When Brandon Crawford said that the Giants didn’t offer him a big-league contract and that’s ultimately why he ended up signing with the Cardinals, I expected the “How dare Farhan Zaidi not want to keep the greatest shortstop in franchise history” and other similar, “Fire Farhan”-type sentiments. What I didn’t really expect was the “A 37-year-old shortstop who batted .194 last season and can only play one position would not be a good contract” voices, which proves that at least a couple of Giants fans besides myself do have rational thinking capabilities…
Is it a coincidence that those quotes were published, and then 12 hours later Matt Chapman FINALLY agreed to his deal with the Giants, reuniting him with Bob Melvin, his manager in Oakland? Probably. But anyone even remotely plugged in saw this reunion coming months ago. Chappy at 3rd allows the Giants to play a rookie/inexperienced shortstop next to him because of his range. He will cover lots of ground that a shortstop is expected to get and thus somebody not named Brandon Crawford will have an easier time of it…
And let’s also remember this: Zaidi does not make roster or contract decisions unilaterally. It is a collaborative process with the coaches and the manager. Melvin ultimately didn’t want Crawford to take up a guaranteed roster spot based on what the whole team looked like, but Zaidi looks like the bad guy because that’s what he’s paid to be. And Melvin can shrug his shoulders and say “that’s baseball” and know he’s escaped the heat…
You’ve noticed it’s March by now. One of the things that surprised me was how much guff I got on my Gonzaga vs. the Bracketologists note on Tuesday. The Bulldogs are ranked 23rd in the polls but most bracketologists have them as an NCAA tournament fringe team. My point was merely that there seems to be a lot of disconnect between the poll and the bracketology, that’s all. And people pushed back with metrics and such things, insisting “the Zags may not make the dance.” I continue to say that Gonzaga is now a legacy team like Kansas and Kentucky and Duke and teams like that, and it will take an awful lot for them to not make the tournament. And I also think the committee will have them seeded much higher than the 11-seed that Joe Lunardi and all the “experts” have them as right now. A 7 would not surprise me at all. And it doesn’t really matter in the end, because they’re going to make the Sweet 16 whether they’re an 11 seed or a 7, so you might as well start coming to grips with that today…
Hey, did you notice which celebrity couple completely dropped off the national radar almost immediately after the Super Bowl?
Good to see Iowa women’s head coach Lisa Bluder acknowledge Lynette Woodard after Caitlin Clark passed her on the all-time scoring list earlier this week and call for a true acknowledgement of that pre-NCAA women’s sports era of the late 70’s and early 80’s…
The ACC released their basketball schedule matrix for the next two years, which now includes Stanford and Cal and SMU. It is a complete and total cluster. The men’s schedule includes three teams for each school with home and away contests, while the women’s schedule only includes one. The most interesting thing is figuring out which eastern schools are “buddied up” to make the Bay Area trips together, like what the Pac-12 does now: For instance, Cal plays at Arizona and Stanford plays at Arizona State on Thursday, and then on Saturday Cal is at Arizona State and Stanford is at Arizona, you get me? Well, unless they’re going to make things completely random in the ACC schedule (not out of the question at all), it looks they’re going to try and pair up schools by geography to make the western swing, like Boston College and Syracuse…
As I have said for a while, if his name was “Brandon Smith” and not “Brandon Crawford,” the Giants could have released him in the middle of last season, and nobody would have cared…
The Jayhawks home, Allen Fieldhouse, opened March 1st, 1955. There are not many arenas older than it that are still used for their original purpose, men’s games (I do love that several have been repurposed to be the exclusive home of their women’s teams, like the legendary Reynolds Coliseum at North Carolina State). When I was at Kansas there was talk of building a new arena on the west campus, fortunately that was just talk and the area around the Fieldhouse has been modified to make it a true basketball mecca…
All that said, I hope B-Craw has a great season. As somebody has already pointed out, the Giants last home series of the year is against the Cardinals, so there is a chance that Crawford gets a second send-off as the returning conquering hero…
But based on last year, there is a real chance that Crawford doesn’t make it out of spring training with St. Louis…
Today is the 62nd anniversary of Wilt Chamberlain scoring 100 points for the Warriors against the Knicks in a game played in Hershey, Pennsylvania, the only time an NBA player has hit the century mark. It is great that’s where he did it, because it helps people learn just how barnstorming-like the NBA was for several decades. Prior to teevee really becoming a thing, the NBA was just another basketball game. The only way to really get more fans was to go play somewhere besides your home arena. The list of small towns where NBA games have taken place- and in some cases, doubleheaders- rivals the tour stops of Elvis in the early 1970’s, when he was going all over the country 200 nights a year…
The oddest thing about the Wilt 100 game is now there is a conspiracy theory (of course) that it didn’t happen because the game wasn’t on teevee and only a partial recording of the radio call still exists. Naturally, this theory is being perpetuated by youngsters who wonder why the game wasn’t televised, and other media related things. Wait till these kids find out they used to put the NBA finals on tape-delay…
The best thing about this famous picture is now whenever anybody sets some sort of basketball scoring mark, they re-create it. This was born of necessity because some kid stole the game ball when the game was over and the Warriors PR man just scribbled “100” on a piece of paper and the one photographer at the game still had film in his camera…
Good to have Chapman. Now, go get Snell and Montgomery. My "celeb couple" guess--Sonny and Cher. Zags play St. Mary's in a few minutes (writing on Saturday night). We'll see how it goes. But most fun team in the Pacific Northwest to watch? The Oregon State women's team. Watch them and you also get to see amusing promos about the excitement of Pac-12 football. Speaking of Oregon State--a pretty good baseball team again this year, too.
And, only 4,124 fans were in attendance to see history! Second leading Warriors scorer that night? Alvin Attles with 16.
And, yes, Wilt did score 100 points that night. And, yes, the Warriors moved from Syracuse, and the Pistons from Fort Wayne and the Lakers from Minneapolis and the Kings from...um...a lot of places (Kansas City, Kansas City/Omaha, Cincinnati, Rochester, the latter two known as the Royals).
Sadly, would not be surprised if Crawford is not on the St. Louis opening day roster.
Curious what happens to JD Davis now. And, the playing time for Wade and Flores. So many questions...
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