My son is a good looking guy, no doubt. Even I was sort of like “whoa” when I encountered him up close the first time. Other photo posts I’ve seen from the day made Bengie and Ray seem popular, giving hugs and handshakes and posing for photos a lot.

Looked like a fun time out, this photo day. Several people I know have met Tim at various events and they all report he’s just the nicest guy ever. Which is great to know. As an aside I love that gal’s green nail polish in the Lansford photo.

WHO’S ALEX HINSHAW?! Blasphemy.

I look at Fanshots… Nice photos, dude.

Watch Omar, he’ll steal your lady.

I always liked the guy, for some unfounded reason. Some cool shots in there.

And I totally have no idea who this dude is either.

Looks like he may be related to Steve Holt?

In Richie’s defense, I’ve seen him interact well with fans in other gatherings, so maybe he was just having a bad day.

Did Zito make an appearance? I know he was pitching that night, but I’m wondering if he just doesn’t feel comfortable right now getting up close with Giants fans.

I have been too busy since Sat. to post, and don’t really have much more time than now, but photo day was also SF Little League Day. So, all the SF little leaguers (at least the ones that could afford VR tickets) entered the park around 1:30 and sat near the visitors’ dugout. Krukow was the MC, and hosted a little baseball seminar and Q&A session. His “guests” were Mark Gardner, who talked about pitching, Bowker, who talked about hitting, and Aurilia, who did a nice little bit on fielding and being a career guy.

The questions came from kids around 6-8 years old, so they were long on cute and short on biting, insightful commentary. “What’s your favorite baseball team” was one Aurilia fielded, and he talked about how he’s glad to be back with the Giants again. It was really a nice event, but unfortunately almost no one but Krukow considered that they were talking to 8 year olds. And the format was basically sit there and listen for two hours, so you can imagine how that went. My nephew asked one question and then when Gardner answered him he started pestering the kid next to him to get some of his chips. The guys mostly talked like they were in Burlingame talking to a booster club; I loved it but the kids were mostly bored.

After all of that, they had a very poorly organized raffle where they gave away some balls signed by each of the guys, a whole bunch (like 10) kid-sized Omar jerseys, and then 6 or 8 pairs of tickets to sit in the pit next to the visitors’ dugout during the game, which led to a frenzy of parents running to get their ticket stubs in the box. My wife managed to get the barcode torn off her stub in doing that, so when we went out later to get supper we basically had to go in and out 4 gates and get strip-searched to get back in for the game.

For my money the best performance was by Krukow. He tried to talk so that the kids would understand, although he told some stories for the parents too. Kids kept asking about arm-destroyers like curves, sliders, etc., which he and Gardner refused to talk about, but Kruk did show how to get sink or slide action on fastballs just by changing the position of the thumb. He also gave a very nice pep talk about the importance of playing catch, about HOW to play catch, and then told a nice yarn (some of which I think he cribbed from a song) about his son wanting to play catch after he got home from pitching a whole game. He was really, really great.

So, after that, they had everyone assemble at 3:45 to go down for photo day, so ALL the SFLL kids and the parents and coaches and hangers-on like me got to go down. So of course 85% of the kids just ran around playing catch, tag, pepper, etc. Oh yes, the pepper… I forgot to mention that all the SFLL kids got bats. Not little tiny bats, but kid-sized wood bats. Which is of course a great “pimento” of their experience. However, these were handed out to kids as they arrived for the lecture, so those talks were punctuated with clanks and “ouch”es and “where’s my bat” cries. On the plus side, I ended up taking my nephew’s bat home for him and discovered that people on the streets of SF give you a WIDE berth if you are walking down the street with a baseball bat.

As for the photo day part, that seems to be well-covered. Omar took years to get around the circle, and he seemed to be exactly as one would expect him to be. We were standing next to two girls (young women, I guess, I’m getting old) who had been stuck on a plane with him once. He apparently let them use his cell phone to make a call. When he came around, he recognized them right away, said he was glad they finally got a flight, etc. which seemed pretty impressive considering all the faces he had seen by that point.

Sanchez was nice and took a picture with my nephew (who’s on the Cubs) and covered up the logo on my nephew’s hat with his hand which was kind of funny.

Lowry got accosted by some girls and was rescued by a security guard and basically skipped us and the airplane girls mentioned above, which was too bad because they had been waiting around to see him (one of them even had a Lowry t-shirt on).

Rowand seemed much thinner than I expected, almost like Randy Winn. He seems more barrel-chested on TV and at a distance.

My wife rated Bengie (yes), Frandsen, and Aurilia as quite handsome. But Manny got like three or four “wows” out of her. He is also very charming and gracious and I hope that his considerable baseball talents combine with all that to make him a real centerpiece of the team on and off the field (he’s seemed pretty polished when I’ve seen him interviewed on TV too).

No Zito because he was starting. Or something.

Cain is a big dude! Tim is a tiny dude, looks like a shortstop or something. They were of course big attractions.

Bochy was late coming out and by the time he was coming around everyone was leaving. My wife felt sorry for him and took a picture.

We’re taking off for a few days but if this isn’t old news in June I’ll try to get some pictures posted.

Also forgot that my nephew, before he ran off to find his teammates to play 3 flies up or pepper or whatever they were doing, asked almost every Giant who came by “Who are you?”

I heard him do it to Chulk and Yabu, who both took it good-naturedly. Yabu is also a bigger dude than I expected.

Thanks for this!

No Randy Winn???? Wasnt’t hugely dissapointed by the lack of a Jose Castillo photo tho i’ll admit.