Back in 2009 I killed some time at work putting together Fun with Wikipedia; Last summer it continued with The Sequel. Now that we're done with the trading deadline (and need to take our mind off of that Reds series), I present the 2011 installment. All of the information comes from each player's Wikipedia page, and special thanks to jcb9 and all of the other McCoven who have contributed to these Wiki entries.

Oh, and again I try not to repeat myself so some of the best tidbits might have been used in the previous posts.

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Last year I spent an hour at work looking up the most interesting fact on Wikipedia about the guys on our 25 man roster and thought I'd do it again. I'll post new facts for returners (although Barry Zito being Patrick Duffy's nephew is still my favorite fact) and here's the link to last year's list:

http://www.mccoveychronicles.com/2009/7/1/934457/fun-with-wikipedia

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McCovenites,

   I've been AWOL for a few months, getting work done, but still peek in a few times a week. Loved watching the weekend series in NY bars over hear and listening to people fawn over Gerald.

So, got to reading a thread about things we've always done "wrong", and being a smarter guy I thought none of these would apply to me but goshdarnitall I was ignorant as a Palin. For example, I never figured out:

- a quart = a quarter gallon

- although i pronounce epitome "ee-pit-oh-mee" when i read it in my head i pronounce it "epit-tome"

- the whole space / shift-space to go page up/down in windows

- to remember what place setting is yours at a fancy dinner do the OK symbol with your fingers on each hand and look at them- the lowercase "b" on your left is for bread and the lowercase "d" on your right is for drink

- Arby's is R and B for Roast Beef (and the founders, the Raffel Brothers)

- disease = dis ease

a great list of these:

http://ask.metafilter.com/158740/You-were-doing-it-wrong

It also took me a while in life to figure out things that affect me daily: there is usually no point in fighting with roommates/family/significant others over anything, true friends can be trusted, if you have a reason to be upset with someone just don't be and see how much more you respect yourself, bitching never helps except making you look like a fool, assume people are cool and let them disprove it, swear words are overused, someone doesn't have to be a die-hard fan to still be respected as a fan, genuinely making people smile and feel good about themselves goes real, real far in life...

So since I respect so many opinions in here I'd love to hear about the things it took you a while to figure out and the things that you've learned over time (especially you older fans, who've gone through so much more life).

No Giants game today, sitting at work waiting for contract approval= it's a dog-dangling afternoon. Was going through pics we took last week at a Nationals-Dodgers game (I planned my DC visit specifically so I could boo the Dodgers) and remembered how nice that stadium was- tons of space, no lines, well designed, very patriotic; it might be my new favorite non-SF stadium.

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I have a rule to never read posts that start with the word "Pokemon" and thus ignored the last post and missed out on the fantasy league sign-ups. Boo.

So I'm adding a third, and hopefully necessary, MCC Yahoo! fantasy league. If you are already in a league and want to prove your pwnership of stats or just missed out on the last sign-ups (really? filled up that GD quick?!?) here is your chance.

One fun change is Yahoo now does an auction, which could be a fun twist on normal drafts. They have a function to try mock auctions right now and I gave it a shot yesterday and it was pretty fun. So here are the specs:

While jogging Central Park today (seriously it's beautiful out here and i hear california weather is sucking, which is a weird flip flop) I had a crazy thought that only the off-season can bring- what if 2010 was the last season of baseball as we know it and we HAD to win the World Series this year, 2011 and beyond be damned? And what if we were the only team privy to this information?

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So I like to participate in ipod wars with friends every now and then, which is when everyone takes turns playing a song on a sound system with their ipod to get a party started- favorites are usually late 80s/early 90s hits that remind us of middle school (A Tribe Called Quest/Another Bad Creation) or classic stuff just about anyone can appreciate (Zeppelin/Tom Waits/Gypsy Kings).

But a nice twist is to throw yours on random and play whatever song comes up next. The problem is I sometimes just add a whole folder of music and then something like B2K's Bump That or Eve 6's Here's to the Night come up. Crappy, crappy noise.

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I've been thinking for a while about how much a free agent's home city affects where they want to sign. I bring this up because of our discussion concerning Nick Johnson.

I sense not too many of us would be too distraught if we were to sign Johnson to a reasonable contract, and since he's a local guy (Sacramento) and I'm trying to figure out if a homecoming would give us the "hometown discount" that would appease all parties involved (and most importantly us). It seemed to work with last year's Johnson signing and may give us a bit of a discount this year as well. Even if it's a slight advantage and it saves us a million or two that is money that can go to signing more international talent or towards an additional impact player.

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Since we've had a flood of newbies to the site (welcome all, try the shellfish) i'd like to hear how everyone chose their icon picture.

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I have about an hour to kill at work and wanted to see in what town Timmy was born (Bellevue), and i realized there are some fun facts about our boys in the wacky pages of Wikipedia. Here is a list of our 25 man roster with whatever's the funnest fact i could find about them from just their Wiki entry. I tried to avoid the obvious stuff, but how many of these are new to you?

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so here’s an idea of the dodgers fans there…

“giants suck”, “go back to the gay area”, “giants are fags”. all family friendly stuff when their team was up by five runs. and for every one “go dodgers” you hear five “giants suck” because they don’t seem to want pride in their home team, just contempt for another city.

i saw three fights break out and someone threw a full container of popcorn at a giants fan who was walking up the aisle; he went and told security so logically security threw HIM out.

one dodgers fan stood up, looked at the crowd around him and yelled “show some class guys, we’re representing the dodgers”…. he was booed and had bottles thrown at him until he gave up and walked away.

walking away from the game two drunks started yelling “any faggot giants fans here? i want to kick some ass”. there were six of us, but my most rowdy friend who is always ready to brawl just shrugged and said “eh, i’ve got work tomorrow and a future, so i’ll pass.”

i’ve been going to dodgers-giants games here in l.a. since 1998 and this was one of the worst crowds i’ve seen… each year they seem to get more vulgar and disrespectful.

man, i can’t wait to see a game up home next month with decent human beings.

After reading Xathan's Open HAPPY Giants Images Thread (Yay!) I noticed some McCoven posting their first ever comment on the site and wanted to see what everyone else's was.

I would love to see a hodgepodge that old timers would understand and we'd have to explain to the new kids. so, post your "109!" followed by someone else's "garlic fries are the bestest."

Oh, If you have hundreds on comments I don't know how to go directly to your first one; I just looked at the date I joined then went to the MC archives and searched through a few threads after that date. Can someone post the non-dummy way of doing it?

without access to mccovey chronicles all day, i had to find other ways to pass the time.

i thought, what if we can trade barry zito and aurelia for a plethora of unwanted contracts, say, giambi, mussina and pavano from the yankees. with buying out giambi's and pavano's option, we take on $50M in salary while unloading $115M. The Yankees get out of 3 bad contacts (but take on two) to make room for a youngster and fall under the salary limit, which saves them an additional $21M. We take a massive salary hit this year, but let all three go next year.

we end up not having to pay for zito after this season, and the yankees take on zito for a cost to them of $44M over 6 seasons. they also get aurelia to carry the bats or what not.

We could always play with including roberts or winn or some other crazy combo, but the point is it  would be a huge savings to the yankees, while basically swapping mussina for zito in their rotation, while unburdening us from a potentially franchise-wrecking contract. plus we get to boo pavano and watch giambi try to man first again, which would make the children laugh (and weep).

but the whole point is SEE WHERE OUR MINDS WANDER WITHOUT THE MCCOVEN AROUND!!! i had to sit around and come up with these crazy situations that would never happen as long as sabean is still around. PLUS it forced me to be productive at work today- let's not ever let that happen again.

i know some of you nerd it up like i do and look forward to the latest edition of the game. i downloaded it yesterday and played for an hour last night, and have to say it's pretty much the same as '08. they do have a really cool depth chart feature now, but i've always been bummed they don't have a really easy feature to track your players' arbitration clock.

they have MadBum and TimA but no Wendell, which is disappointing, but i just cloned Freddie Lewis and tweaked his stats and age to make a Fairley. they also wised up on trades (no more prince fielder for aurelia offers) and give a little more info during game time. They also invented some minor leaguers for the giants, as apparently we don't have enough to fill out the roster.

anyone else had a chance to check it out? any other similar games worth getting into?

so i've only tried out yahoo fantasy baseball these past few years and i keep reading about these "keeper leagues." since working as hard as i do (laziness) prevents me from researching all the options can someone fill me in on which leagues are best/free/worth the price? and are we throwing a league together this year?

i remember last year mlb.com had a sale on all their items, and i believe people got a discount for mlb.tv as well... does anyone know if that same deal was offered this year? i know i have to buy the package soon and was hoping to get a "my team will lose often and i want to pay less because of it" deal.

ok, so i posted this yesterday before noon. before bonds homered and cain won his complete game and baron was the mvp of the world and before the dodgers lost and vincent chase was propositioned by his hot agent and before i cooked up a steak covered with bacon.

if only michael imperioli was in more than 20 seconds of last night's soprano's instead of the karaoke sales guy from "keeping the faith" then all my predictions would have come true.

so, on that thought, call up vinnie the greek and lay a few grand on these predictions:

first-time to spring training, i am super jazzed, but i have no idea what to do. we have tickets to see the giants play, see the angels play, and just for fun to catch tomorrow's exciting royals-mariners game.

if anyone has any suggestions, ideas, thoughts, stock tips, or dinner orders please let me know!

OK, so we have decided on getting Grant a year's supply of rock salt or something and we need a way to collect. Since the PayPal idea won't work unless someone with a business steps up, I found a site called ChipIn- we set it up, pay via credit card, then they can transfer the total to someone's personal paypal to buy the item or they can mail a check. Now I'm not vouching for the site, as I have never used it, but check it out and comment on what you think. Also, if you look at the fees link at the bottom, it says all projects below $10,000 are free of fees.

http://www.chipin.com/overview

It's been reported on MLBTraderumors.com that the Braves have sent H. Ramirez to the Mariners for Soriano, which would mean the big 3-way deal where we get Sexton is probably dead.

http://braves.scout.com/2/598302.html

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Reading through all the posts this month (and burning countless work hours, sorry boss) I see that most of us are fixated on the amount of the players contracts. And as a frugal phil (can't wait until friday's 5 am sales) I hate to overspend as much as the next guy. But if we are going to sign ANY free agents in ANY offseason, we are going to overspend. But here is a vote to overspend starting now.

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I'm all for not getting certain players (Pierre's signing is frightful), but each announced signing is also one less player we can get, overpaid or not. So, with mlb.com reporting Burrell is likely to stay in Philly, is there going to be ANY new blood worth checking out?

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This weekend the Bums take on the Nuns for a 4 game series. We are currently 3 back from LA and 2.5 back from SD. The question here is who do we root for?

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I've been gone recently so I don't know if this has been covered much, but the recent article in the Chronicle about Zito coming across the Bay has my interest piqued.

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