Jaybird's Jottings

Giants Fans On Line

I was at my web site the other day, trying to get motivated to do some file maintenance. I noticed that it’s been two years since I last updated the links information so I thought it would be fun to take a look at them and see what has changed at the Giants sites since December 2003.

Message Boards

Official Site

Previous Comment: This site is very popular. Each day there are a myriad of topics to talk about.

Bring up Merkin....Are We Platooning?....Maybe Linden is that guy....I'm disgusted....Where can I get some garlic fries....Reverse Mojo Team.

The regulars at the message board at the Giants official site will recognize these as some of the many current topics available for discussion. This board remains one of the most popular places Giants fan go to. News junkies get fed with topics every five minutes or so. Rants, raves, the latest breaking news, it's all here.

SF Dugout

Previous comment: One of the best baseball community sites. Lots of topics and passionate discussions.

Awards are given to players, managers, GMs, broadcasters, writers, and on down the line. But what about the fans?

In some cases, teams recognize fans for attendance at the games. But what about on-line? How would you record fan performance?

Sites like the SF Dugout track things like this. Some of the regulars have really made a name for themselves and it can be fun having these familiar names as part of the experience.

This site is still very active and has good thread discipline.

NewsGroup

Previous comment: Lively and spirited discussions about the Giants.

Ah, the heady days of news:alt.sports.baseball.sf-giants. It was Giants Central.

The group has found a new home at Google Groups. The discussions are still very good with some familiar names that go back to the early years of discussing the Giants on the Internet.

A huge plus with google groups is their archives. I had a lot of fun poking around the older postings and looking at the archives chart.

Blogs

For Giants fans, it has been great to see the blossoming of Grant at McCovey Chronicles into one of the best bloggers around. I also enjoy Lefty and Across the Seams as well as several others. Don’t know how we stack up against the other teams but there is some excellent blogging of the Giants.

Mailing List

Previous comment: Eric Ding, a Giants fan in Boston, is your point of contact. I like this discussion group. You get a feel for the personalities of the posters as you do with web logs and there’s a true sense of community with a civility sorely lacking elsewhere in Cyberspace. These are caring and knowledgeable Giants’ fans who go to the games and have their pulse on what is happening with the team.

In its prime, the Giants mailing list put out 5 or 10 messages a day during the season and sometimes more. The hail to Morris and farewell to JT sparked a recent flurry of emails but things have slowed down the past year.

Team Club

Previous Comment: Join Mary and the gang for weekly (Wednesdays at 6 p.m. PST) chats. They also send out an informative weekly newsletter. I especially enjoy reading about the status of ex-Giants. Mary is a real nice gal. Please give her my regards.

The link says “You don’t access to this site.” I don’t know if they are still active. AOL does have a Giants discussion board.

Fan Sites

Previous comment: In the July/August 2000 issue of GIANTS magazine, the Giants recognized my site and four other fan’s websites. EEEEEE!, Valerie’s San Francisco Giants Fans Page, Russell’s Barry Bonds Page and Sarah’s J.T. Snow Page. Of these five, four (all except the Bonds page) are alive and kicking. Congrats to these folks for their continued hard work and labors of love.

Almost all of the Giants fan sites are inactive. A few like Gregg Pearlman and Jmar Gambol have their website and a blog.

Radio

KNBR

Previous comment: I have problems downloading from their site. And do they have a Listen link?? What’s up guys??

XM Satellite Radio is da’ bomb now.

Archives

If you ever want to have some fun, venture over to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine and put in sfgiants.com. This will take you to the Giants official site from as far back as 1996. It was known then as the Giants Virtual Dugout.

New York Giants

Forgotten New York

Previous Comment: Forgotten New York is a nostalgic look back "to the NYC that once was." On my first look, I didn't see anything on the Giants per se, but this is a great way to find out about the subways that once transported Giants fans to and fro' the Polo Grounds.

This site is still quite active. They also now have a blog. Fun site to browse through.

Baseball Fever (Teams of Yesteryear)

This is a nice mixture of nostalgia, oral history and posting of scanned material. You could learn a lot about the New York Giants here, a lot of good insight.

Gotham Baseball

“Where’s the Giants memorabilia?”

That poignant question was asked several years ago by a New York Giants fan who took a trip to Cooperstown and found a bunch of blue stuff in the Main Street memorabilia shops but pitiful few orange and black.

The question leads to similar comparisons. At the Baseball Fever site, the Brooklyn Dodgers’ fan club boasts ove 1400 threads. The Giants have 248.

At the Gotham site, a fan picks up on the topic by observing:

Too often when people wax poetic about the Golden Age of baseball in this town, the baseball Giants get lost in the mix.

A good discussion ensued, worth checking out. The Baseball Fever gang may have discussed it but I did not research it.

Ebbets Field

The Giants-Dodgers rivalry was once the fiercest in all of baseball. But time and circumstance have mellowed the two sides. In fact, the two sets of fans are now rubbing shoulders at the Baseball Fever site and this website that I discovered a few weeks ago. In addition to the Dodger topics, there is a link for New York Giants discussions. It is similar to Baseball Fever with scans of photos and baseball cards. Some of the photos are rare and really fun to look at.

New Since Dec 2003

Mays Field

When the Giants moved from the original Polo Grounds in 1888, franchise owner John Day had the good sense to keep the name for the new park. In 1911, when Polo Grounds III burned down, owner John T Brush wanted to name it Brush Stadium. Polo Grounds prevailed and ended up being the name from 1883 to 1963.

The current ballpark is on the brink of a third name since 2000. Fans hate the changes and rightfully so. One fan did something about it and came up with this website. Be sure to visit and sign the petition.

What Will Take Place in the Next Two Years?

Blogging and boards will continue to rock. It will be interesting to see how much video and audio blogging get going.

What I’d Like to See

A lot of blogs have 10 font size. That is too small. CTRL Scroll does work sometimes to make the font size larger but not all. I’d like to see a bigger standard font size for all websites and also the width of the column is important. Too wide makes it harder to read.

Thanks.

Tony La Russa Talks Baseball in D.C.

On Monday night I attended a Smithsonian Associates Presents event held at Lisner Auditorium on the campus of George Washington University here in Washington. Over 500 fans filled the venerable hall to see John Grisham interview Tony La Russa and Buzz Bissinger, author of the acclaimed Three Nights in August.

Back in November, I had hesitated when I first read about this event. Three Nights got some excellent reviews but not from the sabermetric gang.

Slate’s Josh Levin:

Like every other writer who lashed out at Moneyball, Bissinger buys into the unsophisticated dialectic of numbers versus heart—that there's "no way to quantify desire." But Bissinger's own reporting reveals that those distinctions don't exist in major-league clubhouses. The Cardinals, like every other team, embrace both subjective scouting and newfangled statistics.

And Brian at BTF:

I just started reading 3 nights in August and I was surprised at the Moneyball slamming Bissinger indulges in. Stat guys can't possibly love baseball ?

That had me worried but this event was something baseball. And I figured I needed to see the manager who now stands 549 wins from John McGraw for second place on the all-time list.

Grisham, a baseball lover himself, set the tone early with some light-hearted bantering with La Russa. Tony poked fun too, noting that while Bissinger did win the Pulitzer Prize (in 1999 while at The Philadelphia Inquirer), he didn’t have a bunch of books in the airports like the man to LaRussa’s right.

The format for the evening was Grisham asking La Russa questions about baseball and Bissinger questions about the writing of Three Nights in August. Grisham used the old school style of warming up with several easy questions before getting to the tough stuff. Tough as in the steroid question.

La Russa noted that the players still had to do the work of lifting weights and doing the training. He said he noticed in the early 90s certain players who got big over the course of the off season. He knew it was more than just hanging with Nautilus. When he got to the point where he had to say Jose Canseco’s name, he drew laughter by covering his mouth partially and mumbling Canseco’s name.

La Russa talked in length about his thought process when he gives the nod to retaliate for a beaning. Like any manager, he has to balance the need to keep the respect of his players with the fear of losing the game.

Bissinger talked about his unprecedented access to La Russa and the Cardinals. For the first several months, the author took a backseat approach. Once he got the respect of the players, he got more and more involved.

The Q&A session from the audience was peppered with Cardinals’ fans wanting to hear about things redbird. I hoped for at least one question that would have pleased the sabermetric mind, but it wasn't meant to be.

One-Year Wilky

At this time last year, Brad Wilkerson became affectionately known as the "Last Expo,"... He might have been known, too, as the "First National," because he took the first at-bat in team history, back in April at Philadelphia, and he led the team to its first victory by hitting for the cycle two days later. The odd existence of the Montreal/Washington franchise was all he knew.

So even as Wilkerson's name rumbled through trade rumors since season's end, there was only one way the 28-year-old could react when he heard the news that he had been dealt to the Texas Rangers late Wednesday night.

"Off the top of my head," Wilkerson said today, "I'm just in a little shock." - Barry Svrulga, Washington Post

This past March, my wife and me received a flyer in the mail. “Come see Washington Nationals player Brad Wilkerson at the new Sprint Store in Alexandria.”

On the day of the event, I arrived about 30 minutes before Wilkerson’s scheduled time of 6 pm. About 15 people waited in line. Come show time it had grown to about 25. Some were kids wearing Little League uniforms and looks of excitement and anticipation.

Six fifteen came and went. Finally, a spokesperson appeared and said that Wilkerson would not be able to make it. The disappointment on those kid’s faces and everyone really, said it all.

I had bought a baseball for Wilkerson to sign. I took it home, put it down beside my wallet and keys, and tried not to be disappointed.

When the Nats’ season ended, I needed to put the ball somewhere besides the dining room table. Had Wilkerson signed it, it would have found a home alongside my other signed baseballs and one that I caught at a Giants-Reds game in 1989. But without his autograph, that didn’t seem like the right place. So it sat there on the table until the news came Thursday about the trade. Wilkerson, Terrmel Sledge and minor league pitcher Armando Galarraga were sent to the Rangers for Alfonso Soriano.

After reading some of the fan reaction and more about Wilkerson’s first year as a National, it hit me (no, not the ball). My red-stitched baseball did deserve a place beside the others. It will represent the emptiness we fans sometimes feel when a player we like departs for greener fields.

Some see the departure of Wilkerson as no big loss. He struck out 147 times and went 8 for 18 in stolen bases. Others expressed heartfelt sadness. In the TV commercials he made for a local bank, he seemed like a very approachable person. Described by one writer as a “chubby-cheeked Kentuckian,” Wilky made some nice plays in centerfield and led the team in at bats, doubles, triples, bases on balls and stolen bases.

As I sit here and look at Wilkerson's stats, I see a decent player. His adjusted production was 104.

But the thing I will remember the most about his one-year stay here in Washington is those kids. My guess is that for most of them, that March day brought them their first lesson in a part of baseball all fans have to deal with in one way or another.

"It breaks your heart,” Bart Giamatti said. “It is designed to break your heart.”

Farewell to J.T. Snow

The Giants have declined to offer J.T. Snow salary arbitration. He could still sign with the team but that is not likely.

I’m taken back to Opening Day 1997. We were all there in Section 10. The Giants were selling optimism by the cup.

J.T., our Opening Day first baseman for the last nine years, is the penultimate connection to that team and that new beginning.

It’s a funny feeling to think about him walking out the door. Were these last nine years for the Giants good or not so good?

Thanks for the memories number 6. Sarah and many others will miss you.

Catching Up

Hello sports fans.

Sorry for the lack of posting lately. I’ve been doing some work to update an article I wrote several years ago. It’s about teams that use the Giants nickname. The first part has been published at the NYC Chapter of SABR. Look for the newsletter link at their home page. The second part is scheduled for the fall newsletter which should be published in a few weeks. As part of my research, I got to talk with Staurt Tate. He pitched in two games for the Giants in 1989.

I’m also working on an overview of the places Giants fans go to on the Internet. It’s been two years since I last updated them at my website so I thought it would be fun to take a look at them and make comments.

One new place to visit is Cove Shots. Kevin is a regular at sfdugout and has started a Giants podcast. I listened to the second one. Excellent!