Unfetterred enthusiasm...are you a gamer?

i initially thought it was a generic mlb commercial, but when it meantioned the giants i just started laughing

"what every baseball fan should be" - if you can't feel that way in March, when can you? We're still undefeated, baby!

i was just telling my friend that my sadness over the loss of haren, kotsay, swisher, and scutaro has been replaced by the excitement of ...

- watching buck, suzuki, and barton continue to grow

- seeing what the new guys can do (especially the two gonzalez's!)

- watching duchscherer finally get the chance to start

- hopefully having a healthy harden all year (something i wish for every season)

- hopefully watching mike sweeney get the chance to play in the green & gold

yay for spring training optimism! T-minus 11 days until the season opener!!

How jacked is Geren? The morning after watching Cust and shortstop Bobby Crosby -- another recently oft-injured Athletic -- each launch their third homer of the spring in support of starting pitcher Greg Smith's four shutout innings during a 6-4 win over the host Cubs on Tuesday, the skipper had a bounce in his step that you'd more typically see from an eighth-grade boy who just got asked by his school's prettiest girl to be her date at the Sadie Hawkins dance.

"We had pitching, defense, baserunning, intensity, a couple long balls, intelligent pitching -- almost like a perfect game," Geren gushed. "I was on the phone all last night telling everyone how great it was."

"It's just so much fun to me watching the game played the right way," Geren says. "And to have such a young team gel so quickly and be playing this way together already, it's really neat."

- I think they're going to be better than expected this year.

- I think the youngsters and prospects are exciting.

- We KNOW that the team is "rebuilding". Yes, the payroll has been slashed. Yes, our 2 best players were traded for a bunch of unproven guys or guys who have never played an MLB game. You know what, though? There's hope. There's a light at the end of the tunnel. There's a DIRECTION that the team is headed. I'll get just as much out of watching Buck, Barton, Suzuki, Gaudin, and hopefully guys like Crosby, Harden, and Street continue to blossom into the high caliber players they're capable of becoming.

Not to hate across the bay any more than usual, but hey... at least we're not the Giants. They're spending damn near 100 million dollars every season on overpaid, overrated guys, they don't win shit, they don't have any sort of farm system to speak of, and they have a GM that's made several of the worst trades we've seen in the past 10 years.

So yeah, I'm optimistic.

of the Giants' "gamer" promo all week long. They have been pretty funny, but of course are reflecting the gloomy outlook for the 2008 Giants.

One of their callers commented that when he worked as a coroner's assistant, they used to refer to bodies that had been there a while and...err..aged a bit, as "gamers.' Now I can't shake that image out of my mind when I hear the Giants' "gamer" promos.

"let's not start sucking each other's...just yet"

then again, like Nico says, maybe now is the time to do it.

I am a fan (not a gamer, that's a Krukow word), I can't WAIT for real baseball, and I think we're going to see some things that weren't quite expected from our A's.

Ah, spring. When Harden is healthy, the bats are in full swing, and no one is moping over Cust K's, seven-game skids, or the mere mention of the name Crosby.

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay baseball!!! I'm so excited!

that a .500 season would be perfectly good to me. This team feels like the kind that WILL lose 7 straight and throw in a couple 5 game losing streaks too, but they could also run off 10 in a row in wins. This team is going to try our patients and make us weep with happiness. So 81 wins is what we should shoot for and be happy with. maybe a little under, maybe a little over. Anything more, is just icing. This is the year we need to just sit back and watch the story unfold, because what happens this year will have more impact on future seasons then normal.

I think this season is just chapter one of a few really good seasons to come.

I can smell the hot dogs and garlic fries already mmmmm

This spring has been a teriffic show for our young guns and even a few older guys.

Buck, Barton, Suzuki, and Hannahan are going to be great fun to watch: the can hit and it's going to only go up. Ellis is certainly a top favorite of mine because he bats pretty well and plays All Star caliber defense. Sweeney has impressed and could be a solid contributor.

Maybe the pitching will be there this season. We've had some great competition for the fifth position and Duke, Harden, and Blanton have looked strong. I ignore Blanton's numbers on the Rule of 3. The Rule of 3 is that the Big 3 always sucked it up in spring (as my hazy memory recalls) and then destroyed everyone during the season.

I'd personally like to see Tod Linden make the roster in place of DJ. The guy has played hard this spring and is batting .577 which is no small job. If we have, what I believe, is a somewhat undecided outfield, we should give the guy (who's batting like crazy) a chance to see if he can still make it in the majors.

Before you guys all talk crap about us Giants fans, you should remember that we are all essentially members of the same bulletin board now, and we can either make either miserable with cross-board fighting, or not.

BTW, I really and truly am a fan of both teams. I hope both do well. I expect neither to.

Oh yeah, that's the guy they named the cove after, right?

:)

Preach it sister!

is if the halloweener brass throws a HeroClix/Magic the Gathering players tournament during a game.

Thank God the A's run a baseball team as opposed to the circus sideshow across the bay!