Home Openers

What a thing I watched this afternoon. Home Opener for the San Francisco Giants, on an amazingly warm and sunny day considering the wild night of weather that proceeded it!

Thursday's cold front out-performed it's forecast...the NWS even issued a Severe Thunderstorm Warning! Here in the Inland Valley we were treated to a good 45 minutes of lightning and thunder with torrents of hard rain.

Everything tall around the Bay took lightning strikes, even a United Airlines jumbo jet departing SFO was struck and had to return to the airport for a checkup. The London-bound passengers were good interviews on the evening news...they were as wide-eyed as you'd expect, after a flight they'll never forget!

Golden Gate

Bay Bridge

The tail end of the system spawned a tornado in Yuba City that did some damage Friday.

So you can imagine the warm fuzzy feelings the ball game caused me after our wild night, and the past couple of wild games the Giants played on the road.

Giants' homegrown ace, Matt Cain started the home opener. He was on his game as the sports scribes say. Cain had a no-hitter going into the 6th inning, when the pitcher...the pitcher! hit a grounder to left for a single. Cain calmly pitched the complete game, and tallied 9 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 11 K in 106 pitches (73 Strikes)

The Giants' offense continued their streak of scoring 4+ Runs per game to 7 games in 7 games played. (Last season they scored 4+ just 39.5% of the time) Today's score 5-0 Giants...all in all, a filling, satisfying game that mercifully was very relaxing...'bout time, whew!

The last time a pitcher threw a 1-hitter in his own Home Opener was in 1918!

Like I said, I definitely had the warm and fuzzies after the game. I hung out on Twitter for a while as all the StatGuys chimed in on Cain's performance and all the Opening Day Records...Then I was reminded of a couple of other Home Openers...The Sacramento River Cats, Triple-A Affiliate of the Oakland A's lost to the Reno Aces. Giants' Triple-A farm club, the Fresno Grizzlies won their home opener 6-1 over the Tacoma Rainiers.Before lunchtime I saw a funny tweet from @ABarryEnright54 Aces right hand pitcher: "Slippery, snowy bus ride to SacTown today. Everyone give us a little prayer to get there safety on this #FridayThe13th @Aceball"

The Reno Aces spoiled the Cats' opener 2-0, making it two in a row.

The River Cats' parent team the Oakland Athletics spoiled the Seattle Mariners Home Opener, so there's that...

The Athletics moved to Oakand when I was 16 years old, and already a Giants Fan. The A's play in the American League, which means the Designated Hitter Rule applies. I'm an Old School baseball fan, and think the DH shortchanges the game of too much of it's strategy.

When the pitchers bat, there's more of a chess game played by the managers...

You know, like baseball was meant to be played...