Monthly Archives: December 2010

December 19, 2010 · 8:16 pm

Ryan Braun Gets Gushy, Zack Greinke Gets Fit Up With Some Sunglasses and Jayson Werth Debuts a New Look

Things that make me giddily excited: a.  the Winter Meetings.  b.  Brownies.  c.  Big, unexpected trades.  Y’all know what I’m talking about.  Even Ryan Braun seemed giddily excited.  Although I have a semi-irrational suspicion that his management had a knife to his back while he spoke to the press.  Because Ryan being that gushy about them is just odd.

Anyway, I hope it goes well for Greinke in Milwaukee.  I don’t know the team and division well enough to have an informed opinion (Brewers diehards, come to my rescue!) on whether they could really contend next year, but I obviously hope they do.  I was sad to see that Jeremy Jeffress was a part of the trade, because he was the sweet guy who threw me a ball at the Brewers game last year.  But I wish him all the best in KC.  

And to congratulate Greinke on his trade, he gets some sunglasses.  Round/heart-shaped face = square sunglasses.  These are by- who else?- Prada.

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Which reminded me that at Werth’s Nationals press conference on Wednesday, he debuted a decidedly better look.

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 Before and After

So, true to my word, I’ve fitted him up with some designer sunglasses.

This pair wouldn’t fit on this picture, but here they are, by Giorgio Armani:

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They’re not too big, which would overwhelm his face, but they have soft angles to contrast his angular face.  And they’re only $275.  Total steal for designer sunglasses.  And total steals on designer sunglasses is another thing that makes me giddily excited.

Diamond Girl

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December 18, 2010 · 10:29 pm

Why Barbra Streisand is a Better Awards Show Host than Harold Reynolds and Greg Amsinger

They should have just re-named the This Year in Baseball Awards the Giants Rule the Universe Awards, for 2010.  Seriously, we stole the show.  I agreed with most the selections, although I think Madison and Cain are overlooked way too much.  In my mind, one of them should have been Postseason MVP (or, you know, that guy named Cody Ross who hits homeruns obsessively?) instead of Timmy.  Not to say Lincecum didn’t do well- even very, very well- but in my mind he wouldn’t be the postseason MVP. 

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Cain and MadBum seem happy enough, though.

And then I sort of think looking at the 2010 payrolls (from US Weekly’s website) tells its own story:  one of the teams in the World Series had the ninth highest payroll, one had the 27th.  Sabean was brilliant about handling his team, no doubt, but I think Daniels should have been Executive of the Year. 

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The dorky player photo thing obviously transcends the field.  It applies to the front office too.

What really annoyed me about the Gibby’s, though, was how the hosts of the presentation show, Harold Reynolds and Greg Amsinger, announced a winner and then explained who they thought should have won and showed a highlight reel for that person.  Then they talked briefly about the actual winner.  Can you imagine if Barbra Streisand had announced Kathryn Bigelow as Best Director and then explained why James Cameron should have won and shown clips of Avatar?  Not cool, MLB.  Not cool at all.

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Diamond Girl

p.s.  Utterly off-topic, but The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is the best Narnia movie yet.  King Caspian lost the Spanish-ish accent (and upgraded from his title of Prince) and it’s absolutely beautiful and very funny.  It’s slightly overdone at points, but if you need some offseason distraction, Diamond Girl says check it out.

And the Teenage Girl with Ichiro Being the “Ultimate Teenage Girl” should have won Fan Moment of the Year.  Ichiro ran into her trying to catch a ball and she is decked out in tons of Mariners gear.  Bo the Bailer has a lame nickname and no girlfriend.  Obvious winner much?

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December 16, 2010 · 12:59 am

A Rangers Frog, National Cupcake Day and Moon Jellyfish

Today is just one of those days where the most interesting things happening in the world are only peripherally baseball related.

#1 Interesting Thing:  It’s National Cupcake Day.  Needless to say, I made my vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting.  I was going to try to dye the chocolate orange and black, but decided against it.  Instead I used orange and black cupcake papers (from Halloween).  I think they have some Giants flare.

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#2 Interesting Thing: I finally made it to the California Academy of Sciences to see the newly (two years, newly) renovated museum.  It was all going very nicely until the fire alarms started going off and the lights started flashing and a voice started telling us to get out quickly and not take elevators.  We had to evacuate and fire trucks showed up and it seemed like a real emergency.  Then they left.  No one seems clear what happened.   Anyway.  Here’s the interesting part:

I liked almost everything I saw of the museum but the best part was this red and blue poison dart frog.  It’s way smaller than it looks in this picture and while everyone was oohing and aahing and saying it looked like Superman, all I was thinking was, Rangers frog!

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See what I mean?  Those colors!  It should be the Rangers mascot.  The colors were incredibly vibrant even though it was absolutely tiny and very still. 

This is not baseball related, but the other part I really enjoyed was the moon jellyfish.  They were totally hypnotizing.  I think I could have watched them for hours. 

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Enjoy the multitude of cupcakes today, everyone.

Diamond Girl

 

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December 14, 2010 · 1:01 am

Baseball is a Business. Rinse and Repeat. 2.0

We are rinsing and repeating today because Eugenio Velez signed a minor league contract with the Dodgers.  As I said before, I am hoping he will get more play time and a legitimate chance, which the Giants just aren’t able to offer him right now.  I wish he wasn’t going to be donning Dodger blue, but if he takes a little play time from Matt Kemp I won’t be at all adverse to that.  There is a bright side to everything.

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Meanwhile Cliffy is said to have signed a deal with the Phillies.  As of this writing, the number of years and amount of money is not confirmed, though “sources” say it’s five years, $100 million.  So he wasn’t going after that endlessly long contract after all.  Interesting and refreshing.   I’ll write more when I know more but for now I just have one other refreshing thing to share:  yesterday, I mentioned Cliff Lee and the person I was talking to said, “Cliff who?”  Some days- especially media circus days- I just love those non baseball fans.  And yeah.  This all surprised me too. 

Brian Cashman/Hank Steinbrenner/Jon Daniels/Nolan Ryan/Chuck Greenberg will probably sleep better tonight, now that it’s all over.  As well as Cliff himself.  I think everyone involved in this is glad it’s over. 

Good night, blogsphere.

Diamond Girl            

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December 12, 2010 · 8:40 pm

No, That Was a Dream and The Amazing Nerd Paradise That is Google Trends

First, congratulations to Nick Swisher and his new wife Joanna Garcia.  People reports that her veil was by Monique Lhuillier, and his tux was by Burberry London.  Getting married in style.

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I had a dream last night that it was Opening Day 2011 (wishful thinking, huh?) and the Giants were playing the Diamondbacks in Arizona.  I remember how I was just ecstatic, listening to my radio.  Timmy was starting.  So he throws the first pitch and Jon Miller says, “He [whoever the hitter was] hits a high drive… deeeeep to left… way back… it’s gone!”  Oops.  Let’s all join hands, virtually, and channel positive energy so that the first pitch the Giants throw in 2011 will not be hit for a homerun. 

There’s also this thing called Google Trends (www.google.com/trends) which I’ve fallen in love with.  You can search a term and see a graph of how much people are searching it, what cities it’s most popular in, etc.  So what did I do?  I searched “sf giants”, of course.  Here’s the graph.  Any surprises?  The world was fascinated by the Giants this year.

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Incidentally, “sf giants” is most popular in San Rafael, San Mateo, Oakland and “san francisco giants” is most popular in Pleasanton, San Francisco and Stockton.  Which would lead me to believe that people in the latter cities are more into complete words and sentences.  And “texas rangers” has something of a following in France. 

I am a little bit addicted to this. 

So I looked up “mlb” and saw that it usually spikes near the end of the year (around the postseason/World Series).  No surprises there.  The three most popular cities it is searched in, however, are Santa Domingo, the Dominican Republic, Caracas, Venezuela and Waterloo, Canada.  I was surprised by the Canada part.

 

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More specifically, here is the graph for searches on “mlb” in 2010.

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And, lastly, the “sf giants” in 2010.

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I also saw that “cliff lee” is a garnering a fair amount of interest.  But I bet he would get more if he signed with someone.  Taking a long time at first was building suspense.  But now the suspense has sort of disappeared.

I’m thinking Yankees, at this point, and in a way I hope it is.  A seven year, heck-of-a-lot-of-money deal might be disastrous for the Rangers.  It could be disastrous for the Yankees, too, but they have a little more money to play with.

Hope I didn’t alienate all my non-nerd readers.  I promise to wait a few posts before bringing the nerd in me back.

Diamond Girl

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