OT: All in all, not a bad year

It's been seven months since I've posted here, but since I've apparently been nominated for vice president, I figure now is as good a time as any to jump back into the fray. I've been carefully crafting some clever Bocock jokes lately, but before we get to that, please indulge me a little story...

As a season ticket holder who usually attends about 30 games a year, I was happy last March when I was able to sell all of my tickets for a midweek August series against the Nationals. Those are the kind of tickets that you often end up having to eat. Of course, as August approached, the Nationals series started to look like one that might be pretty exciting. I found myself wishing that I still had some of those tickets, but it was just as well. My wife was seven and a half months pregnant and I had a lot of work to do to prepare for our first child.

On the afternoon of Friday, August 3rd, my wife called me at work and told me that she had impulsively hopped on a bus to Union Square during her lunch break and purchased two tickets for Monday's game from the half-priced theater tickets booth. God bless that woman. "They had Tuesday's game for sale as well," she told me, "but we have our labor and delivery class that night." Barry Bonds had gone a week without hitting a home run, the buzz had died down a bit, and remarkably, she was able to get two upper deck seats behind home plate for $10 apiece. When Barry hit #755 on Saturday, her purchase looked even more brilliant, and we were eagerly looking forward to Monday's game. My only concern was that my wife might have trouble making it to Row 15 (and back down to the bathrooms several times) after a day of work.

As it turned out, this didn't up being our biggest concern. As I was getting ready to leave my office on Monday evening, I had just posted one last comment about Kevin Frandsen when the phone rang. It was my wife. "I was taking a nap in my friend's car, and I think my water just broke," she said. I sped to her office by the ballpark, she gave her tickets to her friend (nothing says "sorry my water broke in your car" like Giants tickets), and we headed to Seton Medical Center. Twenty hours later, Clark was born, 5 1/2 weeks early but healthy and nearly six pounds. My wife named Clark after her godparents; I quickly agreed to the name for other reasons.

A few hours later, I ran home to pack an overnight bag, catching Barry's first two at-bats on television. When I got back to the hospital, my exhausted wife was watching the game with her parents. "He's locked in," I told her as he approached the plate. "If they pitch to him, Clark's birthday is going to be a very historic day." Sure enough, a few minutes later, Barry crushed one. My mother-in-law alertly snapped this photo:

No, wise guys, she wasn't weeping for the loss of baseball's innocence. It had been a grueling day physically and emotionally, and she hadn't slept in nearly 40 hours. The emotional events at the ballpark were just a little too much for her to handle at that moment. The previous night we had wondered if Clark's early arrival might cause us to miss #756. But as it turns out, his early arrival was the only reason we were able to see it on television. We would have still been at our labor and delivery class otherwise. (Apparently my wife was qualified to give birth despite her lack of formal training.)

Here is what the home run (well, actually, this was a replay a few minutes later) looked like from our perspective:

Given his historic birthday, we figured we should drag Clark out to the ballpark a little ahead of schedule in honor of Barry's last game as a Giant. Clark lasted five innings; almost as long as Barry did:

Clark is doing great now. He's happy, healthy, and ready for Opening Day. And he's expressing a healthy skepticism towards the concept of giant stuffed rats that should serve him well later in life:

He's sleeping through the night now, so I finally have the time and energy to return to McCovey Chronicles and check in on the team. So, what's been going on? Someone please give me a rundown on all the young hitters Sabean was able to bring in over the winter. And is it true that Randy Messenger was sent down?