Tag Archives: Tim Lincecum

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Linceblog: Some thoughts on sports life and Mother’s Day; The San Francisco Giants are up, the Golden State Warriors are down?; and more on Tim Lincecum’s mom and why he’s what I call a “hesitant” Filipino

There comes a time when life and sports collide. I was at a personal/family event on Friday night, when sports must be relegated to life’s backdrop. Like the weather, it’s there. You go about your business and know there are games going in some alternate universe. Every now and then you sneak a peak. The Giants knock out Hudson? How did they get those 4 runs?  Now 8?  And what about those Warriors? Down by 3 possessions? More?  In the first-half?

And then you get back to “playing in your own life” and hope your teams win without you.

One did. The other didn’t. The Giants behind Cain came back to avenge the opening Braves loss. And the Warriors? In game 3, the team seemed flat, stuck in some valley and never reached a mountain top. In fact, the ankle injury to Curry completes the metaphor. You try climbing a mountain on a banged up ankle. The Spurs played well, and fought off the Warriors every time they came close in the second-half.

Mother’s Day will be the next stop for the Warriors. The Giants after Saturday’s game, will play on Sunday too.  If your Mom is a sports fans, that’s great. Make sure there’s enough beer.

If not, one will be in “alternate universe”mode again.

Tim Lincecum will be pitching for the Giants in a 1pm game. The reason I write the Linceblog portion of my blog is because I have editors at Filipino outlets that allow me to follow the premier Filipino American player in Major League Baseball.

Lincecum is half-Filipino on his mom’s side. But he’s somewhat of what I call a “hesitant” Filipino and it’s mostly due to his relationship to his mom.

When I asked him about being Filipino earlier this season, he was pretty honest.

 

Lincecum’s relationship with his mom is his personal business and I chose not to press him on it in one of those post-game locker room scenarios usually reserved for answers like “He hit a  change-up high in the zone.”

But Timmy should know he has all sorts of Ninangs and Lolas in the Filipino community rooting for him and wishing he ate just a little more lumpia. And Ligo sardines.

“I like rice,” he told me with a smile one day in the dugout.  “I eat lots of rice.”

Ligo is the company that sponsored that Filipino scarf the Giants gave away recently on Filipino Night. The one with Lincecum’s #55 on it. 

Now if he wants to be a real half-Filipino, he should eat sardines the Filipino way. Open up a small can of Ligo sardines (they come in tomato sauce). Dump it in a fry pan of onions and garlic. When it heats up, use it to  top off your mound of rice. Now that’s what I’d call a pre-game meal. The garlic keeps hitters away.

It’s also something a Filipino mom would do for her son. My mom did something similar for me, while I watched games on TV, though I preferred “tapa.”

Lincecum’s comment on his mom makes you realize how much we are defined by that relationship with Mom and how lucky we are when it’s a special one.

If you are lucky to have your mom close, give her a hug, maybe some flowers, make her a meal (but no Ligo).

Just make sure she’s part of your game.

blog, diversity, Linceblog: Following Tim Lincecum, news, race, SF Giants, sports

Linceblog: 442nd hero Lawson Sakai honored at San Francisco Giants Japanese Heritage Night; Then Cliff Lee and Phils end the Giants’ win streak with 6-2 beatdown; UPDATE-Giants doppleganged 6-2, by right-handed Lee clone

Lawson Sakai, 442 vet and Congressional Gold Medal awardee.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Throwing out the first pitch on this night was a man who was playing third base for his college baseball team during the Pearl Harbor attack.

Lawson Sakai was a student at Compton College in Los Angeles,  but when Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps during the war, his family was sent to live in Manzanar. While in camp, he volunteered for the Army where he served with the celebrated 442nd. The late Senator Dan Inouye was one of his company mates.

Sakai said he was saddened when his close friend died last year in December.  “He said Hawaii would lose so much if he retired,” said Sakai. “So he died with his boots on.”

 

left to right: Col. Brian Shiroyama; USAF Capt Kiyo Sato; Asa Hanamoto; Sakai; Terry Nakanishi, Women’s Army Corps, MIS; Dr.Howard Kline, physician to Nisei vets.

 

 

Sakai, 90 in October, is  retired and living in the South Bay, where he is a Giants fan and often reflects on what the 442nd accomplished.

“We were really outcasts, in 1943,” said Sakai. “If the Nisei didn’t join the 442nd and fight the Germans, we (Japanese Americans)  would not be here today.”

 

89-year-old Sakai throws out the first pitch

 

Now for the other pitches of the night in the actual game.

Oh yeah, the game.

This was supposed to be a pitching duel between the Phillies’ Cliff Lee, and the Giants’ best pitcher of the season, Madison Bumgarner.

In addition, the Giants came into this game euphoric with a six-game streak after sweeping the Dodgers.  The Giants are now also the official comeback kids of the National League, tied with the Orioles in the Majors with 11  late rally victories.

That’s a lot of drama.

So you know it was OK to spot the Philadelphia Phillies for 3 runs in the 2nd.

They would come back, right? Even with Cliff Lee, who’s been 3-0 with a 0.51 ERA at AT&T Park?

Big question marks.

For the Giants, only Hunter Pence stayed streaky hot. He homered in the bottom of the 2nd, and scored  the Giants second run after a double in the 8th.

He was the lone offensive spark on a night the other Giants couldn’t get on base.

So there was no drama. This was more an informercial for Phillies starter Cliff Lee.

The night belonged to Lee, who scattered five hits (including the Pence HR), and kept the Giants at bay with 6 strikeouts.

Bumgarner had 7 strikeouts, but the Phillies were hitting him hard all night.

S’not his night, you might say. 

Bum’s line: 8 hits, 5 runs, one homer run, 2 wild pitches, 100 pitches in all.

That really might have been enough to win if the Giants were hitting like they did in the Dodger series.

No such luck with the Phillies, not when Cliff Lee is on his game to shut down the drama.

UPDATE-5-8-2013  Giants doppleganged as Phils win again 6-2 

 On the anniversary of the first Japanese immigrants’ arrival to the U.S. (May 7, 1843), the coincidence of having a Filipino American starting pitcher may have seemed like the stars were aligned for the Giants on Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

But Phillies starter Kyle Kendrick doesn’t know much about history—as Sam Cook would say.

He created his own history against the Giants, facing them for the first time and making them look foolish at the plate

In 7 innings, Kendrick gave up just 6 hits, 2 runs, and posted six  strikeouts, with no walks.

He had it going.

And Giants hero Tim Lincecum didn’t.

Lince’s line: 7 innings, 9 hits, 5 runs, 3 walks, 7 strikeouts, 1 HR.

Getting to be a similar story each Lince-start.  Signs of brilliance, but it takes a while for it to show in a game. If he’s not on right away, he starts losing it. Runs score, maybe a big inning. And then he settles, is good. And then it’s up to the hitters. That’s the pattern.

Pitching wise, Lincecum doesn’t talk mechanics so much as his “rhythm.”  His rhythm is like a dancer’s. If he’s out of step, he’s all left feet.  In ballet, in baseball, it’s subtle but noticeable. 

Still, it may have been a good enough effort to win, if the Giants’ batters were able to solve Kendrick.

They weren’t.

The Giants were out-pitched,  out-hit, 12-7, and with  2 errors, out-played.

This early in the season, all you can say is, “Next.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

blog, diversity, Linceblog: Following Tim Lincecum, race, SF Giants, sports

Linceblog: Filipino American fans see great game, but no San Francisco Giants victory on heritage night

The Giants should have taken a cue from the tinikling dancers.

You just can’t afford to make errors in the field when you’re a tinikling dancer.

Same goes for a baseball team.

Bowls, gloves, you can’t mess up–not on the field.

Playing the field, dancing with a bowl on your head, errors are costly.

 

The Giants made three deadly errors, that pretty much made the difference in the night’s 6-4 loss.

From the first play on a Parra groundball that led to the first run, to the last inning. The Giants made it exciting by tying the game in the 9th, 4-4. But in the 11th, a series of miscues gave the Diamondbacks the go-ahead runs. There was a misplayed ball by Torres in left that allowed a runner to second. Then a bad throw by Sandoval at third , dropped by Belt at first, followed by a wild pitch that scored a run.  For good measure, the Diamondback’s Parra doubled and another run scored.

A tough night considering the Giants staged a rally as if on Filipino Time, i.e., late.

Two-runs in the eighth, and two-more on a home run by Belt tied the game and thrilled the chilled crowd. But it wasn’t  enough to send fans home happy.

Those with theFilipino Night tickets got special scarves with the number of baseball’s premier Filipino American player, Tim Lincecum, No. 55.

Fan holds up scarf that features number of the premier Filipino American ball player in the majors

There may not be many Filipino American ball players in the “beeg leegs.”  And that makes diversity nights like this one at the Giants’ AT&T Park are important.  There was even a Filipino American ball dude–No. 6, Vince Gomez, retired music teacher.

 

Heritage nights bond the team and the game to the community, and makes a public event like a baseball game a special one. This is what sports does for us these days. It’s the reason the Boston Marathon bombs were so jarring, and why it was important for baseball as a game to respond the way it has to that tragedy.

 

When you include the fans in the stands, baseball really is a reflection of the country, even to how we’re somewhat stratified by where we sit and the ticket we can afford. But we’re all watching the same game, and cheering for the same team.

 

Better yet, though seasonal, it happens everyday, just like life.

 

When you win, you celebrate. And when you lose, you reflect, and get back up.  No time to get down. There’s another game today.

That’s baseball.

 

 

blog, diversity, Linceblog: Following Tim Lincecum, race, SF Giants, sports

Linceblog:Tim Lincecum speaks candidly about his Filipino roots; SF Giants Filipino Heritage Night at AT&T tonight

For Tim Lincecum and the San Francisco Giants, it’s another Filipino Heritage Night, an homage to a fan base that represents the second largest Asian American group in the nation (Four million based on 2011 Census estimates, with Northern California the largest concentration of Filipino Americans outside of Hawaii).

 

And they all love Lincecum, whose mother was Filipino, making the Giants’ star the son of a great-granddaughter of a Filipino immigrant.

 

Lincecum is a 4th generation Filipino American.

 

Far from an accidental, or the reluctant Filipino, Lincecum always seems interested when I’ve mentioned Filipino history to him. One of his recent starts actually was on Bataan Valor Day, the surrender of Bataan and the start of the death march.

 

After a recent game, when he struggled and gave up 7 walks, I asked him about superstitions since ballplayers, like Filipinos are notoriously superstitious. I thought this might get him to open up about being Filipino.

 

But any discussion of being Filipino always goes back to his mother.

 

 

He certainly doesn’t deny his “Filipino-ness.” But like many half-Filipino, or multi-racial Filipinos (21.8 percent of U.S. Filipinos), one’s  comfort level is based on a continued connection to family. Certainly, that’s a private matter–to a point. It’s just that when you take the mound on such a public stage as Major League Baseball, you lose some of that privacy. Filipinos see a game where there are zero Filipinos on the field. And when someone like Lincecum comes along, naturally, he becomes, whether he likes it or not, a kind of global hero to Filipinos everywhere. Sports and identity politics go together.

Just like Venezuelans love Sandoval, Scutaro and Blanco, Filipinos love Lincecum.

Lincecum isn’t pitching tonight. The starter is Matt Cain, not even 1/32nd Filipino, but still beloved by Giants fans.

 

Lincecum might make a cameo as he did on what I believe was the very first Filipino American Heritage night in 2009. The coincidence of Manny Pacquiao promoting his fight with Ricky Hatton made it practically a community event.

 

When pound-for-pound champ Pacman threw the ceremonial first pitch to a catcher named Lincecum, it was probably the first major league Filipino battery in history. (Not in all of baseball, of course. When I caught Marcelino Dumpit as a youth player for Dolores Park and Everett Jr. High in the ’60s, we had a nice Filipino battery going in the city leagues).

Fast forward to 2013, and an older Pacquiao has lost twice, his star not quite as bright as in 2009.

 

Lincecum? He’s had it even tougher. From double-CY winner to statistically being the worst starting pitcher in the league, Lincecum’s last two years have been a mess. He’s struggled to find the rhythm that made him into one of the game’s premier pitchers.

 

Then last Saturday, on 4/20 (coincidence?), Lincecum was brilliant. Throwing with control, Lincecum walked just two batters, and used his low-nineties fastball primarily to challenge hitters, striking out eight. Even more significant, he didn’t give up the big inning that has raised his ERA to over 5.  Does pitching to Posey at catcher really make that much of a difference? It sure seems to. The Giants won the game 2-0, courtesy of a Sandoval homer.

 

Lincecum earned his second win for the season and gained a lot more confidence as continues to get back to his 2009 form.

 

Giants fans, Filipino or not, left that night with big smiles on their faces.

 

The “Preak” was back.

 

 

Read more about Lincecum on Inquirer.net, the major daily newspaper of the Philippines.

http://globalnation.inquirer.net/72569/in-major-league-baseball-tim-lincecum-is-still-the-filipinos-champ

 

http://globalnation.inquirer.net/columns/columns/view/20101102-301073/In-SF-Giants-star-the-story-of-Filipino-America