Category Archives: Linceblog: Following Tim Lincecum

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Linceblog:Giants win 4-3, survive late Dodger surge to sweep series as Hunter Pence delivers key hits, Romo saves Cain’s first victory

Hunter Pence had played every inning for the Giants so far this year, and is the only Giant to do so  (that’s 30 games, 271.1 innings coming into the final game of this Dodger series). 

Good thing he didn’t take Sunday off.

Pence  drove in 4 runs, breaking out of a slump where he had just 5 hits in the last 32 ABs (.156)

It’s a hidden stat.  While he’s .328 with no one on base, he’s just .211 with runners on.

But on this night, Pence was hotter than the Mexican army at the Battle of Puebla, as the Giants staved off the Dodgers 4-3.

In the first inning, Pence’s fielder’s choice with the bases loaded, scored a run, but seemed like a mild improvement over his norm.

Then in the 3rd, with two runners on, Pence took advantage of Dodger starter Hyun-Jin Ryu’s control issues.  After  walking Buster Posey on four straight pitches,  Ryu threw three straight balls to Pence before coming into the zone for a strike. Pence promptly punched it down the left field line for a double, scoring  Marco Scutaro for a 2-0 Giant lead.

Then in the bottom of the 5th, after Ryu walked Sandoval  on four pitches, and gave up a hard  Posey single to center, Pence came up and delivered again— a double off the brick wall in right.

Both runners scored, giving a four-run margin and confidence to Matt Cain.

The Giants ace, who entered the game winless in six starts with an 0-2 record and an ERA of 6.49, was in control on this night.

After 6 innings, he was cruising on 91 pitches and 57 strikes. The Dodgers never seriously threatened.

Only in the 8th when Cain left, did the bullpen struggle.  The Giants had the lead, so this wasn’t a comeback situation  like the previous five victories, but it almost became one.

Adrian Gonzalez, pinch-hitting with the bases loaded and two outs, singled through the hole at second and drove in two runs  off Jeremy Affeldt, the third reliever for the Giants in the game.

Affeldt’s quick appearance ended after Dee Gordon’s  infield hit scored a third run in the inning to shave the score to 4-3.

With runners on first and second, Jean Machi came in to get pinch hitter Jerry Hairston to hit a grounder to Brandon Crawford at short, whose throw just barely got the speedy Hairston.

That set up the bottom of the 9th for closer Sergio Romo, and on Cinco De Mayo no less.

Romo, facing the top of the order, got Crawford to fly out to center. Then Nick Punto flied out to left. 

It left a classic showdown for the final out between Romo and the Dodger slugger Matt Kemp.

Romo had the count to 1-2 on Kemp, who then flied out harmlessly to Torres in center.

Could there be a better finale on a Sergio Romo gnome giveaway day? A better way to end a Giant/Dodger series sweep?

 

 

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Linceblog: Metallica sets tone, but Giants acoustic until Posey rocks the yard; Another game that defines the Giant-Dodger rivalry;UPDATE: Game 2 of series–a Guillermo walk-off homer

 

It wasn’t just the Dodgers and Giants at AT&T Park on Friday. It was the Dodgers and Giants and Metallica, one of the world’s most famous rock and roll bands ever.

 

Heavy Metal Baseballers:Metallica

Metallica? Just the net worth of lead singer James Hetfield is estimated at $175 million, a not so quiet fortune. He and lead guitarist Kirk Hammett both hail from the Bay Area. And Hammett is a Filipino American to boot–from the city’s Mission district.

 “18th and South Van Ness,” he said to me. “I played Little League for St. Charles.”

St. Charles?  Oh ,yeah. I’m a few years older than Hammett. But I was a Dolores Park guy back then, and I remember those guys with the gray khakis and the red sweaters and our teams  (me and Marcelino Dumpit) used to whip up on all the St. Charles teams we played.

Except, clearly we would have been trounced if they had a CYO heavy metal team and we had to jam with  the likes of Hammett.

I mean how could I compete with  my effing clarinet.

 

Hammett, big league axe in hand, did a version of the Star Spangled Banner that had shades of Jimi .

It should have set the tone for one heck-of-a-rocking-game. Even the scoreboard had the Giants’ pictures in Metallica drag.

 

 

Metal drag: They don’t call him Buster for nothing

 

 

And it did set a tone,  but the  game was more like an acoustic fantasy for the Giants.

So did the park rock? Nope. The Giants bats were unplugged.

The Dodger’s Clayton Kershaw had the Giants stymied with a perfect game through the first third of the game, and a no-hitter until the Giants’ Marco Scutaro tripled in the 6th.

Kershaw would go from 74 mph to 94 mph and back in one sequence to show how it kept batters off balance all night.

The Giants Barry Zito was almost as good, but with more key defensive help. In the 3rd and 4th innings, Dodger rallies died because of timely variations of the Arias/Scutaro/Belt double play.

But it looked like Kershaw would beat them again with his arm and his bat when he doubled to lead off the 5th.  A sac bunt moved him to third where he should have stayed, but a ground ball to Arias was too deep to start a double play.  But that allowed Kershaw to score the only run he might need–he was going that well.

A better ground ball came from the next batter, the dangerous Kemp, and this time, the Giants turned a DP to end the inning and limit the damage to just one run.

One run down? That’s just the beginning of the game for the 2013 Giants, who came into the game tied with the Pirates for most comebacks in the National League (9).

In their half of the 6th, the Giants woke up with the Scutaro triple, and scored on a Buster Posey double. 

With the game tied, Hunter Pence singled to center. Posey, running on contact with two out, rounded third and was waved on home to get the go-ahead run.

For Posey, it was nearly a reverse déjà vu moment that produced that heartbreaking moment Giants fans never forget from 2011.  

Only this time Posey was the runner, not the catcher. Would Posey score? Would he barrel into Dodger catcher A.J. Ellis for the dramatic and courageous go-ahead?

Kemp’s throw to the plate was perfect and beat Posey without question. He slid sensibly into the tag and saved the big splash for later. He was instinctively saving the passion and the drama for later.

Posey had another scenario in mind.

In the bottom of the ninth, game tied, facing the Dodger’ reliever Ronald Belisario, and a 3-2 count,  Posey knew exactly where to put the exclamation point in this game.

You need a shot in the arm? There’s nothing like a walk-off home-run against your dreaded rivals.  

Metallica? On the very last play of the game, AT&T was finally plugged-in and rocking, another game that adds to the legend of the Giant-Dodger rivalry.

UPDATE: A GUILLERMO WINS ONE FOR THE GIANTS IN SECOND GAME OF THE SERIES

Another win for the Giants (five straight), all comebacks, and the second in-a-row with a walk-off home run.

This time the hero is Guillermo Quiroz, the third-string catcher and minor league careerist,  who lives for moments like the bottom of the 10th.  As a pinch-hitter, Quiroz was the last position player available to Giants’ manager Bruce Bochy.

No one expected what would happen next.

Quiroz hit a beleagurered Dodger reliever’s pitch into the left field bleachers,  just as Buster Posey did the night before, to give the Giants a 10-9 win.

It was another classic Giant/Dodger game, a highly offensive affair that featured 19 runs and 30 hits between the two teams.

The walk-off home run for the Giants was the 12th in the LA/SF series since the two teams moved west in 1958.

 

 

 

 

 

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Linceblog: Filipino American fans see great game, but no San Francisco Giants victory on heritage night

The Giants should have taken a cue from the tinikling dancers.

You just can’t afford to make errors in the field when you’re a tinikling dancer.

Same goes for a baseball team.

Bowls, gloves, you can’t mess up–not on the field.

Playing the field, dancing with a bowl on your head, errors are costly.

 

The Giants made three deadly errors, that pretty much made the difference in the night’s 6-4 loss.

From the first play on a Parra groundball that led to the first run, to the last inning. The Giants made it exciting by tying the game in the 9th, 4-4. But in the 11th, a series of miscues gave the Diamondbacks the go-ahead runs. There was a misplayed ball by Torres in left that allowed a runner to second. Then a bad throw by Sandoval at third , dropped by Belt at first, followed by a wild pitch that scored a run.  For good measure, the Diamondback’s Parra doubled and another run scored.

A tough night considering the Giants staged a rally as if on Filipino Time, i.e., late.

Two-runs in the eighth, and two-more on a home run by Belt tied the game and thrilled the chilled crowd. But it wasn’t  enough to send fans home happy.

Those with theFilipino Night tickets got special scarves with the number of baseball’s premier Filipino American player, Tim Lincecum, No. 55.

Fan holds up scarf that features number of the premier Filipino American ball player in the majors

There may not be many Filipino American ball players in the “beeg leegs.”  And that makes diversity nights like this one at the Giants’ AT&T Park are important.  There was even a Filipino American ball dude–No. 6, Vince Gomez, retired music teacher.

 

Heritage nights bond the team and the game to the community, and makes a public event like a baseball game a special one. This is what sports does for us these days. It’s the reason the Boston Marathon bombs were so jarring, and why it was important for baseball as a game to respond the way it has to that tragedy.

 

When you include the fans in the stands, baseball really is a reflection of the country, even to how we’re somewhat stratified by where we sit and the ticket we can afford. But we’re all watching the same game, and cheering for the same team.

 

Better yet, though seasonal, it happens everyday, just like life.

 

When you win, you celebrate. And when you lose, you reflect, and get back up.  No time to get down. There’s another game today.

That’s baseball.

 

 

blog, diversity, Linceblog: Following Tim Lincecum, race, SF Giants, sports

Linceblog:Tim Lincecum speaks candidly about his Filipino roots; SF Giants Filipino Heritage Night at AT&T tonight

For Tim Lincecum and the San Francisco Giants, it’s another Filipino Heritage Night, an homage to a fan base that represents the second largest Asian American group in the nation (Four million based on 2011 Census estimates, with Northern California the largest concentration of Filipino Americans outside of Hawaii).

 

And they all love Lincecum, whose mother was Filipino, making the Giants’ star the son of a great-granddaughter of a Filipino immigrant.

 

Lincecum is a 4th generation Filipino American.

 

Far from an accidental, or the reluctant Filipino, Lincecum always seems interested when I’ve mentioned Filipino history to him. One of his recent starts actually was on Bataan Valor Day, the surrender of Bataan and the start of the death march.

 

After a recent game, when he struggled and gave up 7 walks, I asked him about superstitions since ballplayers, like Filipinos are notoriously superstitious. I thought this might get him to open up about being Filipino.

 

But any discussion of being Filipino always goes back to his mother.

 

 

He certainly doesn’t deny his “Filipino-ness.” But like many half-Filipino, or multi-racial Filipinos (21.8 percent of U.S. Filipinos), one’s  comfort level is based on a continued connection to family. Certainly, that’s a private matter–to a point. It’s just that when you take the mound on such a public stage as Major League Baseball, you lose some of that privacy. Filipinos see a game where there are zero Filipinos on the field. And when someone like Lincecum comes along, naturally, he becomes, whether he likes it or not, a kind of global hero to Filipinos everywhere. Sports and identity politics go together.

Just like Venezuelans love Sandoval, Scutaro and Blanco, Filipinos love Lincecum.

Lincecum isn’t pitching tonight. The starter is Matt Cain, not even 1/32nd Filipino, but still beloved by Giants fans.

 

Lincecum might make a cameo as he did on what I believe was the very first Filipino American Heritage night in 2009. The coincidence of Manny Pacquiao promoting his fight with Ricky Hatton made it practically a community event.

 

When pound-for-pound champ Pacman threw the ceremonial first pitch to a catcher named Lincecum, it was probably the first major league Filipino battery in history. (Not in all of baseball, of course. When I caught Marcelino Dumpit as a youth player for Dolores Park and Everett Jr. High in the ’60s, we had a nice Filipino battery going in the city leagues).

Fast forward to 2013, and an older Pacquiao has lost twice, his star not quite as bright as in 2009.

 

Lincecum? He’s had it even tougher. From double-CY winner to statistically being the worst starting pitcher in the league, Lincecum’s last two years have been a mess. He’s struggled to find the rhythm that made him into one of the game’s premier pitchers.

 

Then last Saturday, on 4/20 (coincidence?), Lincecum was brilliant. Throwing with control, Lincecum walked just two batters, and used his low-nineties fastball primarily to challenge hitters, striking out eight. Even more significant, he didn’t give up the big inning that has raised his ERA to over 5.  Does pitching to Posey at catcher really make that much of a difference? It sure seems to. The Giants won the game 2-0, courtesy of a Sandoval homer.

 

Lincecum earned his second win for the season and gained a lot more confidence as continues to get back to his 2009 form.

 

Giants fans, Filipino or not, left that night with big smiles on their faces.

 

The “Preak” was back.

 

 

Read more about Lincecum on Inquirer.net, the major daily newspaper of the Philippines.

http://globalnation.inquirer.net/72569/in-major-league-baseball-tim-lincecum-is-still-the-filipinos-champ

 

http://globalnation.inquirer.net/columns/columns/view/20101102-301073/In-SF-Giants-star-the-story-of-Filipino-America