Retire #22

Will The Thrill...where do I begin. First I should start by giving a little background about what inspired me to write this post. It started with meeting Eric Byrnes on Tuesday when he and Tom Tolbert were broadcasting live at the Public House on KNBR. My boyfriend Sean and I went to say hi to them both and Sean being a big fan of Byrnes mentioned how he wore 22 and was a big Will Clark fan as well. That's when Byrnes mentioned how tired he was of seeing other players wearing #22 and that on Thursday he was going to start trying to rally people to get behind the movement to retire Will's number.

If you haven't read the blog post that Byrnes wrote to start this movement, click here to check it out. Byrnes is passionate about everything and his post about Will Clark really shows his passion for this topic. He talks about how Will Clark didn't get enough votes to stay on the ballot for the Hall of Fame and how absurd it is that Will Clark won't be inducted into the Hall of Fame. He also talks about the "character clause" and how that becomes a factor in the voting now and how we should recognize the character Clark showed by leaving baseball early to be there for his son who was diagnosed with autism. Byrnes then goes into how the Giants don't need to stick to the policy of not retiring numbers unless you've been inducted into the Hall of Fame. 

Will Clark was the first thing I ever knew about baseball and the San Francisco Giants. My parents started taking me to games when I was 5 (1990) and they were lucky enough to share season tickets with some friends that were in the front row on the first base side. There was absolutely nothing between me and The Thrill. The late 80's and early 90's produced some true legends in Giants history and my first experiences at Giants games included getting to watch Will Clark, Robby Thompson and Matt Williams play. I was hooked from day 1. I knew every starting player's name, number, position, throwing hand and batting hand. I memorized everything I could about the players and I loved every moment I spent at Candlestick park whether I was freezing my ass off or basking in some glorious SF sunshine. I was living every little kid's dream who loved baseball. 

In some ways I feel I didn't really appreciate the full impact of Will Clark on the Giants when it was happening. For one thing, I was barely 1 when he made his major league debut in 1986. I also don't remember the 1989 World Series (I'm sure a lot of Giants fans wish they didn't remember it) because it was before my parents took me to games and I was 4. Will Clark left the Giants after the 1993 season which was also around the time that my parents stopped getting those awesome season tickets so my Will Clark experience was cut short in some ways. Regardless of my age at the time, I know all the stories now and Will Clark is a legend. To quote Byrnes from his show on KNBR Thursday, "He defined an era of San Francisco Giants baseball." I couldn't agree more. 

In 1985 the Giants lost 100 games. And you all thought 2013 was bad! Then here comes Will Clark in his first major league at bat and he homers off Nolan Ryan. If you haven't heard Mike Krukow describe that moment, it's absolutely classic. No one could believe what Will Clark had just done, and he comes back into the dugout and says, "Now let's get some more!" in that impossible not to recognize Will Clark voice. I won't sit here and go into detail about all the amazing things he accomplished because you all know already. If you need a reminder, check out the 3 part series of "Inside the Clubhouse" that the Giants did last year here. He is a fan favorite and has been for over 20 years. No one holds it against him for leaving after 1993, including the Giants organization since he's still very involved with them. Everyone loves him and always will. 

The Giants need to give some serious consideration to changing the current "policy" on only retiring numbers of Hall of Famers. There are currently 55 players spanning over 20 franchises that have their number retired despite not being inducted into the Hall of Fame. In addition to that, there are several clubs that do not circulate certain numbers to other players even though they aren't retired. To name a few, the Mariners who have not given any other player #24 in honor of Ken Griffey Jr. and the Mets who have not given #31 to any other player in honor of Mike Piazza. Do you know how many people have worn #22 in the 20 years since Clark left San Francisco? 18. Those 18 players include Eli Whiteside, who's most memorable contribution was taking Shane Victorino out in a brawl between the Giants and Phillies in 2011, and most recently Cole Gillespie (who?) and Roger Kieschnick. Are you kidding me? Why is #22 being worn at all, but more importantly why is it being given to all these subpar players?? Not to totally diss Kieschnick because I think the kid has potential, but it's just not right seeing him wear #22. If we are not going to retire #22 at least use a little more discretion when giving it out to someone else. 

I wanted to write this post because I love Will Clark and I think Eric Byrnes did an awesome thing by starting a movement to get the Giants to retire his number. So send all your tweets to @SFGiants with #Retire22. Tell all of your friends, family and loved ones. Write the front office a letter, start a petition at school, do whatever you need to do to keep the movement going. Will The Thrill and #22 deserve their rightful place on the wall of retired numbers and the overdue place in Giants lore. 

Why I Love and HATE the Trade Deadline

For those of you following me on Twitter, you've seen all my anxiety tweets about losing Javy Lopez. But I did say at some point last week that if there had to be a move, this one would probably hurt me the least. Here are some of the reactions to this possible trade coming from Twitter:

Dear Baseball, you can have as many Brian Wilsons as you want but please don't take Javier Lopez. Love, Giants Fans
— Carmen Kiew (@carmenkiew) July 30, 2013

“@mccoveychron: Sherman: "Giants will 'definitely move' Javier Lopez' http://t.co/sfYIlefHe5” ugh!!!
— Omar Salinas (@bigosalinas) July 30, 2013

(I just figured out how to "embed" tweets into my blog, welcome to blogging 101 rookie!)

We can step away from the sadness of potentially losing Javy for a moment and talk about some of the things I like about the trade deadline. Mostly, things get real interesting in a very short period of time with all the potential moves that start getting thrown out in the baseball universe and make everything more exciting, but only when it really has nothing to do with your team. Hearing things like Jake Peavy and Bud Norris both got scratched from their starts today were essentially the highlight of my day. All the anticipation building over where they will end up and what teams are going to benefit from these moves, it's all so exhilarating! It makes another Tuesday at work that would normally be brutal because you stayed up til 1AM playing Monopoly and drinking beer (this is a true story, feel free to make fun of me. I'm making fun of me!) so much more enjoyable! Until tweets like this come around:

News Alarm: Jake Peavy (P - CWS) The White Sox announce Jake Peavy will start on Wednesday. (http://t.co/dgG3WSPePa)
— FantasyAlarm (@FantasyAlarm) July 30, 2013

So anticlimactic! But entertaining nontheless. I'm really interested to see what happens to Bud Norris. Random fact time: Bud Norris and I had Pre-Calculus together our first quarter at Cal Poly. Him and his buddy Adam always sat by me and my 2 friends and we had a good time chatting every day. I'm really excited to see him pitching in the Majors and I just think his potential is so limited in Houston, my completely obvious statement for the day. I heard Baltimore was the front runner for him earlier so hopefully he ends up in a good situation if he does get traded.

And then there's this whole Brian Wilson in Dodger Blue thing. As I said before, I'm now forced to root for him to fail. It's how I roll. I hate the Dodgers and I will never apologize for that. Him and Yasiel Puig will make quite the pair if you ask me!

With all that, I leave you all to enjoy the rest of this miserable/exciting anxiety filled 24 hours before the dust all settles and we can resume being normal, functioning humans again. A Giants victory would certainly help tonight! Otherwise, you can find me crying in the corner with "Coastin" on repeat until we know Javy's fate.

Let Javy Pitch!

I'm not gonna lie to you all, I've been too depressed about the Giants poor performance lately to find anything worth blogging about. We had a shot to take the series in Atlanta and a combination of not scoring runs and bullpen meltdowns prevented that. We should have swept the Padres but another bullpen mistake and one hell of a catch prevented that as well.

Then in come the Marlins. OK guys, this is the worst team in the National League, we got this right? RIGHT? No. They managed to put up a whopping 8 runs in a 4 game series against the Fish. June has just been downright sad.

Back to my point: Javier Lopez. Twitter has been brewing up a lot of conversation about Javy lately including the lovely Nicole Vogelsong's campaign to get Javy to the Allstar game:

She also included this AMAZING photo from NLCS Game 7:

I am all for Javy in the Allstar game. I'd campaign for him any day! He started really winning me over in 2011 when I found out that he had a degree in Psychology. It's rare to hear about Major League players who took the time to get their degree and I really respect that about Javy and George Kontos. Our bullpen is funny AND smart!! The next thing that I noticed about our favorite lefty specialist was his walk up song. This catchy tune, "Coastin" by Zion I &  K. Flay, is just so different from what your used to hearing especially from relievers. Some of your standard walk up songs include "Hells Bells" by AC/DC, "Shipping Up to Boston" by Dropkick Murphys and who could forget "Jump Around" (don't act like you don't miss BWeez just a tad). Anyway, go listen to "Coastin" and tell me it isn't awesome. I also had the privilege to attend the "Breakfast with Champions" season ticket holder appreciation event in August 2011 where they did 3 different segments of player Q & As and Javy came out with Ryan Vogelsong and were hands down my favorite portion of the event. And most importantly...doesn't he just look like a nice guy??

There's also the "strut". If you haven't seen Carmen Kiew's FANTASTIC compilation of Javier Lopez Struts please stop reading an watch it now. Go ahead, I'll wait.

As you can see there are plenty of non-baseball related reasons to love Javy. Now we need to get down to business. Javier Lopez is good at pitching. His sidearm delivery and frisbee like slider are such a weapon against left handers. Now here is where it gets crazy...I'm feeling pretty confident that he might be able to get more than one batter per game out. WHOA THAT IS CRAZY! Pitching to more than 1 batter?! Oh the madness! Let's not forget that he closed 7 games for the Giants in 2012 which I'm pretty sure had to entail getting multiple batters out. I looked at his stats since he's been with the Giants and since he came to the team in 2010 he's only given up 1 home run. With as many late inning home runs as it seems the Giants have been giving up, that stat alone makes me want to see him pitch more. Our bullpen is flat out struggling and I just don't get why Bochy won't pitch him more. I know we don't question the bullpen master who's won the Giants 2 World Series in 3 years but come on Boch! LET JAVY PITCH!!

End rant. I feel better getting that off my chest. Maybe Javy could put that psychology degree to use and give us all some logical explanation of why he isn't pitching more. I know we would all feel better if he stayed in games longer. At least until he made a mistake and turned everyone against him in an instant ;)

Happy Perfect Game Anniversary Matt Cain

If you are any kind of legit Giants fan, surely your attention has been brought to the fact that today is the anniversary of Matt Cain's perfect game last year. With as dreadful as these last 2 days in Pittsburgh have been we all needed to remember this moment in Giants history today so we could take our minds off of all the issues the Giants are facing right now.

The perfect game was such an amazing moment to be any part of, whether you were watching at home or actually at the game witnessing history in person. I will never forget that day. I remember it vividly since I was preparing graduation gifts for my 2 cousins who graduated high school and getting ready to head down to San Diego the next day. Sean and I were watching the game, he was on the couch and I was in mad crafting mode at my table behind the couch. All of the sudden we get to the 6th inning and a vague comment was made on the broadcast about there being no hits or something along those lines (we all know the rules about actually speaking of a perfect game when it's happening...YOU JUST DON'T DO IT!).

Sean and I finally realized what was happening and crafting became much less important and more stressful all at the same time. I was so nervous about what was happening that I had to be extra careful not to mess up my gifts. When it got to the 7th Sean had walked into the bathroom when that ball was hit to deep right center aka Triples Alley territory and I just kept saying, "Oh no, oh no" and then miraculously Blanco caught that ball. I could watch the replay of that catch a million times and still be amazed every time. That catch was unbelievable! I believe they quoted Bochy today saying, "I still don't know how he caught that ball."

After that catch, everyone knew it was meant to happen. Cain was going to throw a perfect game. We were glued to every pitch waiting for it to be final because there was no freakin' way it wasn't happening. 2 down in the 9th with Jason Castro in as a pinch hitter, sharp ground ball hit to Arias at 3rd, stumble, throw, and he's out! Just the right amount of drama to conclude what was the first perfect game in Giants franchise history. They pan to Matt Cain's wife who's in shock and that's right when I got uber emotional. I'm a nerd, I get it.

I was able to dig up this gem of a text message from my sister (since she barely texts me and no I'm not bitter about it! Haha):

My favorite line is obviously, "His wifey was totes insta tears". I still get a little choked up every time I hear Dave Flemming's call or see the replay of that last out. That's a game that will be talked about for a long time to come. It's a story I will tell my kids someday and hopefully they will fully appreciate the significance (if not I'm trading them out for new kids dammit!).

I learned some fun new things about the perfect game today from Jon Miller during the pre-game show. Jason Castro is from the Bay Area and his family was at the perfect game. They went up to the broadcast booth and talked to Kuip and Jon and they were all a little shocked Castro wasn't in the starting line up because he hit his first Major League home run against who else but Matt Cain. When Castro came up in the 9th with 2 outs Jon and Kuip were definitely more on edge given his past with Cain. Cain said that he just threw that last pitch as hard as he could right down the middle and hoped for the best. As we all know, everything worked out just fine. The Giants posted this video today and I highly recommend you watch it. You will too be "totes insta tears".

As I wrap up this post, the final line for Cain today was: 6.2 IP, 2 H, 0R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 3 SO. It's hardly perfect but compared to the last 2 games, it's almost a dream come true for Giants fans today. So go enjoy the fact that we didn't get swept by the Pirates and relive that perfect day in 2012 like it was yesterday.

Finding Comfort in Baseball

This post is almost entirely a product of me not being able to sleep. My poor dog has some "hotspots" and has to wear a cone so they can heal. Sean let him outside at about 1am and he managed to pull his cone off forcing Sean to hold him from trying to lick his wounds while I searched for the cone in the dark for a solid 5 minutes. I feel bad for him, look at the poor guy! He's miserable.

I can't say I haven't laughed at him a lot though since putting the cone on but this is definitely not fun for anyone. 

OK back to baseball. I have been thinking a lot about how much of a commitment being a baseball fan can be. It's 162 game season that starts in the Spring and takes you all the way to the Fall 6 months later. Anyone who's not a big baseball fan will tell you this is too long, anyone who is a big baseball fan will tell you it's not long enough. 

As many Giants fans will tell you as of late, you can go through some rough times during the course of 162 games. Your team loses 5 of 7 games in a week with bad pitching, sub par defense and a lack of hitting and things start getting into major stress mode. I cannot relate to being an Astros or Marlins fan right now, losing that many games in 2 months is not something I can comprehend these days. Your team will undoubtedly cause you frustration and distress many times throughout the season but also bring you so much excitement and joy. It's the highs that get you through the lows because the highs are so much fun!

Regardless of the emotional roller coaster being a baseball fan puts you through for 6 solid months, it's always there for you. It remains constant when so many other things in life seem to be wavering and changing. You know you are probably going to get at least 6 games a week (with the exception of weird weeks like this with 2 lame off days) and you know that your team is going to get on the field every day and give it all they've got to get a win. 

The investment is worth it when you always have baseball to fall back on when everything else seems to be going a little crazy in your life. The connections baseball gives, the relationships it builds, the memories it creates, all 100% worth the 6 month, 162 game ride. 

I will cap this post off with one of the best quotes from Kruk at the 2010 World Series Parade:

"And everybody here today, you are standing here and you are not standing alone. You are standing with the person who taught you the great story of the San Francisco Giants. Whether it be your dad, or your mom, or a friend, or your sister, or your grandpa. They taught you right. They taught you you had to be loyal, you had to love your team. And to a man on this team, this 2010 team, to a man back in August, they plugged into you and you fueled and energized this group all the way through the crazy month of September, and through what was an epic month of October, and what is one glorious day in November. And you have but one responsibility. And you owe it to the person who taught you the good book of San Francisco Giants. You need to pass this story on, keep this love alive. And when you tell the story simply tell them, 'We're the Giants, we're San Francisco, and we're the World Champions!"

And some fun photos!

My first Giants game with Sean! My Giants bestie Lezlee with us too - August 2011

Fan appreciation day September 2012 with the crew the day after they won the West

Celebrations after NLCS Game 7 at Creeky Tiki

      

Who Do The Rockies Think They Are?

It's Memorial Day Weekend and that means the unofficial start of Summer with lots of barbecues, beer and baseball! The Giants start a 3 game series tonight with the Rockies and to quote Kuip, it's going to be a "grudge match".

The Giants went into a 4 game series last Thursday with the Rockies having complete and total own-age over them. Granted this was part of the road trip that should never be mentioned or thought of again but the Giants got slapped around a little bit by our new NL West "rivals". No one liked this and I think the Giants have a little slapping of their own that needs to happen this weekend to re-establish the aforementioned own-age.

Now lets get petty. I'm about to breakdown all of the reasons the Rockies are not here to stay in a completely materialistic sense. We could talk stats and numbers and shear facts but where's the fun in that?

1. Uniforms - is Purple Pinstripes vs. Fierce Orange and Black even a question?

Let's skip and hold hands and laugh together!

We are badass men who win championships. 

2. Mascots - Dinger the Dinosaur vs. Lou Seal

Wait I thought I was at a baseball game and not in a Barney nightmare! Someone get me out of here!

Lou Seal is just a boss clearly. His dance moves are stellar. If you haven't seen this amazing commercial from 2003 do yourself a favor and watch it now.  

3. Franchise History - Rockies established in 1993 Giants established in 1883

Sean likes to talk about how if you weren't a baseball team when he was a kid then you're not a real baseball team. The Giants have 120 years on the Rockies. Get outta here Rockies, you are the unwanted children of baseball. 

To me, this is all very substantial and convincing evidence of the Giants being the superior team. Let's remind them of that this weekend. To quote my Mom (this is in a text she sent me today, true story), "Watch out Rockies you are in our house now."

Happy Orange Friday, Happy Lincecum Day and GO GIANTS!

P.S. Please feel free to add anything I may have missed on the Rockies lameness in the comments. :)

Who Broke the Pitching Staff...And My Heart?

The Giants are coming off one of the worst road trips in the history of road trips and what's more glaring than the 13 errors in 6 games is the starting pitching troubles. The starting 5 are now sporting a 13th place in the NL ERA and that's just not right. I personally am still blaming Canada. Why? Because it's weird to have to go play baseball in Canada and more importantly, because I can! 

What I think is more stressful is the thought of Vogelsong losing his spot in the rotation. I think 99% of Giants fans will agree that watching him succeed after the trials and tribulations of his career had to be one of the best stories in baseball. I saw him pitch his first start back in a Giants uniform on May 8th, 2011 and it was the start of an amazing comeback to the game for him. If you watched "The Franchise" episode that talked about his story and didn't cry I don't know how you are human. I had the pleasure of meeting Nicole Vogelsong a couple weekends ago and she was so sweet. Sean and I told her how much we love Ryan and his story and she talked to us for quite a bit. It sucks when bad things happen to good people, granted it could be a lot worse, but it still sucks. 

I hate change and I hate the thought of having to kick someone out of the rotation who was so key to the Giants success the last 2 years and especially in the playoffs. I get very emotionally invested in these players and when things aren't going well I don't like it. 

What are your thoughts on Vogelsong? Are you ready to kick him to the curb and trade for a new starter or do you want to give him a few more starts to turn it around?

The Ticket Fiasco

For those of you who know me and my boyfriend Sean, you are aware of our baseball obsession and more specifically our Giants obsession. For those of you who don’t, we drive 3 and ½ hours to get to the bay and we go to games as many weekends as we can afford. Winning 2 World Series in 3 years doesn’t exactly make it cheap to be a Giants fan. We have a lot of fun and end up with some great stories to tell, which is why I’m starting this blog.

This is the story of multiple ticket disasters that happened all in a span of 5 hours Friday night. First off, we had already bought tickets for Saturday and Sunday. Then my mom asked if she could join us for the game Saturday. Of course I was going to do whatever I needed to so she could get a ticket since it was Mother’s Day weekend and all. This is where it all went south.

I bought 2 extra tickets for Saturday’s game so my mom could come to the game. We needed to find a 4th person to join us so I’m already scrambling to sell that extra ticket to someone. The next thing that happened in this crazy chain of events was that I won a contest through Bay Area Sports Guy for a little pre-game party at The Melt on 3rd and Townsend for Friday’s game. So of course we had to get tickets for Friday now and participate in the awesome festivities. Sean is driving us to the city and as I’m entering the barcodes of the extra Saturday tickets into my ticket relay account, I suddenly realize those tickets are also for Friday and NOT Saturday. Enter slew of expletives here.

So it’s 4pm on Friday and I have until 7:15 to try and sell this extra pair of tickets. I turn to every form of social media and online ticket sales I can reasonably access from my iPhone in a car, including Twitter. I almost exclusively use my Twitter account for Giants and baseball related news so the majority of my whopping 50+ followers are Giants fans.

Here’s where an already stupid mistake on my part gets even more ridiculous.

If you don’t know who Peter Hartlaub is, please immediately go to his blog for the Chronicle called “The Big Event”. Ranging from heartwarming stories like sending Terry White to his 6th 49ers Super Bowl to in depth analysis on Jim Harbaugh’sTwitter adventures and who should blow up Candlestick park, “The Big Event” and Peter Hartlaub will surely make you laugh and cry, possibly both at the same time.

So I inadvertently decided to drag Peter down with me in the ticket fiasco of Friday night by sending him a message on Twitter asking him if he knew anyone who would want my tickets. I didn’t hear back right away and it’s already the 3rd inning so I’ve just accepted the fact that I’m out $130 for these extra tickets I stupidly bought and oh yeah, I still don’t have a ticket for my mom on Saturday either. And then I get a message back from Peter who is so bummed that he didn’t see this message sooner and would have loved the tickets. A few messages are exchanged and he decides he can still make it to see part of the game and he will give me at least a part of the money I was asking for the tickets. I tell him to meet me at Will Call and I’ll give him the tickets. So now I’m stoked! Anything is better than nothing for the tickets at this point AND I get to meet this awesome writer I love. Everyone is happy, yay! Score one for Audrey!

No. Do not score one for Audrey.

I direct you to this tweet that gets sent out moments after this awesome plan is devised between Peter and myself:

Oh dear what have I done!!! No Peter, don’t get on BART! ABORT! ABORT! I DO NOT HAVE WARRIORS TICKETS! I start frantically messaging him on Twitter but to no avail. Poor Peter and his buddy get all the way to Oracle Arena waiting for me to show up at Will Call and totally make their Friday night. Then everything hits him like a ton of bricks. I’m at the Giants game with extra Giants tickets. FAIL.

Oddly neither of us chose to specify which sport or team we were talking about during our whole exchange until it was too late. So at the end of all this, I did not get my money back, Peter did not get Warriors tickets, and both of our hopes were crushed.

Peter had a good laugh about this with all of his followers on Twitter and I seriously can't believe how this story transpired. Moral of the story, pay attention!

UPDATE: Check out Peter's story about this in the Chronicle! Click here for his story.