by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

The last time Pablo Sandoval of the Boston Red Sox was in San Francisco was in downtown Civic Center for the City Hall celebration of the San Francisco Giants World Series championship on a rainy San Francisco afternoon. I was covering that event that day and it was a great moment for the Panda and the Giants that October day.

Pablo was a big part of that and there was no player more popular other than the Giants Tim Lincecum but Sandoval was as popular of a guy than that the Giants ever had and their going to miss him. The Giants brass of CEO Larry Baer, General Manager Bobby Evans, and manager Bruce Bochy presented the World Series ring on Sunday to Pablo at a S.F. hotel where the Red Sox are staying in preparation for their series in Oakland starting Monday night.

Sandoval is expected to get a lot of applause when he makes his appearance at the Coliseum on Monday night remember with all respect to the A’s when the Red Sox play in Oakland there’s more Red Sox fans who show up. It’s like when the Yankees play there. So you can expect Pablo to get a lot of applause and a couple of boos.

Sandoval was a very good player, he’s very popular, I knew this was going to happen, Pablo was never happy with the Giants they kept bringing up the weight problem and this was well discussed on radio and TV in Spanish and English. In spite of his weight you might remember when he hit two home runs as a Giant in the 2012 World Series against the Detroit Tigers Justin Verlander.

At that time nobody said anything about Pablo’s weight he hit three home runs in the World Series he’s in the company of Babe Ruth and Reggie Jackson and those guys. The Giants didn’t want to meet his request to get him the same amount of money that teammate Hunter Pence was getting and it was because of his great finish towards the end of last season that he was given the $95 million offer by the Giants. The Sox ended up matching the offer and the rest is history.

Sandoval was part of the three titles in 2010, 2012, and 2014 and he only communicates with two Giants and that’s manager Bruce Bochy and Pence. That’s kind of unusual you would think he would be talking to guys like Buster Posey, Jeremy Affeldt, and Brandon Crawford who gets along with everybody. So there is that internal question that everyone is going to inquire about in this series. You can best believe the spotlight will be on Pablo all week long.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Angels TV Spanish voice and the A’s radio Spanish voice and does News and Commentary each week on http://www.sportsradioservice.com