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Drinking to Steven and Marissa

The vodka is for later.

 

Lincecum wins the Cy Young again

Big congrats to Tim Lincecum for winning his second Cy Young award in a very close vote!

On Thursday, Lincecum became the only pitcher to capture the Cy Young Award in each of his first two full Major League seasons. The Giants right-hander was named the National League's repeat winner Thursday in balloting conducted by the Baseball Writers' Association of America.

via SF Giants.com

Jeff Bridges has the best website ever

I've been spending a fair bit of time lately looking at and working with websites for celebrities, but Jeff Bridges absolutely rocks beyond anything I've seen. Renee gets props for forwarding me the site, it's amazing. Almost completely hand drawn by Jeff, don't miss his blog.

The dude abides indeed.

The Boss is 60 and confused

"Hello, Ohio!"

Bruce Springsteen to the Auburn Hills (Michigan) audience he was playing for. Finally Steve Van Zandt whispered in his ear that they were actually in Michigan (via Yahoo News)

Thank you, Randy

It's time for the third installment of my thank yous to the 2009 Giants. Unfortunately, this post is based around a story that isn't someone getting an award, but rather the news that Randy Winn has been asked to look elsewhere for work in 2010. While he didn't have a particularly good offensive year (especially batting right handed), he continued to be a defensive stalwart in right field and a great personality. Most importantly, he gave the Giants a good four years from a running start.

The Giants acquired Winn from the Seattle Mariners in July, 2005, for Yorvit Torrealba and Jesse Foppert. In September, 2005, Winn had one of the greatest months by a Giant in franchise history. (He hit .447 with 51 hits. He hit 11 homers in 30 games after Sept. 1.) He parlayed that month into a three-year, $23.25 million extension.

While his production tailed off, nobody could dispute that Winn was a good Giant. He played hurt without complaint and got himself ready to be on the field every day. He gave a consistent effort. He’s a smart defensive player and baserunner. Those are the kinds of things managers appreciate most in players. From a beat writer’s perspective, he was accessible and his dry sense of humor made him an asset in the clubhouse. He was our Good Guy award this past season after finishing high in the balloting in previous years.

As Landis said to me today, “If anyone tells me they don’t like Randy Winn, that makes me wonder about who I’m talking to.”

Thanks Randy! We're going to miss you.

Reflections on pigs and humans

"I look at the pig as a great animal model for human lifestyle diseases. Pigs like to lie around, they like to drink if given the chance, they’ll smoke and watch TV.”

Dr. Lawrence Schook, pig researcher at University of Illinois via NY Times but read the whole story, it's filled with great quotes and general pig funniness.

The real impact of Tim Lincecum’s marijuana bust

For those who missed the story, Tim Lincecum got busted for marijuana possession in Oregon on October 30th. It got pleaded down to a misdemeanor and shouldn't make a difference on anything. But Andrew Baggarly, the Merc's Giants beat reporter has fun with the story:

The embarrassment might be the worst thing to come out of this. I’d be surprised if Lincecum loses any endorsements. And besides, it’s not like this comes as a shock. Lincecum dresses like he’s a cross between Jimbo Jones from “The Simpsons” and Jay from “Clerks.” Maybe he’ll drop all pretenses and start wearing dreads.

via blogs.mercurynews.com

Al Michaels traded for an 80-year old cartoon

Gotta love Hollywood. Buried deep in a New York Times piece about how Disney is re-imagining Mickey Mouse is the wonderful tidbit that Disney and NBC Universal settled an 80-year old dispute by trading a well known sportscaster for a cartoon character:

Mr. Iger solved a right problems [sic] with the game by making a deal with NBC Universal in 2006. In the negotiations, Mr. Iger persuaded NBC Universal to trade the Oswald rights for rights to Al Michaels, the sportscaster. NBC wanted Mr. Michaels for its new football franchise and Mr. Michaels wanted to go, but Disney held him in a longtime contract through its ESPN unit.

For background, Oswald was a cartoon rabbit that Walt Disney abandoned in the late 1920's in a dispute with Universal but Disney wanted to resurrect for a new video game, Epic Mickey. Al Michaels is a sportscaster with a little more humility about his value on the trade market.

The long drought begins

Only 101 days until pitchers and catchers report.

Louis on HotWired's anniversary

Great to read Louis Rossetto's memories of HotWired. I'd forgotten about a lot of the machinations that led up to its creation. We were essentially starting a start-up from within a start-up and risking both:

Even internally, people were skeptical – our first business wasn't profitable yet and here we were starting another? In effect, we were taking the money that Condé Nast had given us for growing Wired circulation and investing it a completely unknown, untried, potentially dangerous project to invent Web media.

Still can't believe it's been 15 years.