SAN FRANCISCO -- This tweet from Paul Sullivan sums up August weather in San Francisco:
Mark Twain: "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." Aaron Rowand: "The weather here just sucks."
The only time I've ever experienced warm weather at a ballgame in San Francisco was Game Five of the 1989 NLCS. That boxscore says the temperature was 76, but it wasn't. It was well into the upper 80's, maybe even 90 degrees... I hadn't realized warm air could actually get into Candlestick Park. AT&T Park may be cold, but it's tropical compared to the 'Stick.
It's foggy and cool again this morning. Presuming Darwin Barney can make it through the fog, he may become the 15th rookie to debut for the Cubs this season today. Speaking of which, I noted in the recap to last night's game that the record for rookie Cubs in one season is 27, set in 1902. The Tribune and the Sun-Times both reported the number as 17; that appears to be a typo.
I have been assured by Ed Hartig again that 27 is correct. Here is a complete list from Ed of the 27 rookies who played for the Cubs in 1902, ranked by number of games played (some of the names are priceless):
Joe Tinker, 133 Germany Schaefer, 81 Davy Jones, 64 Dusty Miller, 51 Art Williams, 47 Bunk Congalton, 45 Pop Williams, 38 Hal O'Hagan, 31 Johnny Evers, 26 Carl Lundgren, 20 Bob Rhoads, 16 Dad Clark, 12 Jim Murray, 12 Jim St. Vrain, 12 Harry Schlafly, 10 Mike Lynch, 7 Deacon Morrissey, 7 Mike Jacobs, 5 Alex Hardy, 4 Ed Glenn, 2 Jack Hendricks, 2 Pete Lamer, 2 Chick Pedroes, 2 Fred Glade, 1 R.E. Hillebrand, 1 Joe Hughes, 1 Snapper Kennedy, 1
Tyler Colvin and Starlin Castro look good, but they don't have names like "Bunk Congalton" or "Snapper Kennedy".
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Matt Cain has made eight career starts vs. the Cubs and has posted a 5-2 record with a 2.41 ERA -- but that's not the whole story. In his last three starts against them, one last year and two in 2008, he's thrown 23 innings and allowed zero runs and eight hits and struck out 27. On August 23, 2007, he beat the Cubs in San Francisco and hit a two-run homer. In short, we're doomed.
Randy Wells matched up against Matt Cain on September 27, 2009; as mentioned above, Cain gave the Cubs nothing at all. Wells gave up five runs in 5.1 innings. It's his only career start vs. the Giants. Incidentally, that boxscore indicates it was 81 degrees that day. It won't be 81 today.
Lineup via tweet from Carrie:
#Cubs lineup Thu vs #Giants is lf colvin, ss castro, rf fuke, cf byrd, 1b nady, 2b dewitt, 3b baker, c hill, p wells
Giants lineup via Giants official Twitter account:
Today's Starting 9: Rowand CF, Sanchez 2B, Huff RF, Posey C, Burrell LF, Sandoval 3B, Uribe SS, Ishikawa 1B, Cain RHP #SFGiants
Today's game is on WGN and CSN Bay Area. Here is the complete MLB.com Mediacenter for today.
Baseball-reference.com game preview
Please visit our SB Nation Giants site McCovey Chronicles.
Today's first pitch thread will be up at 2:45 pm CDT, and the overflows will post at 3:45 pm, 4:45 pm and 5:30 pm CDT.
Discuss amongst yourselves.