Here's what's been going on in the wide world of sports while we've been fighting off the flu......

It appears that the Billy Beane Player Emporium is still open for business as Beane just traded traded Nick Swisher to the White Sox for a bunch of prospects. The house-cleaning continues....

Here's todays sports news...

Here's todays sports news...

Here's todays sports news...

Royals 2 A's 1- So who is this Jack Cust and where the hell did he come from? He's from New Jersey and was drafted in '97 by the Dbacks. He then went from Arizona to Colorado to Baltimore and to San Diego and his only major accomplishment in the bigs up until this past week was tripping on the basepaths during a rundown when he was on the Orioles. All along, he was known......

here's todays sports news...

Here's todays sports wrap up...

Hey, here's some shocking news, but the SFPD actually have a bunch of people in custody for the shooting of a13 year old girl several weeks ago. Police had arrested two men and a third gave himself up to officers. They are being charged with a whole host of bad things, like attempted murder and aggravated assault. ...

Ahem...... Perhaps you would like a preview of the upcoming season from a totally official source? Well, you’re obviously not going to get that from us, but we are pleased to bring you the very first installment of A’s Anatomy; where the green and gold will be dissected all season, and no one will be spared, even if you’re Billy Beane and his BFF. (Just kidding, Bob Geren; welcome aboard!) ...

-The Sharkies lost to the Dallas Stars, 4-3. It's the second consecutive loss against the Stars this week and who does the NHL scheduling anyways? It's also the Sharks third consecutive home loss. Their main culprit? Lousy power plays. So, does all this mean the Sharks need to bring in some more veteran guys? ...

-The Warriors111 Spurs 102: This is the second big-name team the Warriors have beaten up at home in a week (they beat the Jazz earlier) and they got some R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Take Care TCB, from Spurs coach Greg Popovich. Bruce Jenkins says it's all about Nellie....

In a surprising move today, Oakland A’s brass fired manager Ken Macha with two years remaining on his contract. Many A's fans are scratching their heads this afternoon, wondering when the A's headquarters had become drama central. Despite leading the team to its first ALCS since 1992, Macha’s inability to communicate effectively with players was foremost on the list of complaints levied by key personnel. His time with the A's was always tenuous at best; his on-again, off-again merry go-round with Billy Beane subject to intense annual review, with Macha barely surviving the cut each year. His job would typically come down to key veteran players vouching for him, despite his obvious lack of social skills. This year, no such veteran dared throw him a life jacket. Not Kotsay, not Chavez and definitely not Milton Bradley. ...

Sometimes a loss can be a victory and this is one of those losses that looks like a victory. Except in the win column where it really counts. The Niners came out right from the start loaded for bear and scored a TD with Alex Smith hooking up with Vernon Davis on their very first drive. The Cards then went on to take a 21-7 lead but the Niners kept coming and coming and coming, only to finally go down in defeat when Smith's Hail Mary pass fell incomplete. In fact, the Niners could claim they won all the big things but lost due to the small things, like penalties and missed passes and one missed field goal. Which sounds pretty bad if you're a contending team but really good if you're pretty much not. Oh, and Frank Gore is the man. His two-yard TD run where he basically just pushed himself into the end zone was the kind of football that would have made Vince Lombardi smile. ...

Ken Macha gets zero respect when it comes to managing the Oakland Athletics. It stands to reason that if he were Buck Showalter or Mike Scioscia, accolades would tumble from high heaven about his skills as a miracle worker. No manager in the American League has done more with less this year than Macha-not one! And yet, we utter his name among baseball denizens and they shrug their shoulders and continue imbibing a cold, frosty one. Macha does little to capture the imagination of A's fans in general. To them, he's the silver-haired lump sitting on the far right side of the dugout making the obvious pitching change when necessary. SFist wants to know one thing: Does Ken Macha matter? A's fans get all into a tizzy-fit over resident pretty-boy GM, Billy Beane, but does anyone else wearing the Kelly green and gold deserve any credit? If fans look closely, Beane's numbers-crunching hoo-haw isn't translating into fat numbers on the Stat sheet this year. ...

The Oakland A's will win the American League West. Yes, this year! We (SFist) are not accustomed to making barrel-chested predictions that eventually turn to fool's gold as it often does on ESPN's "Baseball Tonight" -- we're merely pointing out the obvious: the Oakland A's will win the AL West this year. Despite their anemic, Milton Bradley-less performance last night at the hands of the Los Angeles Angels and Joe Saunders-- who they made seem like a young Ron Guidry than the junk-ball throwing Tommy John clone that he is-- the A's will win more of those tightly-sewn games than the Angels, or god forbid, the perennial flame-out Texas Rangers. And they'll do it without resident genius Billy Beane making a nano-move during the trade deadline frenzy. ...

The Prairie War raging in baseball between the Statheads and the Seamheads leaped into the world of football over the weekend as the Chron's Ira Miller and Ray Ratto tag-teamed the SF Weekly over it’s cover suck up on the Niners' Billy Beane Wannabe, Paraag Marathe. Marathe is the Niners' Director of Football Operations and would be Public Enemy #1 to Niner fans if it weren't for the fact John York got that well-deserved assignment years ago. ...

After an unproductive week at the MLB winter meetings, the A's heated up the winter stove again: they traded minor league OF Andre Ethier to the Dodgers for major league OF Milton "Insert Game-Based Nickname Here" Bradley and major league IF Antonio Perez. That is: they traded a bird in the bush for two in the hand. Ethier was the AA Texas League player of the year--Bradley, the prize for the A's in this......

Just like we said at the end of the 2005 season: the A's need pitching in '06. On Monday, Billy Beane surprised baseball insiders by putting on shoes with laces and signing free agent starter Esteban Loaiza (whose last name we're going to have to learn to spell, like the whole Harden-Haren thing wasn't bad enough) to a 3-year, $21 million contract. Though Loaiza's agent, Joe Boggs, expected the A's to get out of the......

We come to exhume Ken Macha--still, no praise. When A's Brand Baseball last appeared here, the A's and manager Ken Macha (right, not a recent photo) had broken off contract negotiations. $2.6 million over 3 years, with a team option for the 4th, was simply unacceptable to Macha, who became a free agent. The A's started conducting interviews for the vacancy, and our tone about the whole thing may have been somewhat cavalier. Imagine......

The A's have lost four games in a row, to the Minnesota Twins and the Baltimore Orioles. They were defeated by A's Brand Baseball's two favorite Orioles, (in order) SS Miguel Tejada and LF Eric Byrnes, and by our least favorite, overrated, lying, cheating, limp-dicked 1B/DH Rafael Palmeiro. They suffered a bad inning from Barry Zito, who sustained his first loss since June 17, on Monday, a horrible call by first-base umpire Chris Guccione......

So it's been kind of a weird season for the A's, and it has never been weirder than last weekend, when the trading deadline came and went without incident at the corner of 66th and Hegenberger. The A's made no deadline moves; Billy Beane, who says he spends April and May figuring out what the A's need, June and July going and getting it, and August, September and as much of October as possible......

When we last left your San Francisco Giants they were busy pondering their '05 existence: whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of a season's outrageous fortune or to trade for more arms against a sea of losses? And your answer? Randy Winn. Well that and no Barry but was there anyone who didnt see that coming? (side note-- remember those theories out there that Barry was sitting this season......

Baseball is, like, so weird. A 6-game homestand that included Barry Zito’s first win since last July, Rich Harden’s first major league complete game and the catch of Eric Byrnes's life all sounds good, and the A’s got exactly that this week but still managed to drop 4 of those 6 to Seattle and Texas. This week alone, they went from Z’s W over Seattle in front of 30,634 fans on the kind of......

Sunday night in the Bronx, the New York Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox, 9-2. As everyone knows, that means the Yankees will win the 2005 World Series. Even so, the other teams in Major League baseball will play 162 games this year. That includes your Oakland Athletics, now Lewis Wolff's and Billy Beane's Oakland Athletics as well. (Try to share.) At 12:05 PM SFist Jake, contributing.......

New SFist Jake gets us up to speed on what the A's have in store for us this season....

Spring is in the air -- can you smell it? It's that intoxicating mix of grass, red clay, pine tar and chaw. That's right -- pitchers and catchers report in just a few hours, and no, we're not talking about a party in Key West. Of course, one of the joys of baseball for the rabid fan is signing up with your friends for a fantasy baseball league. Right now, people are poring over......

Back on Tuesday, Athletics Nation carried the third and final part of their interview with Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane, who is generally considered something of a genius in his field. Kos points out that he had this to say about the blogosphere, after discussing how fluid player deals and a managing a team's makeup can be: [T]hat's what I love, for lack of a better word, about the blogger's world.  There is a......

In breaking news, Billy Beane has shipped the Oakland A's ace, Tim Hudson, to the Atlanta Braves for three young players who, well, won't cost so much. From Atlanta's point of view, we think this may have something to do with the Mets signing Pedro Martinez. So the "Big Three" is now down to two, and since Mulder seems to have problems with his back and shoulder and Zito with his head, the days of......