2 in a row.....thats what they call a winning streak....and its a good thing Danny came through bc after them Sharks stunk up the joint, i couldn't bare watching 2 losses in a day. But how bout that pitching. Except for Wilson, it looks as if they are coming around.

...and we have gotten swept for the first of probably many times this season. I feel the offense will come around, the kids are already hitting better than anybody thought they would. It's just situational hitting that has been our downfall. Just so you know, it has been our downfall for about 4 years now. I expected much more from the pitching. I really did. I knew they weren't gonna toss 9 innings of shutout ball game in game out but I expected them to be efficient. I love aggressive pitching more than most people but it just is not possible in today's game of shrinking strike zones and pitch counts....Ok, so Cain threw 114ish pitches in his first start. So what. Did anybody care when Gibson or Koufax threw 130 pitches in their first start. No, and they had to come back on 3 days. I'm not gonna write about the 4-man rotation. We all know how strongly I feel about it....All i'm saying is if you are going to baby pitchers forever, they will never grow into complete dominant pitchers....If people are so worried about pitch counts, then cut back on bullpens or long toss....so huge homestand coming up, i think the goal is .500 ball.

Wow, what a piece of brilliance by starting the game with the relief knowing there was gonna be a rain delay some time during the game. I caught the game in the 4th with both teams going relief and thought about it for a second then i figured it out. Great game after the delay also, I wouldn't consider it a gamble coming back with Lincecum after 74 minutes because I feel its similar to warming up before a game and having a long top of the first. maybe it's not quite as long but a similar idea. Bullpen was strong, they picked each other up nicely. 1-2 on the season and we're now 1-1 in one-run games. whoo hoo...500 in one-runners, much better than last year

well tonight is my last night in Arizona. So lets recap the crazy trip...

I got in friday and missed batting practice but saw a good game. Zito was amazing, pitching into the 6th before the bullpen gave up three in the ninth. But the Giants did not disappoint as they added two in the bottom half to win the game 4-3. Also, i checked out an Arena football game....and NY Dragons **** but then i read that Rohan Davey was the QB so that explains everything.

Saturday was another good pitching performance. Cain dominated and the Giants held on 3-1.

Sunday was an off day for me, so of course i went to the casino. sometimes i should lay off the gambling but i don't see it happening.

Monday was spent in Peoria watching a Mariners game. Ichiro played a good game.

The rest of the trip was non baseball related which saw me checking out various architecture. Even on vacation I can't get out the architect in me.

Well it has been awhile since I posted so I thought I would start to post again. My workload is down so now I have time. I’ll be in Scottsdale on Friday so I can watch my beloved Giants and I also decided today would be the first time I write about Game 6. I feel I’m completely over it. I’ve mentioned it from time to time, like when people ask me the last time I cried, but I’ve never gone over it in detail.

So a friend asked me if the 2002 Giants were my team, and I always say that I was more involved with the 2000 Giants just because 2002 was a busy year for me. I had just finished my first year of college and the Giants were starting to heat up. I was in high school for the 2000 team and I can still remember the first time I walked into Pacific Bell Park, ahh memories, I wrote a piece on it for the school paper, that didn’t get published. They did publish my piece on the Giants Rotation that year, so that was cool. Anyway here’s Game 6.

First pitch came and went and I truly believed it would all be over after this game, and in all reality it was. I had this feeling that we may have scored too much in Game 5 but that was my head talking. Only in filling out a bracket do you think with your head. Here it was all heart. I was thinking Ortiz was on his game, but so was Appier.  I didn’t think it at the time, but the Giants could have put the dagger into the Halo’s in the first. Two on, and Santiago pops up in foul territory. Back then I just shrugged it off.  After 3, I felt Ortiz was redeeming himself for his Game 2 start. He was mowing them down. Wow, 6 years later I can still see every pitch. 5th Inning. David Bell hits an infield single. Ok, we’re in business, now if Dunston can only move him over. Forget that, Dunston just gave us the lead. 2-0!! I can’t see Ortiz blowing this. Wild Pitch, we get another. 3-0!!

Ortiz throws two pitches that are hit well but stay in the park. Ok K-Rod vs. Bonds. Bonds struck out earlier in the series but said if he saw him again he’ll take him deep. Bonds plants it over the wall. Can somebody say MVP? It’s 4-0. It’s now the bottom of the 7th and the Giants have a 5-0 lead now. Anderson is ahead but grounds out on ball 3. We’re even getting the breaks. Glaus singles. No biggie. Fullmer singles. Here comes Baker. As soon as I saw Dusty, I thought bad move. But with a 5-0 lead I wasn’t worried. Not yet anyway. But lets look back on this. If there were no outs then I can see Dusty taking Russ out. I can even justify it. But there was one out. Spiezio had flied to medium center and grounded out to first. Fullmer is just as slow as Spiezio. One out, 5 run lead. World Series. I only said bad move because I was certain that Russ Ortiz was single handedly gonna win us that game, even if it was still 0-0 at that point. Ortiz wasn’t gonna give up anything.

As we all know the double play didn’t happen. Spiezio took Rodriguez deep for a 5-3 game. I am gonna say this…. I blame Felix Rodriguez for the game 2 loss, not the Game 6 loss, besides we were still winning at this time…. also, if Ortiz stays in, Spiezio hits into a double play and the Giants end up winning the game 7-2. Yes, we put up 2 more in the 8th and then the Angels get 2 in the bottom half. Then the real 8th inning happened and you knew it was over. I will never forgive Dusty for taking Russ out. To this day I regret taking all of my savings and selling all of my stocks and placing the money on the Angels in game 7. That was the biggest lock ever, bigger than taking Cincinnati in the 1919 series. It was even bigger then taking New York in Game 7 of the 1986 series. To be honest, I didn’t even watch Game 7. I experienced Game 6, what was the point of putting my heart through one more game. I’ve known when one of my teams were gonna lose the game but I always watched the game. Game 7 was the only one I couldn’t watch.

I know I’m in the minority with Giants fans here, but I will never blame Livo for Game 7. It was sad how he was run out of town. Without him, we don’t even get past Atlanta. It’s easy to say Kirk should have started the game, but I would have pitched Livo. It doesn’t matter now we all know what happened.

Whoo...some good games yesterday, and we can assume that Greg Dobbs will have the same kind of year as Troy Tulowitzki, yup u gotta love spring. And in just about 30 minutes, them Jints will play their first spring game. Of course half the team is injured. After all these years of watching, i would be surprised if we were healthy, but the outfield is set for today and i'm ready to listen to Miller and Kuiper today. It's kind of sad that KNBR doesn't broadcast all of the spring games, but they are today so its a plus. Wait..No Dave Flemming....unfortunately, Dave-o is broadcasting Stanford Basketball, so no teenager jokes today. Anyway, since I have a meeting from 12-2, it's gonna take some thought to listen to the game and still listen to how a building should be framed. Lucky for me, I have a framing cheat sheet and a transistor radio...i mean, a bluetooth ear piece...i just hope they don't blow the game during a quiet part of the meeting.

I've always loved reading the updates from spring training Every day there was new stuff to read about and find out what is going on in camp. Now that I'm in Oregon, I have to rely on reading the papers online and checking out the team website. What I don't understand is why do they all have to write the same story every day. Come on guys, there is only so many ways i can read about Ray Durham saying it is his job to lose. Seriously, its on sfgiants.com, the Chronicle, the Mercury...you name it. I may as well just pick one paper and read that because I know nothing new will be in the other papers. I find it hard to believe that nothing else is going on in camp.....and speaking of camp, who else saw Kyle Kendrick get punk'd by his Phillies teammates. It was hilarious. Brett Myers had everybody in on it, the manager, the assistant GM, the media. Great prank.

Barry Zito was named the starter for opening day and of course everyone is upset because Matt Cain had a better year and everybody feels he deserves it. Note to all those people, what does it matter? Never has the opening day result translated into success at the end of the year and i'm guessing that even though Zito starts game 1, then Cain will start game 2. What does this mean? It means that Zito will face the other team's ace for about a month, and then when all the rotations are whacked out of order, it will be meaningless. Also, Cain will still make his 30 odd starts. It also means that Cain will face the other teams #2. If we're already claiming Cain as the ace then he should pitch us to 33 wins against weaker talent. Of course this isn't the case, so please people just stop complaining about it. The rotation isn't something we should worry about.

I'm gonna admit it. I shed tears of joy when I woke up. The Giants open camp today. Even as I'm writing this instead of doing work, I have a baseball with me, not to mention the championship bobblehead. I've decided they look good on my desk and they really complement the pictures of AT&T Park I have up. I can't wait until later today when they put up the first reports from Scottsdale, where it is a beautiful day by the way. Dear Portland weather, Take a hint!! Honestly, I don't think I've seen so many clouds in my life.

In other news, I was in Seattle last weekend so I decided to take the Safeco Field tour. I've been on the AT&T Park tour like six times so I was a little skeptical. I took the Seattle tour about seven years ago and nothing seems to have changed. Being at Safeco made me miss AT&T much more than before. I vow to come home to watch more games this season. I'm thinking in the vicinity of 20. Probably closer to 8 but 20 seems like a good amount. You know, until I get transfered to the office in SF and then 81 is the way to go!!

Well tomorrow is the day when we can get excited. Pitchers and Catchers report!!! Anyway, so I've been looking over tons of statistics looking for that star player for my fantasy team when a package arrived. The coveted Yahoo! Sports Championship Bobblehead. Finally now my peers in my league can cry when they see it because they don't have one. Not from 2007 anyway.
So this season, we are having our fantasy draft in Arizona during spring training. Seems reasonable enough, except we usually have it in early February. It's killing me not knowing my team yet. I've gone through hundreds of mock drafts in my head and I still can't picture a scenario in which i get the team i want. Also this year we have ridiculous categories to play such as Inherited Runners Scored. ok its not ridiculous, it is in fact one of my favorite categories. I especially like all the new relief categories this year. It makes getting a middle reliever more important than ever before. ok and since some people in my league will think I don't have the trophy, here's a pic with yours truly.