Giants-Dodgers: Disdain, Paranoia, History

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — This is what baseball wanted. This is what the Giants hoped. The Dodgers are coming to the Bay, coming to play a three-game series, which could mean everything and then again, because there’s such craziness in the long season, might mean very little.

Dodgers-Giants, so much background, so much disdain. And up here, even after two World Series victories, so much jealousy. The chant isn’t “Go Giants,” it’s “Beat L.A.”  Short and pithy. Resonating with paranoia.

Watching the Dodgers lose gives San Francisco fans as big a thrill as watching the Giants win, and if both can be accomplished in one fell swoop — well, Brian Johnson’s 1997 home run against L.A., which sent the Giants to the postseason, is the stuff of legend.

It’s a sporting matchup, the one-two teams in the National League West. It’s a societal matchup, the glitz of Hollywood against the garlic fries of North Beach.

“It’s good for baseball the way the schedule worked out,” said Bruce Bochy, the Giants' manager. “This is where we were hoping to be.”

He means in the chase, two games back of L.A. He also means at AT&T Park, where on a fine Thursday afternoon San Francisco beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 6-2, a ninth straight win at home.

“There’s a lot of history between these two teams,” said Bochy of the Dodgers-Giants battle.

There’s Bill Terry, back in 1934, when the Giants were in New York and the Dodgers in Brooklyn, chiding, “The Dodgers? Are they still in the league?” Oh yes they were, and they beat the Giants the final two games of the season to give the Cardinals the flag.

There’s the Dodgers building up a 13½ game lead over the Giants in 1951, ending up tied and losing the playoff on Bobby Thomson’s momentous home run in the bottom of the ninth at the Polo Grounds, the “shot heard ‘round the world.”

There’s Juan Marichal smashing John Roseboro over the head with a bat, and Reggie Smith — a Dodger who would become a Giant — climbing into the stands at Candlestick Park to attack a pesky fan. And, of course, there’s Joe Morgan’s home run in 1982, which KO'ed the Dodgers and left Tom Lasorda apoplectic.

Three games in San Francisco this series, then three games next week at Dodger Stadium. “We’re feeling good,” said Giants catcher Buster Posey. And why not? Four days ago the Giants were 3½ games out, a month ago 5½ games behind.

“We also know that’s a pretty good team coming to town.”

No, that’s a very good team. A team that overtook the Giants in July and hasn’t been out of the lead since.

Over the last couple of weeks, the Giants, finally out of their funk, also have looked like a pretty good team. Their pitching is back where it belongs — the Diamondbacks scored only three runs in losing all three games of the series. Now the Giants are hitting when needed, and they’ve won 12 of the last 15.

So much of it is attributable to Angel Pagan. He missed 34 games with back inflammation. The Giants had no leadoff hitter. The Giants had no spark.

On Wednesday, he began the game with a double, then had a single and walk, scoring twice. “He’s our catalyst,” said Bochy, emphasizing the obvious. “We’re a different team with him out there. He’s our get-on-base guy. It’s funny how one guy can mean so much.”

Pagan went 7-for-12 in the three games against Arizona and is hitting .488 (21-for-43) in 10 games against the D-backs. With Pagan on base, opposing pitchers think and throw differently when they face Joe Panik. And Buster Posey. And Pablo Sandoval. And Hunter Pence.

Dodgers-Giants, pitching against pitching. Hyun-Jin Ryu, Zack Greinke and the remarkable Clayton Kershaw for L.A., Madison Bumgarner, Tim Hudson and Yusmeiro Petit for San Francisco.

“Pitching gives you a chance to win,” said Bochy.

It did Wednesday. Jake Peavy started for the Giants. In 5 2/3 innings he allowed only one run, striking out eight.

“Since we got him, he’s been solid,” said Bochy said of Peavy, whom San Francisco acquired from Boston in July. “It’s been fun watching him. He’s a guy who plays the game the way it should be played, as hard as anyone.”

Bochy is upbeat. He knows what’s ahead, and he’s confident.

“This club has been through quite a bit,” he said, meaning the great April and early May, the awful June and July.

In the three games against the Dodgers, it will go through a great deal more. Just as it hoped. Just as baseball wanted.

Time to stop believin’ in Giants?

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — The manager was talking about resilience. Bruce Bochy said he’s proud of the way the Giants, his team, came back when it seemed to have no chance. Yes, the San Francisco Giants are persistent, courageous, gutsy. But they’re not successful.

They rallied in the ninth. Scored two runs to send the game into extra innings, then lost in the 10^th, then Tuesday night were beaten, 3-2, by the Chicago White Sox, who had dropped five of their previous six. Which doesn’t say much for the Giants.

Their race is all but run, resilient or not. They’ve lost five in a row. They’re six behind the Los Angeles Dodgers, a team that never loses, as opposed to the Giants, who lately never win.

Six back, and in May the Giants were 9½ ahead. Sure it was early, but they looked like a contender, maybe a champion. Now they look like a team that is lucky to get a run.

Bochy was talking about the almosts, which is what happens when you’re not quite as good as you thought you would be, not quite as good as most of baseball thought you’d be.

Hunter Pence was on third in the bottom of the first with one out, but he broke slowly on a grounder to short and was cut down at the plate.   

In the bottom of the ninth, trailing 2-0, with the bases loaded and none out, Joe Panik hit a smash up the middle, but White Sox second baseman Gordon Beckham made a spectacular diving stop and it was a 4-6-3 double play. Yes, San Francisco eventually tied, but it could have won in nine.

Still, could-haves and would-haves are the thoughts of teams that can’t find a way to win. They may not quit — nor do the fans, the sellout crowd of 42,317 at AT&T Park staying and screaming to an end that was bitter — but neither do they win.

“We could use a break,” sighed Bochy in his post-game remarks.

They could. They also could use some runs. They did avoid being shut out for a 14^th time this season, and they were facing one of the best pitchers in baseball in Chicago’s Chris Sale, but a run here or there just isn’t enough.

Especially when in the first inning Ryan Vogelsong gave up two on a home run to Adam Dunn. One mistake. In another season, perhaps, that’s overcome. Not this season for the Giants, so painfully ineffective.

“We have to pitch shutouts,” Bochy said in a conversation before the game. It was an offhanded remark, but there is a great deal of truth. Because the other team pitches shutouts against the Giants.

Especially when Vogelsong is pitching by the Bay. He was gone by the time the Giants finally broke through, and this was the fifth straight home game in which Vogelsong received not one iota of offensive help. It also was the eighth time in 24 starts overall.

The Giants simply can’t score. Angel Pagan, Pence, Buster Posey and Pablo Sandoval, the four men at the top of the order, had one hit apiece Tuesday night. It was a two-out single by Brandon Crawford, the No. 8 batter, that tied the game.

“Their defense beat us,” said Bochy. “That double play on the Panik ball was one of the best I’ve seen.”

Bochy is remarkable at keeping his cool. He doesn’t throw equipment. He doesn’t berate his athletes. He simply says things like, “This was a tough one,” and again, “We could use a break.”

No less, they could use some hitters. The strain on the pitchers must be enormous. And now there’s no Matt Cain, who at the least underwent successful surgery to remove bone chips from his elbow.

No Cain. No hitting. No runs. A bad combination.

Six games back of the Dodgers, and a month and a half to go. The talk is about a wild card, but if they can’t beat the White Sox, a team with a losing record, then whom can they beat? They were swept by the Dodgers, swept by the Kansas City Royals.

“I was hoping when Hunter (Pence) was caught at home it wouldn’t affect the game,” said Bochy, “but it did. We were behind 2-0 in the first and it would have been 2-1. I don’t think he read it right. He’s as good a runner as we have.”

Giants home night games are mostly as they have been. There’s the recording of Sinatra singing “Strangers in the Night,” and close-ups of fans kissing. There’s the recording of Journey singing “Don’t Stop Believin.’”

What’s changed is the Giants can’t score and can’t win. Maybe it is time to stop believin’.

Lincecum leaves no-hitter without regret

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — A no-hitter? So? If there is an unwritten rule about yanking a pitcher who hasn’t allowed a hit sometime from mid-game on, well, it hasn’t been stated or tweeted to Bruce Bochy.

He manages not by tradition but by perception.

Sure, the boys (and girls) in the press box at AT&T Park on Wednesday afternoon had their questions, as undoubtedly did many in the sellout crowd of 41,186.

What the heck, little Timmy might not have been at his best, but through five he hadn’t permitted a hit by the Chicago Cubs. Shouldn’t Lincecum at least have had the chance to continue?

The answer, if not directly, was no. So Lincecum, who had the comfort of knowing there was a no-hitter from 2013 on his resume, and also on a day that ended with a 5-0 San Francisco Giants victory, had thrown 96 pitches in those five innings — and had developed a small blister — was content to leave.

Unlike current Giants broadcaster and former pitcher Mike Krukow, who in 1983 departed the mound under similar circumstances against the Cincinnati Reds.

Although Kruk had not allowed a hit through six — he had given up an unearned run on four walks — he was visited by then-Giants manager Frank Robinson, a rather demanding sort.

“You’re done,” Robinson told Krukow.

“But, but,” stammered Krukow.

“You’re done,” repeated Robinson.

Bochy was considerably more tactful and Lincecum more accepting.

“There was no chance he was going to finish,” said Bochy of Lincecum. Not when Tim had thrown nearly 100 pitches — 30 in the oh-what-might-have-happened first inning — and the game still had at least four innings to play.

“He worked so hard. It was time.”

Lincecum shrugged his consent.

“I think it’s easy,” said Lincecum of being relieved, “because I know what our bullpen is capable of.”

That would be to continue the shutout, if not the no-hitter, which was broken up with one out in the seventh by Cubs catcher John Baker, a local kid who graduated from De La Salle High in Concord and played ball at Cal.

George Kontos got the victory, because he was pitching for the Giants when they finally scored a couple of runs off Chicago’s Edwin Jackson in the sixth.

The Giants took two out of three from the Cubs, winning Tuesday and Wednesday on shutouts and extending a string of scoreless innings, by San Francisco and against Chicago, to 20.

One is reminded about the comment by the late football coach John McKay who, while at USC, told a young journalist, “Defense wins, because if the other team doesn’t score it’s impossible to lose.”

Over the last two days by the Bay, the Cubs didn’t score. 

They came close. A smash down by the line by Starlin Castro with two on was grabbed by third baseman Pablo Sandoval, who threw out Castro, and then immediately after that a line drive to right by Nate Schierholtz went just foul.

“Pablo kept everything where he it had to be,” said Lincecum. “Zero runs.”

Sandoval, who was hitting something like .161 not too long ago, had two singles Wednesday and raised his average to .246. Not All-Star stuff yet, but no longer embarrassing.

When he brought home Angel Pagan in the sixth, Sandoval had recorded an RBI for the eighth straight game, six of which were Giants victories.

“He’s in such a good zone right now,” Bochy said of Sandoval.

The Giants were 3-0 against the Twins at AT&T, then 2-1 against the Cubs. “This win made for a real nice home stand,” said a very satisfied Bochy.

San Francisco, on the road starting Thursday night at St. Louis, has the best record in baseball. At the moment. The status is fluid. Only a week ago it was the team across the Bay, the Oakland A’s, who had the best mark. Then they lost five in a row.

What could happen to the Giants out there in Middle America is unknown, but they do have a team earned run average of 3.03, second in the National League to the Atlanta Braves.

And they also have the reassurance of knowing that the motorized scooter stolen from outfielder Hunter Pence has been returned.

“We,” quipped Bochy, “can all sleep tonight.”

Zzz, zzz, zzz.

No scooter for Pence, no win for Giants

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — The day began with news of the scooter caper, a bad omen indeed. The motorized scooter on which Giants outfielder Hunter Pence travels about the immediate vicinity was taken from outside a restaurant Sunday night.

Pinched, as the British say. Stolen. John Grisham stuff. Stephen King stuff. Well, in light of the circumstances, baseball writers’ stuff. No scooter for Hunter — “kind of an extension of me,” he said — and no victory Monday afternoon for the Giants.

You think they aren’t connected? Well, why did the Giants on a Memorial Day at AT&T Park, beautiful in all regards other than the result, allow more runs in one game than they had the previous five games? Why did they mishandle the baseball like a group of 7-year-olds? Why did they get pounded — yes, pounded — by the Chicago Cubs, 8-4?

Pence had a backup scooter, which got him to the ballpark, but it was only satisfactory, not satisfying. Hunter went 0-for-4 against Jeff Samardzija.

The Giants, who had their five-game winless streak (four victories and a rain-suspended tie) stopped, are successful — when they’re successful — because of pitching. On Monday the pitching, starter Yusmeiro Petit — like Pence’s transportation, backup — and reliever David Huff didn’t quite have it.

Samardzija definitely did. The man led the majors with a 1.46 earned run average, but was stuck with a 0-4 record. He’s now 1-4, and the Giants, although still with the best record in baseball, for what that’s worth at the end of May, have a one-game losing streak.

This was Matt Cain’s day to start for San Francisco. But that hamstring injury he incurred Wednesday has not healed fully. The Giants say they are fortunate to have a pitcher such as Petit in reserve.

Yusmeiro did well enough through four innings. Then he didn’t do well at all. His replacement, Huff, did even worse. That is baseball, even for the top teams.

“I’m not sure if the pitches caught up with him,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said about Petit losing his touch, or more specifically losing his ability to retire the Cub batters.

Everything happened so suddenly in the top of the fifth, singles, a double — by Samardzija — a triple. A 3-1 Giants lead became, like that, a 4-3 Cubs lead.

“I was hoping we could hold them down,” said Bochy. “We knew with (Samardzija) it was going to be a close game. He has great stuff. It was an off day for us.”

A day that the usual sellout crowd (272 in a row if you’re interested) of more than 42,000 found hard to believe. The Giants were in front early and, hey, let’s get it over and go to dinner. Tuesday would be back to work, so time to eat, drink and celebrate.

Ah, but there before our eyes, the Cubs started smacking around Petit. “I threw the same way as in the first innings,” he said, “but I missed on two pitches.”

That would be the one Samardzija, the former Notre Dame football star, lined to right for the double and the one the next batter, leadoff man Emilio Bonifacio lined to right for a triple.

Huff wasn’t much in the sixth or seventh, and in the seventh the Giants made either two or three errors — one a wild throw by Huff on an attempted pickoff. The uncertainty arises because first they were charged with three, but after a while one of those was changed to a hit. Incidental, in a way, because the guy reached base no matter how it’s ruled.

“The defensive play goes hand in hand with the pitching,” said Bochy, a kind method of saying, “You’re right, everything was awful, but let’s not go into details.”

He did, when questioned, go into Buster Posey’s struggles at the plate. Buster struck out in the first inning, leaving him with a paltry two hits in 25 at bats. Yikes! He did single to center in the fourth (eventually scoring on Pablo Sandoval’s seventh homer of the year), and Bochy was gratified.

Hitting coach Hensley Meulens has adjusted Posey’s stance, so Buster is standing more upright. “He looked good,” said Bochy of Posey, “a lot freer, a lot more comfortable. He’s coming along.”

Buster hitting again would be a plus. So would Cain pitching again. So would the return of Hunter Pence’s motorized scooter. We wait impatiently.

Lincecum of old finds “Momen-TIM”

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — One word, cobbled together, pasted on the locker behind his head. “Momen-TIM.” That’s what the Giants had, Tim Lincecum waking up echoes and the home crowd reminding us of the way it used to be and perhaps still is.

Lincecum hadn’t had a start like this since last season. In his previous game, five days earlier, Lincecum made it only four innings against the Pirates, allowed eight hits, struck out only four.

There were questions, legitimate ones.

But on Monday night, with the weather gloriously warm, Tim Lincecum gave the answers. And the usual sellout crowd at AT&T Park, as Lincecum left for a reliever in the eighth, gave Tim an ovation that shook the stadium and shook Tim to his shoes.

“It was special in this park,” he said of the cheering. So was his performance, 7 2/3 innings, two hits, 11 strikeouts, which helped the Giants beat the Atlanta Braves, 4-2.

In 2013 Lincecum did pitch a no-hitter, but he had a 10-14 record with a 4.37 earned run average. What he didn’t have, said the experts, was the fastball, which once enabled him to win two National League Cy Young Awards. Nor by the end of September as a free agent did he have a contract.

Lincecum had lost something on his pitches but not anything from his popularity, as was proven again Monday night by the crowd response. So the Giants re-signed him, for big money, for major league money, $35 million for two years.

Nerve-wracking. Damned if they didn’t. Tim in a Mariners uniform? Horrors. Whacked if they did. Those first seven starts this season of 2014, Lincecum never made it out of the sixth inning and had an ERA of 5.55.

Then came Monday night. Then came the rhythm. Then came the domination, Tim striking out the side in the third and sixth.

And thanks to recent call-up Tyler Colvin, who homered with nobody on in the second and tripled with two on in the seventh, the Giants got their runs.

Eight wins in the last 11 games for the first-place Giants, 11 wins in their last 18 games. They have their troubles, true. Brandon Belt, the first baseman, will undergo surgery on his broken thumb and miss six weeks. Down in Los Angeles, Yasiel Puig is smacking them into the seats at Dodger Stadium. It’s going to be a race, going to be a struggle, but if Lincecum works as efficiently as he did Monday night the Giants will be very much in that race.

“I’m happy for Tim,” said Giants manager Bruce Bochy. “He came off a rough start successfully. It was vintage Timmy. He had his slider and his secondary pitches working, his fastball, his changeup. He had a good look about him all night.”

When you’re hot, they say, you’re hot. The Giants can do little wrong these days.

B.J. Upton, who had two of the Braves’ three hits — the third was a home run in the ninth by Freddie Freeman off Javier Lopez — doubled with one out in the seventh of a 1-1 game. Upton then apparently stole third. But Bochy asked for a TV review, and Upton was called out.

“It was that close,” said Bochy. “I had to wait. It was such a tough call.”

The call Giants management made last October was no less difficult. Do you give a man whose future is questionable a contract basically constructed upon his past? The Giants did. Lincecum was grateful. For the moment, the Giants are grateful.

“The key was to be aggressive,” said Lincecum of his game, “not go into many deep counts and don’t let the big guys hurt me.”

Lincecum threw 113 pitches, had all those strikeouts and only one big guy, Upton, hurt him, although since just a run scored the hurt was minor.

“The slider was working early,” said Lincecum. “I wanted to finish my pitches. I was driving my leg through. My game is relying on it.”

Colvin was the guy signed as a minor league free agent in February. He was brought up from Fresno on Saturday, and had a walk and an out against the Dodgers last weekend. Then, starting in left field Monday, boom, boom.

“Yes, this was the highlight of my career,” said Colvin, 28, who had been with the Rockies and Cubs. “To be part of a winning ball club and get a hit to help them to a win is a real good feeling.”

Lincecum has that feeling because he kept the Braves from getting hits. “I was able to keep my pitches down,” he said. “That really means a lot.”

It meant the Giants had what they needed, Moment-TIM.

Firing of Warrior coach disappoints A’s Bob Melvin

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — Bob Melvin has been there. Has heard the phone ring the way Mark Jackson did. Heard the order to come to the office the way Mark Jackson did. Heard the words he was fired the way Mark Jackson did.

Melvin is a baseball man, who played for the Giants and others, and has been the Athletics' manager a month short of three years.

Melvin, who grew up in the Bay Area, also is a basketball fan, a Warrior fan “all my life,” as he phrases it. 

So we talk to the guy nicknamed BoMel, grab him outside the dugout at O.Co Coliseum Tuesday before the A’s were beaten by Seattle, 8-3.

Because of the nature of the Coliseum complex — Oracle Arena attached to the big stadium — the Warriors, A’s and Raiders are in a way connected symbolically.

Maybe 100 yards over Melvin’s shoulder is the court where Thursday Mark Jackson coached his final home game for the Warriors, offering cryptic words before tip-off that nothing after this season would be the same.

Now he’s gone. Now Oracle is empty. Now Bob Melvin, A’s manager and Warriors fan, is disappointed. He is not alone.

Melvin, fired as manager of the Mariners after the 2004 season, fired as manager of the Diamondbacks after 2009, might have offered a different viewpoint, been more noncommittal or simply mused, “That’s the business.” He did not.

“I know Mark Jackson,” said Melvin. “Consider him a friend. I’m surprised, a little disappointed as a Warrior fan. But I’m certainly not an expert, and I don’t know what went on inside.”

We’re told that inside, Jackson was not trusted by the front office. Told that Jackson argued with the son of Warriors owner Joe Lacob. We know Jackson dispatched two of his assistant coaches. There was conflict. There was inevitability.

Not for Melvin, who graduated from Menlo-Atherton High down the Peninsula and then played baseball at Cal. He didn’t want Jackson ousted. On the contrary.

Melvin remembers the Warriors' years in the wilderness, the stretch of 17 seasons when they made the playoffs only once. This year under Jackson, last year under Jackson, the Warriors were a delight, a link back some 40 years when in 1974-75 they won the NBA title.

“I would like to thank (Jackson) for his unbelievable contributions in getting the organization to this point and the success that they had,” said Melvin. “And I believe he’s going to have a lot of choices afterwards.”

Jackson never had been a head coach at any level, much less the NBA, the top of the heap, when chosen out of the ABC-ESPN broadcast booth in June 2011. Now he’s experienced. Yet that doesn’t mean there will be an opening.

Or that a team that needs a coach will accept Jackson, a pastor in southern California, who may have been a bit too religious for those who controlled his destiny.

Melvin’s rookie managerial season was 2003 with the Seattle Mariners. He made it only through 2004.

“I expected to be fired,” he said. “I was with a team that was on its last legs. We won 93 games my first year. We lost 99 the second year. They needed to start fresh. I understood.”

He took over the Diamondbacks almost immediately, managing Arizona from 2005 through 2008 and winning the National League West in 2007. But when the D-Backs started 2009 a disappointing 12-17, Melvin was dumped.

“I didn’t understand that one as much, because of some of the success we had,” said Melvin. “It’s never been an ego thing. I’m not an ego guy. It’s all about the players anyway. But there’s disappointment because you feel you’re working hard and doing a job, and at least in the Arizona situation I felt we made some big strides to get where we were.”

Mark Jackson’s strides with the Warriors were plenty large, but that sign of progress became irrelevant to those in command.

“The old adage, that you’re hired to be fired, I don’t necessarily agree with that,” Melvin insisted. “The intent is to stay there for a long period of time. So I kind of take exception when people say you’re going to get fired anyway.

“That’s kind of a of a defeatist attitude.”

It’s also reality. As Bob Melvin and now Mark Jackson realize.

Giants are struggling – and in first

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — Their No. 1 starter, Madison Bumgarner, has lost three in a row. Their No. 2 starter, Matt Cain — who used to be their No. 1 starter — hasn’t won a game this early season.  Their corner infielders can’t hit, can hardly make contact.

And yet the San Francisco Giants are in first place. If barely.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do (Tuesday),” said the man trying to make sense of this confusion, Giants manager Bruce Bochy. He meant as far as his starting lineup. In another sense, he always knows what to do, keep pushing and pulling.

Baseball is a funny sport. There are so many games. If you lose 60 of them, you’ve had a great season. But if a team loses the last game it played — as did the Giants on Monday night, losing 6-4 at AT&T Park to the San Diego Padres — then it’s as if the world has ended.

Players tread silently through the clubhouse. Reporters are doubly careful to be similarly silent, as if the slightest bit of noise, loud talking or, heavens, a chuckle would be irreverent. That the Giants came in with a four-game winning streak doesn’t help the situation one bit.

Mad Bum was 2-0 not all that long ago. Now he’s 2-3. The first two losses could be attributable to the Giants' hitters. Well, call them batters, because if they had hit, Bumgarner and San Francisco would have won each, instead of losing each, 2-1. Monday night was different.

“I didn’t have my command,” said Bumgarner. And so the Padres — mainly Rene Rivera, a catcher who was hitting .200 before the first pitch — commanded Bumgarner.

Rivera drove in the first five San Diego runs with a double in the fourth and home run in the fifth.

“He made a few more mistakes than we’re accustomed to,” said Bochy of Bumgarner. “He didn’t get the ball where he wanted.”

No pitcher is going be effective in every game. Even Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson were off occasionally. So before piling on Bumgarner, it might do well to stand clear.

The trouble is the Giants are a team built on pitching, so the temptation is to panic quickly when the pitching isn’t there.

Cain, who is scheduled to pitch Thursday, has been baffling. He’s 0-3 with a 4.35 earned run average in five starts, the worst start of his career. That perfect game seems 20 years ago, not two.

“We’re really spoiled,” was Bochy’s remark. He said it specifically about Bumgarner, but it could apply to Cain. Or Tim Lincecum. For so many years, they’ve been, if not perfect — well, Cain was — then dominant.

Now, even with the addition of Tim Hudson, who has been the star, the team ERA is 3.41. As a comparison, the Padres, who have won three of four from Los Gigantes in 2014, have a 3.17 ERA.

“Give them credit,” Bochy said of the Padres, whom he managed before the Giants. “You really have to credit one guy.”

That would be Rivera, whose five RBIs not surprisingly were a career high and the most ever by a Padre at AT&T.

Bochy, as is his style, did mention the almosts and could-haves. Buster Posey’s long shot to left in the sixth hit a few inches below the fence instead of clearing it. Michael Morse’s second of three singles could only bring Posey to third where, because third baseman Pablo Sandoval then struck out, Posey remained.

“Buster’s ball just missed going over,” said Bochy, which was true. “It was a strange night. I thought we had some good at bats at times.”

Sandoval, the third baseman, had some bad at bats.

He’s a free agent, playing as much for a big contract as for the Giants and seemingly a mess. Monday night he hit into a double play, flied out, struck out with the tying run on third and one out in the sixth and then flied out.

That left him batting — yikes — just .172.

The first baseman, Brandon Belt, has a better average, .255, but he was 0 for 3.

“Our corner guys are going to have to get on track for us to have success,” reminded Bochy, stating the obvious.

Your first and third basemen not only are supposed to hit but hit with power. Belt at least has seven home runs. Sandoval has two.

“We’ve got to get them going.”

No one had the audacity to ask how.

The Sports Xchange: A's Chavez gets his first win of season

By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange

OAKLAND — It's not exactly a Hollywood story, so call it a Fontana story. That's a working class city in Southern California about 40 miles east of Hollywood. Yet the location in this instance is not as important as the plot. 

"It's all about getting an opportunity," said Bob Melvin, manager of the Oakland Athletics, "and doing something with it. Jesse got that opportunity." 

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2014 The Sports Xchange

Giants still can’t hit

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — It’s impossible to dislike Bruce Bochy. He never belittles his players, never gives the press the slightest chance to find something wrong with the Giants.

Even when there is something wrong with the Giants.

They’re not hitting. Other than Angel Pagan (.377), Brandon Crawford (.311) and the new guy, Michael Morse (.306).

And since Pagan and Crawford didn’t start on Thursday, their day of rest after two night games and ahead of a trip to San Diego, the Giants couldn’t hit.

At least not well enough to beat the Dodgers, who won 2-1 Thursday before the usual sellout at AT&T Park after the Giants had taken the first two games of the series.

“Win two out every three,” said Madison Bumgarner, “you’re doing OK.” Absolutely. Win three out of three, you’re doing better.

Someone had the temerity to ask Bochy if this Giants team, as Giant teams of the past few years, was strictly dependent on pitching — which, of course it is.

“I don’t think so,” was Bochy’s answer. “I think we saw great pitching in this series (against the Giants).”

Is that why Hunter Pence is hitting .206, Pablo Sandoval .175?

“We’re not swinging the bats right now,” said the manager. “It’s hard to put runs on the board.”

Hasn’t it always been the last five years? A week ago Matt Cain held Colorado to one run. And lost, 1-0. Nightmares of the past, when Tim Lincecum went through the same problems.

Every game becomes agony, the bite-your-cuticles, hold-your-heart complications that Mike Krukow, the pitcher turned TV announcer, labeled “sweet torture.” 

Sweet if you win, that is. And how can the Giants win if they keep leaving men on base and Sandoval literally isn’t hitting his weight?   

Three times he came to the plate with Pence on base Thursday and never got a ball out of the infield.

In the last five games, the Giants scored a total 11 runs. That they won three of those is attributable to Sergio Romo, Jean Machi and others on the pitching staff.

Bumgarner started Thursday and made it only into the fifth before Bochy decided to change — even though Mad Bum had given up only one run. Then again, there were Dodgers on first and second when he was relieved by Yusmeiro Petit.

“The outside corner was hard to get today,” said Bochy of Bumgarner, who walked three and gave up six hits. Whether that was Bumgarner’s fault or the fault of home place ump Seth Buckminster can be debated.

Unarguable is the fact that Sandoval, the third-place hitter, is having a miserable time, most likely because this is the last year of his contract and he’s trying to make a big-dollar impression on whomever (Giants or any team) would sign him.

Bochy said that Sandoval should be thinking of hitting, that his agents are the ones who ought to be concerned with salaries and the like. It’s human nature, however, for a man to let the situation control his life.

“It’s got to be in his mind,” said a former Giants player.

Bochy said Sandoval, with only 11 hits, two homers and six RBI in 63 at bats is “really pressing. But it’s his job to play and not let anything else be a distraction.”

Dodgers starter Hyun-Jin Ryu was distracting enough for the Giants. He pitched a shutout for seven innings before leaving the game for a pinch hitter in the top of the eighth.

“We had the right guys up,” said Bochy, referring to when the Giants scored a run and had two more runners on, in the ninth against Kenley Jansen.

That would be Ehire Adrianza, who, taking over at second on a double-switch in the fifth, had three hits, one of those driving in Brandon Belt with San Francisco’s only run.

That would be Crawford, who pinch-hit for Joaquin Arias and flied out to end the game.

Bochy was not distraught. “The pitching,” he said about the series, “was really good for us.”

It had to be. Because the hitting was really bad for them.

“There’s not a guy out there I don’t have confidence in,” said Bochy, the general in support of his troops.

Statements such as that always are appreciated and admirable. A single at the proper time would be just as appreciated.

On Jackie Robinson Night, Giants win in early morning

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — The game was everything baseball could be and should be, full of passion and tension, and carrying with it thoughts of a pioneer whose courage and skill helped shape the sport to what it has become.

This was the night the Major Leagues honored Jackie Robinson, and at AT&T Park, the timing was perfect, even if the game time, 4 hours and 54 minutes, may not have been.

The Dodgers, Jackie’s team, against the Giants, which almost were Jackie’s team.

The Brooklyn Dodgers, of course, when Robinson in June 1947 became the first African-American to play in the major leagues. And the New York Giants, who nine and half years later, in December 1956, traded for Robinson, unaware — as were the Dodgers — that Jackie had retired.

So much on this Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, 12 innings of baseball coming to an end at 12:14 a.m., a beautiful end for the several thousand fans who remained from the sellout crowd of 42,469.

Hector Sanchez singled home Brandon Crawford from third, and the Giants were 3-2 winners.

The rivalry. The revelry. The reminders that major league baseball was off-limits to African-Americans until 1947 when Jackie, as beautifully planned by Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey, was elevated to the big club.

You know the story. You’ve seen the movie “42,” a slightly embellished version of Jackie’s life, as Hollywood biopics tend to be. That was Jackie’s number, 42, and Tuesday night it was worn by every player on both teams, by every player in the majors.

A grand gesture by the Giants, who used both their main radio announcer, Jon Miller, and famed Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully for the pre-game introductions. For the 86-year-old Scully, there was great meaning.

Beginning with the Dodgers in 1950, Scully not only knew Robinson but that winter he somehow got involved in an ice skating race with Jackie.

“We had some sort of symposium up at Grossinger’s in the Catskills,” Scully said earlier in the long evening. “There was a rink. I had grown up in New York, so I knew how to skate. Jackie, I don’t think had ever been on skates.

“He said, ‘I’ll race you.’ I was surprised. ‘But you don’t know how to skate.’  He told me, ‘That’s the way to learn.’”

What America learned was that baseball truly became an American game when the doors were opened to all races.

Another African-American who followed Robinson into the majors was Monte Irvin, who joined the Giants out of the Negro Leagues and played his way into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Irvin, 95, was invited to the pre-game festivities but sent a note, read to the crowd, that at his age air travel was too hard on his body. 

Irwin played with Willie Mays, and Mays, heading for his 83^rd birthday, was in the Giants' clubhouse before the game, although he didn’t take part in any ceremonies. Too bad.

Another nice touch was the tribute to Boston on this first-year anniversary of the bombing at the marathon finish line. Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline,” the Red Sox’ theme song, was played over the sound system, and the AT&T crowd sang along, as the fans do at Fenway Park.

There was a full moon peering down from beyond McCovey Cove, further embellishing an evening made even more special when Sanchez, who had struck out as pinch hitter in the ninth and then replaced Buster Posey at catcher, ripped a pitch off Brandon League with two outs in the bottom of the 12^th.

“I had to do something,” joked Sanchez. “My wife was sitting in our car in the parking lot for three hours.”

League was the seventh Dodgers pitcher. Yusmeiro Petit, who got the victory, was the eighth used by the Giants.

“It’s great that every year we honor Jackie Robinson the way we do,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said in his pre-game interview in the dugout. “No man had his impact on baseball and society.”

Bochy made his comments at 4:30 p.m. nearly eight full hours before he and his team were done for the evening. And the morning.

This one won’t be forgotten for a long while.

‘I’d boo me too,’ says A’s new closer Jim Johnson

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — Opening day is for baseball. Opening night is for the theater. But if the A’s, the defending AL West Division champions, had tried to play an afternoon game Monday they would have been rained out. After dark they merely were shut out.

Only one of 162. That’s the way major leaguers reflect on every defeat. In the major leagues if you lose one out of three you’ll have great season, a 90-win season or better.

But it hurts to lose that first one. Especially at home. Especially in front of a rare sellout crowd, 36,067.

Especially when the relief pitcher you traded for in the off-season enters in a tied ninth inning and pitches so poorly that Oakland not only loses to the Cleveland Indians, 2-0, but he is booed when pulled after three of the four batters he faced reached base.

The A’s had a reliable closer in Grant Balfour, but they — meaning GM Billy Beane and others in the front office — saw a reason to acquire Jim Johnson from the Orioles and dump Balfour. Johnson had more than a 100 saves over the previous two years for Baltimore.

He made his first appearance in Oakland’s first game. He was not at all impressive.

“I did everything you’re not supposed to do as a pitcher,” confided Johnson, who to his credit didn’t try to hide in a clubhouse packed with reporters and TV cameras.

What he was supposed to do remains conjecture. What he did was walk the first man he faced, Asdrubal Cabrera, give up a single to the next man he faced, David Murphy, and hit with a pitch the third man he faced, Yan Gomes. Bases loaded and no one out. Help!

Nyjer Morgan’s fly to center got an out but it also got Cabrera home on a sacrifice fly. Nick Swisher singled to center, scoring Murphy, and as the disenchanted gathering at the O.co Coliseum provided an accompaniment of boos, out went Johnson, replaced by Fernando Abad.

“I would have booed me too,” agreed Johnson after a debut not long to be remembered. “It’s not the way you want to start with a new team. It’s too bad after the way Sonny Gray battled. But there will be better days.”

Gray, named to start an opener for the first time in his brief career, thought there wouldn’t even be a game because of the afternoon downpour. The uncertainty had him even more nervous than a 24-year-old with only 61 days of major league experience could ever be.

“It was kind of tough mentally,” said Gray. He walked two of the first three Indians batters and needed to throw 29 pitches in the opening inning. Still, no one scored — then or in the subsequent five innings Gray pitched.

Of course, no one scored for the A’s in nine innings, including the eighth when they had the bases loaded and one out. Josh Donaldson had hit one more than 400 feet off the center field boards, but the A’s on base ahead of him, Daric Barton and Coco Crisp, had to hold up on the ball to make sure it wouldn’t be caught.

After Donaldson’s blast, reduced to a single, Jed Lowrie struck out and Brandon Moss grounded to first.

Oakland manager Bob Melvin, a stable sort, shrugged off the entire experience. The A’s had been unable to play their final exhibition Saturday at Oakland against the Giants because of a rainstorm. Maybe just the opportunity to get through game, even a losing game, was a relief of sorts.

The A’s are built on pitching, and through eight innings Gray, Luke Gregerson and Sean Doolittle provided shutout pitching. No complaints there.

The ninth undid them, but if you can’t get a run on offense then something bad is bound to occur.

“He walks the first guy,” said Melvin, a onetime catcher, analyzing Johnson’s ineffectiveness. “But he’s always the type of guy who’s one pitch away form getting a double play. It just wasn’t his day.”

At noon you’d have sworn it would be no one’s day except the groundskeepers. The rain was coming down hard, and not far away in Berkeley lightning hit a tree and split it down the middle. At 4 p.m., three hours before the scheduled first pitch, workers were pushing water by the gallon off the tarp covering the infield.

The poor A’s, was your only thought. Tickets already sold. Anticipation high. A couple of exhibition wins over the Giants at AT&T Park in their rear-view mirror. How cruel the sporting gods are.

Then, as if on cue, the sun came out. The A’s and their fans finally had a good break. Until the ninth inning.

Newsday (N.Y.): Mike Trout on cusp of mega-stardom

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

TEMPE, Ariz. — He is young, gifted and unsatisfied. Mike Trout of the Angels has been described as the best player in the game, which only makes him want to get better.

"I keep thinking about putting up good numbers," he said recently. Not the numbers in a bank account. The ones in the record books.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2014 Newsday. All rights reserved.

Newsday (N.Y.): Ryan Braun is a hit -- but not with fans

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

PHOENIX — The ballpark was quiet, and so the man's derision was easily heard. "M-V-P-E-D!" he chanted. "M-V-P-E-D!"

Ryan Braun was stepping into the batter's box and into the little world he has created, that of a disgraced user of performance-enhancing drugs.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2014 Newsday. All rights reserved.

Newsday (N.Y.): Prince Fielder has a new team, new look

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

SURPRISE, Ariz. — Such an appropriately named community for what happened to Prince Fielder in November.

Fielder was the centerpiece of a blockbuster trade that had the Tigers sending him to the Rangers. Both teams share a training complex with the Royals each spring in this western suburb of Phoenix.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2014 Newsday. All rights reserved.

Newsday (N.Y.): Adam Dunn an Oscar hopeful as partial investor in 'Dallas Buyers Club'

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

GLENDALE, Ariz. — The man has been walked 1,246 times, but his walk Sunday night will be considerably different.

No wide ones from a pitcher. Rather, a stroll on a red carpet in Hollywood.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2014 Newsday. All rights reserved.

Newsday (N.Y.): One last time around the bases for White Sox's Paul Konerko

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

GLENDALE, Ariz. — He agreed to come back for a final year, a farewell tour if you will, which Paul Konerko definitely deserves.

The Chicago White Sox were thinking about their future when they signed Cuban defector Jose Abreu for $68 million to play first base.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2014 Newsday. All rights reserved.

Romo off, Reddick on: Baseball is back

By Art Spander

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The sun was shining, and the A’s and Giants were playing ball. What else do you need to know? That Sergio Romo couldn’t find his changeup pitch? That Josh Reddick twice reached over the right-field fence to steal away home runs? That 6,498 fans were living it up?

An exhibition, the opener, the two Bay Area teams. And every time they play, for real or not — although isn’t baseball the truest form of reality even when the game doesn’t count? — in our minds it’s the 1989 World Series once again.

Time passes, baseball remains eternal.

It’s all about anticipation, about the new kids on the block, about the veterans, about the players — and the plays. When baseball comes around, we’re all young again, remembering what was, wondering what will be.

Strike three, ball four, go the lyrics from Damn Yankees, “walk a run you’ll tie the score.” 

Other lyrics, from South Pacific, “ . . . her skin is tender as DiMaggio’s glove . . .”

A sport, a metaphor, an ideal.      

The greatest mass dream America ever had. The great Frank Deford said that of spring training, a time of myth and magic, when winter melts away and no one has a care.

There used to be an eatery near Scottsdale Stadium, Pischke’s, where the posted admonition was “No Sniveling.” Easy advice. Nobody snivels during spring training.

They cheer. They laugh. They hope. They marvel.

“I don’t think I’d seen anybody go higher against the wall here,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said of Reddick’s superb defense. “And he did it twice. Back to back. What do you think the odds were on that?”

Mike Morse, the new Giant, the guy they signed to play left field, to hit home runs, smacked both those balls, one in the second inning, the other in the fourth.

They were over the fence. They were in Reddick’s glove.

"He's known for doing that, man," Morse said. "I'm happy to help him work on it in spring training, I guess."

Reddick even got a standing ovation from Giants fans. They know special when they see it. Those were special.     

“When I looked up, it was probably two feet above my head,” said Reddick, “and I guess got lucky to throw my glove at it. I just quick-snatched it, I guess you could say. I was shocked, even being able to come close to it. No idea how I did it.”

The A’s did it to the Giants, 10-5. Four runs in the first for Oakland. Six in the fourth. “A rough day for Romo,” said Bochy of Romo who gave up seven hits and all the runs in that sixth. “He was off a little bit.”

Twenty-six players used by the Athletics, 26 by the Giants. Players with numbers like wide receivers (81, the Giants’ Adam Duvall, who homered in the bottom of the ninth). With numbers like defensive linemen (67, the Giants’ Andrew Susac).

It’s like Little League. Everybody gets in.

Before the game, Larry Baer, the Giants’ president, held court in the dugout. He said he wants to see the A’s get their ballpark. In Oakland.

“If we can help them get it, we will,” said Baer. Sharing AT&T for a while wouldn’t be out of the question, if that fits into the A’s plans.

He said he wants to see the Giants rebound after their awful 2013 season, so out of character for the franchise.

“It felt strange,” he said of not being in the race. “It was like that’s not in our DNA.”

He said he wants to see the Giants sell from 2.8 to 3 million tickets, which presumably they will do.

“Nobody has said the Giants can’t make it on the field because of money,” was Baer’s outlook. Yes, the Dodgers have billions, and won the National League West last year, but don’t think the Giants won’t spend when it’s needed — in August and September.

“Besides,” Baer pointed out, “it’s how the money is spent. Look at the A’s.”

Yes, look at the A’s, careful with their dollars, who won their division again, who in Nick Punto have a shortstop that solidifies the infield defense, who as it was shown Wednesday can be frighteningly aggressive at the plate.

The new signee, Sam Fuld, led off the game with a single to center. And away we went, without hesitation. Bang, boom, wham. In the end 16 hits, and only four walks.

The A’s weren’t waiting. The waiting was done for all. Baseball was back.

Newsday (N.Y.): Don Mattingly finally comfortable with second storied franchise

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

GLENDALE, Ariz. — For Don Mattingly, in Dodgers blue, the present remains linked with the past, when he wore Yankees pinstripes.

"I was around quality people,'' said Mattingly, whose entire 14-year playing career from 1982-95 was with the Yankees. "People that tried to play the game the right way and tried to be excellent in everything they did."

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2014 Newsday. All rights reserved.

Newsday (N.Y.): Dominant Justin Verlander propels Tigers to ALCS

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

OAKLAND, Calif. — By the time Justin Verlander was tired, it didn't matter. Not to the Detroit Tigers, who had enough of his near-perfection to win another playoff series. Not to the Oakland A's, who saw too much of him again.

Verlander didn't allow a baserunner until a one-out walk in the sixth and didn't allow a hit until a two-out single in the seventh Thursday night, pitching Detroit to a 3-0 win over the A's in Game 5 of their best-of-five American League Division Series.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2013 Newsday. All rights reserved.

Newsday (N.Y.): A's will start rookie Sonny Gray instead of Bartolo Colon in Game 5 of ALDS

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

OAKLAND — Haunted by the past, the A's contend they are thinking only of the present, Thursday night's deciding Game 5 of the American League Division Series against Detroit at O.co Coliseum.

The A's, as many predicted, will start rookie Sonny Gray, 23, who pitched eight shutout innings in the second game of the series. Oakland skipped 40-year-old veteran Bartolo Colon.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2013 Newsday. All rights reserved.