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.