Giants Midnight Replay

Stress

I have been stressed lately. Getting finished with my finals, switching jobs, eating a lot of pizza, and watching the Giants….. all of these things stress me out. I want to say that my “magical vacation” to Chicago to see friends and the Giants play at Wrigley Field was a cloud of fun and relaxation, but it really was just more stress. I will fill those blanks in with a post when I get a chance. For now I am wallowing in a couple of stress free days. Now all that stresses me out are the Giants. Why did I even dream that this win would be an easy one?

———————————————————————————————-

The Omar Vizquel defensive inside play of the game goes to:

Nate Schierholtz for making an absolutely balls to the wall flying catch to end the game. If he missed the ball we lose. Flat out spectacular!

The Eugenio Velez defensive mishap of the night goes to:

Miguel Tejada, sure he made an amazing dive to get the ball but how much does that mean when you almost throw it away…. at this point I know I am being petty, the guy is getting better. 

———————————————————————————————-

The Jack Donaghy (hero) award goes to:

Madison Bumgarner, how do you win your first game, hit a double and suppress the hell out of the opposing batters. Madison went all beast-mode on the dodgers today, I’m impressed. 

The Devon Banks (goat) award goes to:

Police people. I know I know, I am suppose to welcome safety to the ballpark right? nah, this just looks like a my house after the kegger I threw in high school got broken up. 

———————————————————————————————-

more stuff:

Fontenot gets the scoring started!

The absolute meanest Pablo face I have ever seen. Awesome!

When you can’t win you just go after the batters I guess. 

I love that look that pitchers have when they can’t believe that they just gave up a hit. 

Soooo close to his first shutout. zoiks. bummer moment here. 

I probably should have giving Fontenot the Velez award today, but I just couldn’t. I like the guy too much. 

Usually a good sign, if you have two outs in the ninth, not today. Brian needs to take a day or two to heal that ankle. 

That is the second batter that got hit tonight. just saying…

Who is this guy? and what has he done with the old crappy Tejada? No joke, let’s pay some respect to a guy who seems to be turning it around. I really do want to root for you buddy, just give me a reason. 

Take notes Darren Ford, this is the only way you are going to make the bigs. 

GMR Field Trip

The Mets have a scoreboard problem. They start playing the “Let’s Go Met’s” chant before their first batter even gets into the box, which leads to the inevitable scoreboard prompt burnout by the 5th inning. I say, only sounds until at least the 4th. 

There was some pretty great banter back and forth between the Met’s and Giants fans during the game. And it went back and forth pretty well, through our bases loaded pop-outs, and through their bases loaded double play. Organic “Let’s Go Giants” Chants were squashed by thunderous boos but Giants fans definitely grabbed a foothold in Citi field tonight. 

————————————————————————————————————

I’m just gonna post pictures and give a couple of my thoughts. But first…..

Stock watch

Rising stock:

Schierholtz, Fontenot, Lopez, and Huff (a little bit).

Falling stock:

Tejada (majorly), Burriss, Ross, and Vogelsong (sorry buddy)

———————————————————————————————————

If you read this blog you know that I am a Fontenot fan. He just embodies the underdog thing. He had an important hit tonight and played solid defense at SS. 

Mets fan definitely remember Mota, and they don’t like him. Note to self: look up what Mota ever did to Mets fans. 

The AAA crew. Ford, Burriss, and Rohlinger, chumming it up on the fence. 

Just showing again how short Fontenot really is. Sure the angle distorts the view a little bit, but not much. 

Stretching it out. 

Burrell and Huff were chatting the whole afternoon before the game. There was not a lot of smiles going around. In fact the only one acting loose was Bochy who played catch with Ross for a while. Lots of focused looks on the Giants before the game. 

Henry Schulman in the wild. zoiks!

The only action shot I took all night. I was in foul ball territory and I got about 4 that were hit in about a 30 foot radius, so I couldn’t be holding the camera the whole time. 

Constant coverage!

Last Week In Giants

High light of the game (and possibly the week)

To say that the only Giants game that I will be able to see at AT&T this year was a downer is a huge understatement. Here are the facts. 

1. We lost

2. It was damn cold (I forgot how cold SF gets… yes I’m an idiot).

3. I had standing room only tickets

4. EVERYONE was there early. Gone are the days where I would show up 2 hours early and was almost guaranteed to be able to catch a BP ball. Oh well, for better or worse… right?

5. I had just had my car impounded for parking on Mission street during rush hour (FUCKSHITDAMNFUCKING $475 later I got my car back!!!!)

The best seat in the house.

If you buy standing room only. 

So ya, I enjoyed coming home, I enjoyed being at AT&T again. But I am much more looking forward to the Giants Vs Mets game at CITI Field where I have seats 17 rows behind the Giants dugout. And tickets are only $30 because the Mets are TERRIBLE. 

But enough about me. Let’s talk about what the Giants are up to. 

I’m just going to go through a couple of players and spout what I have been thinking about. 

Fontenot

Can I get an amen? If given playing time I feel like Fontenot represents more runs saved on defense and more runs created on offense than Tejada. I know I am echoing someone but I get nervous every time the ball is hit to SS. 

Pat Burrell

I want this guy in the lineup every day. Sure he makes a lot of outs, but he always takes at least 4 pitches. One of the shining examples of how to take an at bat. 

Aaron Rowand

From now on I will probably not mention how garbage Rowand was. For Rowand we are going to have to put blinders on. I don’t remember what happened to Rowand last year… do you? All I know is there is some dude who looks like he sits on a toilet when he swings and he is saving our ass, game in and game out. 

Darren Ford

…..Has more World Series Rings than Major league hits, and he totally deserves it. 

2011 All Stars

1. Posey

2. Pablo

3. Timmy

4. Either Cain… or Wilson… not sure which one yet. 

The Dog House. 

1. Tejada (told you so)

2. Huff, but it’s not entirely his fault, he is hitting it into the defense a lot of the time. 

3. Ross,….. is he playing for his job now? maybe. 

4. The rotation, I know… I love them too, but they need to start getting deep into games or our bullpen will be all used up at the end of the season. My recommendation is to get Kroon, and Edelfson up here to help out for a while, drop Burriss and carry an extra reliever to keep the pressure off. 

Last thing…

I see this sign every time I go to the park…. and I wonder… how the hell is a ball (or a freaking bat!) going to get back to the last row of the last section before the arcade, about 20 rows under the overhang and still be “flying”?

There Will Be Blood

I tried…. I tried REALLY hard to save the Zito stache phenomenon until I could do a “This Week In Giants Facial Hair” post…. But it’s not possible, it was on full display tonight. This shapely “Nose Mullet” is THE nicest I have seen on a pitching mound since Clay Zavada. Can you attribute Zito’s future dominance to his new “Tom Selleck”? That would be a resounding YES! Is it a major reason why the Giants won 4 to 1 tonight? YES!

Zito I am your eternal fan if you keep the stache! I take back all the bad things I said about you. I will forget the fact that your an emotional wreck with a philosophical attachment to surfboards and other self-absorbed-beach culture douchiness.

Keep the “Plainview” Barry, if you know what is good for you. 

—————————————————————————————————————————-

The Kafka Tamura Award (Hero) goes to: 

Pablo Sandoval for the 38 lbs lighter defensive show he put on in the 4th inning. Pablo also got the first RBI of the night.

The Johnnie Walker Award (Villain) goes to: 

Gio Gonzalez, cause you gotta recognize greatness! This guy is a beast straight up! I would not be surprised if he wins a Cy Young at some point soon.

—————————————————————————————————————————-

The Omar Vizquel award goes to:  

Pat Burrell, There isn’t many times where I can give the award to him. So I gotta do it when I can. Nice Catch Burrell, nice catch. 

The Velez Award goes to:

Andy LaRoche was having a bad day all around. He had a wide throw to first base on a double play chance, and also this bungled ball. 

—————————————————————————————————————————-

Extra goodness. 

OMG these guys are insane homers! I am so happy to have our broadcasters, every time something doesn’t go their way its “NOOOOO” from the fucking peanut gallery. 

Hey look…  smiles!

Coco smiles!

Exhibition game smiles!

Game face bitches!

Zito was about 11 inches away from giving up his 1 run lead early.

Holy crap, DeRosa has a HUGE backside! Just sayin…… just sayin…

DeRosa’s big ass is slowing him down on this foul pop-up.

As much as I hate Panda hats, imagine if this was your only hat choice. Actually imagine if that was your job, making like 2,000 ballon hats. 

Don’t forget the little guy’s contribution an RBI double in the 7th. Fontenot is another player that is better than Rowand

A missed sign gets Andy Laroche into a “Fun”-down in the 5th.

I swear if Schierholtz loses his job and Rowand keeps his I will be pretty irrate. Two batters after Rowand waved frantically at a high pitch Nate blasts this one deep into center field.

Tomorrow I will post my season “Preview”.

This Week In Giants Facial Hair. (#3)

What sets men apart from boys…. besides being able to buy beer? Men can grow facial hair, ok…. men can bring gnarly amounts of hair to the surface of their faces. Let us sit and celebrate, mock, and marvel over the facial hair of your San Francisco Giants. 

Latest & Greatest

What’s going on in this picture? What Ishi is bringing to the table might just be a more molded and extended version of what he had before.

 But to me it is looking more like a facial hair style that has been unofficially banned from the Giants clubhouse……. More specifically THIS ONE:

Yes… I said it… “The Velez” has been officially baned from the clubhouse. Also…. Yes I AM trying to mention Velez in EVERY blog I do. 

Also it looks like Cody Ross is keeping the World Series beard. I see no evidence of him having one before last year. 

——————————————————————————————————-

Best Facial Hair of The Year …. (so far)

I just picked up a copy of this on Saturday…. This mustache makes me weep with joy. Sadly the scum-stash is gone…… hopefully not forever. 

Worst Facial Hair This Year…. (so far)

Hands down Jeremy Affeldt has had and currently has the worst facial hair ever. It straight up reminds me of a vagina.

Please Jeremy…. listen to reason… it looks terrible. Your a decent looking guy, but your ruining it with that landing strip. Stop…. please. 

Look at him during his Reds days… so much better. 

——————————————————————————————————-

There has been a lot of hair sticking out all over the field lately. Sometimes when I’m looking at a player I can see the hair sticking out behind from behind their neck. My hair used to be like that. (no I don’t have pics). I’ve noticed Pippen rocking an inordinate amount of hair lately. Just a huge mane back-flowing out the neck, pretty epic. But if he doesn’t watch out it he could be visited by the mullet fairy one night. 

Newcomer Culberson has been rocking the same hair wad. It’s as if they have an exhaust pipe out the back of their heads and a cloud of brown smoke got petrified on the way out.  

But when you can see a BEARD coming out the sides of a neck from BEHIND. THAT is EPIC. 

Congrats Brian…. your beard has passed the “fully epic” stage. 

——————————————————————————————————-

Random Scruff

Rowand, rocking his boxy scruff, a stupid smirk, his gamer stains. Too bad you can’t see it, cause his head is waaaaay up his ass. 

The only thing about Whiteside’s scruff is that it might be the only part of his hair that is not FULLY grey. It’s a small island of youth still clinging to his chin. 

Pablo….. This looks bad. either go for a beard, a mustache, or nothing. 

Scruff to the future?

See You Latos

Giants win 6 to 4….. BUT I don’t care what happened the rest of the game. We got Latos for four runs in the first. And that makes me happy. 

————————————————————————————————-

Last year while working at my old place of employment I had a running dialog with one of my co-workers Sinclair, who just happened to be a Boston Red Sox fan. It was around this time last year and the Giants were killing it in spring training. I was listening to all the games since it had been a long off season. Every day I would trudge through the snow on my way to serve skinny lattes to god-awful Carroll Gardens dwellers. But every day I had one more victory to goad about when I got to work. Finally when spring training was almost over I was once again rubbing the Giants spring training record in Sinclair’s face…. I remember him saying… ” You know they don’t hand out rings for winning the Cactus League” ……”Don’t they……” I said “Don’t they”… At that point….sure…. I was full of shit. But I did add…”we’ll see”. 

I quit that job, it was a nightmare. My boss was am overbearing lady with no real experience with running a coffee shop. I left for greener pastures, my friend Sinclair stayed there and eventually became manager. I came back to visit him after the Giants won the world series, naturally and reminded Sinclair of our conversation. 

—————————————————————————————————

The Tony Soprano Award goes to: LBR OK OK, I know that I debated a nickname for Fontenot last week, but man he CRUSHED that ball tonight. So I will call him Little Babe Ruth….. just for today
 
The Mikey Palmice Award goes to: Mat Latos because Palmice acted like a whiney bitch and so does Latos sometimes. 

—————————————————————————————————

    The Omar Vizquel Award goes to: Pablo Sandoval

I know he was charged with two errors but he was PICKIN it tonight!

    The Eugenio Velez Award goes to:

Burriss….. Sorry Burriss, I know the ground is hard and the hops in spring training are weird, but you gotta make one of those two plays. 

—————————————————————————————————

A couple of players broke out of their slumps tonight. Good for you cabbage patch kid!

Rowand: “Yeah… I think this strange appendage hanging out of my right shoulder is what is wrong with my swing”

Bochy: “uuuuuhh……. I think that’s your arm”

Rowand: “ya that thing”

dude…. look how short Fontenot is compared to the ump…. thats crazy!

They Finnerty’s in NYC where my girlfriend and I watched the game, I thought it would be cool to snap a screenshot when they showed it on TV. Turns out that both of us are in it. I’m wearing the Giants hat on the lower left corner with the beard, and my girl is in front of me in the beanie. Yay, that about 1:30 of my 15 minutes already used up.

Bobbles:

Pablo get eaten up at the hot corner

Daigle is killing me, he always comes in late and blows meaningless games, which I don’t really care about, but it makes the game drag on and on! “Dude… You forgot the ball”

Raj “So you got a hit….. That’s good”

Rowand ………………………..(crickets)……………………

Brandon Belt, snaps out of his “slump” with this hit. 

Kevin Frandsen is a cute puppy who wants to snuggle in your armpit. 

Here’s to you skinny Pablo

Yeah… Little Babe Ruth…… just for today. 

After hitting a ball to the fence in dead center Brandon Crawford tries to bolster his chances at the coveted KFGPA (Kevin Frandsen Memorial Golden Puppy Award)

Contemplating Fontenot

In 1st grade I had a friend named Nick Castillo. He was a runt, shorter than everyone, faster than most, and his clothes seem to fit him wrong even when they were new. He left or got kicked out of my school after an incident in 5th grade. As my memory fades of those hazy photograph years of my life, I am left with one memory of Nick. He was the only one of us that had seen boobs. Or at least he was the only one who had broached the subject. I remember vividly, playing super techmo bowl at his house one Sunday afternoon. We are taking a break to drink glasses of whole milk, a strange tradition in his house which I found to be excessive but was relishing at the time, when he confided in me that his older sister’s friend had let him touch her boobs.

I was too young to realize that I was supposed to be impressed. It more struck me that I had never really contemplated boobs more than I had after that day. Also short people took on a sort of mythical stature in my mind. Did they just know more about life than me? Did they have access to some sort of 4th grader black market on taboo things like boobs, maybe candy? What else did Nick know about?

There is something fascinating about short people, is their whole family short, or are they the runt? Is runt a derogatory word? I’m not even sure.

At 5’8 Fontenot is riding the edge of what would be considered a runt. But for some reason, maybe it’s his facial features, I think of Fontenot as some sort of runt. As a comment has pointed out to me Fontenot is more around 5’5 which seems right than at his listed height of 5’8. It is strange to me that on a team full of great nicknames that Mike Fontenot has survived half a season already without having a some sort of terrible “huff-daddy-esque” nickname attached to him.

Here are my choices.

#1. Mr. Tumnus

For this one it’s just pure looks.

#2. The Leprechaun

While calling someone a Leprechaun might have negative connotations, I want to say that this is not the case here. I’m just saying that Fontenot is short and looks like one.

#3. Pippen

Fontenot is a hybrid of all the actors that play the different hobbits in Lord of The Rings. But has some specific Pippen-like qualities…. at least in the fast-forward black and white movie in my head.

#4. Napolean

Like the great military leader of the early 19th century, Fontenot is not only short in stature, but he is also most definitely of hearty French stock. Height wise Fontenot has Napolean beat by an inch and a half, but career wise, I’d say that Napoleon has the edge. Looks like Napolean has him beat here in height and awesomeness of career.

Also…. does anyone else see the irony of anyone short being on a team called the Giants?