Game 7 Summary: Padres 1, Giants 0

Your Pitchers of Record: WP — C. Young (1-0) LP — Matt Cain (0-1) S — Hell's Bells (2)

Went Deep: Ha! Ho, ho. Hee hee. Waugh! It's funny 'cause it's true.

Your Refrigerator Water Dispenser Water Star of the Game: Matt Cain. Six innings of no-hit ball that were wonderful to behold. Shame about him pitching for a team that can't hit.

The Turning Point: Top of the 7th inning. Molina doubles to lead off. The Giants proceed to do absolutely nothing. Feliz grounds out feebly to short. Winn strikes out and looks bad doing it. This brings up Matt Cain. While Winn was batting, Bochy and his staff did their best to fake the possibility of Cain being pinch-hit for, sending Kevin Correia to get loose in the bullpen and having Ryan Klesko grab a bat and stand menacingly at the edge of the dugout. But who are we kidding? Rather than "ruin" the no-hitter, Cain batted and struck out. The next batter Cain faced doubled down the line to left, ending the no hitter and eventually scoring the winning run.

I'm not saying that Bochy should've pinch-hit for Cain, necessarily. Winn's strikeout was really offensive, but Young was pitching well. Still, is the goal to get a no-hitter or win the game? Guess the former.

Wrapping Up: This is a game that will be deeply etched in my memory. I watched Cain take an no-hitter into the 7th last year, in person. And in that game he gave up a run even while the no-no was in progress! This year, he does this -- and loses. Although honestly, you had the feeling during the game that even if he threw a no-hitter through nine, this was one of those games where the Giants would never score and they'd lose it in the 10th.

Or to put it more succinctly: Yuck.

Your Pitchers of Record: WP -- Brad "Bad" Penny (1-0) LP -- Noah Lowry (0-1) S -- Saito (2)

Went Deep: Are you kidding me?

Your Coca-Cola Star of the Game: Jeff Kent. Remember the Game Winning RBI? A stat so useless that in a world full of useless stats that are kept around for more than a century (I'm looking at you, earned run) it managed only a decade or so before being run into the ground? Well, this is the sort of scenario where the GWRBI actually has some meaning. Kent got a hit, he drove in Nomar Garciaparra, and the Dodgers went ahead to stay.

The Turning Point: Gonna say it was Pedro Feliz fielding a grounder and throwing horribly home, pulling Molina away and allowing Matt Kemp to score. Let's not forget how Kemp got on base: he chopped one in front of home plate, which Lowry fielded and shotgunned past Ryan Klesko futilely for that classic infield single/pitcher's throwing error combo. Kemp then advanced to third base on a laughably high wild pitch.

Stop Running!: Much has been made of the story that Bonds has told Vizquel to go ahead and try to steal bases. Proof that the recalcitrant leftfielder might want to stop talking altogether. Vizquel was thrown out with Bonds at the plate. Never let this happen again! It was the first of three Giant outs on the bases. Next up was Ray Durham, who was thrown out trying to steal as Klesko struck out to instantly destroy a second-inning rally.

In the fifth inning, we had the runner-up for turning point of the game. Pedro Feliz, who had reached on a leadoff single, attempted to score on Randy Winn's double to left. He was gunned down at home. I understand, in a taut 1-1 game, every run matters. But if Feliz holds at third, the Giants have runners at second and third with no outs. Even if Lowry strikes out, Roberts has a good shot to get Feliz in from third with one out. As they say, (Tim) Flannery will get you nowhere.

The Outmaker!: I really, really don't like Juan Pierre. Wait a second (as Ron Fairly would say) -- I take that back. I love Juan Pierre. Because he's a terrible, terrible player, and he plays for the Dodgers. He bats lead-off because he's fast, but he's a prodigious out-maker. Last night Mr. Speed Kills actually managed to ground into a double play. And he let a hit drop in front of him due entirely to the fact that he ran an incompetent route to the ball. Macworld's own Dan Frakes, who sat next to me and is a Cubs fan, hates Juan Pierre with the hatred that only be felt by someone who has seen Juan play for his very own team. So he can't hit or field, but hey, he's fast. Whoo. Let him run like the wind, Grady.

Wrapping Up: The Giants had plenty of chances and ran themselves out of most of them. The Dodgers win it largely because of two hits: Garciaparra's double, and Kent's RBI single that immediately followed. Thus are games won and lost in the National League West.

The first five innings, I get to listen to the Padres announcers, Jerry Coleman and Ted Leitner. Jerry Coleman is a pleasant fellow, and although he says many things that are nonsensical, they're nonsensical in a sweet, confused-grandfather kind of way.

Ted Leitner, on the other hand, sounds like a million bucks. His voice is so smooth, I am shocked that this is the same man who barked the sports on local San Diego TV when I was in college. However, the words that come out of Ted's mouth are not as smooth.

I realize that sometimes it's hard to listen to announcers for teams other than your own. But Ted's got an old-school commitment to stats that just kills me. For every hitter, he's got a clutch of stats that he's obviously reading off a stat sheet -- but the stats are almost a parody of what a stats-ignorant broadcaster would use. All pitchers are judged primarily by their won-loss record, and secondarily by their ERA. Even within the ERA category, a pitcher's ERA against the opposing team ("in four starts against the Padres last year, his ERA was 3.12!") seems to be a favorite, small sample size (and irrelevancy of pitching against laundry) be damned. For batters, it's all about the RBI, and secondarily the batting average.

Leitner -- whose homerist tendencies apparently revolve around his catch-phrase "My Padres!" -- spent some time talking about how while AT&T Park is certainly a quaint little stadium, it can't hold a candle to Petco Park, with its sandy outfield and its old brick supply building. And Petco is a beautiful park. But better than AT&T? Nope.

But my favorite moment of listening to Jerry and Ted was when Ted began systematically picking apart the hated Barry Bonds. Seems the topic of Willie Mays had come up, and both Jerry and Ted agreed that Willie Mays was a better all-around player than Bonds. Jerry, with the wisdom of the ages, opined that Bonds' major hole as a player was a lack of arm strength. Jerry was right. Ted, on the other hand, complained that Bonds has never been able to throw, and that he's just terrible in the field.

The numerous gold gloves notwithstanding, anyone who's followed Bonds for any length of time knows that Bonds has always had a weak arm, but an incredibly accurate one, and that when Bonds combines his extremely high level of baseball intelligence with his accurate arm, he can be deadly from the outfield. He has never been a gun-'em-down-at-home kind of guy who keeps people from tagging on medium fly balls. But to ridicule him based on his arm strength? C'mon, Ted, there are plenty of better ways to rib Barry Bonds. Pick one that's accurate.

The most mind-boggling moment of the rant, however, was when Ted pointed out that before Barry began popping pills and rubbing on cream a few years back, he wasn't much of a home-run hitter.

I laughed and laughed and laughed all the way down the Grapevine.

1) Hold it for the next six weeks.
2) Rent a port-a-john.

Since I lack the necessary discipline, we went with the port-a-john option. It sets right there next to our garage on what happens to be a very busy intersection. Nevertheless, our experience with throwback plumbing has passed without incident, save for the fact that Lisa swears that every time she uses the facilities, entire convoys pull up at all four corners to point and stare.

Or it had passed without incident until the other night.

I was awoken at 3 a.m. by the unmistakable sound of inebriated chatter -- either drunks or teens or, most likely, drunken teens. Then, I heard another unmistakable sound -- that of drunkards rocking a port-a-john back and forth as if to tip it.

Well, I flew into action, so long as you define "flew" as got out of bed, flipped on the lights, tracked down some slippers, grabbed an implement of toilet defense, and eventually sauntered outside to dispense a little street justice. By that time, the drunks or teens or drunken teens had fled, which was just as well given my poor choice of implements. The toilet remained upright though knocked askew at a 60-degree angle from where we had placed in in our yard.

(My implement was a very long, very sharp kitchen knife -- perfectly fine for dicing onions but not so good at fending off punks trying to tip over outhouses. Sadly, this was the best choice on short notice. I don't own a gun, not out of some aversion to gun ownership but rather because the over-under on me shooting off my own foot would be about five minutes after picking one up. Back when I lived up in the mountains, I had a hatchet that I could use to chase off potential evil-doers, but again, you city folk tend to over-react to the sight of a man running down the street waving a hatchet. Long story short, I think it's time to peruse the merchandise over at Easton.)

All of this is a round-about way of saying that the fight-or-flight reflex had kicked in, and getting back to sleep was just not going to happen. And after perusing the morning papers -- the ones that had been published online at that early hour anyhow -- I found myself with a surplus of time on my hands and unfocused energy.

That's when I came across this Los Angeles Times article on the all-time Dodger/Angels team. The conceit is that it's a 25-man roster filled with players who spent time on both Southern California clubs during the course of their careers.

It's not a very formidable squadron. The best player on the team is Don Sutton, who was the ace of the Dodger staff during his tenure in Chavez Ravine and a valuable contributor to the Angels when he played in Anaheim. And after Sutton, it's a long drop down -- a lot of spots taken up by the likes for Frank Robinson, who had a cup of coffee with both teams at the end of his career, and Steve Bilko, who did his most prodigious hitting for the Angels when they were in the Pacific Coast League.

But that set my racing mind a-thinking: just who would be on a joint A's-Giants team made up for players who played for both franchises during their careers? And could that Bay Area All-Star squadron take on its Southern California counterpart?

These are the questions that trouble me at 3 a.m.

Actually, what was more troubling was finding a list of players who had been on both the A's and Giants since 1968 (the year that the Athletics arrived in Oakland). I seem to remember seeing such a list in one of the old Oakland media guides, but a cursory search turned up nothing. Google was no help. And my memory figured to be even more useless. So what I did was pan through 37 years of rosters for each franchise at Baseball-reference.com and look for identical names. I eventually found enough people to fill up a 25-man roster -- had a lot of time on my hands, remember? -- but I almost certainly overlooked someone who should be on the team. I welcome your corrections and denunciations.

Two people who aren't on the team, but probably should be are Willie McCovey and Orlando Cepeda. Obviously, Stretch and the Baby Bull established their hall of fame credentials with the Giants. Across the Bay? Not so much. Cepeda logged all of three at bats in an Oakland uniform; McCovey trumped him at 24 at bats. And all this came at a time when, if you were a Major League ballplayer and Charlie Finley hadn't traded for you, chances were good that you had died during the off-season. Anyhow, I wanted my joint Bay Area team to include players who spent at least half-a-season with each club. (There are a couple of exceptions out of necessity.) So McCovey and Cepeda are out -- if you disagree with my reasoning, let me hear about it in the comments.

So, let's get this pointless exercise -- fueled by an insomniac's rage -- started with a look at the starting infield...

1B: Dave Kingman
2B: Ray Durham
SS: Tito Fuentes
3B: Phil Garner

Kong is probably the second best player to spend any length of time on both sides of the Bay. He hit 100 home runs as an Athletic and another 77 with the Giants -- I seem to recall him making an All-Star Game with Oakland as well, even though Baseball-Reference says I'm full of hoey. Ray Durham spent half-a-season in Oakland, but it happened to coincide with a 20-game win streak; one might argue that the subsequent four seasons in San Francisco have been less eventful. Tito Fuentes played his first nine years in San Francisco... and wrapped up his career furtively in Oakland at a time the A's were just a miserable ball club. Remember that exception I mentioned in the paragraph about McCovey and Cepeda? That accounts for Phil Garner's presence on the team. He broke in with the A's, he made all of 14 plate appearances with the Giants, but I'll be damned if I can find another third baseman who spent any amount of time with both teams.

Your starting outfielders...

RF: Felipe Alou
CF: Billy North
LF: Dusty Baker

I vowed to myself to limit this team to just one Alou -- all three brothers spent time on each side of the Bay, but Felipe probably had the best season in both locales (.271/.308/.367 in his one full season in Oakland, plus six solid seasons with the Giants). Billy North is one of the few cross-Bay All Stars who can claim decent stints in both cities. (Well, San Francisco, not so much, but we loved those World titles in Oakland, Billy!) You didn't think I would pass up an excuse to put Dusty Baker -- the favorite player of my misspent youth -- on the team, did you?

Your starting rotation...

Vida Blue
Kelly Downs
Gil Heredia
Scott Sanderson
John D'Acquisto

Looking at contributions to both franchises, Vida Blue is the best player to ply his trade in both Oakland and San Francisco. He won a Cy Young and MVP award in Oakland. By my count, 72 of his 209 career wins came as a Giant. And in his post-career days, his miserable experiences with Finley so soured him on Oakland that he sought out and won a front-office sinecure with San Francisco.

As for the rest of the rotation, Downs is probably remember fondly on neither side of the Bay. Same goes for Sanderson, assuming he's even remembered at all 'round these parts. (He spent the bulk of his multi-city career in Montreal and Wrigley.) John D'Acquisto is there because, well, convention, these days demands that a rotation have five starters. And as for Dr. Gil (20 games as a Giant, far too many as an Athletic)...

Years from now, when I am bouncing my still-as-of-yet-theoretical son on my knee, boring him to tears with tales of baseball, I expect he will look at me and say, "Daddy... did the A's really give a lifelong mediocrity like Gil Heredia two starts in the 2000 American League divisional series against the Yankees, including a start in the decisive Game Five?" And I will look at my son with love in my eyes and say, "Shut up, kid. I don't flaunt your failures in your face, do I?"

Your closer...

CL: Keith Foulke

Yeah, I went with Foulke, for his one terrific season with the A's and his 11-game cup of coffee in San Francisco, if for no other reason, than to remind Giants fans that Joe Nathan wasn't the only closer to get away. Besides, consider the rest of the bullpen...

Relievers: Tim Worrell, Elias Sosa, Goose Gossage, Ernie Camacho, Jay Watisick

Not exactly the Murderers' Row of pitching staffs. Worrell and Witasick had their moments with both clubs, Goose was past his prime by the time he hit the Bay, and Ernie Camacho is a live, warm body. As for Elias Sosa...

Here's a bit of trivia that will impress exactly no one... Elias Sosa is one of two pitchers to play for four of the five Major League teams in California (A's, Giants, Dodgers, Padres). The other? The aforementioned John D'Acquisto (A's, Giants, Padres, Angels). Amuse your friends and irritate your neighbors with this insubstantial bit of knowledge.

You know what position I haven't dealt with yet? Catcher. You know why?

Because the guys who played catcher for both the A's and the Giants were kind of awful.

Near as I can figure, Bill Bathe, Bob Kearney, and Brent Mayne were the only three players to don the tools of ignorance in both the 415 and 510 area codes. (This is by no means an exhaustive study.) When Brent Mayne is your best choice for a backstop, you are dealing with a thin crop of candidates. We'll go with Bathe as the backup for his ultimately pointless heroics in Game Three of the the 1989 Bay Bridge World Series.

Bob Kearney never played in a Bay Bridge World Series.

The rest of the bench

1B: Mike Aldrete
2B: Manny Trillo
SS: Johnny LeMaster
3B/OF: Kevin Mitchell
OF: Mike Kingery

Mitchell's a bit of a cheat since he was in no physical shape to play third by the time he wound up in Oakland. Mike Kingery is the subject of one of my all-time favorite baseball puns. ("A horse! A horse! Mike Kingery for a horse!") Johnny LeMaster is here because I love to rub Jason's nose in his existence.

Now the real question: Could this Bay-Area All-Star Team -- managed by Alvin Dark, who won pennants in both cities -- defeat a team comprised entirely of Shakespearian characters? I do not like our chances.

That was the last time, as of this writing, that both Bay Area teams enjoyed the taste of victory on the same day.

The A's, of course, followed up the Seattle series with another three-game sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers. But the Giants failed to take advantage of the A's fine work, coughing up three consecutive games to the Mariners up in Seattle. The A's hit the road, dropping their first two games in Colorado, just as the Giants were taking two from the Fullerton Angels of Costa Mesa. But then the A's salvaged the final game of the Rockies series on the same day the Giants finally succumbed to the team from San Juan Capistrano or thereabouts. And of course, with their next three games against each other, it was impossible for the A's and the Giants to win on the same day -- at least, not until Bud Selig announces the "Everybody Wins Wednesdays" promotion that he's undoubtedly hatching at this very momentt.

So the question is, how long will this spate of one-sided victory continue? And the more daunting question: what is the longest stetch of games in which the franchises in a two-team market have failed to win on the same day? (We consider Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and the Bay Area to be two-team markets. We will also extend the definition to include Baltimore-Washington, though adding the Missouri, Texas, and Ohio teams to the mix seems like a bit of a stretch.) I have no idea how I would go about tracking down such a meaningless-but-nevertheless-interesting-to-me statistic, so if anyone's got any ideas, I'm all ears. Better yet, if you know the answer, lay it on us and save me the work of having to research it myself.

We get it, Tom. We get it. Every chance you get you tell us how much you hate Barry Bonds and all he stands for. It's been on the Web. It's been on the cover of SI -- two weeks ago, Sports Illustrated published a cover story that was essentially a three-page-long blog post by Tom Verducci about how bad Barry Bonds was. A cover story. Nothing new, nothing in depth, just a cheap way to sell copies on the newsstand and not deliver anything inside that you couldn't read about on any random blog you out there.

It's time to give it a rest, Tom. You're becoming a parody of yourself. Or would you prefer it if, instead of being known as a baseball writer, you were known as the star of Verducci on Bonds? Ahab had his whale. You've got Barry Bonds.

As for Sports Illustrated, I don't know what to say. I've been a subscriber since I was in high school. And this week I am probably going to phone up Time Warner and ask for my money back. Because SI has largely abandoned the excellent reporting they used to be known for, and replaced it with knee-jerk blog crap. I used to read SI cover to cover. Now I thumb through it and generally leave disappointed.

I like blogs. I write them and publish them. But I don't buy news magazines in order to read angry blog posts formed into cover stories.

So, with that as your enticement... anyone in the greater Bay Area want a Giants-A's ticket for free? It's a bleacher seat, so you're not even contractually bound to sit next to me.

Just drop us a line in the next hour to 90 minutes, and we'll make the necessary arrangements. Otherwise, one of the many enterprising businessmen on th BART bridge will wind up with the extra ticket for pennies on the dollar.

"Let me just grab my rubber chicken that I bought at the souvenir stand and wave it over my head," I said to Jason. "Oh, that's right -- we don't do that here because we're not a bush-league operation."

Jason paused for a few seconds. "Yes," he said. "I could tell by all those tarps you have in the third deck."

Well-played, old man. Well-played.

Our consensus opinion: probably the worst English-speaking announcer of any sport. We don't care to listen to any other contenders.

Because neither Jason nor I are solely negative nellies who exist only to cast aspersions on those who are more accomplished than us, we also talked about our favorite broadcast teams. With two years of MLB Extra Innings under my belt, my informed opinion is that the best announce team is the tandem of Don Orsillo and Jerry Remy over on NESN, followed closely by the Bay Area's own Kruk and Kuip.

Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper would be the unquestioned leaders, I explained to Jason, except for the fact that they get a little too cutsey-pie for my tastes. You know, all that blathering about Ball Dudes and the whole "Grab some pine, meat" -- it's not to my liking.

"If you think that's bad," said Jason, who did not disagree with my central thesis, "you should see the 'Erase me, Kruk' bit. Now that's really getting out of hand."

This was news to me, since I typically don't watch many Giants telecasts, but apparently Krukow has this thing where, if there's a shot of a fan who's not to his liking, he'll start scribbling over the offending fan with the telestrator. This has become so popular with the gentry that fans are now bringing "Erase Me, Kruk" signs out to the park -- not unlike the Circle Me, Bert signs popular among a depressingly large sample of Minnesota Twins fans -- so that they can appear on the TV as part of Mr. Krukow's telestrator schtick.

As if to prove Jason's point, I'm watching tonight's Giants-Cubs game because it came on right after the A's win and I like to see me some history as much as the first guy. And I haven't had the game on but 15 minutes before we get the evening's first "Erase Me, Kruk" sign. Krukow gladly obliges.

I should point out that this frippery took place during the first inning. Of a 1-0 game. With runners on first and second. Immediately following a Bonds at-bat.

Hey, here's some constructive criticism, Kruk: maybe focus on calling the game in that situation. Save the schtick for the deadspots and the blowouts. Because you are a couple gimmicks away from morphing into Hawk Harrelson. And nobody wants that, least of all Hawk.

Anyway, Sunday Night Baseball is on, and it's basically the Barry Bonds Show. No, not that Barry Bonds show. Peter Gammons is talking Bonds, and Pedro Gomes is talking Bonds. There's no commercial break after the top of the first, so that we can watch Bonds take the field -- live! -- to the boos of Dodger fans who, we all know, used to cheer him and throw roses onto the warning track.

To make up for it, ESPN then shows commercials rather than the bottom of the first inning. Okay, I made that last one up.

But then Joe Morgan does something stupid -- he starts talking. It happens a lot. And Joe explains that the big problem with Barry Bonds is that he's lost his confidence, that he's struggling with his confidence, and that maybe he shouldn't be playing so often because he's struggling and it makes him sad.

Let's leave the usual Joe Morgan gaps in logic aside for the moment and focus on this one statement: Barry Bonds is having confidence problems.

Yeah, that Barry Bonds, if only he were more self-confident.

I'm sure that's his problem, Joe. Absolutely.

T Walker relieved M Cain.
M Giles walked.
E Renteria walked, M Giles to second.
C Jones walked, M Giles to third, E Renteria to second.
A Jones singled to left, M Giles and E Renteria scored, C Jones to second.
J Taschner relieved T Walker.
A LaRoche walked, C Jones to third, A Jones to second.
J Francoeur hit by pitch, C Jones scored, A Jones to third, A LaRoche to second.
B McCann walked, A Jones scored, A LaRoche to third, J Francoeur to second.
J Accardo relieved J Taschner.
R Langerhans singled to shallow left center, A LaRoche and J Francoeur scored, B McCann to second.
W Betemit grounded into fielder's choice to first, B McCann scored on throwing error by first baseman L Niekro, R Langerhans safe at second on throwing error by first baseman L Niekro.
M Giles grounded out to first, R Langerhans to third, W Betemit to second.
E Renteria grounded out to second, R Langerhans scored, W Betemit to third.
C Jones walked.
A Jones grounded into fielder's choice to second, C Jones out at second.

Gotta love Chipper. Two walks in one inning.

Gotta hate Tyler Walker.

Harmless rookie hazing during spring training, as the Associated Press claims? Or just a haunting object lesson for the kids about the dangers of The Clear? You decide, gentle reader.

Pedestrian and uninspired choices please Plaschke!

He will be named as the new Dodger general manager in a morning news conference which, to be true to Colletti, should take place behind a batting cage.

That's where the guy has lived for the last two decades, first in Chicago, then in San Francisco, often in first place.

Wow -- if I read that passage properly, it looks like the Dodgers just hired a homeless dude to run the team. He lives behind a batting cage? I knew San Francisco real estate prices were outrageous, but that seems pretty severe.

Oh, silly me -- Plaschke's getting all metaphorical on us. Ned Colletti's a grizzled baseball lifer, not one of them number-crunching punks like Paul DePodesta. Never mind that Colletti got his start in baseball as a numbers-crunching punk, handling the Chicago Cubs' presentations in arbitration cases. And before that, he was a newspaper writer, which doesn't sound to me like taking up residence behind a batting cage, but it at least explains why Plaschke is willing to give him the grace period that DePodesta never received. Ink-stained wretches gotta stick together, you know.

But we've interrupted Plashcke mid-ramble:

Months after the last Dodger regime traded Paul Lo Duca, Colletti worked out a Giant contract for Mike Matheny.

While the last Dodger regime didn't see the value in Adrian Beltre, Colletti was signing Omar Vizquel.

Two moves that helped the Giants finish four entire wins better than the Dodgers, who, as Plaschke will remind us, were Hell's Own Ballclub in 2005. As to the wisdom of signing a 37-year-old shortstop to a backloaded contract, well, we'll direct you over to Rob McMillin's analysis.

As for me, reading Bill Plaschke's column has made me faint, like I've spent a few minutes sniffing paint fumes. If you want further deconstruction of his drivel, check out the Web Site Formerly Known as Fire Jim Tracy for a mono-sentence paragraphy-by-mono-sentence paragraph analysis that concludes with:

Classic Plaschke. You have the half-truths, with information clearly and purposefully left out. You have the egotistical and omniscient Greek chorus dropped into the middle. You have the embarrassingly hypocritical reassessment of the minor league system after DePodesta was fired. You have the name dropping of Plaschke's source whores, friends, and lackeys. You have the Orwellian insistence that red = green and Adrian Beltre = good baseball player.

In other words, the Times has farther to fall.

Update: This analysis from FireJoeMorgan.com is also lover-ly.

For years, the Giants have succeeded despite a brooding superstar and a mid-level payroll. Colletti has been in the middle of all of it.

Let me replace some words in that first sentence to make it accurate:

For years, the Giants have succeeded because they had the best player of the last twenty years, and possibly the best player ever.

There. That's better.

ESPN "Insider" (that means you have to pay to read him) Steve Phillips today presented his top 50 baseball free agents, along with guesses about where they're going.

I am tempted to plot out all his suggested moves just for shits and giggles. It looks to me like he's saying that the Nationals are signing about 15 guys, although it's probably not that high. The Giants, by the way, aren't signing anyone. Okay....

But this is the best of all the "top 50":

39. Ray Durham

Prediction: Mariners.

Comment: He doesn't run like he used to, but he can still produce when on the field. He has been unpredictable physically, often being a late scratch from games with one nagging thing or another. He can be a potential top of the lineup solution, if he ever stays healthy.

Yes, Steve, Ray Durham would make an excellent free agent signing. Had he not picked up his player option with the Giants two weeks ago.

This attention to detail explains a lot about Steve's tenure with the Mets, I think.

Maybe they can even hire Bobby Valentine as manager!