Repeating an incredible success sure isn’t easy. One day you’re parading down Market Street, selling truckloads of merchandise and appearing on short-lived TBS talk shows. The next day you’re trying to decide whether Miguel Tejada or Orlando Cabrera is the answer at shortstop. For the San Francisco Giants, this was the Difficult Second Album of baseball seasons; if they were My Bloody Valentine and 2010 was Loveless, 2011 was Kevin Shields going nuts while the recording studio malfunctioned. (In this strained analogy, the 32-track mixing board in the control room is Buster Posey.)

Grant Brisbee, on the other hand, had no trouble repeating his success. In 2011, McCovey Chronicles was more popular than ever, with scores of McCoven lining up every day to comment about what was for lunch, or Game of Thrones, or both. No longer working for the Llama Boss, Grant was now free to write posts about baseball whenever Rob Neyer told him to the mood struck, help promote Jeff Keppinger to CSN viewers and, somewhat less importantly, get quoted in a small-town newspaper article. Oh, sure, even he had his Aubrey-Huff-in-odd-numbered-years moments, which for Grant were April 7 ("Belt stays, though. He's kept at first, he's allowed to hit through his slumps, and he stays in the majors. If I had to guess, I'd say the Giants agree on all counts."), May 4 ("No Zack Wheeler for a rental.") and August 23 (when, during McCovey Night at the Ballpark, jponry got her nose bloodied by a foul ball meant for her putative boss.)

And yet, in this injury-plagued, weird, often frustrating Giants season, Grant was there for us every step of the way. Let’s take the final weekday of the regular season to celebrate what Grant does best, which is to use words, pictures and (increasingly) animated gifs to make us laugh, to make us think, and to make us wonder why we spent hundreds of hours watching this historically bad offense.

[Warning: This is a lawwwwwwng fanpost.]

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Front-paged from the FanPost section because there's a conspiracy theory going around that the Giants faked the entire World Series from a Hollywood sound stage.The conspiracy couldn't go deep enough to fake a parade with hundreds of thousands of people, could it?

I know Goofus was nice enough to create a Parade Fanpost, but I had too many pictures to share so I figured I'd create a new one.

I watched the parade on Montgomery between Bush and Pine. Got there around 8:15, there were already a few people claiming spots by then. By 10am, an hour before the parade even started, it was five people deep all along Montgomery.

Once things got underway, people were just going nuts, screaming and cheering for all the players, while tickertape shredded colored paper rained from the offices above. It was fantastic--the weather, the crowd, the energy, the happiness eminating from everyone in the parade--just pure joy. I screamed like a 13-year old girl watching the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. Mrs. Kitspool, who works in an office building on the street, brought down the Jon Miller bobblehead from her desk and I spent the entire parade waving it at all the participants. The bobblehead got a thumbs-up from Diane Dwyer, so I've got that going for me. Which is nice.

And now, the visual evidence.

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Here at McCovey Chronicles, it's become an annual tradition on the final Friday of the regular season to offer up our thanks to our fearless leader in Giants fandom, Mike Fontenot Grant. And by "an annual tradition" I mean, "six years in a row I've spent an ungodly amount of my employer's time putting together this sycophantic highlight reel." I don't even get paid for it, you know. Oh, sure, Grant sends some McCovey Bucks my way as a quid pro quo, but it turns out the Apple store doesn't consider them legal tender.

With the Giants one win away from their first playoff appearance in the history of the site, I considered delaying this fanpost until either a) their championship parade down Market Street or b) Francisco Liriano no-hits them in Game 7 of the World Series. However, the MCC mods, who want it so bad they can taste it, insisted I stick to my regular kiss-ass schedule.

And so I give you "Grant Brisbee 2010: It's Magic Inside, and Llamas Are Watching...Always."

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First off, this is not meant to be a "What's wrong with Timmy?" discussion. Although it's fair to say I wouldn't be bringing the question in the fanpost title up for discussion if many (most?) of us didn't think something's wrong with Tim Lincecum in 2010. PiKAgiant brought up the "should Timmy skip a start" question in yesterday's postgame thread, and I thought this would be a good place to expand on it.

If you do think something's wrong with Tim Lincecum's delivery/velocity/command/control/arm/head, will skipping his next start make things better? Since Grant has the rights to Point/Counterpoint (and he's much funnier than I am), I'll present what seem to be the pros and cons of the argument.

Pros

• If the Giants make the playoffs, they need Tim Lincecum to pitch really, really well. The trend over the last month of his starts is very depressing. Skipping a start would break up a vicious cycle and have the bonus effect of saving his arm for October.
• By skipping a start, Lincecum would get a full 12 days between starts. The last time he had a lengthy break was the eight days around the All-Star Game, and he came back to pitch a complete game shutout of the Mets. His next start would be a Friday night home game against the D-backs, and the Giants are still 10-1 on Orange Fridays this season.
• It would allow Chris Lincecum to spend a good stretch of time working on fixing his son's mechanics. The Giants should pay for his airfare and hotel room in St. Louis and Philly, which is pocket change compared to what they're paying their ace.
• Skipping a start worked for both Matt Cain and Jonathan Sanchez in seasons past. I'm too lazy to compile all their numbers pre- and post-skipped starts, but anecdotally I remember a certain no-hitter…

Cons

• Lincecum is 5-0 with a 1.54 ERA against the Cardinals. They have a .551 OPS against him. He went 7 innings and had 8 strikeouts against them back on April 23 (you know, back when he was "good") in a 4-1 win.
• His scheduled Saturday start is at night in St. Louis, and his night ERA is more than half a run lower than his day ERA.
• If his confidence is shaky right now, the Giants might be exacerbating things by skipping a start. Maybe he'd perceive that decision as a lack of faith in him to right himself. Keeping him on schedule and giving him the chance to shut down the Cardinals offense would be a sign of encouragement.
• The Giants are in the middle of a pennant race, and they can't afford to throw a AAA spot starter on the road matched up against Chris Carpenter. Timmy's not pitching like an ace, but he's still striking people out and he's getting bled to death by BABIP bloops as much as anything.

Myself, I'm leaning towards the "don't skip a start" camp, but it's pretty close. What say you, McCoven?

Excluding the All-Star break (which is only three days this season), today is the last off day the Giants have until August 2. That's a pretty remarkable screw job by the MLB schedulers. Be that as it may, over the next 38 games we're about to find out just how good the boys in French Vanilla actually are. To wit:

21 of their next 31 games are on the road. Current Giants road record: 14-18.

Their next homestand starts Friday against the Red Sox, who are destroying National League opponents (16-4 in their last 20 interleague contests) and whose pink-hatted fans will noisily fill The Big Phone this weekend. (I'm just the messenger.) Next, the Evils (9-9 in San Francisco the last two seasons) come to town.

Then, the Giants take off on an 11-game road trip with four-game series in both Colorado and Milwaukee and a three-game series in super-humid Washington (i.e., not a good place for a Lincecum start) against Strasburg and the Nats.

Post-ASG, there's a four-game home series against the Mets, three in LA against the Dodgers, four in Arizona against the D-Backs, then back at home with four against the Marlins and three more against the Evils. By which time the trade deadline will have passed and Sabes will have turned Madison Bumgarner into Jermaine Dye.

Comment starters:

Talk amongst yourselves.

(Soccer haters to the left, please. We'll see you later in the center of the page to talk baseball.)

Six months after being drawn in the same group, the most anticipated soccer match in the History of the Universe is upon us: England! United States! For all the marbles! Or at least 1 or 3 points. The last time these two faced off in the World Cup, John Wooden was only 39 years old, Jamie Moyer was just starting high school, and the Giants still played in New York.

Now, the expectations for the US against the Three Lions are quite a bit higher than in 1950, when Joe Gaetjens and the Americans shocked the world on the pitch at Belo Horiztone. Can our porous defense contain Wayne Rooney? Can Landon Donovan and Clint Dempsey create goals? Are Jozy Altidore and Gooch Onyewu healthy enough to make a difference today? If Bruce Bochy was coaching and Buster Posey was a goalkeeper, would he start him at striker? These and other questions will be answered by 2pm today.

Have it, McCoven soccer nerds. Should be a fun match, regardless.

US:

Howard, Cherundolo, DeMerit, Onyewu, Bocanegra, Donovan, Bradley, Clark, Dempsey, Altidore, Findley.

ENGLAND:

Green, Johnson, King, Terry, A Cole, Lennon, Lampard, Gerrard, Milner, Heskey, Rooney.

[Making this a FanPost just to give it exposure higher on up on the home page...]

I wish I could focus on Giants baseball today, but I can't. I made a donation to this wonderful organization today, and there are many other worthy relief organizations (Red Cross, UNICEF, etc.) who need donations to help the people of Haiti during this terrible time.

I'm sure many of you have given already, and if you haven't, please consider doing so. Even small donations help.

(Posting this about 19 hours early...)

Greetings, McCoven futbol fans, and those of you looking for a work distraction between the end of the Tiger Woods Affair and the start of the Winter Meetings. The draw for the 2010 World Cup is Friday in South Africa (approx. 9am Pacific Time). The 32 teams involved are placed into eight groups of four teams each. Each group will feature one team drawn at random from each of the four "pots" (/Tim Lincecum) below:

Pot 1: South Africa, Brazil, Spain, Italy, Germany, Argentina, England, Netherlands

Pot 2: Ivory Coast, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, Algeria, Paraguay, Chile, Uruguay

Pot 3: Japan, S Korea, N Korea, Australia, New Zealand, United States, Mexico, Honduras

Pot 4: France,  Portugal, Slovenia, Switzerland, Greece, Serbia, Denmark, Slovakia

What's the best case/worst case group for the US? What would the ultimate "Group of Death" look like? Based on the draw, who should be considered the favorite(s)? 

Lastly, what are the chances that, just as France is about to be placed in a group, Jim Ross from the WWE exclaims, "Wait a minute....THAT'S IRELAND'S MUSIC! OH MY GOD....NOOOOOO" and Shay Given slams a folding chair over Thierry Henry's head?

Talk amongst yourselves.

Edit: Here are your 2010 World Cup Groups!

Group A: France, Mexico, South Africa, Uruguay

Group B: Argentina, Greece, Nigeria, South Korea

Group C: Algeria, England, Slovenia, United States

Group D: Australia, Germany, Ghana, Serbia

Group E: Cameroon, Denmark, Japan, Netherlands

Group F: Italy, New Zealand, Paraguay, Slovakia

Group G: Brazil, Ivory Coast, North Korea, Portugal

Group H: Chile, Honduras, Spain, Switzerland