After a weekend in which it felt like we watched about 100 hours of football, all we can say is Bill Belichick has some major cojones and one can only wonder what Marty Schottenheimer did in a past life to deserve everything that has happened to him in the playoffs. ...

So how did the Giants' hiring of Bruce Bochy go over with Giants fans? Well, does the word "meh" mean anything to you. It's not that people were upset (well, some people were) but most people just kind of gave it a shrug and said that it's not such a bad pick. Kind of like when you go out looking for a used car to buy and you dream of a sports car or a hybrid and you wind up doing what everyone else does-- buy a Honda. It's not very exciting and it's not very sexy but the car just plain ole works. ...

It’s looking like the pre-season favorite for MVP of the 2005 Giants season might not be trainer Stan Conte after all, but Barry Bonds’ publicist. Because today a story is breaking that can’t be any good as it involves two things that give any publicist nightmares: mistresses and Geraldo Rivera. Yep, the mustached-one scored a hot news story as he interviewed some woman claiming to be Bonds’ alleged mistress. In the interview, she not only discussed their affair, but also said that Barry was using steroids as far back as 1999. The alleged mistress, Kimberly Bell, was on Geraldo because she’s been trying to peddle a book for years about the affair which supposedly lasted for nine years and ended with Barry offering a mere $20,000 in hush money. ...

The Giants, who just love their history, are getting ready to sign manager Felipe Alou's son Moises to a two year deal worth something like thirteen or fourteen million bucks, making him their right fielder. He's thirty-nine. Hmm. Felipe and his brothers Matty and Jesus played for the Giants in the sixties, so, from that perspective, this is a warm and fuzzy sort of thing, and Moises hit the crap out of the ball for......

First thing is, you gotta understand that at least one SFist writer obsesses over the Giants to a damned near unhealthy point and scours the internet on a fairly regular (constant?) basis looking for Giants orts. So it's pretty rare when significant San Francisco baseball news reaches him through the papers first. Today, though, the Chron had a pretty sweet scoop when it reported that the Giants have all but signed Florida closer Armando Benitez......

In their first foray into this year's gi-normous free agent market, the Giants signed longtime Cleveland shortstop Omar Vizquel to a three year, $12.25 million deal yesterday. It seems kind of bananas that they've committed that much loot to a guy who turns 38 in April, but they've got the deal structured so they pay him over five years -- $2.5 mil. in '05, $4 mil. in '06 and '07, and deferred payments of......