San Francisco Bay Area

Northern California, like her sunnier Southern counterpart, is prone to drought.

Despite the Hollywood imagery, the Golden State is not a naturally lush paradise with green hills rolling down to meet blue ocean. In reality, most of the State was a desert and eventually will be once again.

Our very nasty, not-so-secret secret is that Cali simply does not get enough water to sustain our current rate of growth.

Dear Mr. Braden,

Congratulations on beating the Yankees Thursday afternoon and ending their winning streak at six games.

Now shut up.

You sound like a fool.

After last night's seven-inning, 10-strikeout performance against the Padres, Jonathan Sanchez has caught the attention of the baseball nation once again.

Not only is Sanchez ready to break out (as I hinted this offseason), he is already on his way to doing so.

The San Francisco Giants are stranded in one of those offensive deserts where the run-scoring oases are replaced by shimmering mirages of runners in scoring position that dissolve into nothing.

Hey, it was gonna happen sooner or later—this is not a team capable of winning 100 games.

Those kinds of clubs have exceptional hitting to complement the same kind of arms.

While these Giants have the pitching part of that equation, even the improved offense is still mediocre (and that's being charitable).

For every Phil Mickelson Masters moment that fuels our optimism and confirms that the sporting fates have a firm sense of morality, there are at least as many examples of the contrary. Episodes where Lady Luck jilts the White Knight, and instead shacks up with the leather-clad Lothario that plays by nobody's rules.

Not even his own.

(Bonus points if you recognize that bit of hybrid pilferage).

Case in point of this latter blight would be the San Francisco Giants' three-game series with the Los Angeles Dodgers that just concluded on Sunday.

Let's get it out there right up front—there is very little one can do to sugar-coat a San Francisco Giants loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers sealed by a Manny Ramirez pinch-hit, two-run home run in the bottom of the eighth inning.

Especially when you consider Major League Baseball's most tiresome clown conspired with a hanging slider from Sergio Romo (in a 1-2 count no less) to deliver the rubber match and series to his fellow Bums.

Nope, that's one of those moments you simply have to wear as a baseball fan.

San Francisco Giant uniforms do not like Los Angeles Dodger uniforms and vice versa. However, the hatred is only cotton-deep. Put the ballplayer in street clothes, stick 'em in a room, and most of the exchanges would be cordial.

Being that I live in Los Angeles now, I've only been able to catch the highlights of the Giants' wins on MLB.com the day after the game or catch the game on MLB.com's virtual game thingy.

Imagine my thrill last night when I dropped into a sushi restaurant that actually had the game on in the bottom of the third.

It immediately made me remember there's a God who loves me and wants me to be happy.  ;-)

Then Mark DeRosa hits into a double play.

The Giants of the last two or three years would have been deflated.

The San Francisco Giants sent Buster Posey to the minor leagues insisting that the youngster needed to be behind the plate every day in order to continue his growth as a catcher.

After a nice spring training with the bat, few who know the hitting-deprived big league club questioned the wisdom of Posey being ready to hit the big leagues.

Still, with the talk about him needing to catch every day combined with a bunch of malarkey about his arbitration clock starting (or making sure it doesn't start), most seemed fine with Posey catching for the Class AAA Fresno Grizzlies.