San Francisco Giants Link Dump, 5/9

Good morning! Sunday is Mother's Day. Have YOU bought your mom whatever Giants memorabilia they claim is a good gift for Mother's Day?

Giants, red-hot closer Romo have agreed to wait to talk contract
With all the hype about Pablo Sandoval's contract being up, it's easy to forget that Sergio Romo could leave after the year too. And now that we know that the Giants and Romo won't negotiate during the year, let's all get ready to freak out about a player who's actually been good this year.

Oh, were we already prepared to freak out over the slightest thing? Good, good. Nice work, everyone. That'll be a time saver.

Belt is Not the Only Bambino
Brandon Crawford blogs about his two-homer day in Atlanta. It turns out, the only other time he hit two homers in a game was in a Dominican instructional league game where he was teammates with Hector Sanchez and Ehire Adrianza. I wonder if they ever got together to discuss how one day they'd all be in the majors, and two of them would be good at defense.

At the Ballpark: Race, Community and MLB
Recently, Baggs wrote an article about the Braves' move from Turner Field to their new stadium in Cobb County, and he was not a fan. Here, Wendy Thurm takes a look at this move in the context of race relations - specifically, their use of the Tomahawk Chop - and compares their record on race with that of the Giants, who have no African-American players on the 25-man roster. She thinks it's more complicated than I do; my humble opinion is that the Tomahawk Chop is the worst thing in the world and that it should be punishable with prison time.

In Search of the Perfect Fastball
We all know that a good fastball is a combination of velocity, movement, and location, and this article tells us a lot about the different benefits of each of those factors. For example, if you have good velocity, you don't have to be too fine with your location. If your fastball has sink, it's very effective on the inside part of the plate. If you have the perfect location, you don't need to throw too hard. If you don't have any of these things, congratulations! You're 2012 World Series hero Barry Zito, and you play a mean acoustic guitar.

MiLB, CBS ink 'Game of Week' TV deal
This year, the CBS Sports Network will be showing a Minor League Game of the Week, and this coming Thursday, that game features our very own Fresno Grizzlies taking on the Dodgers' AAA affiliate, the Albuquerque Isotopes. It's a classic rivalry of good vs evil...well, maybe the AAA version of that. Amiable vs Unpleasant, maybe. It has a nice ring to it.

The Month That Was: Walk-off Wins, The BumSlam, A New (Old) Ace, Beast Mode Blasts, Sandwich Stabbings and Much More
Alex Pavlovic takes a look at the Giants' April. At first glance, it seems comprehensive, until you realize that he didn't even deign to mention that time that the Giants won but didn't look great against a bad team, and you realized that this team is utterly doomed. Come ON, Pavs. Don't you know what the real story is here?