Oakland Bay Bridge
27 Sunday Aug 2017
Posted landscape, North Oakland, Oakland, travel
in27 Sunday Aug 2017
Posted landscape, North Oakland, Oakland, travel
in08 Tuesday Jul 2014
Posted Uncategorized
inTags
A's, Athletics, Bay, bridge, Francisco, game, giants, half, nagging, oakland, pre, San, series, sf
It would all be in good fun if it didn’t mean so much to us.
Having been nine and a half up six weeks ago and now down a half a game and knowing the Dodgers are down by a sh*t-ton to the Tigers in Detroit right now, it’s motivating. (Man, I hate interleague). If we can get the win tonight we can erase that nagging half game.
Go Giants!
25 Monday Nov 2013
Posted Uncategorized
in24 Sunday Nov 2013
Posted Uncategorized
inTags
california, Dave, David, Karthik, Kingfish, m.t., mtk, oakland, shoot, shuffleboard, slots, tournament, TURKEY
24 Sunday Nov 2013
Posted Uncategorized
inTags
cafe, california, fun, game, Karthik, Kingfish, m.t., mtkk, oakland, pub, shuffleboard, tournament, turkeyshoot
24 Sunday Nov 2013
Posted Uncategorized
inTags
2013, california, game, Karthik, Kingfish, mtk, oakland, play, shuffleboard, teams, tournament
29 Sunday Sep 2013
Posted Coastal Cali, music video, North Oakland, Oakland, S.F., SF Bay, vehicles
in13 Friday Sep 2013
Posted Coastal Cali, Oakland, S.F., SF Bay, vehicles
in26 Wednesday Jun 2013
Posted Coastal Cali, fishing, North Oakland, Oakland, SF Bay, vehicles
in01 Saturday Jun 2013
Posted Series Recaps
inThe Athletics beat a loose, sloppy, error-filled, weak-hitting Giant team for three games and succumbed to decent defense and slightly better hitting in game four.
The only thing missing from these Giant losses was the Yakkity Sax music that makes anything it goes with look cartoonish. sigh.
21 Sunday Apr 2013
Posted radio, Series Recaps
inTags
angel, AT&T, back, Barry, bounce, call-in, diego, enough, Francisco, game, giants, hits, just, knbr, Lincecum, Lurie, m.t., Marty, murderers, oakland, padres, pagan, park, post, rows, San, series, sweep, Tim, timmy, zeets, Zito
The Padres were preyed upon by the Giants, who were licking their wounds after being swept in Milwaukee in games which exploded the ERAs of Barry Zito and Matt Cain.
So the Giants relished the opportunity to face a weak opponent back at home in the friendly, wide-open spaces of AT&T – they were eager to do what they do so well they’re the World Series Champs.
The formula is clear: pitching, defense, just enough hits and taking advantage of opponents’ mistakes. We should stop calling Giants Baseball “Torture,” because it’s the Giants’ method that creates the tension. They want to set the conditions taut and then to play crisp, so the other team will make a mistake first.
Giants Ball is small ball with four basic priorities. The simple formula applied effectively, can be beautiful. In order of importance:
1. Pitching – quality starters and a stable pen. The Giants rely heavily on starting pitching and on the bullpen. Bochy continues to improve at making the necessary moves to prevent runs from crossing the plate.
2. Crisp Defense – Marty Lurie on Bench Coach Ron Wotus: “What Ronnie said was, ‘If you get a double-play ball you better turn it. (beat) That’s the difference between a pennant winning team and another team.'”
3. Just Enough Hits – situational hits to produce “just enough” runs. It’s a different philosophy … think Just Enough Hits as opposed to Murderer’s Rows. We keep mowing down Murderer’s Rows in the World Series. Pitching wins out over a month of postseason play. All you need is just enough hits.
Jon Miller: “Sandoval is now hitting a *cool* five fifty with runners in scoring position. Pablo’s playing the chauffeur telling those runners in scoring position, hop in, I’m driving you home.”
4. Take Advantage of Opponents Mistakes
Some may think of plays that result from opponents errors as lucky, but when you play tight, crisp, team ball like this, you create conditions by which to seize upon errors of the opponent.
It’s a plan that’s going to generally result in close games. Lurie: 14 of 19 games have been decided by less than 3 runs and the Giants are 10-4 in those games.” We’ll take that!
So quit chewing your nails and get used to it. Learn to enjoy the chess match from the defensive perspective, let’s talk pen vs. pen.
I joined Marty Lurie on the Post Game to talk about that and other joys of small ball … and it was fun:
Thanks, Marty!
The highlight of the weekend was Angel Pagan’s walkoff double on Friday night. Though the Giants had to come from behind and score late to win it, the score was low because the pitchers were doing their thing.
Pitching
Giants starting pitchers gave up two runs over 27 innings and had two shutouts.
Bumgarner got tagged by Chase Headley for those runs, which was an anomaly in his pitching. Otherwise he was on target and the team didn’t let him get the loss: Pagan’s walk-off prevented it.
Tim Lincecum’s performance was dominant – with eight strikeouts over 6 innings – and the Giants’ system worked most efficiently in Game Two. Pablo Sandoval’s two run homer was all the scoring we needed and all we got. Mijares, Casilla and Romo cleaned up, held and closed.
In Game Three, Bruce Bochy left Barry Zito in through the 7th, which, if it were Bumgarner or Cain I would consider exactly the wrong move (please see other posts) … but Zeets is a special case, pitching perhaps the best of his life. He wants and deserves the innings. He was, to borrow Marty Lurie’s word for it, “electrifying” – seven shutout innings on 102 pitches with 71 strikes and pitched a great game.
Chad Gaudin came in with a five run lead and in a non-save situation maintained the shutout for the final two innings. The bullpen is really starting to gel.
Hitting
Pablo Sandoval and Buster Posey each had a two-run homer in the series: Buster’s first home run of the year and Panda’s game two decider. The Giants have hit 11 Home runs, and I believe that’s 3rd worst in the Major Leagues – Just Enough Hits as opposed to Murderer’s Rows.
In the absence of power, key hits are what’s important and several guys on the team are doing the job to create a collective effort – a different hero every night.
Pablo’s bat has woken up after back-to-back, 0-fer nights and he is now leading the team and ranked int he league in RBIs, hitting .550 with RISP, which prompted Jon Miller to remark: “Pablo’s playing the chauffeur telling those runners in scoring position, ‘Hop in, I’m driving you home.'”
Angel Pagan won Game One with that walk-off double but has been getting other key hits throughout the young season. Last year he tied the 109-year-old Giants record for home hit streak and he seems focused on breaking it this year. He and Andres Torres have been picking up the pace to get on base as Marco Scutaro starts to find his stride.
Hunter Pence has been getting key hits as well and has four home runs to lead all Giants. Brandon Crawford is having his best year hitting in the majors thus far, threatening to end the season as a .300+ hitter and a Gold Glove winner.
Zito is getting calculated, intentional hits: well-executed bunts, infield hits and even a base hit swinging that looked great. Bay City Ball has a great piece about where Barry Zito’s hits go. Hint: the same way all the time.
Nick Noonan continues to show presence that’s unusual for a rookie – key pinch hits, solid infield work. Brandon Belt has been streaky, still looking for his swing. The negative comments on a hole in his swing get ugly. I still have faith.
This was a good series against a weak opponent that featured pitching and just enough hits by the Giants.
25 Tuesday Dec 2012
Posted journal entries, North Oakland
inI believe I’m a species of animal born to my parents forty-five years ago in what we call Tamil Nadu. I believe our species, which we categorize homo sapiens sapiens, is very much like other animal species that share this organism, our planet – particularly those in our family, mammalia.
However, I also believe we’ve grown in a unique manner from all living things and we have been inventive.
We invented God.
We empowered ourselves above all living things with this great rationalization, and we alone became intelligent beyond our design.
We then spent the last hundred years dismantling our invention. Humankind is responsible for itself.
We began devoting our time to other inventions: sciences, maths, money, power and all manner of feats of engineering. We’ve launched satellites and a space station that gives us a permanent presence in space. We’ve explored the moon and sent robots to Venus and Mars. We have sent deep space probes so far away they are about to leave the heliosphere.
We’ve explored and mapped our planet in great detail. We have conquered many diseases that used to kill us and have now grown to a population of at least seven billion individual human beings. We understand statistics and our species enough to know we will make it to ten billion, unless we experience a cataclysmic event.
We are the only living thing capable of creating such an event.
I believe the era must be called the anthropocene. The Age of the Human.
It is important to do so because it implies a willingness to take responsibility. It makes our legacy as a species even more important because we are now the stewards of this world.
We connect by use of these machines instantaneously all over the world and can exchange ideas and thoughts with unprecedented speed, which implies the ability to make massive, global change in thinking toward similar goals possible. Corporate culture has dominated such mass media.
The Digital Generation is significantly different from human beings who came before them. I’ve written we ought to consider categorizing the digital generation as a new species of human being: homo sapiens digitalis
I am a father and a son and of a transitionary generation between sapiens and digitalis. Having unmade God and seeing how much of an effect we are having on our world, I feel disconnected from society.
I see this age as the anthropocene and long to take greater responsibility for my fellows, but instead, I grow isolated and separate from most because of my beliefs.
Post-Neo-Liberal Isolation is not an illness. It is a state of awareness. From within it, I compose my expressions in an attempt to work through it, not to escape it. It cannot be escaped. Beyond it lies the future of humanity and indeed, of this world.
That is my belief.
Well, at least, that’s my belief today.
18 Tuesday Dec 2012
Posted by mtk | Filed under flora, North Oakland, photography
24 Saturday Nov 2012
Posted Oakland
inTags
3-D, art, bar, california, carving, craft, hobbyist, layer, machined, McGee's, oakland, tool, Wood
apparently there was a machine they sold in the 70’s that allowed one to cut into wood to create layers. Craft machines for hobbyists were popular in those days: rock tumblers, plasticizing half-dome machines and etc.
I’ve never seen the wood carving one, but this guy in the neighborhood of McGee’s in Oakland made a pretty good rendering of the bar from across the street, saw it last week, my first time in this Oakland neighborhood spot.
21 Wednesday Nov 2012
21 Wednesday Nov 2012
16 Friday Nov 2012
Posted fiction, Oakland, performance, S.F., short film
inTags
a.p., airport, Balas, Brooks, consuelo, dangle, dj, earle, ferrara, fiction, film, Francisco, inside, James, jason, JFR, Karthik, Kevin, KoKo's, lloyd, Lounge, m.t., manning, mtk, narrative, OAK, oakland, outsider, Raj, Robert, rosencrantz, San, sf, short, tanner, the, Walt
“The Academy and the Government are always the last, the very last, to state the truth.”
– Dr. Robert Brooks
a narrative short fiction about two academics, one an invited guest of the other, who meet in the SF Bay and discuss aspects of the state of the world, briefly, but disagree.
produced and directed by M.T. Karthik
camera/lighting by Jason F. Rosencrantz
edited by MTK (with JFR); written by MTK (with JFR and Lloyd Dangle)
starring: James Earle as Dr. Robert Brooks, MTK as Dr. Raj Balas
and acting as “the students”: Lloyd Dangle, Walt Tanner and A.P. Ferrara
with Chris as the bartender and DJ Consuelo on decks
music: Alma de cera by Abel Duêrê, undercooled by Ryuichi Sakamoto, zigga zigga bite off 3 Feet High and Rising by de la soul, piano track by Vijay Iyer
thanks to OAK airport and KoKo’s Lounge
08 Thursday Nov 2012
Posted fauna, North Oakland
in27 Saturday Oct 2012
Tags
2012, AT&T, Carter, from, from oakland, game, house, Karthik, Lurie, m.t., Marty, mt, mtk, oakland, park, public, series, three, world
ALL YEAR LONG I HAVE HUGE … OK NOT HUGE, BUT ALL KINDS OF LITTLE DIFFERENCES WITH THIS GUY AND YOU KNOW WHAT HE DOES?
He invites me on the radio to talk about it.
and last Saturday he let me wear the Championship Ring from 2010. wow.
Marty Lurie, radio host who joined KNBR early in 2010 after working to cover the A’s, was immediately a lucky element for the Giants. He and I stood exactly where we are in this photo two years before, and bore witness during the run that finally made the Giants World Series Champs in San Francisco. Marty walked in … and we won.
For decades a criminal defense attorney, and at that a New Yorker, Mr. Lurie became a historian of the game of baseball independent of what he does now for KNBR. If anyone must, Marty Lurie must be associated with the cross-country relationship the Giants have that reaches back to the Polo Grounds in New York City.
But by providence and timing, Marty has grown into a unique role with the World Series Champs and is now an important member of the San Francisco Giants team.
Mr. Lurie’s an excellent radio interviewer whose competence is a direct result of his research. I loved watching him at the Public House in Game 5 against the Braves back in 2010. He sat down to score the game and pulled out a yellow legal pad to do it. He’s a baseball nerd trained as a lawyer!
Mr. Lurie’s interviews of baseball players and managers on Talkin’ Baseball, which he’s been conducting season-long for three years now, are a growing chronicle of the game.
So Marty Lurie is an attorney who can discuss both leagues’ histories very effectively. He brought a whole lot of AL contacts over to KNBR the first year and was eager to share with us NLers the value of certain stories from the lesser league.
But slowly over the past three years, he has joined the stewards of the Giants Championships of 2010 and 2012 who, taken collectively, have become arbiters of SF’s first time championship memories. (full disclosure, GBC hopes to be included in that group of stewards)
Marty, I’m saying it here for the first time: You’re the only lawyer I really like.
Thanks for letting me wear the Championship Ring and for doing such a bang-up job behind the mic.
sincerely,
“M.T.”
and, in 2010: “Carter from Oakland”
(just pissed off a whole lot of lawyers I know who think me and them’re “real close”).
01 Monday Oct 2012
30 Sunday Sep 2012
29 Saturday Sep 2012
29 Saturday Sep 2012
25 Tuesday Sep 2012
Posted by mtk | Filed under North Oakland, photography
19 Wednesday Sep 2012
18 Tuesday Sep 2012
Posted North Oakland, vehicles
in17 Monday Sep 2012
Posted mural, North Oakland
in16 Sunday Sep 2012
Posted baseball, North Oakland
in16 Sunday Sep 2012
Posted baseball, North Oakland
in30 Thursday Aug 2012
Posted North Oakland, S.F., travel
in