Tag Archives: San Jose Giants

Back to the Basics

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First, a belated apology to Jackie on behalf of the Mariners, who swept her beloved Orioles in a four game series at the end of June. I know she was disappointed, but in the Ms’ defense, they needed the victories a lot more than the Os did.

Which isn’t much of an apology, I realize. But it’s sure in line with baseball tradition, where the “apology” for nailing a batter in the ribs with a fastball is often, “He deserved it.”

But I digress slightly. Despite a recent absence of hitting–especially with runners in scoring position–the Mariners are still 23 games over .500, only three games out of first in their division, and holding a solid (if hardly impregnable) six game lead over Oakland in the Wild Card race. They’re on pace to win 101 games, which is pretty good for a team few expected to win 90.

So, sorry Jackie–but would you please ask your guys to beat the Yankees a few more times this year? Thanks, much obliged.

Moving on.

We went to our annual minor league game last week. The last couple of years we went to Sacramento for a AAA game, but this year the schedule worked out better to go back to our previous stomping grounds, San Jose.

The San Jose Giants are a Class A Advanced league team. The quality of play is not, to put it politely, at anything close to a major league level. The odds say that the majority of the players we saw will never get more than a cup of coffee, if that much.

But.

We had good seats–not that any of the seats in a 4,000 seat facility are bad.
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And when you sit that close to the action, you really get a sense of how good that so-called bad play is in reality. When someone hits that proverbial screaming line drive, you can hear it scream. And when it knocks the third baseman on his ass, you understand why he didn’t catch it in a very visceral way. One you’ll never get watching, say Nolan Arenado, from the third deck of a 50,000 seat park.

Which is not to say you forgive that third baseman, of course.

Still, A-class baseball is an entertaining way to spend an afternoon or evening, and it’s a damn sight cheaper than the majors.

But be aware that Municipal Stadium does have its quirks. Many parks are afflicted with seagulls that descend on the field after the game, sometimes not waiting for the final out before they come shrieking in, chasing errant french fries. Municipal Stadium has a similar problem.
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It’s a self-inflicted problem, of course. What you’re seeing there is the clean-up after a regular promotion. During the game, fans can buy a bag of numbered tennis balls, which they get to throw at targets set up on the field. Get a ball into a bucket or plastic ring and win a prize: leftover bobbleheads from earlier promotions, for example. Though, to be fair, the day we were there, three people won tickets to a San Francisco Giants game. That attempt at balance isn’t quite fair, though: big winners aren’t all that common, and three winners at one game was an all-time record.

We had a good time–and that’s without figuring in the post-game fireworks show. It was short and didn’t have many large, spectacular blooms, but the launch point in center field, less than 100 yards away, and the heavy emphasis on rapid-fire curtains and streams of sparks more than made up for the limitations.

Moving on.

If we believe the commissioner, the biggest problem facing professional baseball right now is pace of play. Based on the game in San Jose, I think he’s got the wrong end of the rope. It’s not really about speeding up the game. That’s just one approach to the real problem: keeping fans actively involved and interested.

Maybe we don’t really need pitch clocks or electronic umpires*. Maybe what we need is something a bit different.

* We don’t. Nobody who’s seen the home crowd react to their cleanup hitter strike out looking at a pitch three feet outside would ever say getting balls and strikes right is the best way to keep fans involved in the game.

Hey, Commissioner Manfred, how about reintroducing the beer batter at the major league level?

For the uninitiated, one player on the visiting team is designated the “beer batter”. If he strikes out, beer is half-priced for a period of time, typically fifteen minutes or for the next half-inning. And, boy howdy, do the spectators cheer when the beer batter swings and misses.

Sure, there are issue to be worked out. Nobody’s going to want to sell those $12 craft beers for $6. But the mass-market beers shouldn’t be a problem, especially if you limit sales to a subset of the concession stands. And most, if not all, parks halt beer sales after the seventh inning, and half-priced soda isn’t going to satisfy anyone when the beer batter comes up in the eighth or ninth. Maybe a deal on beer-battered corn dogs?

But the beer batter is only an example. Give the fans a specific thing to root for that has a direct payout to them, and they’ll engage. Case in point: if an Oakland player hits a home run, everyone in a single section of seats gets a free pizza. But fans can’t cheer for that. Homers can happen at any time, and the section isn’t announced until after the hit. How about changing it up a bit: if the ninth batter hits a home run, everyone gets pizza?

You’ll have fans screaming for guys with a lifetime .200 average to swing for the fences, and crying in mass agony when his fly ball dies on the warning track–and if he bunts, well…!

Sure, it might be a little pricey for the Giants when MadBum is pitching, but that’s what corporate sponsors are for, right?

Call it unenlightened self-interest. It’s not as obnoxious as the increasingly ridiculous between-innings antics most parks have turned to, and it’ll work just as well to keep fans in the stadium.

And it’s certainly more true to baseball tradition than putting free runners on base in extra innings.

Feline Doings

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GT is doing about as well as can be hoped. I haven’t take a lot of pictures of him, because I don’t want to subject him to the stress of bright, flashing lights.

But I thought he could handle one photo.
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Yeah, the poor guy has to wear the Cone o’ Shame for a while. He’s got a drain installed (carefully not included in the picture–you’re welcome) and it wouldn’t be good to have him scratching at it.

(No, we weren’t happy about how little space he had in the cage. A new, larger one arrived today and he’s got quite a bit more elbow room now.)

Not only does the cone prevent him from grooming himself–thus the unusually-mussed fur–but it also keeps him from getting his mouth close to a bowl of food on the floor. Wall-mounted bowls should arrive today, but for the past couple of days we’ve been helping him eat. Wednesday we spoon fed him. None of us enjoyed that. Since Thursday, we’ve been holding the bowl inside his cone.

And if you don’t believe that holding a bowl for a cat while he eats isn’t an exercise in patience, I suggest you go to your local zoo and watch them feed the big cats. A tiger will happily spend hours licking a slab of beef.

Fortunately for everyone, GT is determined to move the food from bowl to stomach as quickly as possible, but even so, licking is a slow transfer mechanism. Those wall-mount bowls can’t arrive fast enough!

If all goes well, he’ll have the drain removed on Sunday and, we’re hoping, he’ll be allowed to remove the cone at the same time.

He continues to be remarkably cooperative. He sits quietly, uncaged, for his twice-daily warm compress, and he didn’t squirm or wiggle when I picked him up to move him to the new cage. He’s not happy. As best we can tell, he’s alternating between grumpy and bored, but he’s bright enough to not make this experience any harder on himself than it has to be.

Meanwhile, inside the house, Yuki got wind* of the fact that the Giants have lost five straight games and six of their last ten. It seems he thought a show of support was in order.

* I assume he read it in the sports section of the newspaper. He certainly spends enough time sitting on the paper while I’m trying to read it, and we all know cats read with their butts.
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Note that the flattened ear has nothing to do with his disgust at the Giants’ performance. It’s a combination of the feline equivalent of “helmet hair” and dismay at the number of typos and grammatical goofs in the magazine he’s reading.

At any rate, Yuki prevailed on ‘Nuki to join him in supporting the Giants.
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I think the theory is that if the players see the look on ‘Nuki’s face, they’ll be too terrorized to lose again.

Their effort is admirable. Too bad the boys are wearing San Jose Giants caps.

Halfway There

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Here we are at the All-Star Break again. The official mid-point of the season, also known as “The Week Without Baseball”.

OK, yeah, I know it’s only four days, but I figure that if MLB is allowed to promote the game as something larger and more important than it really is, then I can do the same for the break itself.

Anyway, last night was the Home Run Derby, which isn’t baseball, but is entertaining. MLB addressed my biggest complaint about last year’s event. The threshold to earn bonus time was raised from two 425-foot home runs to a pair of 440-foot shots. That was high enough to avoid making it a “gimme” and I’m fairly sure it influenced the results.

It’s a shame Madison Bumgarner wasn’t allowed to play. Note to MLB and the Players’ Association: nobody wants to see a separate pitchers-only home run derby. We just want to see MadBum launch a few. Let’s be honest–we don’t expect him to win. But watching him try? That’s entertainment. And he certainly couldn’t have done much worse than Robinson Canó’s pitiful seven home run performance.

When Giancarlo Stanton racked up twenty-four in the first round, everyone knew he was moving on, but darn it all, Robbie, couldn’t you at least have managed double digits?

Oh, well. Stanton’s performance was awe-inspiring; well worth the time spent watching a meaningless, made-for-TV entertainment extravaganza.

And, per my usual fascination with side issues: the kids in the outfield made some nice catches this year. Kudos!

Moving on.

The actual All-Star game is tonight. Real baseball, even if it doesn’t matter as much as MLB wants us to think it does.

And then we get two days without baseball.

Well, not really. Don’t forget the minors. The AAA All-Star Game is tomorrow, and if you’ve got the MLB Network on your cable or satellite lineup, that’ll be televised. And minor league play resumes on Thursday. It’s a great opportunity to hunt up your local minor league team and catch a game without feeling like you’re neglecting your major league team-of-choice.

Speaking of catching a game, I’ve been to a pair of minor league games this year.

July 5 was the San Jose Giants. I’ll spare you the pictures, since (a) I didn’t take any and (b) if I had, they would have looked a lot like last year’s.

Then, on the ninth, I went up to Sacramento, home of the River Cats. Until last year, the River Cats were the As’ AAA* affiliate. Now they’re affiliated with the Giants. But I didn’t go to root for the ‘Cats. Oh, no. Y’see, the Tacoma Rainiers, AAA affiliate of the Seattle Mariners were in town.

* For the uninitiated: AAA is the highest level of the minors. In theory, the teams are made up of youngsters who are almost ready for the majors. In practice, there are also major-leaguers reconditioning after injuries, and older players on the way back down.

Both the San Jose and Sacramento games were, by the way, followed by fireworks shows. That’s not a minor inducement. Ballpark fireworks are generally excellent.

Anyway, the River Cats game was
STARWARS Night
As promotions go, STARWARS Night is fairly harmless. A few gratuitous stormtroopers, Darth Maul throwing out the first pitch, and similar oddities don’t greatly detract from the Baseball Experience.

We had excellent seats.
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Third row back from the Rainiers’ dugout. No protective netting, which made that sign at the lower right take on new layers of significance.
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Odd. I’d never realized that women were at higher risk of injury from flying bats, but flying balls target men. I’d like to see the study that supports the theory. Anyway…

The highlight of the game, at least for Tacoma fans, was once-and-future Mariners’ catcher Mike Zunino. He went three-for-five with two home runs, drove in all five of the Raniers’ runs in a 5-3 victory, and–on a personal note–tossed this into the stands:
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My first-ever game ball. It may not have come to me via a home run or a foul, but I really don’t care. Two people missed their catches, it came to me, and I’m thrilled.

Less thrilled: the kid sitting two rows in front of me, whose father was one of the people who missed the ball. He gave me one heck of a dirty look. I considered giving it to him–especially since he and his father were also rooting for Tacoma–but decided to keep it. Not only was it my first, but I thought the odds were good that he’d have another chance that day.

And I was right. A couple of innings later, his father missed another catch. That ball went to the father/son duo sitting just to their left.

Never fear, though, he didn’t go home disappointed. Not only did the kid’s father finally snag a ball for him in the eighth inning, but at the end of the game somebody in the Tacoma dugout slipped him a used bat.

Very well-used. Dented, scuffed, and with a large crack in the handle, it was obviously not a usable bat. But he was thrilled. And rightly so. He’ll be a fan for life, no doubt.

I confess to a modicum of jealousy, but I’m bearing up. Holding that ball is remarkably soothing. Thanks, Mike!

Moving on.

This is getting long, so I’ll let you go. You’ve got minor league tickets to order.

And Thursday I’ll check on my predictions for this year’s playoff teams. That should be exciting.

Sights of the Week

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Because I can: A few thoughts and pictures from my holiday week.

7/3 – Mariners vs. As
O.co is a lousy place to watch a ballgame, and I gather that it sucks to play there too. All the worst features of a generic stadium planned for multiple sports and none of the good–assuming there are any.
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But when your team wins, you can forgive a lot. The Ms’ four two-run home runs suggested they might finally be pulling out of their extended hitting doldrums. It’s only a suggestion, of course: Wednesday’s 0-14 with runners in scoring position shows they still have a lot of work to do, but, y’know. Hope.

And a very impressive fireworks show after the game. If you’re one of those heretic non-baseball fans, you should consider going out to the ballpark on a fireworks night just for the show. And if you wind up enjoying the game too, so much the better.

7/4 – San Pablo 4th of July Family Celebration and Fireworks Show
09-3(My first opportunity to use the Android Photo app’s Panorama mode. It works amazingly well.)

A relaxing way to spend the Forth. Carnival games for the kids–and a rock-climbing wall and pony rides–a few local merchants and community organization booths*. Amateur entertainment: a karate demonstration, Zumba demonstrations, a clown act. Fortunately, this year’s acts didn’t include any singers. And the lion dance was very impressive. Outlining the lions in color-changing electroluminescent wire was a great idea.

* I got a key chain from the San Pablo Police Department, a flashlight from the San Pablo Senior Center–and joined the San Pablo Friends of the Library.

The fireworks weren’t as technically impressive as the As’ show, but were just as satisfying.

7/7 – Manuscript editing
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Sachiko was kind enough to offer her thoughts. She wasn’t impressed. I don’t think the chapter can be salvaged to her standards: it doesn’t have nearly enough scenes of cats being fed.

7/7 – Blaze vs. Giants
Minor league baseball at its best. Perfect weather, excellent seats, and a good game.
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One of the beauties of lower-level baseball is the small parks. Sitting close enough to the field that you an read players’ lips after they commit an error gives you a totally different impression of the game than you get from a seat in the upper deck at a major league stadium.

San Jose won the game 9-4. At the same time, the San Francisco Giants beat the Mets to end their seven game losing streak and the Mariners came from behind to win their game against the Tigers in extra innings. So the only team that didn’t have a good time was Bakersfield.

The most dramatic play of the game was Angel Villalona’s long, high home run to center field. Villalona, San Jose’s first baseman, has a body that puts one in mind of Pablo Sandoval, and when he gets it behind a ball, one suspects he could hit it through the fence.

Despite the majesty of Villalona’s home run, the most interesting sight of the day was pitcher Tyler Rogers. He has one of the purest submarine deliveries I’ve ever seen, and he uses it to great effect: 39 strikeouts to 9 walks in 37 innings for San Jose so far this season. I expect him to move up quickly–he had a rough time in a brief stint at AA Richmond (Go Flying Squirrels!) but he seems to be putting the pieces together well, and I expect him to do much better on his next try.
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More on Hope

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This “hope” thing is tricky.

The Mariners gave some to their fans with a winning road trip (five wins, four losses) that included several games where they remembered how to hit the ball. Then they came home last night and demonstrated how easy it is to score a bunch of runs and still lose the game. Five runs will win a lot of games, but not the ones where your opponent scores twelve. With the All Star Break, the official half-way point in the season, less than a week away, they’re at 38-45, hoping to hang on to a one game lead over last place Oakland.

Meanwhile, over in San Francisco, the Giants have now lost seven games in a row. They’re at .500 on the year, still hoping (there’s that word again) to catch Los Angeles, win the division, and break the Curse of the Odd-Numbered Year.

So how best to celebrate hope for a pair of teams that both expected to be better off than they are? Me, I’m off to San Jose today to watch a game between the Mariners’ and Giants’ Class A (Advanced) teams.

I’ve written about the joys of minor league baseball before, so I won’t rehash it here. I’ll just note that IMNSHO, Class A (Advanced) baseball is the purest baseball experience you can get from professionals. Most of the players have solid skills, though they’re still working to master their abilities. And, by and large, they’re young enough that you can legitimately say they could put it all together and become a star. (For the record, the oldest player on the Bakersfield roster is 26, most are 23 or 24, and the youngest–Rayder Ascanio, a shortstop from Venezuela–is 19. San Jose’s team skews a little older; leaving aside Juan Perez, who was on the major league team last year and is currently on a rehab assignment, they have several 26- and 27-year-olds, and the baby of the bunch is Christian Arroyo*, who just turned 20 a month ago.)

* I find it amusing that the youngest player on both teams is a shortstop. Clearly, I’m easily amused.

As a fan of the Giants and the Mariners, I’ll be cheering for both teams–wearing a Mariners’ shirt and a Giants’ cap–and hoping to get a look at a few of the guys who’ll be leading their major league clubs to titles a couple of years from now.

The weather is perfect and I’ve got nothing riding on today’s game. It’s amazingly easy to ignore the odds that say few of these kids will ever make it to the majors. Maybe hope isn’t so tricky after all.

See you at the ballpark.

That’s the Way We Do It

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I went to a baseball game and no history happened. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

We’ve arrived at the All-Star Break. Last year, I marked the occasion with a pair of posts. I’ll keep it to one this year.

I pointed out that this is the time of year when fans of the under-performing teams begin obsessively watching trade rumors, waiting for the one that will give them hope for next year. What I didn’t mention is that fans of the teams on the edge of making the playoffs are obsessively watching trade rumors, waiting for the one that will give them hope for this year.

So far this year, both groups are still waiting. The only trade with potential major impact was between the As (currently the best record in baseball and the runaway favorite to make the playoffs) and the Cubs (currently the fifth worst record in baseball).* Things should be heating up this week before the frenzy next week leading to the trade deadline.

* Yes, the Cubs are in the first group–under-performing teams–and their fans did get some hope in their acquisition of Addison Russell. However, he’s now their second top prospect at shortstop, a position where they already have a good player. That means if they get a significant boost from Russell, it’s because both of the others flamed out–hardly desirable. More likely, the actual gain will be from a future trade, either of Russell himself, or one of the other two when Russell becomes the full-time shortstop. Either way, there’s a modicum of hope, but it’s a deferred hope, and likely deferred beyond next year.

I also wrote about the joys of the Home Run Derby. It’s not so much the home run hitters, it’s the kids chasing the balls that provide most of the fun and excitement. Last year’s Derby was good in that respect. This year was amusing, but not as good as last year. I think the kids had a touch of World Cup Fever. A lot of flops and slides on the wet-thanks-to-rain grass, but not much “will the ball be caught?” drama.

The Derby isn’t baseball, but it helps get through the lack of meaningful games. The actual All-Star game is tonight. That is baseball. Meaningless, like preseason games, but at least the quality of play is (usually) better than any random preseason game. Tomorrow and Thursday are off days, and the season resumes Friday. So what do we do for baseball Wednesday and Thursday? Well, there are always the minor leagues.

Which brings us back to that baseball game I mentioned in the first paragraph.

The San Jose Giants are, as you could probably have guessed, a minor league team in the San Francisco Giants’ system. They’re a “Class A Advanced” team*, meaning that they’re several steps away from the majors.

* The current classifications are, in descending order of presumed skill and readiness for the majors, Triple-A, Double-A, Class A Advanced, Class A, Class A short season, and Rookie. In the past there were fewer types of “A” teams, and there were “B,” “C”, and “D” leagues. I’ll just note that baseball reflects the society around it, and as such, grade inflation and peer promotion are inescapable.

There is an element of truth in that joke, but it is, as with most of baseball’s long and checkered history, more complicated than that. Maybe I’ll do a post on the Great Minor League Reorganization of ’63 one of these days.

As an A league team, the SJ Giants are not playing in a fancy park like the parent club’s. San Jose Municipal Stadium seats less than 6,000 people, and it looks about half that big. Ignore the small video screen over the right field fence, and it could almost be a small-town stadium from an old movie: small dimensions, painted advertisements on the fences, and an outfield that hasn’t been sculpted to millimetric tolerances.

Since the players are young, the quality of play sometimes leaves a bit to be desired. “Sure” double-play balls aren’t sure at all, flies that look eminently catchable to the eye accustomed to big league play fall untouched, and errant pitches fly past catchers with alarming regularity.

But the teams make up for it in other ways. The small size of the stadium means that even the cheap seats* are closer to the field than 95% of the seats at a major league park.

* And they are cheap. Non-discounted seats for tomorrow’s game start at $11. The major league club changes prices depending on who the opponent is and how far in advance you buy. As of this writing, the cheapest seats for the SF Giants’ first home game after the break are $56.25.

Even in the last row of seats, you’re close enough to really hear the action: the sound of bat hitting ball, ball hitting glove, and–when sufficiently provoked by a bad call–chin hitting ground in disbelief.

And the team takes advantage of the intimate nature of the venue to do things that couldn’t be done at a major league park. In the big leagues, video screens keep attendees occupied between innings by showing “fan cams,” “dot races,” and highlights of other games–sometimes even other sports. The San Jose club is strictly analog in its between-inning distraction. They drive a truck onto the field, and let players throw baseballs at it: any player who breaks a headlight gets $20.00 and a pre-selected fan wins a coupon for auto parts. Four spectators are invited onto the field to play Musical Chairs, with the winner getting movie tickets. A fan throws rolls of toilet paper at the team mascot, who is seated in a Porta-Potty (I never did hear what the fan won).

OK, maybe some of the activities aren’t in the greatest of taste, but they’re still doing better than “Captain Morgan” and a bevy of half-dressed young women throwing T-shirts into the stands while a video urges spectators to drink responsibly. (Yes, this really happened at an As’ game–and, I’ve heard, several other major league parks–a couple of years ago.)

As you move up the ranks from A to AA to AAA, the quality of play improves, and the off-field “product” and ticket prices start to look more like the majors as well. But that just means you can choose your level. There are teams affiliated with one of the MLB clubs in 42 American states (and one in British Columbia: the Vancouver Canadians, a Class A short season affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays). If you need a baseball fix to get you through the next two days, you could do far, far worse than to check out the closest minor league team.

I should note that the game itself, as you might expect, wasn’t a highly-polished performance by either team, but the Giants beat their arch-nemesis*, Stockton, 8-4. The Giants built a 7-0 lead before giving up four runs in the eighth inning: thrills and chills; we wondered if that eighth was ever going to end.

* In Class A, every opposing team is your arch-nemesis, standing between you and the development of the skills you need to move up to the next level.

A good time was had by all. Well, except for Stockton and its supporters, but since they won the other three games that weekend, they can’t complain too much. It was a pleasant evening in the sun with an exciting game. No history was made, but how much history does one need in any given season? Baseball is its own compensation.