Walcoff: Giants could send four to Midsummer Classic
July 2, 2009
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| Tim Lincecum could be one of four Giants featured in the Midsummer Classic. (Getty Images) |
It’s time to turn this year’s All Star game into The Freak Show. Nobody deserves to start the Midsummer Classic more than Tim Lincecum. The 25-year-old Giants ace leads the majors with 132 strikeouts and three complete games while his 2.37 ERA is second best in all of baseball.
Lincecum (8-2) is red hot and rock-star cool. He’s The Freak because he’s so unique. Tim commands a game the way a young Mick Jagger prowled the stage. With a blazing fastball and baffling change-up he makes hitters quiver like teenage girls at their first Stones concert.
Tim is clearly the senior circuit’s best hope of ending their 12-year winless streak against the AL. Let’s hope National League manager Charlie Manuel remembers that Lincecum missed last year’s All-Star Game after being hospitalized with the flu. So, how about sending Tim to the mound in St. Louis on July 14 to the sounds of “Start Me Up” and maybe the NL will finally get its “Ya-Ya’s Out.”
Believe it or not, the Giants may have as many as four All Stars this year: Lincecum, Matt Cain, Pablo Sandoval and Brian Wilson. Cain entered last night’s game with only one loss in his last 10 starts. Sandoval is in the hunt for a batting title after hitting .394 in June, and Wilson is among the league leaders in saves. OK, Wilson is a high-wire act who can blow a game as easily as he can close one out, but no reliever in the league has more saves the last two seasons. The last time the Giants had four All Stars was 1993: Barry Bonds, Robby Thompson, John Burkett and Rod Beck.
Meanwhile, for the fifth straight year the A’s will likely have to settle for the mandatory minimum of one All Star, and it should be Kurt Suzuki. The 25-year-old catcher is a defensive wiz who has done an excellent job handling the A’s kiddie-corps pitching staff. Suzuki is also one of the few reliable bats in Oakland’s under-performing lineup. Sadly, the four former All Stars the A’s brought in last winter: Matt Holliday, Jason Giambi, Orlando Cabrera and Nomar Garciaparra are all having subpar seasons.
Time to ruffle some peacock feathers. Instead of showing Wimbledon tennis live this week, NBC is choosing to air the Today Show to the west coast. So today at 7 a.m., while the rest of the nation gets to see Serena and Venus Williams play in their respective semifinal matches as they happen, Bay Area viewers have to wait until 10 a.m. to see it. Friday we’ll have the same three-hour lag for the men’s semis. It was bad enough that NBC force-fed us the bogus, “plausibly live” Olympic coverage of the 2000 Sydney Games. But, hey it’s 2009. Tape delaying major sporting events in the age of texting, Twitter and iPhones is inexcusable.
KGO (810 AM) Sports Director Rich Walcoff can be heard weekdays from 5 to 9 a.m. on the KGO morning news and is also the co-host of “Raiders Gameday” and “Recap” talk shows on KSFO (560 AM). He can be reached at RichWalcoff@gmail.com.
