the pressure is on….both teams? Lots of second guessing of Roberts who is starting the underwhelming Maeda instead of the short rested Kershaw. I actually think it’s the right decision. If Maeda cobbles together a serviceable outing and LA scratches a win off Lester you have to think the lights get blown out in the windy city this weekend.

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#FreeStix! RPOTD!

Joyeaux Noel et un Bon Anee’ pour mes Amis de le Flap. God Jul og Nyt Aar, ogsa. Okay, so we got now German, Spanish, French and Norwegian greetings of the day and season and, oh ya, Bon Voyage Aeriel for Blade and “Muchos Garcias” as some southeast Texans sometimes say in describing south Texas to Flav for his long-running labor of love in keeping this happening happening. No white Christmas up here in the far flung fringes of Minnesota’s Northwoods, but i guess they got em around Denver and Santa Fe. Go figure.

Looking forward to a Giant 2012, making a matched set with 2010. Already champing at the bit to salute the Champs of the new year.

The Cubs are proving once again that a team that coasts through the regular season is never a lock to succeed in the post season. Some of the Cubs players complained in September that it “felt like Spring Training.” There is something to this. It’s a challenge to go from not feeling pressure for months to suddenly being thrust into the knuckle-gripping stress of the post season. Adding the additional pressure of “Are they really going to lose this?”  is probably making it that much worse. ESPECIALLY for a young team. The Cubs can dig themselves out of this because they are better than the Dodgers. But right now it’s clear which team is handling the pressure of October baseball and it’s not the youngsters from Chi-town.

#FreeStix! RPOTD! (this is a good one that gives a quick glimpse into his *disgust with the corporate crap*. I feel like I am getting to know Stix better as I sift through his repetitive yet introspective posts….)

Carstie Clausen said, on June 25, 2015 at 10:32 am (Edit)

Chi: As much as i admire Belt, i do get the feeling that he may be past simple disgust with ATT. I’m disgusted with the owners for going along with that corporate crap, but they are greedy fuckers so it’s just fine with them not to dump the phonebill and go with Willie Mays Field. So it could just be that BB9 is quietly plumping for a trade.

Houston? They are swamped with prospects, both outfielders and starters. Thing is, SF does not have to trade Belt. They could hold out for one helluva package. There is no clearly dominant team in the Junior League, unlike with StL in the NL. The Stros haven’t been to the dance since long before they switched leagues. They could be hungry enough to make quite an offer for a guy who might well be the next Dave Kingman in their venue.

With some financial considerations added, Philadelphia might get a bite on a Cole Hamels offering. Problem is, they might want to add Howard as well.

Ok, the time for the Cubs to stop screwing around is right now. They are hitting .193 as a team this post season. That is a batting average the Giants should be checking in with, not the stacked Cubs. Enough fiddling around. It’s time to pound the Dodgers into the ground and out of the post season. And that starts tonight.

Even though they’re still playing baseball, for me, it’s basically the off season. In the past I’ve entertained myself with digging up retro players of the day. The BBOTD was born in, I think, the first year of the Flap. This year, to honor and support our ensnared Flap buddy Stix, I am going to try to upload a #FreeStixRetroPostoftheDay! every day this off season. So without further ado, here’s one from 2013 when he went by the handle StixWiz:

#FSRPOTD!:

Greetings and salutations on the pending New Year. It IS an even numbered one. Those have been good for SF of late. Also greetings from the Icebox of the Nation as my HIGH temp today was Twenty-frogging-TWO degrees below ZERO. I really feel sorry for those poor Canuckle ballers less than 100 miles north of me. For them below zero = -1 Celsius, which is something like 30 degrees in real temps. Now i can understand Celsius for some little place like Belgium or the Netherlands where neither 90 degrees nor ten below are often encountered. Places like that it does make some sense to get all laboratory scientificalatious about measurements and such ~ But Cana-frozen-duh? Give me a break.

Olney MIGHT be right if Cain does not show the uptick he provided in the latter part of last season; if Bumgarner suddenly and unaccountably slips; if Hudson starts showing his age; if Timmy’s resurrection was a flash in the pan and IF Vogie’s bad season was not a one-off. Looks like a lotta IFs to me. We are not even talking bullpen yet.

Even year, gang. It starts in less then 8 hours here in the Icebox of the Nation.

AL game tonight, if anyone is interested. Today is the 27 year anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake. I was in Portland, Ore attending the esteemed Lewis and Clark college. Where were you?

I’ve been keeping loose tabs on our Flap-buddy in the clink and came across this article from Oct 6. I’m no lawyer, but representing yourself and ordering the court to do something is probably not the fast track to freedom. Maybe Snarkk or Xoot can chime in on this.

Watching the Toronto hitters flail meekly away at the filth from Andrew Miller just reinforces our need for a lockdown bullpen. And I’m not talking about a very good bullpen like the one we had in our World Series runs. I’m talking about secret weapon shit. I know Miller is getting used differently because it’s the post season and some managers (unlike the by-the-book Showalter) play to win NOW in the post season. I’m talking about scaring teams into knowing they are playing a 6 inning game. Score runs by the 6th inning or you’re done. That’s what I want. And that’s completely doable if Evans decides to go this route…..

I grinded through that AL game last night. Zumiee is right, that logo is just awful. It’s like they intended to go out and be as racist as they could possibly be. Regarding the Cubs, I don’t like them much either the way the media is fawning over them. But they fawn over Kershaw 10 times harder, I’ve actually never seen such adoration of a sports figure before (from the media).

I support the Dodgers getting kicked out of the post season at any point so I will be rooting for the Cubs.

Part of the problem (for me) with gearing up for the rest of this post season isn’t just *the Giants aren’t in it*. It’s how they were ousted. It was so fast and so unexpected. Even doubting their bullpen I really thought they could hold a 3 run lead. I still can almost barely believe they lost that game.

It got taken from us too quickly.

The lead story on KTVU this morning is the rain that’s coming through the Bay Area today. It’s not very much rain. But that’s the lead story.

And there’s an AL game tonight if that does anything for ya.

It’s hard for me to really start gearing up for next season, but I was kicking around the prospects of the 3 available stud closers. Seems like a no brainer right? The Giants won’t sign Chapman because he’s a lunatic, they won’t sign Jansen because the Art Dealers wouldn’t ever let that happen. That leaves Melancon unless I’m missing something.

I’ll watch the rest of the post season because I like some of the Indians hitters and can get behind rooting for them a little bit. I was fine with the Nats getting eliminated. I don’t like most of the Nats players or Dusty. Dusty is great at connecting to the players but he’s pretty lame as a tactician and he lost another series last night. He seems to have lost most of his edge anyway. Harper can now spend the off season sculpting his hairdo.

Cubs should smash the Dodgers, that will be fun to watch……

24 hours later, I am looking at this a little more rationally. Jettisoning the entire bullpen is probably not going to happen. Even though part of me still wants to see them all erased from the planet. Before we get started, here is the contract situation for everyone going forward:

http://www.spotrac.com/mlb/san-francisco-giants/yearly/payroll/

Realistically, who stays and who goes? Romo, Casilla and Lopez are all coming off the books. Fun fact: That trio made a cool 21 million in 2016. Gnaw on that as you commute to work today. I will assume Evans isn’t insane and won’t bring any of these 3 back. They are all DONE as major league players. I don’t care what Casilla says or how bendy Romo’s slider can still get on occasion. All 3, ba-bye.

3 guys who will be back: That fucking lefty reliever, Kontos, Strickland. They are all arb eligible through 2019 (at least), they all have good stuff, they have all been successful at different points in the season. And we paid up the ass for TFLR so as ant-small as he usually comes up, he ain’t going anywhere. And maybe Strickland takes some anti-stupid pills this off season. He dumb.

Law: Obviously stays, will probably be the 8th inning set up guy.

Okert, Osich and Gearrin: I could see the first 2 guys coming back, not the 3rd. The first 2 are young, controllable with great stuff. That has a place in anyone’s bullpen. Gearrin was never one of “my guys” and I hope he’s gone.

That leaves 2 spots, at least, for Evans to go both fists into the free agent market for a closer and another stud set up guy. He cannot half ass his way through this. Or it will be his full ass having to answer to the fan base. Someone needs to be held accountable for this absolutely shitly constructed bullpen and I put that squarely on Evans and Sabean. They have to fix this.

Matt Cain makes 40 mill over the next 2 seasons if that does anything for ya. If you go back and look at the contracts Timmy and Cain got and look at their production post-deal you can see clearly how much more productive Barry Zito was > both of them during his time here…..

Once you get past the maddening decision to pull Moore and dive into that pathetic excuse for a bullpen, it gets a little easier to tolerate the insanity that unfolded after that. Look, I wanted him to leave Moore in too.  But 120 pitches is a lot of pitches. Bochy might be the only manager in baseball to even CONSIDER leaving him in.

If you can’t hand your bullpen a 3 run lead in the 9th and still win the game you simply have no business being in the post season. None. What was the plan? Pitch our starters 9 innings every game? That’s just not realistic. Sure, he could have left Moore in last night and probably would have gotten the win. But then what? We still had a Game 5, an NLCS and a World Series to go. At some point you have to use your bullpen.

So in one way we got put out of our misery a little early and that’s better than a long, slow painful death. I think. I’ve never died before.

No, I’m not going to fault Bochy too much on this one. Yes, he looked like a doddering old man shuffling back and forth in that 9th inning. But the guys he brought in were paid to do a simple job and they didn’t come close to performing. Law looked scared as fuck out there. He threw one ball nearly over the batter’s head, another ball yanked left in the dirt. And then a hard hit base hit. Lopez? I mean, he’s there to do one thing and he couldn’t do it. I’m actually surprised Rizzo didn’t blast that swing and miss strike two deep into McCovey Cove. That was a straight up cookie he missed. Romo’s pitches looked worthless. He finally had to come in with a nothing-slider and it got belted. I wouldn’t have left him in either, lol. What was Bochy supposed to do? Use Casilla? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!

At least that fucking lefty reliever got them to hit a ball on the ground. I don’t know what was going on with Crawford last night. It’s like he was channeling the ghost of Steve Sax or something.

Yes it was a disgusting way to lose. It reminded me of the Roger Craig fumble. Or more recently, the Warriors collapse against the Cavaliers. But there was really no where to go with this. Winning would have just delayed the inevitable. The bullpen is incompetent. This morning, they are ALL that fucking lefty reliever to me.

This is more on the front office than anyone else. They built a 200 million dollar team and a 10 cent bullpen. That’s indefensible.

Tough way to be forced into the off season but we were not winning a World Series with that ‘pen. It was never going to happen.

Ashamed to admit I didn’t make it to the end of that game, not by a long shot. I did what I normally do when I don’t see the end, I opened up my lap top and went to the Flap.

590 comments. Either something really good or something really bad happened.

Or both….

I read through the highs and lows, then went to mlb.com to see it for myself. I don’t really think you can understate this Gillaspie thing. For starters, I can now spell his last name without having to look it up. That in itself is a miracle. Driving down the hill to Safeway this morning I was listening to the KNBR guys jizzing the radio waves and heard that lefties are hitting .122 off Chapman in his career. He had never given up a triple before last night. And had that been a park normally configured his no-triples record would still be in tact (cue: Diggity’s grass roots effort to get the park changed).

I’m just glad we got at least one. I watched the Red Sox game and as it wound down you could just see how desperate and disappointed all those players were. Swept out of the post season at home. Screw that.

I’d like to lather up the hate for Lackey tonight but I just don’t have it in me. That 2002 game wasn’t won by him it was lost by Dusty for starting Livan. And do you remember who are two pinch hitters were that game?

Shingo and Tom Goodwin. We never stood a chance in Game 7.

Instead of talking about tonight’s game I want to bring back and old quote from the past. It was 2012 and the Giants were down 2-0 to the Reds. Hunter Pence gathered the team around him. Retold by Tim Flannery, I’ll let The Reverend take it from here…..

“GET IN HERE, EVERYONE GET IN HERE..LOOK INTO EACH OTHER EYES..NOW! LOOK INTO EACH OTHERS EYES, I WANT ONE MORE DAY WITH YOU, IT’S THE MOST FUN, THE BEST TEAM I HAVE EVER BEEN ON SAID THE REVEREND HUNTER PENCE. ” AND NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS WE MUST NOT GIVE IN, WE OWE IT TO EACH OTHER, PLAY FOR EACH OTHER, I NEED ONE MORE DAY WITH YOU GUYS, I NEED TO SEE WHAT THERIOT (JERRY) WILL WEAR TOMORROW, I WANT TO PLAY DEFENSE BEHIND VOGELSONG BECAUSE HE’S NEVER BEEN TO THE PLAYOFFS..PLAY FOR EACH OTHER NOT YOURSELF, WIN EACH MOMENT, WIN EACH INNING, IT’S ALL WE HAVE LEFT”

Now go out there and do what you do with your Even Year Bullshit……

Slam dunk. Lights out. Win day. I’m not worried about Mad Bum but I am wondering about the rest of the team. I’m not doubting their collective effort but I do wonder how badly they really want it. Many of those guys have rings already and the dude who doesn’t (Span) might not have enough magic to join that party. There was no clearer sign of this being a no-magic season than the ball that Pence dropped in Game 2. In 2014 he was “Pence on the Fence.” Last game he was “Hunter the Punter.” Or something else that rhymes with his name. That was all I could come up with pre-coffee.

Either way, we have an elimination game pending and that’s when it’s usually duck and cover time for our opponent. I have no idea why that is but apparently we have the Cubs right where we want them.

Down 2-0 is not good. Not only is it the score of the series it reminds me of the score of every goddamn game we’ve played this year. But we are in these games. The mlb dyed hair jobs were noticing that the Giants don’t have a hitter who can carry the team. Wow, that’s some sweet analysis.

The argument that we are up against it because our hitters have to face lights out pitching game after game in the playoffs doesn’t even wash because we got Hendricks out of the game and then couldn’t hit their bullpen. And having their relief pitcher hit a bomb was just good comedy in our sad faces.

This tweet from Kuip’s son is good comedy too. I was thinking the same thing. Cubs fans over-celebrate lazy fly balls like each one is a game winning Super Bowl touchdown.

Pffffttttt…. If not for a lone Coner Gillaspie swing, we’d be working on 18 straight zeros. I guess that would have been impossible since we don’t play the Cubs if we don’t score a run in New York. But even for an offense that showered us with impotency all season, this is a little surprising. KNBR gives away 5K if a Giant hits a grand slam in, I think, the 5th inning. They should offer up 50 million for that to happen. 5K should be the payout for an extra base hit….

Speaking of Gillaspie, he’s our third baseman for the rest of the season. Nunie couldn’t beat Posey in a sprint right now. I’m actually a little surprised that Bochy used him in a PH role last night. He doesn’t play for 2 weeks, he’s cold on the bench all night and you send him up there to face Chapman? If he had crumpled to the ground running to first would it have been a surprise? I suppose when you’re travel 2mph there’s little chance for a crumple.

Even with this almost unreal inability to score runs, tonight isn’t a must win game. It’s awfully close to a “pretty please, with sugar on top, win the fucking game” game but with Bum going in 3 and then another home game with Matty Moore, tonight isn’t mandatory. Nobody needs to tell these guys how to come back from a 2-0 deficit anyway…..

So let’s see them loosen up a bit tonight and have some fun. Contrary to what those 17 zeros suggest, this team can score runs. Just go out and do it.

This series vs the Cubs is bringing back a lot of memories for me. 1989. Just starting out Lewis and Clark College. I remember a surprising number of Giants fans attending that tiny school in Portland.

I looked over the ’89 roster just for some better recall. Some of these guys weren’t on the post season roster:

Best player name: Ernie Camacho

Best horse racing name: Kelly Downs

Best Ex Cardinal: Ken Oberkfell

Best clutch hitter I remember with no stats whatsoever to back it up: (tie) Greg Litton and Ernie Riles

wait…2 guys named *Ernie*? Whoa…..

Guy I Thought was too old to be on that team: Chris Speier

That team also had Yan Gomes future father-in-law on it….

Draveckey, Bedrosian, Reuschel….

The Thrill.

Greenwald.

In hindsight, the clear problem with that team not winning the World Series was chronological. 1989. Odd year. They never stood a chance.

Don’t get me wrong, I have been known to get my hoot and holler on. But last night, when Gillaspie launched that “even shaped” ball deep into the night, all I did was raise my left hand, make a fist and smile. I never made a sound, didn’t even utter a “fuck yeah.” My days of jumping out of windows (college after Will Clark’s grand slam) are over. We’ve been gifted too much by this team over the years for me to act like this is all brand new. I advise you to click on “POTD-best of” and read #35. That’s what’s up.

Madison Bumgarner is just a man, man. He’s the man I wish I was. The man we should all strive to be. A winner. A closer. A starter and a finisher. An understated, respectful celebrator. Rock solid reliable. Is there a straighter or truer post season bullet ever fired in the history of baseball? Bumgarner makes me look at Joe Montana and say “Is that all you got?”

The best part of EYB is that it’s already happened. I guess you could also say it’s “happening”. But really, it’s happened. Once again we have been absolutely gifted with an unbridled joy that you don’t get from just walking the earth on a random Wednesday. Who knows what’s going to happen, we all know there is still a long road to travel.

I continue to force myself to appreciate the moments in time that we get with this team. We are so so lucky. Don’t ever forget that no matter what happens from here on out.

I loved last night’s game. Even the strikeouts. As the game wore on it became a game to watch within the game. Good thing I wasn’t playing a drinking game. All those k’s would have sent me to the ER. And who doesn’t enjoy a walk off? There are critics of the wild card format but I’m not one of them. An instant Game 7 to kick off the post season? That is fantastic. And if the WC teams or the fans grouse about only getting one game here’s an idea: win your damn division.

My A’s fan buddy, The Boney One, texted me at 4:32am today looking for my prediction on the game tonight. I just texted back “excitement” and left it at that. It’s the bare minimum of what we all get today and into tonight.

Even if they lose, I’m pretty content just getting to this game. How did the worst team in baseball make the post season? Think about that. And it’s not even arguable, with stats or your own eyeballs, that we weren’t the worst team in all of mlb in the second half of the season.

But here we are. I’m down with a crazy 3 week run. I don’t expect it but I also didn’t expect the 2014 flag and that’s flying like a boss right now.

So whatever, no expectations. But I’m confident because of who’s taking the hill. Excitement is definitely in the air. On the east side of the Dumbarton Bridge there are salt ponds. Savy locals know when it’s time to roll up the window. I hope NY fans know what’s up but there’s only so much they can do to withstand the EYB that’s wafting towards Citi Field right now. It’s coming and it’s even and it’s bullshit and so far (engage knowing dude head nod) no one has been able to stop it……

Representing……

One thing we have going for us, and I think we forget this a little bit, is the absolute mystic of Madison Bumgarner. To us, he’s still human, we watch him all the time. He’s not a machine, he gives up runs. He even loses games. But to the rest of the baseball landscape, he’s a living legend, a character out of Greek mythology. How perfect is it that he gets to go up against a pitcher with the nickname of a God from Norse mythology? I don’t know about you guys, but I go Greek > Norse all damn day long. Always have, always will.

Peep this. Lowest Road ERA, Post Season history:

Bum: 0.60

Bob Gibson: 0.97

Mariano Rivera: 1.02

Sandy Kofax: 1.04

So if you find yourself at work shitting your slacks trying to figure out how we are going to hit Thor, just remember that Mets fans and very likely Mets players are probably shitting themselves twice as hard worrying about how they are going to hit Bum. And that mental mind bending snot rocket in their faces is as real as it is powerful. That’s our “10th man”. Thor was good in the post season last year. 26K’s, 19 innings, 2 wins, 3.32 ERA, blah blah blah. The bottom line is that he’s more cute nickname and flowing locks than he is true legend. Legend status is real and it’s earned and it’s Bum. It could literally be the reason we win that game tomorrow…..

In honor of all that is competitive and right with baseball, the Giants have to win this wild card game. Even though you know the Cubs are rooting hard for the Mets. If you were Chicago, you would too. If Syndy beats us the Mets get a day off for travel and then have to lock the kitchen up and ask “Two Slices” Colon to open the NLDS on Friday. And for Game 2? Freaking Lugo? The guy who’s last name starts with “G” that I can’t spell? After Thor, they literally have zero starting pitching left. The Cubs would destroy them.

Meanwhile, if the Giants win it’s not like they burned their only ticket to the dance. Cueto and Moore loom largely and I love the idea of Smarge out of the bullpen if needed. And by Game 3 Bum is back. SF vs Chicago is set up to be an epic battle.

The only reason I think we can pull this off is because our pitching is right there. It’s been rock solid for 2 months. If we didn’t have 4 stud starting pitchers all geeked and peaked I would worry since pitching doesn’t just all of a sudden come together.

But hitting can. You can be in a hitting slump and all of a sudden spring out of it. In fact, it’s probably nothing that some wild eyes from Pence shooting around the dugout couldn’t fix.

First things first, Thor is going to be a problem. He pitched against us twice this year. We hit him some in May, not at all in August. He’s a total stud.

Right now I’m having a pretty hilarious vision that would likely involve some NYPD activity. Palwie is humping his book outside the stadium. Loo is right next to him waving one of those giant-ass cardboard signs of Stix face– you know the type of sign those Jesus freaks wave around? A sign that big.

A game this big.

E.Y.B.

A loss, and we have to deal with an irritating trip to St Louis (if they win tonight). Although I have to think that if it turns out to not be a Matty Moore Sunday, and we lose, Voggy will be all out to take care of business in the night cap.

I can’t say enough about Cy Blach. The dude toils in the minors all year while Bochy mindlessly trots out Cain and Peavy over and over. Do they Giants know how to scout their own players? Because this is the second year in a row that a guy has come up and been lights out (Chris Heston in 2015).

The Dodgers have to unfurl the lamest of line ups today, right?

The Giants, with their limp and lifeless Summer, have pretty much doused out any fire I had left in me for this season. But I’ll tell you, seeing those orange towels getting whipped around by 40,000+ was fun to see. Did a little rekindling, so to speak.

Taking the first game was critical. Had LA won it would have been a deflated attempt vs Kershaw today. I still don’t know how we coax a win out of this day but hey, EYB right? So Ty Blach v CK today, no pressure there. The Pirates are pitching Chad Kuhl vs Wacha. A lot of that is going to come down to how much of a shit Pittsburgh gives. At least we’ll likely know the outcome before our game.

And then tomorrow is a Matty Moore Sunday. If it ends up mattering, and you know it will, we have Voggy pitching the Sunday night game for us. I am 100% certain he gives everything he has in that start.

So, an interesting weekend set up at least…..

The St. Louis Cardinals need to reconfigure that left field wall. It’s absurd that Molina’s ball was ruled a GRD. Price is whining about only having 10 seconds to decide and I agree with him about that. But he’s the manager, he’s supposed to know the rules and the configuration of the park. That ball CLEARLY hit up against the advertisement wall, anyone could see that. I’m not sure how all the umpires missed it when the announcers caught it right away (as well as Duvall, more on him in a moment). I’m assuming this happens a lot is St Louis because of that inexplicably configured wall. How is everyone playing and/or umpiring not critically aware of this?

And again, why would the Cardinals even be so dumb as to set this up to be so controversial? We’ve got ads out in left field, if the ball hits an ad it’s just part of the field of play. The way it looks to me, there is about an 8 inch (or so) break between the wall and the the ad wall above it. It may be set back slightly too, I can’t tell. But why create such a muddled situation? They are both walls, if a ball bounces off either one it should still be considered in the field of play. At the VERY least, paint a giant yellow line at the bottom of the ads to distinguish between the two walls.

A ground rule double is a ball hit fairly that leaves the field of play. Did Molina’s ball look like it reasonably left the field of play to any of you?

Duvall was interviewed after the game. Nobody had a better look at where that ball hit than him. He said “I definitely knew it hit the sign but I wasn’t sure if that was a ground rule double or not.” Look, the Reds deserve major blame in this, too. When we would play away softball games the first thing everyone did pre-game was walk the field with the ump and he would tell us what was considered a home run and what wasn’t. How, at the major league level, do you not inform your freaking left fielder about that stupid ass ad wall being a ground rule double? Shouldn’t their version of Wotus have gone over that with him? That’s just incompetence as far as I’m concerned. Duvall could have started screaming for their to be a protest/review but he just walked off the field because he didn’t know the rule…….

If you feel like laughing about this instead of steaming, this is a pretty funny tweet.

Looking back on it, I never really believed in my heart that they had a chance to string together two days of hitting. We were jizzing on ourselves after Tuesday’s 19 hit outburst. But just like the *No Jizz Area!* sign that Stix scrawled out on a piece of cardboard and tries to strictly enforce daily in his jail cell, the Giants hitters were intent on not letting us jizz ourselves again last night.

Baseball has the funniest effect on fans. If your team does something ONE DAY the fans start tricking themselves into believing that’s the way things are. Any bad team can hit one day in a row. Some bad ones string together nice stretches of hitting together, just as we did in the first half of the season.

We just don’t have the hitters this year. I think some guys are having bad years (Panik, Belt and Span), some guys are probably hurting because they played the game too hard for too long (Pagan, Nunie, Pence, Posey and also maybe Panik) and some guys might just be worn down (Crawford). Take Span for example. I would bet ANYTHING that Span would be having a better year if he had Kent and Bonds hitting behind him. He’d be scoring more runs. That would probably create less pressure for him. Good things would unfold from there. And forget Kent and Bonds since that’s an unrealistic example. How about just Pence and Pagan in their prime? Pat the Bat? Uribe? What would I would give for an Andres Torres atop this line up…..

The 2016 Giants put way too much pressure on themselves individually by sucking collectively. You can’t win consistently like that. Being 0 for 5 billion when losing after 8 innings is evidence of that….

You know how sometimes we hear a players name and somebody says “Remember when he was a Giant?” and everyone is like “No. Absolutely no recollection.” That’s what you’ll say 10 years from now when somebody says “Remember when Gordon Beckham was a Giant?” Rich Rodriguez’s only at bat at the triple A level must have been a good one. Anyway, he’s a Brave now and we get Beckham and if I’m Specs I’m wondering just how much the Giants actually hate me.

All of a sudden, they started hitting. Let’s see if they can cobble together 2 games in a row. Someone needs to tell the Giants, before tonight’s game, that it’s ok to hit 2 games in a row…..

Somewhere is a dimly lit cell in the Clearwater county jail, Stix is whispering to himself “to get Belt in the 2 hole, I’d do it all again, I’d do it all again….”

I’m not one for omens signs or superstitions. Well, not lately anyway. Not with the weird and awful year it has been for Bay Area sports teams, and sports and rock & roll icons in general.

Anyhow, I found this moth on my doorstep yesterday night. An omen of good things? 6 games, 6 days, 3 teams, 2 spots.

I’m of a mind that we just need to get in. Even losing the one-game play-in means we made it to the playoffs. I’d rather lose the play-in game that be labeled the biggest fail in baseball history. At least since the playoff format started.

We get to take a day off from losing or sucking, whichever you pick to take the day off from. Marlins game tonight should be sold out. I woke up this morning marveling at the fact that Arnie and Fernandez died on the same day. Two guys who personified unbridled joy and happiness in the sports they played. One of them packed as much life as you could pack into a lifetime. The other one didn’t get a chance to do that.

I hope this video loads properly. I’ve watched this several times and it just makes me feel good. Don’t spend even a second today bumming out on the Giants. It’s a waste of time. Go do something that makes you happy. Finite number of day, you know…..

Very sad news about Jose Fernandez. His start had gotten pushed back to Mon. Just wonder if he would have been out on a boat speeding through the night at 3am if he had to pitch today. One minute you’re shaking a hoe at the feds the next minute your boat is crashing on rocks. Life is precious. Don’t fuck it up.

8 games left….

Well, we did it. We were all out to do it but we ultimately ended up beating the 2016 PCL champs, the El Paso Chihuahua’s who were, coincidentally, wearing San Diego Padre uniforms last night. But who cares? A win is a win. Always looking for a proper measuring stick, I think it’s safe to say that we would have been good enough to take down the PCL this year if not for the biased rule against us being allowed to play for that certificate. I blame this on the ghost of Bud Selig….

Big Al Suarez is going tonight and me-thinks this won’t be his first rodeo with most of these fellers.

Agent 000 hit a bomb and we lost. That barely computes. But hey, no worries, the Mets and the Cardinals lost, too! It’s embarrassing being in this wild card race. I am not on board in the slightest with the take of “hey, if we can get in, anything can happen!” That’s a perspective for a team that’s at least half way decent. We suck. In literally every aspect of the game except starting pitching. In that area we have 2.5 solid starting pitchers as long as the first one isn’t getting stared at, the second one isn’t getting bitten in the balls by a crab and Mr. 0.5 is pitching in an easy, breezy pressure free game.

Do I think we could win a wild card game? Sure, anyone can. Do I think we could beat any other post season team in a 5 or 7 game series? Haha, no chance in hell. Just kill this season already. Pence is playing the OF like he’s half awake. If the Reverend is shutting it down it’s time we do, too. I don’t remember much about the ’85 hundo loss bunch but it has to be worse being a fan of this year’s team than that team. It HAS to.

Smarge going tonight in SD.

Cueto says it felt like his groin got bit by a crab and I have to believe there’s another way to let us know what that felt like. Kruk was gushing about Okert but this is the same guy who served up a fatty to Shimpf and now we’re supposed to trust him? Our bullpen has got some great arms but most of them are connected to some 10 cent heads.

Matty Moore Wednesday and I’ll be interested to see how he does. As far as pressure goes, this is one of his bigger starts as a Giant.

MadBum would be a big hit in prison. “Don’t look at me. Did you look at me? Stop disrespecting me!” It’s just such a simpleton approach to interacting with other humans.

Nothing to say about last night except the Giants learned a valuable lesson this season. You can’t build a 200 million dollar team and have it backed by a 10 cent bullpen. I like a lot of the guys in our pen, believe it or not. But collectively, they are not the right mix. The sad thing is that I am worried about management’s ability to build a bullpen for *today’s game.” I get that they built one that worked for the WS years. But frankly, I think that was lucky. The bullpen of today is stacked with dudes who throw gas. We have like one dude who throws gas and his location smokes copious amounts of pole. Plus, he doesn’t have the right make up for this job.

This is the same brass that thought that fucking lefty reliever was worth Bickford AND Susac. And he couldn’t be any more non-descript.

So don’t be surprised if this happens again next year…..

…..and cue Romo’s laugh track. I really need to see a video of this. I’d settle for a gif. I watched it live but now that I can’t find it anywhere on the internet I feel like I need to see it again to really let the *mosaic* of it wash over me. At the very least I’d like to get a Romo laugh track and play it whenever I see something stupid or absurd unfolding before my eyes…

Five back of the Dodgers. One back of the Mets. One UP on the Cardinals. About the only thing that’s remotely plausible is that the Cardinals go into Nepal and get blasted and watch their pitching staff implode. Even if that happens we still have the ongoing problem of sucking and even if we get a lead Bochy will just give it to Santiago GasCan and up in flames we go.

This is the worst September for baseball I can ever remember. Total let down.

Regarding the Crue….Kickstart My Heart is far and away my favorite Crue song. I’m not sure how anyone could listen to that and not get stoked to go do something.

With three World Series beauties in the bank since 2010, I really don’t have a problem with losing. It washes off me so easily I almost feel guilty. It’s not that I don’t care. I care. But I don’t understand some of these fans who are rioting on the KNBR airwaves about not getting Cespedes or losing a series to the Padres. They act like those pathetic losers in Willy Wonka who didn’t get all the candy they were promised. Winning a World Series is hard to do and you should spend your time celebrating those rare victories, not whining for an entire year when you don’t win.

While I don’t have a problem with not winning a World Series every year, I have a HUUUUUUGE problem with how we lose individual games. And we have reached a form of losing I don’t think I can ever recall experiencing as a Giants fan. Bruce Bochy has paralyzed his ability to manage successfully with his bizarre obsession with Santiago Casilla.

Bochy seems to have camped out in 2 defenses of the indefensible decision to use Casilla: 1) Casilla’s *stuff* and 2) his 31 saves. What Bochy doesn’t value: 1) Casilla’s mental state 2) the fact that the fans are booing him before he throws a pitch and the pitcher he is replacing is literally laughing out loud. Numbers 1 and 2 of *The Things Bochy Doesn’t Value* absolutely matter. You can’t just gloss over that like they don’t. And #2 sustains and worsens #1. And you cannot be a closer at any level of baseball if #1 is fucked up. Finally, this isn’t about the fans booing although they have every right to question Bochy’s decisions. Romo’s hee-haw all the way to the dugout showed what the players think of this shit….

Every single decision you make in your life comes down to risk/reward. The higher the risk, you better see a potential higher reward. Or you shouldn’t do it. That’s the poker player in me talking but if you think about it you can apply it to every decision you ever make. Since Bochy began this obsession with bringing Casilla into high risk situations I keep trying to figure out what his reward is. It doesn’t seem to come close to matching the risk. I’m assuming he’s trying to #1 win the game and #2 get Casilla’s confidence back. But at this point, Casilla has no chance of stringing the several successful outings together needed to rebuild his confidence. So one save is great but it will all soon be undone, exponentially, with the next impending implosion. And each blown save at this point in the season far outweighs any small bump to his confidence that a save might give him. I will cue up Romo’s laugh track if you tell me I’m wrong….

So none of this is making any sense unless #1 Bochy is trying to lose these games or #2 Bruce Bochy is suffering from a total breakdown to his own level of confidence. And if that’s the case our season is doomed and if he can’t figure #2 out in the off season it is time for him to go.

Maybe the Padres have just had the worst luck of any team in the history of baseball? The most potent 62 win team in the league?

Is it possible the Cardinals are worse than San Diego? Of course not. I think I am being too linear with everything. “This team lost to this team so they are worse than this team…” That doesn’t work in baseball. Any team can beat any team in a series for a variety of reasons.

And for whatever those reasons are, we are beating St Louis rather handily right now.

I saw something last night, didn’t understand it, maybe you guys could help me out. It was the 4th inning and Buster Posey hit a ball in the air (no seriously, he did) and it flew and kept flying and it ended up going over that wall that separates the fans from the field. Then for some reason play just kinda stopped. Buster was running slower than usual around the bases and the fans were cheering. Cardinals were standing around, nothing was happening and the ball he hit was never returned to the field of play. What exactly happened there? Did the Giants or Buster get penalized because Buster seemed to have inadvertently lost the ball they were using?

It’s Saturday. Go dominate this great day….

So sticking Nunie and Span at the bottom of the LU turned out to be the trick. Interesting…..

Matt Moore has been dominant in 3 of his last 4 starts. He’s been the anti-Leake. I don’t see any reason why he can’t keep that going tonight. Whether we can string together 2 good hitting games in a row is definitely in question. Luke Weaver isn’t like those 3 bad Padre pitchers, he’s actually pretty good. And we don’t know him. Uh oh.

Wonder what it’s like to be a Cardinal fan this morning. Losing to the Giants has got to be an ignominious defeat. Those fans have been going through a pretty parallel year with us. Disappointment, frustration, being let down time and time again. Just like Giants fans, right?

It’s probably almost easier to be an A’s fan. You know you’re going to suck, there are no surprises when you ultimately do.

Probably the worst part of KNBR , besides the commercial of the woman who starts off by saying “My number 2 doesn’t look like a number 2 is there a number 3?” is how dumb their callers are. Multiple fans have called up this week relating the 2016 collapse to the 1993 season. They’re calling it the same thing. This is just like ’93, they say.

Do these dipshits even listen to the words coming out of their mouth? And the hosts are only mildly denying them.

2016 and 1993 have literally nothing in common. For starters, the ’93 team was actually good. Their winning % in by month in July, August and Sept: .692, .577, .571. The Giants winning percentage in 2016 (by month): .458, .407, and (my personal favorite) .385. The Braves in ’93 winning % in those 3 months: .679, .731, .704. The Dodgers winning %: .625, .536, .667. This Dodger team would have gotten killed by that Braves team…….

What we are dealing with today is light years away from ’93. Our 2016 team sucks. And the Dodgers aren’t much better but they are definitely better. And this wild card race (something that wasn’t even around in ’93, the callers might want to recognize that) is completely misnamed. What is the opposite of a race? It needs to be called something that is monotonous, pathetic and without an actual celebration for whoever backs in as the ultimate representatives……

Do any of you guys believe in signs? Stuff that happens to you that ends up foretelling the future? Yeah, that seems like a stretch right?

And then I looked back on my day in Oakland yesterday. Signs that lead to nowhere. A woman dropping a deuce right there on the sidewalk in front of me.

And this morning it’s hard for me not to think that those fake signs and that woman and that damn sidewalk weren’t trying to tell me something about the 2016 Giants…..

The good news is that I’m headed back to Oaktown right now. As I dodge 880 potholes at a solid 5 mph clip I will keep my eyes peeled for indicators of what today’s game might bring……

…and then Paul “Small” Clemens said “Nope!”

Loo covered last night loss succinctly and as Flap-accurate as possible:

No pole left unsmoked…

Nothing about last night’s pathetic lay down surprised any of us (or the VMI guys). We’ve seen this type of limp performance out of the Giants before. To be truthful, I watched almost none of it except some quick glimpses during 49er time outs. Even then, I just had to look away. Bad baseball seems to be all the more boring and maddening if you trying to watch it in between a pro football game. I don’t know what that’s all about. I don’t find baseball boring unless I am watching a football game at the same time and that makes no sense because I greatly prefer baseball to football.

But regardless, we got beaten by arguably the worst current starting pitcher in the National League. At home. In a game we really needed to win. Versus a team that is flat-awful….

Enjoy your day. I’m in fucking Oakland all week at a conference and it sucks here…..