A Press Democrat Blog

Overtime

Ted Sillanpaa looks at the San Francisco Giants, other Bay Area sports and gives a dad's-eye view of Empire prep and youth sports trends

Trout’s contract: Key to losing Bay Area sports talk listeners

Monday, at 5:33 by

By TED SILLANPAA On Twitter @TedSillanpa  Stuck in the car, driving home, without my music or the podcasts that entertain me as radio once did. Old, old habits die hard, so I tuned to KNBR to hear my favorite Bay Area radio guy Tom Tolbert talking about Angels star Mike Trout. Actually, Tolbert and co-host Ray Ratto were talking about Trout’s contract being extended by the Angels and … OK. I’ll admit that I don’t care about player salaries or… Read More »

49ers’ Harbaugh did youngsters no harm

Monday, at 8:10 by

By TED SILLANPAA I spent Sunday in the last place on this planet that I would spend even one second considering about the outcome of Super Bowl XLVII. I was done with the Ravens’ win over the 49ers before the confetti finished falling to the Superdome turf. When I plugged back into the world on Monday around noon, a sports talk radio guest appeared on a station out of Sacramento to explain that 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh had spent… Read More »

Running into out at home, playing back cost Tigers dearly

Thursday, at 9:30 by

BY TED SILLANPAA The Tigers made two strategic decisions that, while not completely unreasonable, didn’t make much sense. Those decisions sent the World Series back to Detroit with the Giants leading 2-0. First, it’s a cardinal sin at every level of baseball to run into the first out of an inning at third base or at home plate. Watching the replay a dozen times doesn’t help explain why Detroit third base coach Gene Lamont waved Prince Fielder to the plate… Read More »

Baseball gods show Reds are better than Giants

Saturday, at 11:02 by

BY TED SILLANPAA The Giants were put in their place by the baseball gods Saturday night. Oh, don’t think the baseball gods aren’t aware that Giants’ fans had actually started to believe that the team was as good as its winning margin in the NL West seemed to indicate. They knew. The gods always know. The baseball gods showed Giants fans the flaws in their team in a 5-2 National League Division Series loss Saturday night … in San Francisco… Read More »

Giants playoff roster: How many pitchers?

Saturday, at 6:14 by

By TED SILLANPAA The Giants had 11 pitchers and 14 position players on the 2010 postseason roster. There’s no reason to think the club won’t do roughly the same thing this fall. The only real question in 2010 was whether or not to carry Barry Zito on the postseason roster. It wasn’t so much a tough call based on his performance, but rather based on the reality that professional sports franchises don’t typically bench and embarrass their most highly-paid players.… Read More »

Giants, Dodgers are both playing like playoff teams

Monday, at 9:55 by

By Ted Sillanpaa Roughly five hours after Marco Scutaro drove in the game-winning run in the 10th for the Giants on Monday … the Dodgers came from behind to beat the Padres in the 11th in Los Angeles. About four hours after Buster Posey hit about as clutch a two-strike, RBI-double as imaginable in the ninth to tie the Diamondbacks … Andre Either hit a 9th-inning home run in Dodger Stadium to send the game into extras against the Padres.… Read More »