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This is your second reminder that Madison Bumgarner will be starting for the Sacramento River Cats today and that is exciting! We haven’t seen him since the tail end of Spring Training, where he and Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors were injured on the same day and it spelled doom and gloom for Bay Area sports, and many turned to the San Jose Sharks for relief.
WELL, things aren’t any better, to be honest. The Sharks were eliminated in the second round. Curry came back much more quickly than Bumgarner but the Warriors are down 3-2 in the Western Conference Finals and play to save their season tonight.
And the Giants...well, they’re hanging in there but .500 is starting to slip away. And even if they are sitting above the Dodgers in the division, it’s a tenuous grip, and only on third place.
But Bumgarner, hey, that’s good news! Hopefully some of you get to go to the game and tell us how it went.
There were a couple of new posts on the Giants blog that are worth looking at. If you’ll remember, I linked Brandon Crawford’s story about his teammates helping him find his swing.
Gregor Blanco wrote a corresponding post about that, in which he talks about how his role on the team is to be the best teammate he can and lift up others when they need it, along with helping them up their game. He calls them a family, and notes that they are the ones who know each other best and can help fix things when they aren’t working right, noting contributions from other players as well. It’s worth a read.
Similarly, Brandon Belt had another post, where he credits Ron Wotus with his deep and expanding knowledge of, and love for playing first base and how you never stop learning new things, even in what some consider to be one of the easier positions to play. He talks about the importance of honing in your focus on every single pitch and how hard that can be, even as he gets older, and all of the different things going through his head for every pitch.
Those are some good Saturday morning reads to get you ready for another day of baseball in Chicago.