GIANTS IN CHICAGO

Just got back from a wonderful trip to Chicago to watch game 1 of the 4-game series between the Giants and Cubs. The weather was perfect: warm, clear, not humid, never smothering.

I lived two blocks north of the park for nearly 7 years, but never once visited it. How strange, then, to sit in terrace seats behind home plate 11 years after leaving Chicago to watch a game between my two favorite teams.

The only thing that would have made that exciting game even more memorable was a Giants team that was more of a match for the white-hot Cubbies. Tim Lincecum and Rich Hill duelled beautifully for 6 innings, each giving up 1 run. The game heated up considerably in the 8th, with the Giants taking a 2-1 lead before the Cubs -- with the awesome support of the most vibrant, well-behaved fans I've ever seen -- fought back with 2 hair-raising runs in the bottom of the same inning. Cubs won 3-2.

When we flooded, sated, out of the park, the whole neighborhood seemed to buzz with happy tidings. There's no type of fan more fun to hang with than a happy Cubs fan. Usually free drinks are involved!

Highlights of the game included that moment in the 5th when Pedro Feliz hit a homer to center left and the fans threw the ball back onto the field. "Tie game?" they seemed to say. "Oh, no you didn't!"

I had the pleasure of meeting the gentleman -- Richard Streetman -- who sang the national anthem. Admit it, we're all bored to tears with mediocre renditions by "Who the fuck is that?" (Today's game, anyone?) Richard's crystal clear voice was made for anthems -- or anything requiring that white-guy soulfulness that usually only comes out of boys from the South. Beyond his pipes, Richard is also an incredibly charming man. We hung out together at a few local bars and had good fun getting to know each other. Richard Streetman -- remember that name. He may now work for the Cook County Sheriff's Office, and may be able to count Hillary Clinton among his peeps, but he's salt of the earth and killer company. Go Richard!

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The guts of the Friendly Confines.

How can one resist snapping the most identifiable scoreboard in baseball?

The jarring specter of Harry Caray hovering over Giants broadcasters (bottom middle) Mike Krukow and Jon Miller.

Ryan Theriot and Daryle Ward, players in their prime.

MY ALL-STAR EXPERIENCE

As you all know, San Francisco hosted the MLB All-Star game this year. I had no desire to take part in the spectacle, although I wouldn't have tossed a ticket or two if they'd fallen into my hand.

Instead, I spent a lazy Sunday afternoon (July 8) at beautiful Marchbank Park in Daly City, where the San Francisco National Adult Baseball Association (SFNABA) was holding its own decidedly more intimate All-Star game. The "Ocean" team beat the "Bay" team 7-5.

Because my father played semi-pro ball back in the 60s, I have a special attachment to non-MLB baseball. Here in the Bay area, we're lucky to have a fully formed league in SFNABA, with a variety of parks to choose from. The great thing about these games is that you can sit on the grass at the edge of the field with your dogs and a picnic basket and bask in the sun while good players play baseball mere feet away. It's even more intimate than Spring Training.

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ALL STAR GAME, GIANTS SUCK, AND CHICAGO HERE I COME

Three different posts, actually, but I want to summarize them before I get on my plane to Chicago to watch the Giants get their sorry asses beaten by the succulently superior Cubs.

I attended the Bay Area Association of Adult Semi-Pro Something or Other Ball Players All-Star Games. It was awesome and I plan to post pictures when I get back from Chicago.

The Giants are so embarrassingly bad I can't even post about it. They just extended the General Manager's contract 2 years. The asshole mostly responsible for the terrible position we are in. Huh?

Chicago! Save me! I'm in Chicago over the next few days for the Giants/Cubbies series. I've got tickets to the Monday game and plan to take many pictures and score games in my nifty playbook.

I'll update with more information when I get back. Cheers.

STEEEEERRRRIIIKE!

The last several weeks -- those not consumed by travel and work and the general vicissitudes of ordinary life -- have been interesting for a baseball fan of my ilk.

WHY THE OLD WORLD IS BETTER

Craig Biggio, now in his 19th year with the Astros, attained hits 2,998, 2,999, 3,000, 3,001, and 3,002 in last night's dramatic and incredibly emotional game against Colorado. The game came to a complete standstill when he hit 3,000, and I'll admit that I wept openly.

Biggio seems like a nice guy: eloquent, sincere, the type of man who looks into the camera when he's addressing the fans. I'm happy to see him hit this ultra-rare milestone.

I sometimes wonder whether baseball players like Biggio -- the older guys who have maturity and grace in their column -- will become oddities as baseball moves, however slowly, into the corporate age and into an age where fluent English and camera-friendliness are no longer important, or even essential, to the allure of baseball heroes.

ON PITCHING AND HITTING AND THEIR UNHAPPY CONFLUENCE

One thing I've noticed in all the games I watch (and I watch many) is the lack of run support for otherwise stupendous pitchers. Matt Cain of the Giants -- their young phenom -- is unquestionably one of the best pitchers in the game. But his record of 2-9 -- an embarrassment by any standard -- points its gnarled finger only at the pathetic performance of Giants offense. Cain has pitched games in which he gave up no more than 3 runs and still lost because of shameful support from his teammates.

I've watched more Cubs, Nationals, Braves, and Giants games where literally nothing happens offensively -- as if the batters are bewitched by some fetid torpor -- while terrific pitchers hack away at each other's teams, hoping apparently against hope that somebody will rack up hits and runs. It appears to be a National League problem, but more on that later.

HERE COMES THE NEW WORLD

I'm fascinated by the resurgence of Milwaukee as a contender of note. Rookies. Farm systems. Multi-year development strategies. That seems to be what the Brewers have behind them. Which makes the pathetic performance of the Washington Nationals so cerebrally intriguing. Both teams are internally cultivating talent. The brewers are about three years ahead of the Nationals in this regard. The Nationals may have Ryan Zimmerman, but the Brewers have Prince Fielder.

Homer Bailey in Cincinnati, Cole Hamels in Philadelphia, Tim Lincecum in San Francisco, Hunter Pence in Houston -- these are the dewy newbies we pay attention to. And still Jeff Francoeur in Atlanta, Zimmerman in D.C., and the Cubbie club of exciting new talents (DeRosa, Fontenot, Pie, and Cedeno down in the minors) all shine when they can.

LOVE THE OLD WORLD -- HATE IT ALL IN ONE ROOM

The Giants simply suck. In many regards, they are the embarrassment of a management team that has been trying to fill seats based on celebrity appeal rather than contention appeal. After this year, when Barry Bonds' involvement will be a non-issue, the Giants will be left with nothing -- veterans with no offensive steam and annoyingly average players like Ryan Klesko (boo!), Todd Sweeney, Kevin Frandsen, Pedro Feliz, and Randy Winn. No line-up power, no notable clutch hitting. Ah, there's always Dave Roberts, bless his energetic soul. He may have been the darling of Boston just a few short years ago, but he can't save San Francisco from its own terrible front office.

I'm skeptical that a team in an expensive market like this will ever take the Marlins/Brewers/Nationals pill and start from scratch, but God almighty, that's what this Ben Gay club needs.

By the way? I'm not impressed with Felipe Alou's replacement, Bruce Bochy. Yawn.

REAL NAMES RULE

There's this deplorable habit running rampant through the commentator booths of major league baseball. Its epicenter is Atlanta, but the problem has leaked into other markets like Arizona and even San Francisco.

The problem? Giving baseball players grammar-school nicknames. In Atlanta, the commentators call John Smoltz, Chipper Jones, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, and Jeff Franceour -- respectively -- "Smoltzie," "Jonesie," "Salty," and "Frenchie." Arizona commentators call Eric Byrnes "Byrnsie." Worst is Giants commentator Duane Kuiper, who calls Pedro Feliz, a native of the Dominican Republic, "Pete."

Huh?

HOW ABOUT THOSE CUBBIES?

I'm having a grand old time following the Cubs. Before their recent 7-game win streak, I was starting to see the team gel under Lou Piniella's leadership. Lou does a nice mix of old and new talent, and is riding high on the late June productivity of Derek Lee, Aramis Ramirez, Mark DeRosa, Alex Pie, solid pitching, and, most importantly, Alfonso Soriano, whom the Nationals still miss.

In good Cubs tradition, I refuse to get excited about anything related to their #2 spot behind Milwaukee. In good Cubs tradition, I should actually look at this winning streak as a harbinger of the end of the team's success this season.

But I'm a patient man. We're only half way through the season. There's plenty of time to fail.

SMALL BALL ON THE ROAD: Giants vs. Cubs

I was trying to think of how I'd like to spend my birthday this summer. I decided to fly to Chicago in mid-July to watch a couple of Cubbie home games. One of them will be against the Giants.

Although I lived a few city blocks from Wrigley Field for several years in the early/mid-90s, I've never been to Wrigley Field. I wasn't into baseball until long after I left Chicago for San Francisco. I kick myself for missing the opportunity to go and watch games in those years.

There's a little B&B, can't remember it's name, about two blocks from Wrigley Field. I think that's where I'm going to stay while I'm in town. It will be ass hot and humid, but I won't mind, not in the bleachers of one of the coolest ball parks in the world.

YOU'RE SO GAY...I BET YOU THINK THIS POST IS ABOUT YOU, DON'T YOU, DON'T YOU

Just tuned into tonight's Giants@Padres game, which is in the top of the 1st. The TV broadcasters are Mark Grant, who used to play for San Diego, and Andy Masur, who did a great job for a lot of years for Cubbies radio in Chicago before moving to southern California this season.

After the odious underarm deoderant ad that precedes every launch of an MLB TV stream, Grant and Masur were the first image I saw.

Forgive me, but I laughed my ass off. Grant is holding a baseball -- just in case we doubt his baseball superpowers. "Look at me! I used to play baseball! Can't you tell? That's right, I'm holding a BASEBALL." Masur, with his strangely manicured eyebrows, looks like Grant's gay sidekick.

I don't mean "gay" in the sexual application of the word. I mean "gay" the way high-school kids mean it. As in, "You're gay," where "gay" = "retard."

TV enhances the superhero gayness of it all by binding these guys in matching jackets that look like discarded design concepts from an X-Men movie.

Grant and Masur are so cute and earnest, I expect them to don capes and fly in circles above the field during the 7th-inning stretch.

HOLY DISAPPOINTMENT, BATBOY!

Well, the Giants, after a week of games, are 1 for 6, right down there with the worst team in baseball so far -- yep, the Nationals. Veteran luminaries of various stripes and effectiveness share the gutter with a reconstruction team packed with nobodies. How embarrasing.

Tonight, I watched every agonizing moment of the Giants@Padres game, where only 7 hits in the entire game resulted in 1 run for San Diego. They won with that puny little integer.

I guess you could generously say that Chris Young and Matt Cain duelled, but they didn't impress me as much as the offense infuriated me. Wasted opportunities abounded. You study the faces of Bonds, Aurilia, Durham, Feliz, Winn, and you see men thinking about something other than the game of baseball. Men who lack the spark you see in the faces of Twins hitters, Braves hitters, Cubbie hitters. I wonder if there's any hunger there, or if these guys are collecting massive paychecks while playing a week's worth of dotty exhibition games. Nobody in San Francisco seems to be playing baseball. Just making plate appearances. Is that the new standard for selling seats?

I pity all of the holders of those incredibly expensive Mays Field seats, the overpaid, overeducated baseball dilletantes conducting business through their Treos and Blackberries. They just paid for a weeks' worth of incredibly uninteresting baseball. Ha!

Color me cranky.

BARRY BONDS. WATCH OUT.

Holy cow, Barry Bonds' first at bat against San Diego's Chris Young (who?) on an 0-2 count resulted in his 735th home run. I'm speechless.

UPDATE: Top of the third. Barry just hustled toward the infield from LF like a bat out of hell, trying to catch a high flyball. I pressed my fingertips against my teeth (we, in San Francisco, are intimate with Bonds' long, slow recovery from double-knee surgery), waiting for something horrible to happen. Damned if he didn't catch the ball like the Golden Glover of old. Very impressive.

He seemed to cramp up as he came to a stop (somebody give this man Ben-Gay, stat!), but he returned to the plate in the bottom of the third, with Omar on base (Omar used Bonds' at bat to steal 2nd -- tee hee).

WHO'S YOUR DADDY?

I just watched the game between the Cubs and Reds. I like Ted Lilly, the Cubs new SP weapon. He's accused of throwing a lot of pitches, but he's also a strikeout monster. He dueled Bronson Arroyo, one of my favorite pitchers from last year. Both men went deep and were relieved competently. Didn't see much batter performance, but that's OK cuz the Cubbies won, fairly decisively, 4-1.

The real story with this game was Lou Piniella, who is clearly sending a message: we will try to steal bases often, we will aggressively run the bases, and I have no patience for closers who squander comfortable leads in the 9th.

Lou came running out in the 9th to school Ryan Dempster. He ran (ran!) to the mound and said fewer than ten words, wheeled around, and stormed back to the dugout. Dempster started pitching again before Lou even made it back.

I think it's safe to say that Dusty Baker's warm-and-fuzzy days are over.

Ted Lilly was brilliant. He even got a single (his first career RBI) and a terrific infield play, hustling to get a man out at first by a hair. I love it when pitchers also have some offense and defense in them.

NICE COMEBACK IN WASHINGTON

I was surfing around a bunch of team sites and noticed that all the teams I pay attention to had lost every one of their games so far this season. That’s not so bad when it comes to teams like the Cardinals (2 losses) and Houston (2)—in fact, hot diggity!—but it also applies for the Cubs (1), San Francisco (1), Rangers (2), and Washington (2).

A couple games were in progress and it looked like the trend was going to continue. The Rangers have already given up 4 runs in the first, and the Nationals, when I first checked, were down 2 runs going into the bottom of the ninth. I’d gotten to a point last year where I couldn’t pay attention to baseball because the team I’d follow was always on the losing end. Spotting a similar trend so early this season is making me nervous, I must admit.

But then the scoreboard refreshed, and the Nationals were winners! They posted 3 runs to come from behind and win! Maybe my season isn’t doomed after all…