The Giants signed Juan Uribe to a minor-league contract, with the potential for $1 million/year if he makes the team.

Even though he is a second cousin of Jose Uribe, I’m a bit torn on whether it’s appropriate to revive the “Ooo-reee-bay” chant. I also hope this acquistion doesn’t preclude the re-signing Rich Aurilia, who is older but still is at least approximately an average player from a statistical standpoint. Juan Uribe reminds me of…Jose Castillo, and we all know what happened there.

Posted under Uncategorized

The Giants released the details of this year’s FanFest a few days ago. This year’s KNBR 680/Giants Winter FanFest will be held at AT&T Park on Saturday, Feb. 7, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. PT. Admission is free, but fans are encouraged to donate to the Giants Community Fund at the door.

The most notable guests will be Tim Lincecum and The Thrill himself, Will Clark. Also, individual game tickets will go on sale at the ticket windows starting at 9AM.

The complete list of Giants guests scheduled to attend FanFest besides Lincecum and Clark include Jeremy Affeldt, Vida Blue, Bruce Bochy, John Bowker, Emmanuel Burriss, Matt Cain, Orlando Cepeda, Jesse English, Tim Flannery, Dave Flemming, Kevin Frandsen, Mark Gardner, Alex Hinshaw, Steve Holm, Bob Howry, Randy Johnson, Mike Krukow, Duane Kuiper, Carney Lansford, Fred Lewis, Joseph Martinez, Osiris Matos, Jon Miller, Pat Misch, Dave Righetti, Dave Roberts, Ryan Rohlinger, Sergio Romo, Brian Sabean, Billy Sadler, Jonathan Sanchez, Nate Schierholtz, Lon Simmons, J.T. Snow, Jack Taschner, Brian Wilson, Ron Wotus, Keiichi Yabu and Barry Zito.

Read the full press release

Posted under Uncategorized

2K Sports is releasing its widely popular game MLB 2K9 on March 2, 2009. To prepare for the game’s launch, 2K Sports has released a short promo video featuring 2008 NL Cy Young Winner Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants.

Posted under Uncategorized

SF Gate reported in a brief blurb that former Giants pitcher Frank Williams had passed away. I remembered Williams as a pretty good sidearm righty, number 47, who was a solid middle reliever for the Giants back in the mid 80s. He pitched for parts of three seasons for the Giants before being traded to the Reds for Eddie Milner. He had put up pretty solid stats (career ERA 3.00) and I had never heard why his career ended so abruptly after just six pretty good seasons.

I poked around and found the original source story, which gave the heartrending answer. His career ended after a car accident, and after that he left his family for Victoria, British Columbia, where other than a brief comeback attempt with the local Victoria Mavericks, he steadily declined over the years, bottoming out as an alcoholic on the streets and hanging out in a local sports memorabilia store, reliving stories of his major league years with store patrons.

At the end, with his major league earnings all gone (according to Baseball Reference, he made $1.44 million in his career), he was all but homeless and alone, sleeping in various shelters and using his old baseball cards as identification. What a sad ending to what had been a promising life.

With this, now three members of the ‘86 Giants are gone: Williams, Jose Uribe, and Chris Brown. Rest in peace, Mr. Williams, you’re now warming up in the bullpen up above.

Posted under Uncategorized

It looks like the Giants have quietly put back the “Your SF Giants” banner on their website, which was the team’s slogan for 2006-2007. Whether this is a temporary placeholder or whether they’re going with this as the slogan for 2009, I guess we shall see.

Posted under Uncategorized

On getting elected to the Hall of Fame!

Henderson was named on 511 out of 539 ballots (surprising that 28 people did not vote for him) , and Rice slid in barely safely with 412 votes, just 7 more than the minimum number needed. Out of the misses, Andre Dawson (67%) and Bert Blyleven (62.7%) moved to within striking distance of future election. Tim Raines got only 22.6%, which I hope is just “not the first year but eventually” instead of “no”.

Matt Williams got 7 votes, which unfortunately was not enough to keep him on the ballot.

Posted under Uncategorized

Tim Lincecum follow-up interview at the MLB Network studios, this time focusing on his mechanics. He breaks down his approach and his motion, and offers some insights on how he can get such velocity from such a small body. I’m no pitching coach, so I’ll just let the video speak for itself.

Tim Lincecum’s Mechanics

Posted under Uncategorized

Giants hurler Tim Lincecum was recently invited to the new MLB Network studios for an interview with Harold Reynolds and Victor Rojas.  Some major points I remembered:

Read More…

Posted under Uncategorized

I used to write an annual commentary about each year’s Hall of Fame ballot on another blog, but since that blog no longer exists, here it is.

With the New Years festivities beginning to recede in the rear view mirror and with it the winding down of (college) football season, it is once again that time of year, the annual announcement of this year’s enshrinees into the Baseball Hall of Fame. So without further ado, here is my commentary on this year’s candidates.

Read More…

Posted under Uncategorized