Rest Day

A break from the World Series today as the Giants travel to Arlington, Texas for three days of away games starting tomorrow, the Giants winning the first two games of the series at home. We went to the co-op this evening to pick up dinner fixings and ran into a guy wearing a panda hat who it turns out was at the game Wednesday night. He thinks the Rangers are through; even if the series runs six or seven games the Giants will win it: it was the vibe he got at the ballpark two nights ago.

There’s still a lot of baseball left to be played. We nervously await Game 3, first pitch tomorrow afternoon at 3:57 PM Pacific time.

Weaving for the World Series

I had a two-day weaving workshop this weekend at Meridian Jacobs with Robin Lynde (who also taught me to spin). Robin took one look at my Giants Ishbel and handed me some black and orange yarn to weave with. There wasn’t quite enough of the orange to make a scarf-length piece so I added some gray at either end (all of the wool is from Robin’s Jacobs sheep).

My mind is still spinning with the language of weaving and the giddy sense of how fast it moves in terms of fabric length. I tried several patterns (plain weave, twill, broken twill, and pebble weave, settling on broken twill for the scarf). The warp is all black except for four strands of gray either edge.

I got home just in time for the first pitch on Saturday night, having woven about 5-6” of orange. Orange and black. The Giants won their game and the pennant, moving on to the World Series. I went back yesterday and finished my scarf, which I now have to full (wash and agitate a little to get the wool to settle).

Go Giants. (And thanks, Robin, for an excellent weekend and for these photos.)

The Raggle Taggles

I have no idea how the Giants just managed to win that game but they’re going to the World Series!!!

Their bullpen gets a lot of the credit though. The Giants’ starting pitcher Jonathan Sanchez got pulled in the third inning with two runners on and nobody out and the bullpen held the line for seven more innings. The last bit of play was a classic Brian Wilson the Giants’ closer sequence. Giants up 3-2 bottom of the ninth, with two outs. Phillies’ runners on first and second. A base hit ties the game, an extra base hit wins it. Wilson is up against the slugger Ryan Howard and the count goes full. Wilson gets him looking on a low outside strike and The Giants Win The Pennant!

Three Out Of Four

That is the number of Giants losses out of the games we’ve seen on TV this season. Clearly we are jiinxing them, and must stop accepting invitations over to friends’ houses to watch critical games. Last night’s epic failure against the Braves is well up there in the history of Giants’ postseason infamy.

Jinxes or not, watching baseball on television just does not agree with us. Or conversely, I don’t think there’s a sport that’s better suited to radio than baseball. Baseball is not about visual glitz of the sort that TV excels in, it is about narrative, exactly the sort that good radio announcers can draw out exquisitely. We’re lucky that the KNBR radio team for the Giants is very good at what they do.

End of Season Joy

At home now, basking in the Giants winning the NL West, which they did today on the final game of the season, a 162-game slog most time of which was spent chasing the San Diego Padres, trading division leads with them much of this past month, overtaking them by three games as of last Thursday night, only to see that lead evaporate as they lost two in a row against the Padres on Friday and Saturday, but the Giants pull it out in the end as they beat the Padres today 3-0.

I only caught bits and pieces of the game before the seventh inning. We were providing radio support for a bicycle event (the Princess Promenade) along the American River Parkway. Doing bike patrol I ended up cycling about 42 miles cruising the stretch between Discovery Park and the CSU Sacramento campus. The game started around 1, and I didn’t finish with my bike duties until around 3. We were back at home in time for the final half-inning, and avoided getting too hysterical after the last strikeout because Diego was sitting on Pica’s lap while she was spinning yarn. The cats haven’t quite figured out our baseball mania.

Correlative Fandom

The Giants are in the thick of the pennant race, winning the first out of four games in a critical series against the San Diego Padres to move to one back of the team. As a fan of course I worry about just what are the necessary steps to take before and during the game to ensure success. Do I need to listen to every pitch, for example? I did carry a radio with me early in the game this evening when I went outside with the cats, just in case…

Rivalry

Occasionally there is a game to remind us that there is more to the Giants-Dodgers rivalry (which dates back 120 years) than mocking the Dodgers fans for tossing beach balls around their home stadium. Last night was one of these. We missed all the good bits: the Giants’ ace pitcher, Tim Lincecum, started off badly, walking the first batter of the game on four pitches and giving up a home run in the first inning to put the Giants behind 3-0. Things were showing no sign of improving, so I turned off the radio. Checking in online in the top of the 9th, I delight to see an update come in where the Giants take the lead 6-5 on an Andres Torres double, and turn the radio back on. I learn that in the interim, the following has happened:

1) Tim Lincecum (who is lacking control this evening, remember) hits Dodgers batter Matt Kemp with a pitch. He charges the mound; players swarm to restrain the two. The Dodgers’ bench coach gets quite irate. The umpire warns both benches.

2) The reliever who takes over for Lincecum, Denny Bautista, throws a couple of pitches that go inside; the Dodgers’ bench coach yells something about this and gets ejected as a result.

3) The Dodgers retaliate. In the top of the 7th, their starter Clayton Kershaw hits Aaron Rowand with his first pitch of the inning. Having been warned, Kershaw and Dodgers manager Joe Torre get ejected. Dodgers coach Don Mattingly steps in for Torre.

4) Somehow through all this the Giants claw back from 5-1 to 5-4.

5) It is the top of the 9th. Dodgers closer Jonathan Broxton struggles a bit, and the bases are loaded. There is a conference on the mound, and acting manager Mattingly comes out to the mound. He steps off the mound, thinks “oh, one more thing”, and returns to the mound. Giants manager Bruce Bochy notices this, points it out to the umpire. The umpire concurs. According to the rules, two visits by a manager to the mound means the pitcher must be taken out of the game. The Dodgers are forced to take off their closer, and bring on their struggling-this-year reliever George Sherrill, who is allowed (according to the rules) only eight pitches to warm up.

6) Torres hits his double, and the Giants take the lead. Buster Posey, the Giants top-prospect-turned-hottest-of-rookies, gets an additional RBI and the Giants lead 7-5.

7) The Giants’ usual closer, Brian Wilson has pitched in the previous four games and is unavailable, but Jeremy Affeldt takes over closing duties, and the Giants win it.

See, just another usual day at the park.

Soccer Quandaries

I listened to my first baseball game following the World Cup, the Giants beating the New York Mets 2-0, Tim Lincecum throwing a complete game shutout. I’m not quite ready to give up soccer for another four years, and for now continue to pay attention to the sport. So far this means a) finishing Unseen Academicals, Terry Pratchett’s latest novel about the wizards at Unseen University being coerced into fielding a football team against the town folk of Ankh-Morpork, the ending of which bearing more than a slight resemblance to the Spain-Netherlands final b) reading Jonathan Wilson’s recent treatise Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics c) learning that Billy Beane, the much-heralded general manager for the baseball team the Oakland Athletics, has in recent years become a soccer fanatic; indeed some suspect he’s gotten bored with baseball and only cares about soccer these days d) wondering if Billy Beane’s favorite English Premier League team, Tottenham Hotspur, would be a good one for me to follow and maybe adopt (it would not do to become a fan of any of the EPL “Big Four” — that’s like defaulting to being a Yankees fan) But chances for me to watch soccer without broadband or any sort of cable TV are few and far between, so maybe I stick to baseball on the radio…

The Game We Didn't Catch

[It’s my turn to blog but I’m leaving the field open for Numenius, whose birthday it is today. – Pica]

We went to San Francisco today to catch the Giants game on the occasion of my birthday. Unfortunately a storm decided to pass through San Francisco at the same time. Undeterred, we trudged the seven blocks from Montgomery BART to the ballpark clad in rain jackets and ponchos through the rain, hoping the weather would let up in time for us to see some baseball.

The game wasn’t called off, but was in indefinite rain delay by the time we got inside the ballpark. We headed up one escalator flight to promenade level, where we milled about, happy to be under a roof, and grabbed a lunch consisting of garlic fries and hot chocolate. We were never even to make it up to our seats.

It didn’t let up. We watched the in-house televisions giving pre-game coverage commemorating the 10th anniversary of the opening of the ballpark. Eventually they switched the telly over to the final round of the Masters golf tournament. A bit surreal — watching golf (which we never watch) hanging out in front of a hot dog concessionaire, the rain pouring on the field of AT&T Park, all on my birthday.

Our giving up time was 3 PM, two hours after arrival. It was still coming down on the field at that time. The game had not been called — they were going to do everything possible to play the game today due to the logistical difficulties of rescheduling the game with the Atlanta Braves later on.

We left the ballpark. Two minutes later, it started letting up, and the sky was bright to the west. We wondered if heading out when we did was a mistake.

We took BART back to Ashby Station, where we had left our car, and got the radio. By 4 PM they still hadn’t made a decision about the game, and were checking on the condition of the field. By 4:45 when we were three-quarters of the way back to Davis the game was a go, the start time scheduled for 5:10 PM.

Back at home for the first pitch. Tim Lincecum didn’t get much warmup in, and it showed in the first inning: he walked a batter and gave up a two-run home run to Brian McCann. But he settled down quickly, and didn’t give up another run.

San Francisco’s offense got started in the 4th inning — Pablo Sandoval hit a triple, and was singled home by Aubrey Huff. Pablo had his first big day this season, later on hitting a home run and a single. Tim Lincecum ended up with 10 strikeouts. Jeremy Affeldt pitched two innings to close out the game, only giving up a home run to the Braves’ rookie phenom Jason Heyward. Giants win 6-3 — we weren’t there to see it. A fun day regardless.

On Being a Fan

Most of my friends aren’t knitters. Most of my friends aren’t birders (though many are, perhaps the largest single group). Most of my friends aren’t sketchers or artists. Most of my friends aren’t calligraphers. Most of my friends aren’t the slightest bit interested in sports of any kind, especially not baseball.

Yet most of my friends seem to tolerate all these things in me. Thank you. It’s baseball season again, which has me happier than I can describe, and I hope you’ll forgive the effusion for a little while. It will settle into the June doldrums for both the Sox and Giants, into the vague hopes of August, into the dashed dreams of September. But for now, baseball leafs out as it does every spring, full of hope and promise.

Play ball.