Giants' Title Defense Begins *UPDATED*

Play ball.

With Tim Lincecum's first pitch at 12:05 PST this afternoon, the San Francisco Giants' title defense has officially begun.

Dave Flemming's sweet, sweet tenor is currently caressing the radio waves. Jon Miller is waxing poetic about God knows what. Giants baseball is back, and all is right with the world.

For the past four months, we've been stray dogs wandering the cold, mean streets of Winter. We've kept ourselves alive scavenging the scraps of winter meetings, free agent signings and World Series DVDs. But now the gates have been opened to the great smorgasbord of Spring. Come one and all, eat and be merry.



You can listen to the game on KNBR, but not knbr.com (blame the Man). You can also listen to it on MLB.com as I am, but you need an MLB Audio account (again, the Man).

Lineceum has already given up 4 hits and 2 runs before recording an out.

But fear not -- I remember Lincecum having a shaky Spring last year only to start the season on fire. It all ended ok last year, so I'm fine with him doing pretty much everything the same.

Jon Miller already mistakenly called Miguel Tejada Juan Uribe. The first of 4,309 times that will happen this season. I've already heard the Tap Plastics jingle 18 times (t-t-t-tap!). The Giants already had their first three up-three down inning on offense. But worst of all, Dave Flemming, a Stanford Alum, already took a dig at Cal Baseball. Watch it, voice crack.

But hey, they waited at least one inning to hit into their first double play!

This party is just getting started!

*UPDATE*

Giants win 7-6!

The Giants picked up right where they left off, both in that they won and made it much harder than it needed to be. Entering the 9th inning with a 7-4 lead, the G-men put the go-ahead run on second. But like a mother seal trying to identify its pup on a crowded beach, at least we clearly identify the Giants. This is our team!

 I'll take 105 more of those!

The radio broadcast was half Cactus League Game and half World Series reminiscing. Additionally, Jon Miller provided quite literally every known statistic on the band Journey and managed to repeatedly pronounce the song title "Don't Stop Believing" like it was the Latin name for an exotic bird. "Don't...stop...believin'.

Everything's coming up Milhouse!