Giants Win Padres Series and the Olympics

We attended the final game of the Giants Padres series on Wednesday afternoon at AT&T Park and knew immediately it was not going to be a good day with Sandoval and Posey not in the lineup and Pagan batting clean up.  Lincecum got batted around and the "g" men looked helpless at the plate for most of the game.   Any chance of Giants catching the Padres during an eighth inning rally was curtailed when Arias was thrown out at third base on a ball hit to deep short.

The series began with Crawford being the focal point of two controversial calls.  In the first inning his ball hit to left field was originally ruled an out. In an unusual action the umpires gathered and made the right call as shown on replay and changed the ruling to a hit.  Later in game Crawford was ruled out for missing first base.  According to talk radio in San Francisco the ruling was made by a new umpire apparently trying to make a name for himself.  Replay showed that Crawford touched the inside of the base although the San Diego announcers after reviewing the same replay said that he clearly missed the base.  The second win on Tuesday evening featured a great catch by Pagan that turned out to be a crucial double play.

Olympic Flame Squaw Valley

Signing at MoMo's

Notes -  Before the game on Wednesday we were busy signing  autographs at MoMo's. . . Followers of the Giants are in denial if they don't think the addition of Hanley Ramirez to the Dodger line-up is going to make a big difference in the NL West race. . . Gary Brown after a hot few weeks has leveled off at .290. .  Vince Scully of the Dodgers mentioned during Friday night's game that Belt was being booed by the Giant fans.  At the game Thursday all I heard was  encouraging cheers for Belt.  Not sure where Scully got that information  but it was bogus.

Olympics - I thought the Olympics Opening Ceremony was long, drawn out and very boring.  The costumes change from year to  year but otherwise it was another replay of  recent Olympics.  Nothing like the creativity of all those pianos that were featured at the Opening Ceremonies of the LA games in 1984. . .   I felt sorry for the Queen and those in attendance who sat for hours just waiting to see the Olympic flame lit.  I am sure they didn't realize that they can see an Olympic flame ignited at the start of the fourth quarter of USC football games played at the LA Coliseum. . .   The Olympic flame pot from the Squaw Valley Winter games of 1960 (pictured above) was auctioned off as a barbeque grill to help pay the enormous expenses of hosting the games. . . This flame was centrally located at Squaw Valley and could  easily be viewed for all the events unlike the current London flame that can only be seen from inside the track stadium. . .The Olympics seem to be more about sex then the games.  Bob Fitzgerald reported on his affiliated station KNBR how great it is for the Olympics to spend your donated money to purchase condoms for the athletes so they can enjoy their experiences at the games.  Fitzgerald  is the Golden State Warriors TV announcer who is covering Olympic basketball for NBC.

Homer Sweeney