-So everyone is talking about what's up with the Barry. Not only has he not been signed yet, but he rolled into the winter meetings with an entourage in tow looking for a job. We get a kick out of the idea of seeing Barry standing outside some hotel handing out resumes to any GM who walks by. The Giants, as you can well imagine, were not happy but they continued to talk to his agent nevertheless. ...

Because you all love sports so much, we're doing a daily feature on the latest in sports. Warriors 117 Kings 105- What's gotten into the Warriors? They've won four in a row and scoring like Leo DiCaprio in his "P----- Posse" days. Leading the way is Baron Davis who is playing out of his head and playing out of his head a lot as Nelson is playing him almost the entire game every game. Considering Baron's off-and-on again relationship with the injured reserve, we're not sure how smart a move that is. Also playing every minute of every game this early in the season is maybe not a smart move either. Anyways, he lead the way with 36 points. ...

-Another Caltrain fatality, yesterday around 6. It's the thirteenth this year. -McAfee is your latest hi-tech company to have a CEO go down due to stock shenanigans. ...

The Oakland Athletics this afternoon showed why this year’s team is infinitely grittier and more determined than playoff teams of years past. This collection of misfits and guys barely above the legal drinking age simply know how to win. They’ve outplayed and out-executed the Twins in the Metroblob, and showed the baseball world why they’ll go deep into the playoffs. Instead of Frank Thomas hammering the Twins into submission this afternoon, it was the likes of Nick Swisher, Marco Scutaro and Mark Kotsay running the Twins ragged. The 5-2 final score doesn’t reflect the way the A’s controlled this game. Boof Bonser, the Twins starting pitcher, never really had a chance against the highly selective, pitch-conscious A’s batters. They nitpicked the poor guy like vultures picking at an animal carcass. And in the end it came down to the basics: hitting, pitching, defense and the big play (something the Twins were touted as superior to the A’s). Esteban Loiaza, a man we’ve called out in the past, pitched like he’s been sipping on stud juice—he was simply outstanding before running into a couple of homerun blasts. It was also Swisher making adjustments and not swinging for the fences, but using that crappy dome for less glamorous doubles. Smart move, Swish! And it was Mark Kotsay’s brilliant inside-the-park homerun that sealed the deal on this little affair in Minneapolis. ...

Everyone loves a redemption story and the A's this year might have baseball's best redemption story as Frank Thomas put the Big Hurt on the Twins, leading the A's to a 3-2 victory. He started things off with a home run in the 1st and then added a crucial insurance run in the top of the ninth to give the A's a one run lead. That became crucial when the Twins lead off the bottom of the ninth with a triple that Milton Bradley lost in the Metrodome ceiling (everyone who plays there has done it-- it's one of the reasons playing in the Metrodome just flat-out sucks for visiting teams). ...

Not that we watched a lot of football yesterday, but we saw that red haired woman in the Nissan commercial enough times to make us feel like we need to introduce her to our parents. ...

SPN is reporting the Victor Conte told friends that not only did Barry take "the cream" and the "clear" but knew damn well what they were. This is the very-same Victor Conte who swore to everyone that Barry didn't take steroids and was completely innocent of anything. Also the very same Victor Conte who leaked all that Grand Jury testimony (allegedly) that put Barry into potential trouble over perjury charges. With friends like these.... ...

Okay everyone, let's do the Tighten Up. Twins 7 A's 5- Joe Kennedy picked the wrong time to snap his scoreless inning streak as he blew a two run lead late to the Twins, a team long-buried and now looking like your possible Central Division Champs. The A's were up 5-3 in the eighth when Kennedy, pitching his second inning, started giving up hit after hit. This wasn't any sort of Benitez job, however-- Kennedy had a 15 1/3 scoreless streak going and took his first loss since last year. That's the thing about being a relief pitcher, no matter how well you do, at some point you're going to blow a game. The game also marked the end of Frank Thomas's home-run streak, as he was unable to do the deed this time around. The big thing, however, is that the Angels, a team that has just pretty much hung around and around and around all season, also won. What was once a fairly comfortable lead is now not so much as the Halos are now 4 1/2 back. We had thought the A's were pretty much in cruising mode but we guess not. Welcome to Pennant Race Hell, A's fans. ...

Chargers 27 Raiders 0- Well, that didn't go well. It went so well, in fact, Aaron Brooks got himself already benched and we had him making it halfway through the season before getting benched. Typical Raiders-- all the hype, all the energy, all the excitement that was created before this game (the tailgaiting started early Monday morning) and they totally laid an egg. In sort-of Prime Time. Even more revealing, everybody in the world knew the Chargers were going to run the ball and everybody knows they weren't going to let Phillip Rivers throw the ball and yet the Raiders gave up 131 yards to Tomlinson. The countdown to the Randy Moss explosion begins now. ...

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. ...

It's looking like one of those pitching kids the Giants have been bragging about for years might be living up to the hype. We're talking about Matt Cain, of course, who won yet another game, 4-0 against the Whale Vagina Padres. We love when the Giants play the Pads because they seem to beat them everytime, even when the Pads are in the midst of a five game winning streak. Anyways, Cain pitched seven innings, gave up one hit (he had a no-no going into the sixth), and no runs. In his past five starts he has given up one earned run in thirty-four innings and an era that was once over seven is now under four. Expect his arm to blow out sometime early next season....

Soy es parados, your Bay Area baseball teams are losers, baby... ...

The Giants won (won!) their tenth out of thirteen games as Noah "Mr. August" Lowry pitched a 4-1 win over the Wild Card leading Cincinnati Reds, their second win in a row over the Reds. Sabaen's mid-season pickups are finally showing signs of life as Mike Stanton got the save and Shea Hillenbrand hit a two run home run. The Giants now find themselves three games back in the NL and 3 1/2 out of the Wild Card and with the Mets and Cardinals now flailing..... ...

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. ...

With the start of the upcoming baseball season less than a week away, SFist's sports desk will try and break the new season down for y'all, round-table, free-form, discussion style. In the next few days, we'll debate the winners, the losers, and all the in-betweens. This discussion could be great, it could be lame, it could be meh. We guess we'll find out ...

Frank Thomas has hit 448 home runs, and has hit .307/.427/.568, over his 16-year career. That's pretty impressive, but in the last 2 seasons, Frank Thomas has been mostly injured: he's appeared in a total of 108 major league baseball games. Whatever Frank Thomas does in the 2006 baseball season, he'll do in the uniform of the Oakland A's. Thursday, the A's signed Thomas to a $500,000 contract, which reportedly includes $2.6 million in......

There's good news and there's bad news in Giants-land today. Let's start with the bad news: so far the only Hot Stove action the Giants have pulled off is trading one relieving re-tread for another relieving re-tread for yesterday they traded LaTroy Hawkins for Steve Kline. Kline, who gained a measure of infamy for giving his then-manager Tony LaRussa (ha!) the finger, is considered a get for the Giants because he’s left handed and they lost their only left-handed setup man when Scott Eyre left for the Cubs. Or maybe not. ...