Babble on Recent Sports Stuff

Wow, I rambled on this message board like I was writing a blog entry. So perhaps I should just re-write it here and add more links while I'm at it! :P

Current poll on CSN Bay Area:

If the Giants finish the season 5 games behind Colorado how would you characterize this season?

A) Succesful
B) Mildly Successful
C) Average
D) Below Average
E) Failure

I'd vote "Mildly Average". :P Honestly, I don't know. They've obviously done better than what was expected when the season started; however, the management has driven me nuts at times. I'm finding myself having more questions than answers:

Freddy Sanchez has been here how long and he's been injured twice?
Will Buster Posey get a start this season?
Speaking of starts, did Ryan Garko really start in 26 games? It's seemed like half that.
Did you enjoy the return of the Uribe chant? (I did!)
Angel Villalona?

Oh, but hey, they won tonight and the Rockies lost. It is not (mathematically) over.


In other news, hockey's almost here! (Well, technically it is here, but it's preseason.) Here's something else I wrote over on that board right after the Heatley trade broke:

But at least the drama is done now and everyone can just focus on training camp. I will say that I have a bit of a fear that Heatley's arrival just might have an Avery-in-Dallas effect. It's very irrational, very worst-case-scenario, I know, but the fear exists. If the franchise is strong enough and can get him to be effective (this is assuming he is like the media's portrayal of him--I'm kind of comparing the best-case scenario to the way things worked out with the Patriots and Randy Moss, at least that first year), then the sky's the limit. I wish everyone luck.

re: today's Giants-Mets game

I'd just like to say that anyone who thought the HBP on Wright was intentional either didn't watch the game or wasn't paying attention. The game was scoreless at the time, there was a runner on first, no outs, and Cain had an 0-2 count on Wright. Why the hell would you intentionally throw at a guy in that situation? Anyway, Cain went on to pitch 7.1 innings and when he was taken out, he tipped his cap as he went off the field. One of the announcers--Mark Grace, I think it was?--immediately took offense to the gesture, thinking it was a response to the all the booing the fans were doing after the incident. I believe he thought wrong, though, as Cain was most likely tipping his cap to the crowd of Giants fans sitting behind the dugout. (Those living in the SF area may know that this NY trip was one of the big team vacation packages for the season.) So yeah, the announcer sounded like an ass to my ears. But maybe he saw the error in his words later on...I mean, they did acknowledge the group of Giants fans there when Molina homered, so maybe he realized something then. I can only hope. :P

[edit 8/16: It appears that I was wrong in my initial thought...now I think it was probably a combination of both, an acknowledgment to the Giants fans and a "yeah, I heard you" to the Mets fans. I'll admit my error, but I still think that announcer overreacted.]

And as I type this, Ian Kinsler just got hit in the head with a pitch. Gah. He immediately stood up, though, and seems to be fine, thank goodness. Looks like the HBP will be a big topic tonight on the sports networks. :/

I'll end this with a fun quote from the AP wrap of the game that I saw over on Yahoo!:

"Santana then hit Molina in the elbow, and Bochy argued that Santana should be automatically ejected. Manuel removed him for reliever Shawn Green while Bochy argued."

The pitcher's name is Sean Green. I had a feeling that someone would make that error, heh.

Quick Babbling

1) I went to the Giants game tonight (technically last night). What is it with the Giants and first-time All-Stars missing the game? ...I kid! It sucks that Cain got hurt, but fortunately x-rays were negative, it's just a contusion, and he should be fine. It was nice to see the relievers get a win! There was also a light rain at one point, which caused this to happen:



The other rainbow (or perhaps the other half of the rainbow?) is faint, but you can make it out over the left side of the AT&T sign. Oh, and Sandoval homered for the second straight night. Why is he not on the All-Star team again? :P

2) I wore Sephora's Liner Electro in Khaki today and I only wish I had tried it out sooner. I don't use pencils that often (brushes seem easier for me to use for some reason), but this held up well, plus I love the color. See The Next Best Thing to Going Shopping Yourself for detail + swatches of the product...that post was actually what prompted me to get it in the first place, heh.

3) They brought back Metal Orchestra!? I'd passed on it the first time around, but...wow, that's tempting. (I own two Kat Von D palettes and I love them dearly.) Oh, and over on Urban Decay they have an online catalog of their fall products...but a couple of the pictures show future holiday release products. One is the 24/7 pencil in Eldorado (gold...looks nice, so if you're into those...yeah) and the other is Nail Enamel. They're bringing that back? I don't remember when they discontinued it, I just remember not seeing it anymore one day, though this was before I was on mailing lists and all that jazz. I had a couple of colors of this back in the day that I loved, "ID" was one and...what was the other one, "Pipe" might have been in the name? I wanna say the name had something to do with snowboarding. It was a pale iridescent color.

"Crispy defense wins games." --F.P. Santangelo

Hey, look! Matt Cain won a game! It finally happened, even though he had some issues, but the team played well overall, and the bullpen did a good job to finish it off, so...yay!

Unrelated note: It was really funny hearing the seagulls during the postgame wrap.

Somewhat related note: Zito to the bullpen - your thoughts? My initial thought was that this was a worse demotion than sending him down to the minors since I don't know how much pitching he'll be doing here...but maybe doing that would make the Giants look worse? I don't know.

Trevor Linden never played for the San Francisco Giants.

So I'm at work listening to the radio, and this one caller is going on and on about how much the Giants are going to suck this year. I zoned out after a minute but woke up when he mentioned the name Trevor Linden. He meant Todd Linden. This mistake actually happens quite a bit, and it manages to annoy me every time.

756, blah blah blah, "asterik".

I didn't write about the whole home run ball online vote thing because I thought it was dumb (still do--I mean, how much money is being spent on this when there are children starving and fun stuff like that), but I have a couple of questions about it anyway:

1) If, for some bizarre reason, Barry Bonds is found to have not done anything wrong as far as the MLB rules of that time are concerned, do we get to brand Mark Ecko with an asterisk?
2) Am I supposed to know who Mark Ecko is? I'm serious here. I'm not even sure if I'm spelling his name correctly.

I will say this, though: At least that Mark guy (unlike many of the people who have called the various radio stations regarding this topic) can pronounce "asterisk" correctly. Why is it such a hard thing to do? Even in commercials! There's this TV commercial going around right now for one of the cell phone carriers...a young lady is visiting the fake crappy cell phone carrier that has asterisks all over the place (i.e. "Unlimited text messaging!*"), including one of the clerk's hands. The lady calls him on this, saying, "You have an asterik [sic] on your hand."

...Ugh.