Category: Uncategorized

By Matthew T.F. Harrington

The Golden State Warriors (67-15) wrapped the 2014-15 season up with a victory, outpacing the visiting Denver Nuggets 133-126 in a warm-up for Saturday’s first-round opener against Anthony Davis and the New Orleans Pelicans.

Klay Thompson scored 25 points despite the Warriors starting five seeing limited action. Stephen Curry played only 19 minutes, ensuring he’d be fresh for the opening round of the Western Conference playoffs. The potential Most Valuable Player scored 10 points on 4 of 10 shooting over his 19 minutes of action.

For the Nuggets (30-52), Wilson Chandler and Danilo Gallinari put up 18 a piece while Erick Green chipped in 17 off the bench.

Golden State wrapped up the top seed well in advance of Thursday night, knowing full well they’d face the eighth-seed at Oracle Arena to open the postseason after a record-setting 67-win season that included a pair of 17+ game home winning streaks. It took until tonight for the final seed to be decided though, with the Pelicans topping the San Antonio Spurs for the final spot in the playoffs. Golden State went 3-1 in the regular season against the Pelicans.

By Jeremy Harness

SAN FRANCISCO – In his first outing of the year, we were reminded of what Tim Lincecum is still capable of doing. It didn’t take very long to be reminded of what he cannot do anymore.

After throwing seven shutout innings at the Padres Friday night that brought back memories of his Cy Young Award-winning days, Lincecum lost his command – and the strike zone – in the first inning Wednesday night. With his decreased velocity and, thus, inability to get away with the mistakes in pitch location that he once had, he paid dearly for it.

Charlie Blackmon led off the game with a walk and Troy Tulowitzki followed up with a single to put some pressure on. However, Lincecum rallied and was only a strike away from getting out of the jam in when he caught too much of the plate to Nolan Arenado, and the third baseman took him deep to give Colorado a 3-0 lead.

The Giants could not recover from that setback, blowing opportunities to get back into the game as they lost their sixth game in a row, 4-2, before 41,188 disappointed fans at AT&T Park, including the first three home games of the 2015 season. In fact, Wednesday marked the first time that they have been swept in a season-opening home series since 2000, which happened to be the inaugural season at this ballpark.

In other words, it’s not the way the Giants expected to celebrate their World Series title of a season ago, to be sure.

Lincecum (1-1) was able to steady the ship, keeping the Rockies scoreless for the next three innings before being pulled for a pinch hitter in the bottom of the fifth. He finished surrendering those four runs on six hits while walking one batter and striking out four. The deficit is manageable for a lot of teams, but it seems like more of a death sentence for the Giants’ offense.

To their credit, the Giants did show minor signs of life during Wednesday’s game after the Rockies dropped the three-spot on them, but they still drew mostly blanks when it was time to fire the big shot.

Colorado starter Tyler Matzek (1-0) also had something to do with that, as he went six innings and gave up a single run on five hits, walking only one and striking out three others. For the Giants, though, this has been increasingly commonplace.

Down 4-1, Gregor Blanco, for instance, delivered instant excitement with a one-out triple while pinch-hitting for Lincecum in the fifth. That was quickly extinguished when, once again, the Giants failed to bring him in and remained in a three-run hole.

The Giants continued that unpleasant theme in the eighth, after Matt Duffy inched the Giants closer with his first major-league home run, a solo shot that narrowed the Giants’ deficit to two. Pagan then singled and Buster Posey walked right behind him, but the Giants failed to bring either man around, wasting yet another opportunity.

With that, the Giants have now gone 4-for-47 with runners in scoring position in their past seven games, which certainly paints a picture as to why they now sit with a 3-7 record.

NOTES: Nori Aoki entered Wednesday’s game with a 17-game hitting streak that dated back to Sept. 21, but that came to an end against Colorado, as the left fielder went 0-for-3 and getting hit by a pitch in the first inning.

by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

Fifty-four(54)years since Fidel Castro declared Cuba a
Marxist-Leninist country, today Cuba is so poor and so in
need of help that soon the USA will have it first embassy in
Havana for over half century. Cuba will be removed from the
terrorist list, and they were there for good reason, if you go
back and see the countries they associated with, every enemy
of America was a friend of Cuba.

So who won the Cold War between the USA and Cuba?
Obviously the USA. Did anybody expected anything else, after
70 years of communism collapsed in Russia in 1989, Cuba was
to follow. But that is not the way some here in
the USA will portray the moment we “set shop”and
open the US Embassy in Havana. They would say that
cooperation is essential, that Obama was right, that we need
the same health care system as Cuba and they will pick what
they like about Cuba. Some idiotas(idiots in Spanish)will go
the length of praising Cuba’s beauty and Cuban’s
sensational beaches, like Fidel Castro put them there, and
not God.

But most of these people, quick to talk about
violations of human rights, never really spoke about those
violations of human rights, the Cubans in the island are
still subjected to.

Last week USA Today, revealed a poll,
they said it was taken without the authorization of the
Cuban government, inside Cuba and it showed that Obama was
more popular than Fidel Castro. Well, the USA Today should
know that anybody would be more popular in Cuba than the
Castros. As a matter of fact(going back for a
while)I remember as a young man when John F.Kennedy, after
getting elected President of the US, was also more popular
than Castro on the island.

My father Joaquin left Cuba as a Cuban-exile in 1964.
At that time, radio WQBA in Miami had an Open Mic at Miami
International Airport, with reporter Tomás García-Fuste.
The microphone was for Cubans arriving in the US a country
of freedom. My father said at that microphone, right at the
airport: “Caballero, el comunismo es una
mierda” -translation- “Gentleman, communism is crap”. Joaquin was
absolutely correct.

Sometimes history gets in the way of our Presidents.
Re-establishing relations with Cuba was going to happen,
just like when we captured Osama Bin Laden, there are
certain things(like history)that gets on the way of leaders.
I knew that we would prevail at the end, and capitalism has
prevailed also in Cuba over
socialism-communism-totalitarism.

I knew when I first arrived in this country in 1961,
that Communism would fall before Democracy. And(if I may say
it also)I was right like my father Joaquin, Cuba’s
system has been a monumental failure. The blockade was not
the issue, because Cuba during the past few decades, traded
with Canada, and many countries in Europe, so it was not the
American blockade that brought the Castro’s to their
knees, it was their own failure of a bankrupt system.

The famous one-percent(1%)that the left in American
made so important on their debates, they forget to mention
that in Cuba, the one-percent is the government. Cuba’s
rulers do not lack food, private transportation or many
other luxuries, that the average Cuban in the island is lack
of. But they will never tell you that here in the land of
plenty, because many people that are born in this country
failed to realize, that there is no other country like the
United States of America, and that our system of government
as flaw as it may be, still is the best on earth.

Cuban baseball players should be happy, they soon will
not have to risks their lives trying to escape the
island in the middle of the night in small and dangerous
craft, looking for the Freedom THE CUBAN PEOPLE STILL DOES
NOT ENJOY.

I am sure there will be more news about this in the
future.

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

By Jeremy Kahn

SAN FRANCISCO-Just like the previous 15 Opening Day ceremonies held on the corner of 3rd and King, this Opening Day was special for more reasons than one.

You have the fans rejoicing each other as they see one another for the first time since Game Five of the 2014 World Series, then longtime San Francisco Giants Public Address Announcer Renel Brooks-Moon came over the loudspeaker to begin the 2015 Opening Day festivities.

This Opening Day is extra special, as just like in 2011 and 2013, the Giants enter the season as the defending World Champions, thus this day is even more special.

After Hall of Fame broadcaster Jon Miller took over the reigns from Brooks-Moon, both the Colorado Rockies and the Giants teams were introduced to the fab day AT&T Park.

The Giants came entered the field via beyond the centerfield wall with Bruce Bochy, Tim a Lincecum and Buster Posey each carrying one of the three World Series trophies.

National League Championship Series and World Series Most Valuable Player Madison Bumgarner received the loudest ovation of all for his tremendous postseason run, as helped the Giants to their third World Series Championship in five years.

In memory of revered broadcaster Lon Simmons, who passed away on April 5, his four daughters threw out the ceremonial first pitches.

The final thing of the ceremony was to raise the World Series banner that the Giants earned after they defeated the Kansas City Royals in a thrilling seven-game series last October.

With the help of mounted San Francisco Police, Bumgarner hopped aboard one of the horses and rode it into centerfield, where he handed it to Bochy.

Led by Jeremy Affeldt, Matt Cain, Lincecum, Sergio Romo, Santiago Casilla and Javier Lopez, the banner was raised to the top of the flagpole.

Including Bumgarner and the six pitchers, Posey is the only position player remaining from the 2010 team and he was in the bullpen during the ceremony.

By in his first meaningful appearance since Game 7 of the World Series, Madison Bumgarner only lasted three innings.

In those three innings, Bumgarner allowed five runs on 10 hits, as the San Diego Padres made it two straight win with a 10-2 victory over the San Francisco Giants at Petco Park.

The Padres tied a Petco Park record with 20 hits, as Matt Kemp picked up four hits, while Yangervis Solarte and Will Middlebrooks each added three hits.

Former Kansas City Royals pitcher James Shields, who faced Bumgarner in games one and five of the World Series went seven innings, allowing just one run on three hits, while walking one and striking out seven.

Shields also picked up a hit in the eight-run victory.

Joaquin Arias got the Giants on the board in the top of the fourth inning, as he hit his first home run of the 2015 season.

Ryan Vogelsong pitched three and two-thirds in relief, as he allowed five runs (four of them earned) on nine hits.

Casey McGehee strained his left knee after he left the batters box with he flew out in the top of the first inning.

Former Padres pitcher Jake Peavy makes his season debut for the Giants on Sunday, while former Oakland A’s pitcher Tyson Ross takes the ball for the Padres.

By Jeremy Kahn

In the first two games of the weekend series between the San Diego Padres and the San Francisco Giants, the number one is the magic number.

Wil Myers hit a double in the bottom of the eighth inning that scored Clint Barmes, as the Padres defeated the Giants 1-0 at Petco Park.

It was the second game in a row that the final score was 1-0, as the reigning World Champion Giants spoiled the Padres home opener with a 1-0 12-inning victory on Thursday.

The lone run was the first run scored by the Padres in 22 innings, or since Wednesday’s game against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium.

Also the run broke a string of 22 scoreless innings pitched by the Giants since their series finale against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field on Wednesday.

Joaquin Benoit picked up his second win of the young season, as he pitched a perfect eighth inning in relief of stater Brandon Morrow.

Despite allowing a single in the top of the ninth inning, new Padres closer Craig Kimbrel was able to get Angel Pagan to ground into a double play to end the game.

Both Nori Aoki and Buster Posey each picked up two hits for the Giants in the loss.

Tim Lincecum went seven innings, scattering just four hits, while walking three and striking out five in his first start of the 2015 season.

Santa Rosa native and former CAL pitcher Brandon Morrow also pitched seven innings, and scattered four hits.

Morrow also walked three, the same as Lincecum; however he struck out seven in his first of the season.

The former PAC-10 foes were picked five spots apart in the 2006 Major League Baseball Draft, as Morrow was drafted by the Seattle Mariners and Lincecum was drafted number 10 by the Giants out of the University of Washington.

By Daniel Dullum

Sports Radio Service

Friday, April 10, 2015

San Jose became the first Arena Football League team to start the season 3-0 Friday, traveling to Tampa Bay and defeating the Storm 36-27 before an announced crowd of 8,588 at Amalie Arena.

In the process, SaberCats receiver T.T. Toliver reached the 1,000-pass reception plateau for his career, the fourth receiver in league history to do so. On the night, Toliver finished with six catches for 84 yards.

Newly-acquired wide receiver D.J. Stephens snagged six passes for 80 yards and two touchdowns for San Jose, and Darius Reynolds made six catches for 64 yards.

Defensively for San Jose, defensive back Vigil Gray grabbed an interception for the third straight game, and made five tackles. DB Ken Fontenette finished with a team-high eight tackles. Defensive end Rodney Fritz had a forced fumble and two sacks, and Jason Stewart had an interception and a safety. Also, DE Donte Paige-Moss contibuted two sacks and a forced fumble.

SaberCats quarterback Erik Meyer completed 17-of-32 passes for 179 yards and two touchdowns. Storm quarterback Jason Boltus finished the night completing 21-of-39 passes for 260 yards and four touchdowns.

The SaberCats came close to scoring on their opening drive, but a possible scoring play to D.J. Stephens was wiped out by a penalty, and another scoring pass to Reynolds was nullified when the wide receiver was unable to get his feet inbounds. But the SaberCats bounced back with a big second quarter.

San Jose took a 14-0 lead in the second quarter on a 16-yard scoring pass from Meyer to Stephens. Jacksonville responded with a 19-yard TD reception by Kendrick Ings, who led the Storm with a game-high eight catches for 100 yards and three touchdowns.

Meyer’s quarterback sneak extended San Jose’s lead to 21-7, and Nich Pertuit booted a 16-yard field goal, giving the SaberCats a 24-7 halftime lead.

Next Friday, the undefeated SaberCats travel to Jacksonville to face the Sharks.

By Jeremy Harness

Despite the hits the Giants have taken via free agency as well as injuries, this season is starting to shape up like the beginning of the 2014 campaign.

Justin Maxwell, who made the Giants out of spring training as a non-roster invitee, came through with a pinch-hot single in the top of the 12th inning to bring in Brandon Crawford and lift the Giants past the San Diego Padres, 1-0, in the Padres’ home opener at Petco Park.

The Giants seemed to catch a break in the third inning, when Padres starter Ian Kennedy, a perennial Giant-killer, had to leave the game after throwing a pitch to Nori Aoki and feeling tightness in his hamstring.

The extent of his injury was not immediately known at press time, and there is no timetable for his return at this time.

However, that was not the case. Four other Padres hurlers kept the Giants off the scoreboard until Maxwell victimized reliever Nick Vincent to ruin the afternoon of a whole lot of fedora-wearing Padres fans.

Meanwhile, Tim Hudson fired zeroes at the Padres and pitched into the seventh inning while giving up only five hits in the process, even though he also surrendered five walks. He gave way to Jeremy Affeldt, who shut down the Padres fir the remainder of the seventh.

The Giants’ bullpen then combined to give up only two hits the rest of the way, and after the Giants grabbed the lead, closer Santiago Casilla pitched a perfect 12th inning to earn the save and give the Giants a 3-1 record.

The Giants have three more games in San Diego before making their home debut on Monday for a three-game series with the Colorado Rockies, to be followed by a four-gamer with Arizona and a three-game set with the defending NL West champ Los Angeles Dodgers.

By Daniel Dullum
Sports Radio Service
Wednesday, April 8, 2015

The San Francisco Giants made it nine consecutive victorious road series at Chase Field, following a 5-2 win on Wednesday over the Arizona Diamondbacks.

San Francisco had a 3-2 lead in the eighth inning when Casey McGehee drove a 375-foot two-run home run to left, providing the final margin of victory.

The win went to rookie Chris Heston, who was called up Tuesday from Triple-A Sacramento to replace the injured Matt Cain in the San Francisco rotation.

“What a good job he did; good for Chris,” Giants Manager Bruce Bochy said in his postgame media session. ”He was a little amped up that first inning, threw it away, but settled down and really did a nice job.”

Rookie jitters could be attributed to Heston hitting the first batter he faced and making a throwing error trying to pick him off. Once he settled down, Heston gave up two earned runs on three of the D-Backs’ five hits, struck out five and walked two in his six innings of work.

”The first inning started to unravel a little bit, kind of a little shaky there,” Heston told the media. ”But I was able settle down and get back into it.”

The Giants bullpen did the rest. Jean Machi and Sergio Romo each threw a scoreless inning, and Santiago Casilla racked up his second save in three games.

Leadoff hitter Nori Aoki led San Francisco’s 14-hit attack, going 3-for-4 with an RBI double. The Giants racked up 37 hits in the three-game series in the Valley of the Sun.

Arizona starter Jeremy Hellickson (0-1) gave up three earned runs and nine hits in 4 1/3 innings.

After the Diamondbacks took a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first, San Francisco went ahead to stay in the top of the second on run-scoring doubles by Aoki and Matt Duffy.

The Giants made it 3-1 in the fifth when McGehee scored on a base hit by Brandon Crawford. Arizona responded with a run in the sixth when Paul Goldschmidt scored on a passed ball.

In the top of the ninth, Buster Posey led off with a single and scored on McGehee’s drive to the left field pavilion, which effectively put the game out of reach.

The Giants road trip continues Thursday in San Diego, where they’ll play a four-game set with the Padres. Veteran right-hander Tim Hudson will make the first start of his 17th and final major league season for San Francisco. The 39-year-old Hudson had surgery to remove bone chips from his right ankle during the offseason.

By DANIEL DULLUM
Sports Radio Service
Tuesday, April 7, 2015

PHOENIX, Arizona – Chip Hale’s first win as a major league manager didn’t come without some anxious moments, but his Arizona Diamondbacks outlasted San Francisco 7-6 Tuesday at Chase Field.

“I’ll save the lineup card, that’s for sure,” Hale, the former Oakland Athletics bench coach, said. “It’s exciting. We’re playing the World Champions and they have great players who know how to win. You just have to keep going until you get 27 outs.”

Jake Lamb, who drove in four of the seven D-Backs runs, said of his manager’s first win, “This was huge. Not only to get it for Chip, but it’s game two of a series and to get the win, this gives us a chance to take the series tomorrow.”

Arizona built its lead on a pair of three-run homers – David Peralta in the third inning and Lamb in the fifth – both off Giants starter and losing pitcher Ryan Vogelsong (0-1).

Vogelsong lasted 4 2/3 innings and surrendered all seven D-Backs runs. He gave up six hits, struck out five and walked four.

“Ryan was so close to having a pretty good game,” Giants Manager Bruce Bochy said. “Two three-run homers with two outs, he worked a lot of deep counts and that might have caught up with him. He had good stuff tonight, I thought. He made some good pitches before the second home run, but (Arizona hitters) found a way to foul them off.”

The Giants did some slugging of their own, with home runs by Buster Posey and Brandon Crawford. Posey was 3-for-3 with a walk, and Hector Sanchez added an RBI double. Sanchez, replaced Posey behind the plate when the All-Star catcher took over for the injured Brandon Belt at first base.

Though San Francisco scored six earned runs off Diamondbacks starter Rubby De La Rosa (1-0), the right-hander managed to still get the win. Arizona closer Addison Reed struck out two of the four batters he faced in the ninth for his first save of the season.

De La Rosa, acquired from Boston in the offseason, struck out five, walked two and surrendered eight hits. He worked out of jams in the fourth and fifth innings to keep Arizona in the game.

“I just tried to throw the ball over home plate and see what would happen,” De La Rosa said. “I had to make an adjustment to make better pitches, and that worked.”

“We did a good job of scoring runs tonight,” Bochy said. “We just couldn’t quite finish it off.”

With two out in the first inning, Angel Pagan doubled and Posey hammered a 399-foot home run to left, putting the Giants up 2-0.

Arizona cut their deficit to 2-1 in the bottom of the second when Mark Trumbo tripled and scored on Lamb’s groundout to second. The Diamondbacks took a 4-2 lead in the third when, after a double by Aaron Hill and a walk to Paul Goldschmidt, Peralta sent a 419-foot drive deep into the right field seats for his first home run of the season.

San Francisco countered with single runs in the fourth and fifth to tie the game at 4-4. In the fourth, Pagan walked and scored on a single by Belt. One inning later, Vogelsong singled, moved to third on a double by Nori Aoki, and scored on Joe Panik’s sacrifide fly to left.

In the bottom of the fifth, the Diamondbacks snapped the tie with Lamb’s three-run homer – his first of the season. After Goldschmidt singled and Peralta walked, Lamb worked Vogelsong for a long pitch count before he homered to the left-center field seats, just to the left of the 413-foot sign.

“I was just trying to wait for a mistake and hit it,” Lamb said. “I was looking fastball away and I was proud of how I was fighting off pitches. (Vogelsong) kept throwing changeups down, I kept fouling them off, fouling them off. I got a fastball away, fouled that off. I told myself to zone down and look for something to hit to left-center. He hung the slider and I put a good swing on it.”

“(Lamb) saw eight or nine pitches. (Vogelsong) was facing his last hitter anyway,” Bochy said. “I was hoping that worst case, maybe a base hit. We had him covered for the next hitter, but he just made a mistake.”

Lamb has seven runs batted in over the first two games of the season. “I’ll take it!” he said, laughing. “I’m feeling comfortable at the plate right now and I’ll just try to keep it going.”

With Belt leaving the game in the fifth inning due to a groin injury, and Matt Cain headed to join Hunter Pence on the disabled list, Bochy can’t remember a start to a season like this one.

“It’s difficult to do,” Bochy said. “We’re going through a rash of them right now. Some things, you can’t explain. We’ll be making a decision soon on personnel, get something rolling and figure out what we’re going to do.”

GIANT JOTTINGS: RHP Chris Heston was recalled by the Giants from Triple-A Sacramento. Heston replaces RHP Matt Cain, who was placed on the disabled list (flexor tendon strain, right forearm) retroactive to April 4. The Giants aren’t sure how long Cain will be on the DL. … Belt’s strained groin injury was to be evaluated after the game. Bochy said Belt would undergo an MRI on Wednesday. … The announced attendance was 22,626.