In light of Sunday's news that a Giants fan allegedly threw a banana at Orioles' center fielder Adam Jones, who is black, the franchise made a formal apology to both the player and the team.

In a statement issued Monday morning, the Giants mea culpa'd:

We were extremely disappointed to learn about the incident involving Adam Jones at AT&T Park yesterday. The Giants have a zero tolerance policy against this type of behavior, which results in immediate ejection from the ballpark. While we have been investigating the matter since we learned of the situation, unfortunately we have been unable to identify the person responsible. We would like to extend our sincerest apologies to Adam and the entire Orioles organization for this unfortunate incident. The inappropriate actions of this individual in no way reflect the values of our organization and our fans.

After Baltimore swept the series, Jones tweeted about the incident, saying, "I want to thank whatever slapdick threw that banana towards my direction in CF in the last inning. Way to show ur class u jackass."

Ne later found temporary solace in a plate of delicious tamales.

UPDATE: In a dramatic twist, someone has stepped forward claiming to be the banana-tosser. Longtime fan Alexander Poulides, 42, talked to Mercury News, saying that he threw the banana, yes; but he threw the peel in disgust at the Giants, not Jones or the color of his skin. "Oh, my god,'' Poulides tells Mercury News. "I threw a banana on my way out."

Poulides reportedly "grabbed a banana off a catering cart and hurled it toward the field in disgust at the Giants near the end of a 10-2 loss at AT&T Park on Sunday." The banana, according to Poulides, "sailed toward Jones," who in turn tweeted about it.

[MLB]
[SF Appeal]

Brewers 7 Giants 5- There's a scene in the Producers (the original) in which after the play becomes a hit, a forlorn and stunned Gene Wilder goes through receipts of all the shares that's been divied out and reads each one out loud as he realizes the true magnitude of how much money he and Bialystock owe. We imagine that's how Peter Magowan feels everytime Barry Zito pitches. "$126 million for seven years...$18 million a season....$700,000 per game...."

Orioles 2 A's 0- Now that we've finished "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" we feel really sad. Now what do we have to look forward to? In the place of something that gave us a lot of warm feelings, we have nothing but this big huge, empty hole. Kind of like the A's offense.

The book was good--scary and intense and all sorts of dark and epic.

You know how everyone says San Francisco is a little bubble utopia isolated from the realities of the rest of the world? Well, you might as well embrace it this Labor Day, because the eastbound Bay Bridge is closed all weekend.

Yes yes, you probably already know, since Caltrans has commissioned every single flashing road sign in the entire state to remind you for the last two weeks. We feel badly for any Amber Alert children kidnapped this weekend. BART will run extra trains, there's extra ferries running -- and a few charter buses will be allowed on the bridge, including the ones hired by the hapless couple that's been planning their Labor Day Treasure Island wedding for the last two years (as well as the ones for the Baltimore Orioles and the Texas Rangers, who are coming in to play the A's).

This is it for awhile in terms of big projects -- but expect delays for the next 2 and a half years, as the crews demolish the westbound approach (goodbye, weird lane that looks like it's exiting at Fremont but then puts you back on 101), and set up the detour lanes going around Yerba Buena Island.

A large portion of Western literature doesn't make sense to California kids. Specifically, we don't get all those poems about springtime, because it just doesn't feel like that big a deal. This is not to say that "there are no seasons in California." Rather, we mean that spring is nice, sure, but so are summer and fall, and Indian summer, and hey, winter isn't really that bad, either. There seem to be more poems about one season than it really warrants, is all.

There is one such poem, though, that we love, and can't get out of our heads this February morning. It's one line long, in dactylic quadrameter (there's a syllable missing from the fourth foot, but we don't know what that's called), and we learned it a long time ago:

Pitchers and catchers reported today.

Say it with us:

Pitchers and catchers reported today.

See, some folks mark the first day of spring with the return of blossoms to trees, running water to streams, swallows to Capistrano, or robins to, uh, wherever it is robins return to. Here, we'll take Cardinals and Orioles returning to Florida, and Blue Jays to Arizona.

SFist will bring you complete spring previews for the A's and the Giants, and possibly some reporting on the World Baseball Classic, in the weeks ahead. We'll find out soon whether Barry Zito and Rich Harden, and Matt Morris, Jason Schmidt, and Mike Matheny, still have it; whether Jason Kendall and Armando Benitez can get it back; whether Country Joe Blanton and Huston Street, Matt Cain and (help us out, Giants fans--does your team have any good young pitchers?) will get better . For now, we just know that they're in camp, and that they bring with them 162 games worth of hope and promise and joy and all that other stuff from the poems about spring, and that's good enough. Spring is here.

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 and a 9th-inning rally that wasn't on Tuesday, and a bad outing by Danny Haren on Wednesday. They scored nine runs in four games.

The mood at the Coliseum, on the BART ride home, and here at A's Brand Baseball HQ, has changed: from euphoric trash-talking and counting playoff chickens based on 120 games worth of eggs, to trying to remember what to call it when the ninth inning ends and the other team has more runs than the A's do, to hesitatingly accepting that the team might not play .800 ball the rest of the way, and finally to cautious optimism. In itself, that's a testament to the progress the team has made this season--in April and May, when the team was collecting four-game losing streaks like they were Homies, it would have brought out the Chickens Little (they know who they are), wringing their hands and asking: What's wrong with Zito? Should Billy Beane hold a primetime press conference to apologize to Joe Morgan and Tim McCarver? Should he fire Ken Macha? Does this mean the A's are moving to San Jose? To Las Vegas?

If you'd posed all these questions to the crowd at Wednesday's game, though, you'd have heard 32,290 people respond, together, in 32,290-part harmony: Meh. The Royals are coming to town Friday.