How about that local sports team?

So how about that local sports team? Them “Fighters” or “Warriors” or sumthin. Them’s gettin pretty good, don’t they?

Jamie is a big basketball fan, and he kept saying that we should all go to a game every once in a while. Because even if the team kinda sucks, there’s good teams visiting all the time to make it worth your while. Well, the Warriors do everything but suck this year. With baseball and NASCAR to keep up with I’m usually too “sported out” to care about the basketball playoffs, but I watched game 4 vs the Mavs last night and was wildly entertained. Way to go, Warriors!

Happy Easter!

What I learned at the Giants game today:

• Not getting a single run out of bases loaded with no outs is of the best ways to motivate an opponent team that was showing all the signs of getting beaten into submission.
• Speaking of which, you probably won’t go very far in the season (or deserve to win) until you get at least one run out of bases loaded with no outs.
• Barry Zito is a great pitcher, but having played in the American League sure shows when he’s at bat.
• Recording 1-2-3 innings against a pitcher who was at 50+ pitches after two innings is a good way to keep that pitcher in the game much longer than he should have been.
• Barry Bonds might still be a great hitter with an outstanding OBP, but his diminished speed is hurting the team. He only got to frst base on the “double” that drove in Aurilia, and he was out at 2nd base in the same inning when other players would easily have made it.
• I don’t really care that the Giants are 1-5 and were swept by the Dodgers. It’s early in the season and they have lots of time to pick up the pace. I kinda like that peace of mind, it’s too early to get upset
• Taking the Larkspur ferry to the ballpark and watching a game is an awesome way to spend Easter Sunday.
• Not putting on any sunscreen – even if the entire day was overcast – is an awesome way to get sunburned in the face. This is San Francisco, after all!
• Reading an interesting book is a great way to pass the time in the ferry. The ride never felt that short before.

And finally:

• I love going to games with my fiancee.
• And she looks great with a Giants hat on.

Boooo!

Looks like a bag of money fell from the sky, hit Jason Schmidt on the head – and killed him. Well, at least in the eyes of San Francisco Giants fans he’ll be dead now. I don’t think anybody expected Schmidt to stay for the next season, but did it have to be LA?

Still, good memories. Like that 16 K game last season…

Open Wheel Racing

The IRL is returning to Infineon Raceway in 2007, and Michael Schuhmacher ends his career today. Oh, and I’m watching the NASCAR race, so it’s time to update with some racing stuff! At this year’s IRL race, there was an exhibition of classic Formula 1 cars with some cool entries. Here’s the Ferrari 312 T-2, the car in which Niki Lauda raced to the chanpionship in 1976/77. There’s also an exhibit description for the car, and Wikipedia has a picture of Niki driving the car.

I don’t remember the cars above (I was born in 76), but I sure remember the Formula 1 races of the early 80s. Niki Lauda, Alain Prost in their red-white Malboro McLarens. The second image shows one of the early versions, the McLaren M-30 that Alain Prost was driving in 1980. Doesn’t look like he had much success back then, but of course that would change in 1984-87.

Where’s the bodyguards?

Poor Brian Vickers. He gets his first win, something that every NASCAR driver dreams of, and then the dream turns into a nightmare. He can’t even catch a break on Inside Nextel Cup (which was entertaining to say the least, though). Victoria might disagree, but come on – it’s racing and things happen. Get off your rabid Dale Jr. soapbox. End of story.

Indy Grand Prix of Sonoma

Because it was so much fun for the NASCAR race, here’s my panorama shot of the Indy Car lineup this weekend. Once again beware, the full image is 14000×1420 pixels big and might take a second to load

More on the race later!

The Evil Pit Light

I just don’t get it. Everybody agrees that Kurt Busch got shafted by the pit light abruptly changing to red on Sunday. Not everybody might agree on whether he should have been given some leeway in the ruling or not, but what’s this discussion about how to fix the problem? “You shouldn’t be penalized when you’re committed to pitting! But wait, how do we decide when you’re committed?” – Put a second light further away from the pit entrance! That might work!” – “Etc. pp.

Am I missing something here? Just add a fricking yellow light phase and don’t abruptly go from green to red. Problem solved! Apparently the idea is so successful that they’ll start using it on all the major highways in the country soon. You know, so that you don’t run down 37 at 65mph and get shafted by the traffic light jumping to red when you’re ten feet away. “I’m sorry officer, but what was I supposed to do at that point? You gave me no warning!” I dunno, maybe I’m missing something…

What The Hell?

Hillendrand for Arcado? You’ve got to be kidding me! Way to shaft a player that the club slowly and steadily developed and who was starting to get real results. Well, Victoria and I are going to the game tonight…not sure I wanna go now ;(

Montoya And NASCAR

Well, this will be interesting. I grew up on Formula 1, and I grew tired of Formula 1 before Montoya even entered the circus. It just became so painfully obvious that in F1, races are never decided on the track – they’re decided in qualifying and on the pits. Nothing against a little pit strategy, but it’s almost like there’s “No Passing!” signs posted along the entire track. Oh, and as soon as two cars touch they fall apart and the drivers are out. Not all that much fun to watch, no?

So to see Montoya get into fulltime stock car racing (and NASCAR in particular) should be fun. Passing aplenty, bumping aplenty. Not enough road courses for my liking, but it sure will be interesting to see how that goes. In the meantime, I will watch the World Cup Final

NASCAR Race

Last panorama shot for a while, I promise! This one is 12405 * 1351 pixels (1.7mb) big. I got hooked on these shots 4 or 5 years ago, when I found that my Canon camera came with a program that automatically stitches these things together for me. And then I promptly forgot about it. Here’s the starting lineup from this week’s race as seen from our (really nice!) seats.

The race was a lot of fun! We got to our seats in record time, 35 minute drive to parking and 25 minutes shuttle to the grand stands. And then we waited. Live races are a weird kind of affair – you don’t mind the initial wait much because there’s enough entertainment around you (this year they had an air show and a mini Chris Isaak concert) and you get to see the cars getting readied. The start of the race gets your blood pumping and you follow the race as best as you can, getting excited about the position changes and crashes.

But after about two hours of racing, the sun, alcohol and constant noise are starting to take its toll (unless your name is Victoria and you just take a 45 minute nap in the midst of it all). The field gets drawn out so much that there’s always a car racing by (making it hard to understand the track commentators), and you kinda lose track of the running order past position 8. But the last 10 laps make up for it as the action gets more intense. Crashes happen more frequently and you get to see if the winner can hold on to his lead. Then you watch the burnout, try to catch a glimpse of victory lane – and attempt to leave the racetrack while keeping your sanity. When 100,000 people leave at the same time there’s bound to be some traffic jams! This year it took us over two hours to get back on the road towards Sonoma. We skipped the long shuttle lines and hiked back to our parking lot instead (getting marginally lost in the process), then needed another 45 minutes to exit the raceway.

Anyway, back to work now, there’s just as much excitement around the office (albeit of a different kind). We recorded the race, gonna finish watching that sometime to see all the stuff we missed. IRL race coming up in August!