Giants suck. It’s Opening Day. I’m off work to celebrate. Alex Gordon just went really deep. I love baseball. Giants will suck for the next X number of years. We have Cain, Lincecum, the best two announcers in baseball, a beautiful park and a beautiful city. Yeah, yeah, Magowan’s taking advantage of those last two points and the announcers don’t matter THAT much relative to the team on the field. It’s Opening Day and I’m just happy. (Actually I’m really happy because my Real Betis came back and beat Barcelona 3-2 this weekend…one mid-sized Spanish soccer club is the one sports “team” that actually affects my moods.) Tomorrow, I’ll be pissed at the Giants…but still happy with my Betis boys.

No runs on 4 hits, 7 strikeouts in 5 innings for a no-decision.

Since this team cannot score runs they can’t leave starters out there for more then six innings till they’re forced to pinch hit. I don’t expect much statistical magic from any starter.

61 wins is a good call. 64 wins would be a miracle.

Giants, best case scenario- 70 wins
What it’ll probably be- 61 wins
What it’ll be if Cain or Lincecum get hurt- 55 wins

You’re correct. Gone would be 30 dollar charges for the privilege of renting 160 sq ft worth of potholes for 4 hours. No forking over $19.00 for flaccid hot dogs, rancid smelling fat-fried potatoes, and flat beer sloshed up in containers more suited for Jello. No more $68.00 Field level ticket just for the privilege of having some poor stiff making minimum wage hold a sign in your face between batters to prevent you from returning to your seat. As if this edifice had now been raised to the status of Le Grande Opera and Mario Lanza himself had been resurrected from the dead, expressly for the purpose of staging a command performance for the Royal Family of Magowan.

You’re right. There would be no amusement parks with swimming pools, water slides, patio dining, playgrounds, arcade games, sixty-dollar pizza and costumed mascots mingling amongst the crowds. It would all be gone. At least the superfluous “ballpark experience” part of it. The peripherals would vanish. Along with the cretins on cell phones and idiots who treat players and other spectators like zoo animals. And all that we would be left with is: The Game. It would still be played. Players would still play. It would be dispersed to smaller venues, but they would still be playing. They would make a living doing other things. But they would still play. And the casual spectator, (the one pandered to by owners) would go do something else. And the hardcore baseball fan would find another team to follow.

The game has been distorted by the marketing twits, and non-baseball people, to the point of complete dehumanization of the players. Its all about the “ballpark experience” now. Well, Mr. Owner, when you hire frauds and their cronies to run you operation and throw out onto the field a collection of overage wine sipping carpetbaggers that people resent, anyway, and then follow it up with a cynical, ego maniacal attempt at mind erasure, you’re not necessary to me and thousands of others anymore. When an owner insinuates his countentance as the face of the franchise and tries to pawn off dollar for dollar, potentially the worst team in the history of baseball as “All out, all the Time”, its time for me to focus my baseball attention elsewhere.

One thing that Magowan and others of his ilk forget. They are temporary stewards. Owners like Stoneham go broke. Owners like Lurie get worn out and sell. Other owners die off. The point being, that no owner will ever outlive the team to which he temporarily runs roughshod over. Even Steinbrenner came to the realization that all his caterwauling for face time over the years accomplished was to make him a laughingstock. Mr. Magowan is fast reaching that point. If he hasn’t figured it out, he only has to look down the road to the Forty Niners ownership. All the money in the world cannot prevent somebody from making themselves a complete ass and a figure of scorn, and ridicule. And every bit of it will be earned.

Isn’t Bocock going to be the starter at short with Omar still on the shelf?

C – Bengie Molina
1B – Rich Aurilia
2B – Ray Durham
SS – Omar Vizquel
3B – Jose Castillo
LF – Dave Roberts
CF – Aaron Rowand
RF – Randy Winn

with zito on the mound

Baseballs’ problem is that it’s, I guess the word would be oligopoly. The “ownership”, which all started so people would have a place to sit in 1876, is sitting on a goldmine, and they have no competition, no-one telling them what to do, no real market forces affecting them. What are you going to do otherwise? Go see the A’s? Go to San Jose? It’s all the same. The Giants will be profitable for the next 20 years if the team loses 100 games every year.

There’s good ownership, there’s bad ownership, but there isn’t “losing money” ownership. MacGowan could give a shit – I sound like Joe Morgan here (god help me), but I can almost guarantee that the financial forecasts say the team we have right now is exactly what gives them the best financial return. Near as I can understand it, short of making the playoffs, it really doesn’t make that much of a difference in dollars and cents.