Mini Giants

I quickly snapped this photo at the Giants’ spring training opener last week as I was leaving in the 9th inning. I didn’t realize until I looked at the picture later that the little Brian Wilson fan has the mohawk and The Beard going and the tiny Tim Lincecum fan has Timmy’s flowing, long locks going. Too cute.

My tale of baseball woe

As San Francisco Giants pitcher Jonathan Sanchez tossed the team’s first no-hitter in 34 years, and 30,000 fans at AT&T Park screamed in ecstasy, I sat in a Palo Alto parking lot, listening to history on the car radio with mixed emotions. I was happy, but also distraught. That’s because five hours earlier, I had given away my tickets to the game.

The team mobs Sanchez after the final out. Photo by artolog. (www.flickr.com/photos/artolog)

That week in July, I had driven 800 miles from Arizona to California. And twice that week, I had already driven the 50 miles from San Jose to San Francisco to catch two games. So when Friday rolled around, after all that previous driving that week, I just couldn’t stomach driving up to the city again for a third game — and to see a guy with a 5.30 ERA to boot.

So my brother found a friend to take the tickets off my hands. And when he did, I actually joked, “What’s Sanchez going to do? Throw a no-hitter?” And then I said: “Watch him give up 4 runs in the first, and I’ll be glad I didn’t make the drive up.”

That evening, I stayed in the San Jose area. My wife dragged me to a tech party, and every half an hour, I “watched” the game with MLB.com’s real-time pitch-by-pitch application on my BlackBerry. When Sanchez tossed three no-hit innings, I texted my brother, half-joking that Sanchez was throwing a no-hitter. Then the 6th inning, seventh inning and eighth inning came, and still no hits. By that time, I had stopped being social at the party, and just stared at my BlackBerry. Thank goodness I had a drink in my hands. (more…)

November baseball

One of the treats of living in Arizona is near year-round baseball. Here’s the Giants’ Kevin Frandsen getting a hit off the Yankees’ Phil Hughes in a mid-November Arizona Fall League game in Scottsdale. I shot this half-minute video with my tiny digital camera, assuming Frandsen would do something good with his at-bat, and he did!

Crying foul

I should have taken my own advice. On my family’s Web site where we sell our Giants’ season tickets, I had written this to entice people to buy baseball tickets from us: “Bring a mitt. Foul balls come our way.”

Last Wednesday, sure enough, a foul ball came my way. A line drive, hit hard, screamed toward me from several hundred feet away like a heat-seeking missile. My initial thought was: holy sh–. It’s coming my way!

So I stood.

And in those three or four seconds, I had these frenzied thoughts:

I can catch it!

Wait, it’s going to hurt!

But I can catch it!

The ball was above me. I knew I had to reach high above my head and jump a little for the ball to hit square on my palms. Should I reach out and touch someone, or in this case, something? I was at AT&T Park, after all. But did I really want to hurt my hand, maybe break it, for a stupid foul ball? (more…)

Art of the Interview

My San Francisco Giants book was recently republished in paperback, so the publisher had me do a few radio interviews this month to publicize it. Last Sunday night, while being interviewed live on a sports radio show, everything was going well until the host asked me a question I couldn’t possibly answer. The question was something like: “How would you compare Juan Marichal’s pitching style with other Hall of Famers like Sandy Koufax?”

I had one or two seconds to comprehend the question, realize I had no answer, and to come up with an answer. My insides churned. So what did I do? I told him the truth. I recall laughing into the phone and saying, “Well, I wish I could answer that, but I can’t because I wasn’t alive when they pitched. Maybe you would be a better person to answer that for me?”

He had to answer his own question. The guy threw me a curveball and I hit it right back at him!

Musings about baseball… and my friends

I recently started writing a San Francisco Giants blog for the San Jose Mercury News. During the week Giants Talk launched, I wanted to write a posting that would grab people’s attention. So I wrote a column, titled “How I learned to love Bonds again.” What better way to get the flaming started than with a blog where I publicly express affection for Barry, the most hated man in baseball? (more…)