It’s getting increasingly difficult to get people to bite on April Fool’s pranks, isn’t it? If you don’t pick someone off very early in the morning, before they’ve gotten their wits — dim or otherwise — about them, good luck to you. It probably ain’t gonna happen.
More than likely, it’s a mere reflection of these media-saturated times; everything is viewed with suspicion, with borderline disdain, so everybody’s always “on guard.”
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Back in the early 2000s, when the A’s were bursting back onto the scene as a relevant force in big-league ball, general manager Billy Beane — considered at the time a merely great young baseball mind — adopted a mantra of sorts in response to queries regarding his teams’ exceptional camaraderie.
“Chemistry,” Beane would say, “is a by-product of winning.”
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No team wins a world championship on the strength of a single unit, so to say the Giants won it all in 2012 because of their starting rotation is an oversimplification.
So, too, is saying that Buster Posey makes the offense go, or that Sergio Romo is critical to bullpen success.But when you think of the Giants and the keys to their shot at repeating, where does the mind go first? The rotation, of course.
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Huge week in local sports. So let’s go speed round, super-sized ...
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Sergio Romo’s World Baseball Classic cameo — and let’s get real, it was nothing more — got entirely too much attention, and entirely too much gravitas was attached to everything he did for the Tres Colores.
That’s not to say there shouldn’t be some thought put into who might have to close for the Giants should Romo’s head or elbow explode.
But aren’t we forgetting Santiago Casilla, and Jeremy Affeldt, and even young Heath Hembree?
Relax.
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Spring training results don’t mean anything, right?
Sure, except when there aren’t any results at all.
Not in the 0-for-4 sense, mind you. Or the five-earned-runs-in-two-plus-innings sense, either.
No, we’re talking as in no results, period, sense. As in not playing.
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Andres Torres was a cautionary tale of sorts, in that the Giants counted on him in 2011 to provide the same spark he provided the 2010 team that ended San Francisco’s World Series drought.
He was coming off a career year so skeptics abounded, each of them eager to note the inherent danger in expecting a journeyman-turned-cult figure to recapture the magic.
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If the Giants fail to recapture the magic of last summer and fall, nobody will be stunned. Repeat champs are a dying breed in big-league ball, for a variety of reasons.
If one of the reasons for the Giants’ inability to repeat is the World Baseball Classic, add that to the long and obvious list of reasons to shout at the top of your lungs for major reform in regard to what should — but never will be — the greatest event in the game.
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This week, the Giants opened the kind of spring training that makes a former big-league beat writer wish he could turn back the clock and dive back in for a bit.
As noted in this space — and any other space dedicated to providing a preview of the Giants’ title defense — we touched on the team’s decision to keep the title winners intact, and one of the products of that decision is the primary reason for the aforementioned itch to dash for the desert and cover this camp.
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There are tough acts to follow, and there are unbelievably tough acts to follow.Merely tough was the task of hitting the stage to perform at Sunday’s Grammy Awards show in the immediate wake of Justin Timberlake’s massively hyped, Jay-Z-enhanced return to the music business.
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If the past truly is prologue, you better have your tickets in hand already if you want to be a part of the Giants’ spring training party.
The last time Scottsdale, Ariz., played host to the defending world champs, way back in 2011, the vibrant little city and its charming stadium were packed throughout camp. Otherwise sane people were paying scalpers upward of $200 for the right to burn the skin off the backs of their thighs on the sun-sizzled metal bleachers down either foul line.
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Fans who live in a major sports market like the Bay Area have a luxury that those living in, say, Indianapolis, simply don’t have and will forever envy: The ability to quickly snap out of the mental funk that often comes with a crushing loss.
Super Bowl? So last week. Time to bounce back, people. On to the next.
Who can truly maintain a mad-on for Greg Roman’s play-calling in the clutch when the Giants just got the band back together Saturday at AT&T Park? They’re opening spring training as the reigning world champs this week.
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OK, we’ve had our two weeks of all things irrelevant, including an actual breakdown of the news conference attire chosen by John and Jim Harbaugh.
We’ve had our fill of filler stories. You know, the little-known tale of the trials and tribulations of the special teams gunner. Gripping stuff that you’ll never again give a second thought.
We’ve been amused by the players who just can’t help themselves.
You just knew Randy Moss was going to stir some stank up at some point, right?
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It certainly doesn’t seem like the NFL left a single stone unturned in terms of providing a potentially classic Super Bowl this time.
The Harbaugh angle, whether the Harbaugh boys — you just know they were Eddie Haskell types way back when — are playing along, is fascinating from multiple angles.
Retiring, polarizing and proselytizing megastar future Hall of Famer? Ray Ray will do.
Compelling quarterback matchup? Colin Kaepernick and Joe Flacco, absolutely yes.
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The big question after 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh made the change from Alex Smith to Colin Kaepernick seemed to be this: Is anything less than a Super Bowl appearance mean it was the wrong move?
Silly question, really. Too many things go into winning and losing football games at the playoff level, and issues such as Justin Smith’s injury and the kicking woes are no small factors to the negative. And that Frank Gore right now feels like that guy poised to have a monster game to propel the Niners to New Orleans is a huge one to the positive.
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