Call to the Pen: Pablo Sandoval Judged The Miss Universe Pageant

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Pablo Sandoval judged the Miss Universe pageant. He sure did, alright, and this is a blog post about it. This is a blog post about it because it’s the baseball offseason and the baseball offseason is typically really boring with a few, short, notable flashes of intrigue. I’m not willing to consider yesterday’s Mariners/Angels trade of Jason Vargas and Kendrys Morales one of those notable flashes of intrigue because man, what a boring trade. You’ve probably already read about it like six different times in six different places because that’s how the baseballing internet works when only one sort of interesting thing happens per week in the winter. The trade makes sense for both sides: ok hitter for an ok pitcher, park factors roster construction blah blah blah. Pablo Sandoval judging the Miss Universe pageant is a notable flash of intrigue because he’s a baseball player doing something abnormal and he was also on the team that won the World Series and he was also the Most Valuable Player in said World Series. I kind of forgot about that already. What’s today’s date, anyway? I feel like it’s been the winter/offseason for about six months now. Do I have Seasonal affective disorder? The acronym for Seasonal affective disorder is (SAD), so that’s pretty appropriate.

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Call to the Pen: 2012 Season Review Series: San Francisco Giants

Please go read this post and look at these GIFS created by David G Temple

AND THEN

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The 2012 season could not have gone any better for the San Francisco Giants. I suppose they could have won every single game they played and had every single player on the roster go to the All-Star game, but a World Series title, a homegrown catching savant returning from a horrific injury to claim MVP honors, and a perfect game from the vaunted pitching staff’s ace hurler will do just fine, I imagine. Buster Posey was one of the best players in the game. Matt Cain made history. Pablo Sandoval hit an inhuman three home runs in a single World Series game. The Giants won a second championship in three years. They even got two historic playoff starts out of Barry Zito! The contract was worth it after all! Yes, a rather remarkable season, indeed. Soak it in, Giants fans, take a lot of pictures and write down some notes in your diary, because there’s no way it will ever get any better than this.

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Call to the Pen: Halloween Baseball Blog Post Extravaganza!

The most important thing is that this blog post features a reference to, and video of, the popular children’s film Hocus Pocus (1993), as well as an image of a man dressed as a lobster with a San Francisco Giants logo on its chest.

Please click this internet hyperlink to read the entire post over at Call to the Pen

Today is Halloween! You probably already knew that. If you didn’t already know, I need to ask you how that’s even remotely possible. Aren’t you on a computer and also the internet and don’t you live in the age of information? To not be aware of Halloween on Halloween would take a dedicated and considered effort to avoid such things. I suppose you could object to Halloween on moral or religious grounds, which is just fine, that’s your right and you’re free to live your life however you like, but even then, to not know that October 31st is Halloween still strikes me as rather peculiar. Baseball. This is a baseball blog. You can tell because of the name of the blog and also because of the picture that accompanies this post. The picture features San Francisco Giants fans! The Giants are a baseball team and they won the World Series! In October! Their team colors are orange and black and that one guy is dressed up as a lobster! Halloween! Full circle, ya’ll. We made it, kind of.

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How [Barry Zito] Made [His] Millions

Apologies to Radiohead.

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Call to the Pen: Neil Young Predicts the World Series

It turns out that Neil is not wrong, and knows what he’s talking about when it comes to baseball. Either Detroit will win the World Series or San Francisco will win the World Series. Neil Young did not predict that San Diego would win the World Series, so I believe we should accept his expertise and adjust our lives accordingly. Not only is Neil Young a very prolific and talented musician, he is also a baseball expert. This should only strengthen our admiration of the man. Take this very important and critical knowledge with you and share it with friends and loved ones.

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Giants! Giants! Help us God!

Just imagine that in the below video, instead of playing football, the athletes are playing baseball. And instead of red, white and blue helmets, the athletes are wearing black and orange hats. And instead of being small, young, little children, the athletes are full grown men. And instead of preparing for some lame Pop Warner youth league game or whatever, the athletes are preparing for Game Seven of the National League Championship Series. Just imagine all of that. In this thought exercise, I don’t see how the whiny little “Help us God!” kid isn’t Tim Lincecum. But that’s just me.

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Photograph: Tim Lincecum, Baseball Pitcher

Photo taken by Christian Petersen / Getty Images

I have no comment on Tim Lincecum’s recent struggles other than they sadden me. I like Tim Lincecum. I like this picture of him. I like the delivery, and the hair, and the hat, and the uniform, and the number on the back of the uniform. And the dirt and the grass and the colors and the feeling.

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Call to the Pen: Tim Lincecum Pitches With Hate in His Heart, Giants Win

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After much hand wringing, and hemming and hawing and whatever else one does when trying to make a difficult decision, Bruce Bochy elected to go with Barry Zito as the San Francisco Giant’s game four NLDS starter in Cincinnati. Shockingly, things were tense. Balls were thrown outside of the strike zone, batters walked, some runs scored. Despite holding a one-run lead in the baseball contest, the Giants, and their fans, were understandably nervous. Things probably didn’t get much better when the enigmatic Tim Lincecum arrived in relief during the fourth inning with two outs and two Reds runners on base.

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Call to the Pen: Bruce Bochy Would Like Brandon Belt To Wear Big Boy Pants

I’m a raging narcissist, so I generally like most of the stuff I write. I can’t help it, I have a disease and the only cure is a very strategic form of repression, false humility, and self-deprecation. It also helps to have a really deep cynical streak that is able to find the worst in everything, allowing you to keep your ego moderately reigned in so that you don’t start selling insurance over the phone or become a politician or some shit. It’s a tough combination to get right, and if you don’t, you run the risk of just being a total dick that everyone finds insufferable. I fall into this trap more often than not (false humility, self-deprecation). I say all of these disgusting things because while I generally like most of the stuff I write, it’s rare that I actually make myself laugh out loud. Holy shit, this post is fucking revolting, and so far there’s been zero baseball. I need to stop but I haven’t explained myself yet. I’m in a trap of my own design! Let’s just get this over with: I rarely make myself laugh out loud (because not finding yourself hilarious is the sign of a healthy mind), but all the “big boy” talk in this Bruce Bochy/Brandon Belt post at Call to the Pen really made me giggle like an idiot. I couldn’t get enough of it. I wanted to write big boy and make a big boy joke almost every single sentence. It took way more restraint than I should admit to keep the big boy references to what they are now. So there you have it. Now you know. Check out the post and see if you agree with my sense of humor! I bet you don’t! This has been the worst solicitation for a blog post of all time.

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An Open Letter to the Giants Fan Who Sat in Front of Me During the Start of Saturday’s Mariners Game

You did a really bad job of hiding that pint of Smirnoff, dude. You just let it sit there below you, right next to the huge ass lemonade you had no doubt purchased to pair it with. Obvious. Conspicuous. A clear bottle filled with clear liquid, label popping red every time you lifted your hand for a sip. It was a bold strategy, no doubt, but I have to wonder why you didn’t just dump the whole pint into the lemonade and be done with it. Why you didn’t sneak down to a garbage can and stealthily dispose of the evidence. Maybe just ditch it in a bathroom stall. Something. Anything.  That would have made a lot of sense, right? I mean, you had won, Giants fan. You had beaten the man. No eight or nine or ten dollar beers for you, no, your reasonably priced pint of vodka was all you were going to need for the duration of the game. Reasonable and frugal. Worth the risk. Victorious. But you got cocky. Or maybe you were just oblivious. Maybe you were  a great deal more drunk than you were letting on. Sat quiet in the midst of a black out. The calmest problem drinker of all time. Who knows? I don’t. I don’t know you. Only you know. Only you know you.

And so it went. Sometime around the 4th inning. Alcohol Enforcement. Busted. You were asked to leave the premises. You were in violation. You left without a fuss, your friends followed behind, despondent. A few minutes later the narcs who had sold you out, fellow Giants fans no less, left the bleacher seats after receiving the Narc Seat Upgrade or whatever they call it. No on likes a tattle tale, except the Seattle Mariners Baseball Organization, I guess. And you were gone, Giants fan. Tim Lincecum T-shirt jersey wearer. Strange and uneven and poorly located tattoo haver. You were somewhere else. Maybe at a bar, maybe just a few blocks away, watching the game on television, the hollow echoes of the stadium’s babel reaching your buzzing ear ever so slightly. A memory imagined, but no longer real. A missed opportunity. A squandered evening. You flew too close to the sun, vodka drinking Giants fan. You were blinded by the light, transfixed. The strange scent of your own burning flesh jolting you into awareness a moment too late. The end arriving before the beginning was over.

You left your lemonade behind with your empty seat. It sat in front of me on the concrete, more than half full. I did not touch it. I did not drink or discard it. I measured it’s vacant volume with my eyes. About 12 ounces, give or take. About three-quarters of a pint. About perfect.

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