Brilliant!

ugh, Matt Morris.

The autotagger didn’t pick him up for some reason. Which makes the autotagger a suitable replacement for Sabean

And I don’t just mean Sabean/Bochy. 2 years is nothing, in the grand scheme of things, but how long do we have to put up with microsoft boy?

Sad fan is sad.

People in the Bay Area have clearly demonstrated their willingness to pay good money to watch the Giants lose.

If they’re just being chislers, they’re nearly as bad at that as they are putting together a good offense.

They see way too much value in the pride of the old way of doing things. Competent businesspeople are able to adapt and catch new currents, so they don’t get stuck in an eddy.

How many statues are around the ballpark? How many retired players are in the organization? This organization is selling you the nostalgia of yesteryears. They’re are selling you on “intensity”, “gamers”, “warrior spirit”, “balls of fire”, and “playing the game the right way”.

You want to see how the game was played back in the “good old days”? Come on down to AT&T Park to relive America’s pasttime.

I think your reply alludes to what I am somewhat feebly attempting to convey here. What you write is absolutely correct…for you and other serious followers of the game. At the time the signings of the folks we are talking about, Benitez, Morris, Roberts, Zito all created positive and generous amounts of media attention, and consequently free advertising in reaching the casual fan, who has only a network tv celebrity kind of name recognition awareness of the typical non-superstar major league ballplayer.

Hence we hear Freddy Sanchez referred to constantly as 3 time all-star, career 300 average hitter. Those kinds of things make serious followers and serious fans alike want to break large pieces of furniture with their bare hands, but to the average casual fan and ticket buyer, “3 time all-star, and career .300 average” are filled with fungible meaning and add credibility and worth to the product the Giants are peddling.

And to clarify one very very important point, subscribing to the Freddy Sanchez is an All-star fallacy has nothing to do with whether one understands or knows “the art and science of baseball” or being smart or ignorant or anything of the sort. It has to do with the amount and quality of information that is being processed by the typical fan.

Most of the time they’re just not paying that close attention and rely upon what they read, hear and see in mainstream media. If enough people say Zito, Morris, Rowand, Roberts, Renterai are all “Cy Young” “All Star” Gritty, Savvy guys, one can hardly blame the ticket buyer or casual fan for believing what they read hear and see.

I don’t blame fans. I blame people who are supposed journalists and who are supposed to know better to report out these things in msm. Not cheerlead.

Would you really want to follow a team with that kind of player turnover? If anyone does, they can simply go across the Bay for a team resembling that.

I completely agree with what Magowan said (whether or not that’s how he truly felt). There arent’ any guarentees, and if they had spent all their money going for broke for one or two years, then this terrible drought that we’ve had would have been even a couple years longer. The best way to win a championship is to try to get to the playoffs every year, and that’s by staying competitive.

I’m just saying I agree with the theory he put out there, not necessarily with his execution of said theory.

" but they must want to win also, even if they can’t figure out how to do it".

Not really in my opinion. Six straight years of finishing at or near the bottom of the NL West standings and rewarding those who are responsible for the design, planning, construction and deployment of those rosters, with 3 additional years is not in keeping with the pursuit of championships. It is however; rewarding those responsible for several years of the homestatis of a very nice Baseball theme park, and getting them out from under the wrath of Selig during the Bonds years..

They were actually saying make a strong run at Bay this morning, when I was listening.

It makes more sense if you look at the extra money as coming out of the advertising budget rather than operations.

Well the Washingto Nationals Expos come to mind, so I’m not sure what underachieving means unless the postulate is that the Giants had tons of talent for over 100 years but that particular talent never performed to expectations?

On the other hand, the Giants were owned by the Stoneham family up until 1976, and they won the majority of their pennants in that time as well as their 5 world series titles in the years leading up to the sale to Bob Lurie and Bud Hergeth.

They have been owned locally for the past 34 seasons by two different ownership groups. That is approximately 6 generations of baseball careers given the average MLB career is around 5.6 years more or less. During that time they have won exactly two pennants and lost 8 of the 11 World Series games they have played in. They have gotten worse. Not better. In spite of 15 years of the best player of the modern era.

I guess what you write goes to the heart of things. Winning World Championships is extremely difficult and the chances are slim even when you have unlimited financial resources and a burning desire to win. If thats all that it took, the Yankees would win the World Series every year almost non-contested. But they don’t. Too many other owners are blood thirsty competitors and will go to any length to win, at whatever cost. Theyare “all-in”.

Neukom and company know this I am fairly certain. And they have made a calculated decision to not go “all-in”, simply because the stakes for a partnership are too high. Getting 30 millionaires to agree to risk everything with not even a 50/50 chance of recouping their investment, let along winning a championship is never going to happen. The only guy that seemed at one time to have a burning desire to win at all costs was Peter Magowan, but we all saw what happened. The day to day grind after so many years finally wore him down. Baseball is a tough and punishing business. Neukom knows this. He simply does not and cannot play against the big dogs under the restraints of the current ownership structure

This kind of gets to, strictly as a Giants fan, why the Passing of Mrs. Burns could be the most pivotal thing in the 2009 season. The personal tragedy aside we know she and he her husband were willing to pay to improve the product. No offense to the surviving Burns but we just don’t know if the same holds true for them and if so to what degree and in what forms.

/ Al Davis rattles his walker to face towards Mays Field and “smiles”

Run, do not walk , to the nearest psychiatric facility.

(note extra spaced comma in tribute to Uncle Frankenstein)

Though they showed an 8 game upward swing from last year, they still finished 7 games behind the Dodgers in third place, and there is nothing to suggest that they can close that gap in the near future. They sure haven’t beaten the Dodgers in recent years for the most part. And before you can even begin to think about competing for a playoff spot, they have to get by the Dodgers.

Targeting a wildcard is simply defeatism disguised as “competing”, so if they are serious, they have to be better than the Dodgers. Its been that way since they were in New York. And they do have one advantage. The Giants interleague rivalry is with the A’s; the Dodgers is with the Angels, so the Giants get a mild 3 game advantage there most years. But enough of that.

I’ve always looked upon Sabean as a forked-tongued, opportunistic interloper, whose every pore oozes contempt for fans, and ballplayers alike. To him players are chattel, the fans, merely marks. He is so mindful of so many college coaches, scouts, and gamblers that I’ve had the displeasure of having to interact with over the years. Some succesful, many not so much.

He is the perfect fit for a Microsoft mouthpiece who so far, has demonstrated no passion for the game, the players, the fans that I have seen or heard.

The fans and players were greatly loved by Harlan, than later Sue Burns and to a certain extent Peter Magowan. Thats all gone now. And her passing was extraordinarily sad. Her passing always brings forth the adage of the good always dying too soon.

So yes. Lower your expectations the same way Niner fans did when John York and Terry Donahue and the Dennis Erickson idiocy replaced Eddie DeBartolo, Carmen Policy and Bill Walsh exceptionalism. York effectively killed off the last remnants of the Walsh era. Nuekom and his ilk have started a new era of cold, calculating, dispassionate corporate boardroomism.

Call Ghostbusters?

/lols

I don’t see any evidence that Magowan is to blame for Rowand’s contract. Sabean incorrectly identified centerfield as a problem position for the Giants’ and pursued both Juan Pierre and Gary Matthews Jr. before settling on Dave Roberts. After realizing that he was wrong about Roberts he then went after Rowand. Meanwhile Randy Winn was there all along. Yes, Randy Winn is not the perfect CF for a spacious ballpark, but that was just a small problem, not a major one. Sabean sticks his fingers into the small holes in the dike (insert bad lesbian joke here) while floods continue to pour unchecked through the massive ones.

I was right there with you tell the last 2 weeks of July. Both those trades and their results along with how playing time was allotted in the final 3 months has forced me to leave that happy realm. To steal from another childhood tale, this is the type of crew that would kill the goose to get at the gold that is obviously inside.

From a macroscopic viewpoint I agree that prior management teams were not as successful in making money. As Keith mentions, Stoneham literally traded away Hall of Famers for dirty dish scrapings:

Willie Mays for Charlie Williams.
Orlando Cepeda for Ray Sadecki.
Gaylord Perry for Sam McDowell.
Willie McCovey for Mike Caldwell and
Juan Marichal for cash to Boston.

By 1973 they were all gone. Stoneham was done in financially as much by bad real estate deals in Arizona as the windblown Stick and the crime-ridden parking lots surrounding it. And as good as the Giants lineups were during his San Francisco stewardship, they won only one pennant, such was the strength of the Dodgers and Cardinals, in the 60s and the Dodgers and Reds in the 70s.

Stoneham, simply did not have the financial resources to compete against the Dodgers. But before he went broke in the 70s, he worked and spent his ass off to put the best team forward every year until the Stick did him in. For him it was always about winning championships, even though he made some really bad trades like the Cepeda for Sadeckei and George Foster for Frank Duffy fiascos.

But Baseball was his only business. He pioneered the development of Latin American ballplayers, and knew talent inside and out having learned the game under his old man Charlie. Much the same way Hank Steinbrenner and Peter O’Malley learned the game under their fathers.

When it came to developing ballplayers, (remember this was before free agency), neither Lurie nor the current management team, belong in the same conversation with either of the Stonehams.

Lurie was a tightwad and not a risk taker, and beneficiary of inherited real estate wealth from his old man Lou. He was a half-measure guy whose best decision was to hire Al Rosen and Roger Craig. He got fed up with the disaster of Candlestick and sold out to Harlan Burns and company, though retaining a small financial interest in the club.

As for the current collection of owners in the post-Burns/Magowan era of the SF Baseball era, I put forth my thoughts on them in the original post.

I will encapsulate them thus:

They have breathed new life into what was once a run down wharf area decomposing away next to the entrance to the Third Street Bridge. A superb marketing organization. As good a business member of an urban community as one could ever dream of. Purveyor to urban progressives and conservative suburbanites alike. A more family friendly organization would be hard to find.

Compassionate benefactor of children charities, hospital funding, aids and cancer research, wounded military troops, and loyalty beyond duty to favored former players. A wonderful organization and admired employer. Just like the Walt Disney Company. And about as likely to win a world championship as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.