-And Stanford hires...Jim Harbaugh. Harbaugh was an NFL QB, most famously with the Bears and the Colts. and was the coach of the University of San Diego, not exactly a DIvision 1A team. His record there, though, was 29-6 with 27 wins in his last 29 games which isn’t too shabby. But is it a reach? Or a gamble? And is it the right gamble? ...

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......

More like SFist Blotto today! A Gilroy High School post-prom party this weekend got a little out of hand, and culminated in a senior falling off a third floor balcony at the Monterey Best Western hotel. Fret not, folks -- just like in the cartoons, she landed on an awning, which is credited for saving her life. The cops came by the hotel two more times that evening, once on a complaint of public drunkenness, and the other to arrest two guys doing $3200 of damage to the hotel ice machine. In other alcohol-related news, a bartender and a waitress at Noe's Bar and Grill on 24th and Church are being credited for their sharp eyes -- they caught a guy slipping some kind of drug into his date's drink. They whisked the drink away, claiming it was bad, and then saw him do it again as they were waiting for the cops. When the guy became suspicious, he mumbled something about "dirty glasses," offered to buy the bartender and waitress drinks, and then fled the scene in his BMW convertible. And finally: the inebriated baseball fan who threw his beer on pudgy Jason Giambi at Saturday's A's/Yankees game has been charged with battery, public intoxication, and throwing stuff on the field. Giambi, in a showing of good sportsmanship, has declined to press charges, but the DA makes the final decision. The fan, who's the son of Lafayette mayor Carl Anduri (!!), wasn't the only poorly-behaving A's fan this weekend -- the next day, two guys jumped onto the field. One was caught by Eric Byrnes; the other, wearing a diaper and no shirt, was caught by security. ...

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......