Although the two-time Cy Young Award winner struggled this season, Tim Lincecum threw his first career no-hitter in San Diego tonight. Striking out 13 in a 9-0 win over the Padres, Lincecum stands as the 15th Giant to perform such a feat. And what a feat it was.

Bryan Murphy of McCovey Chronicles poignantly explains why this no-hitter was so important:

And so tonight we are witness to a near-catharsis. Tim Lincecum's 148-pitch no hitter served many masters: our long-standing expectations of The Freak, a dying team in need of a glimmer of hope, and most importantly, a pitcher who knew he had it in him but hadn't quite yet proved it to himself, his fans, or his naysayers. If you think Tim Lincecum didn't need this the I'd accuse you of being completely out of touch with a competitive mindset. A no-hitter is not a perfect game, of course, but it is a stunning accomplishment for a pitcher and it is yet another one for Lincecum to add to his resume, mantle, or heck, even his self-esteem. It has to feel good for him to know that he still has "it" and can still do something amazing on a baseball field. This was a guy who couldn't be counted on to start a baseball game approximately nine months ago, and now this.

Shortly after the no-hitter came to an end at Petco Park--where, in the audience, Giants love was in no short supply--Buster Posey came in behind to give Lincecum a big ol' air-lifting bear hug. (Also of note? A spectacular diving catch by Hunter Pence.) A great night for your San Francisco Giants and, especially, for Lincecum. See for yourself:

Previously: Matt Cain Throws A Perfect Game

Oh this is cute. Padres pitcher Mat Latos recently made his views on San Francisco and the Giants quite clear via his balls. Big League Stew reports on the rivalry: "The young San Diego Padres pitcher recently signed three baseballs for American Icon Autographs with the inscription of "I hate SF!" They're now being featured on an eBay listing with a buy-it-now price of $299.99 and a note that 50 percent of the proceeds will go to the MLB Players Alumni Association."

[Yahoo]

After last night's 3-1 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks, the first-place Giants maintain a two game lead over San Diego in the NL West. AP notes: "San Francisco lowered its magic number to three to clinch the club’s first division title and playoff spot since 2003 — and could secure at least a tie Thursday."

The Giants will end the season with a series at AT&T Park against San Diego. Brace yourselves.

>Sorry to spread the bad news, Giants fans, but last night's 9-4 loss to the Diamondbacks mathematically eliminated them from the playoffs. We know, we know, wha? Well, statistically, the Giants could still have made the playoffs if they won every game up until the end of the season and the Padres, DBacks, Dodgers, and Rockies all came down with the Ebola Virus. Hey, it happens sometimes, sort of. In the Premiere League, Tottenham once got eliminated from qualifying for the Champions League when several key members of the team came down with a mysterious case of food poisoning.

So what's left in the season? Well, you know how people have been saying all season how much they'd like to see the kids play? The kids are playing-- those few times in which we checked out a game, we kept on wondering who the hell are the people on the field and what have they done to Ryan Klesko? In fact, the Barry, who's become kind of irrelevant to everything since he broke the record, isn't even playing much. It's like when the ratings were down on "The Facts of Life" and so the producers brought in some new students to highlight and made the regular crew more like supporting players than anything else. Didn't they open up a bakery or something? And didn’t Natalie lose her virginity to George Clooney? Man, that was a long time ago.

There will be a lot of post-mortems for the season sure to come, but we'll get things started. Lessons to be learned after the jump

Hey, don't forget to play our "Rename Dodger Stadium" contest-- there's only three days left to play! And don't forget to sign in under a name so we know who to give the prize too. Right now, some of our favorite entries are by "guest" and we don’t know who "guest" is.

Padres 5 Giants 4- Other than Barry's Big Bomb, it was a pretty bad weekend for the Black & Orange: they got swept, Matt Cain's horrible luck continued, Noah Lowry went out with an injury, and the bullpen blew more things than Paris Hilton. Actually, our highlight of the weekend was going to our favorite pop culture site, Oh No They Didn't on Live Journal to see that in between discussions of Britney's latest breakdown and all things Harry Potter, somebody posted a story about Bonds' tying the record. Even better, we got to see the occasional Giants icon, including this great one of Barry Zito. And in case anyone's wondering, our favorite Harry Potter movie is Order of the Phoenix.

Angels 4 A's 3- Milton Bradley went after Billy Beane this weekend for, well, being the Man who had him down. Bradley's main complaint, other than hinting that the A's have problems with black players, was that he was nothing more than a cog in the Moneyball machine. We've always wondered if that was a common complaint with the A's, that it often comes off like players are told what to do mainly because some computer spit out some stat that was interpreted by some math major from M.I.T. Apparently, there's also some grumbling about manager Bob Geren, mainly that he is too friendly with everyone and not being all manager-like, more Michael Scott than Tony LaRussa. You know, the A's do tend to hire extremely bland, non-descript guys (Howe, Macha, Geren) who's main attribute seems to be getting out of the way and patting everyone on the butt. Of course, all the griping could be because of all the losing and losing tends to make everyone pretty grumpy. Who knows?

Padres 4 Giants 2- The Matt Cain suicide watch is in effect again as Cain once again pitched a stellar game only to get tagged with yet another loss. This time it wasn't just bad offense but bad defense too as two runs charged to Cain were the result of a Kevin Fransden boo-boo. Last week Jayson Stark wondered if Cain was the best 2-7 pitcher in history, so now the question is is Cain now the best 2-9 pitcher in history.

Actually, a decent question is if Cain deserved to be in the situation he was in. With the game tied, Cain was sent up to hit in the 7th inning. Should Bochy have pulled him for a pinch-hitter? After all, what the Giants needed more than anything was more offense. And how much can you ride Cain with a high pitch count? So Cain goes out to pitch the 8th and starts getting in trouble-- thus the loss. Couldn't it be said that this game was on Bochy? And once again, we're left to debate about whether or not Bochy should have the kids throwing as many pitches as he's letting them pitch. But that's a subject for another time.

A's 13 Indians 7- The A's ended their five game winning losing streak in a manner most atypical of the team, by scoring lots of runs. Seriously, this team lately has become the Bizarro A's. Leading the way was Jack Cust who had five RBIs and the A's B Team of Marco Scutaro and Kurt Suzuki. No, we haven't heard of Suzuki either but considering another Suzuki, that being Ichiro, just goes with his first name, maybe we should start calling Kurt just plain ole Kurt.

1) A constant display of the Giants never-so-die attitude
2) A constant display of an inability to hold leads and drive in runs

This game featured both. Barry Zito pitched a good game, giving up only two solo home runs in eight innings of pitching. The Giants, meanwhile, seemed to have runners in scoring position all game and couldn't do diddly with them. Los Gigantes rallied to score a run in the eighth and send it into extra innings only to be done in by yet another Pads solo home run in the tenth. Since it's the simple things in life that matter, we guess we should be happy about Zito's good outing. That is until you remember all the money he's being paid and realize we shouldn't be cheered by a strong outing, merely bored by it.

Indians 8 A's 5- Remember when the A's won all those games? Hell, remember when they won a game? And remember when nobody could score off them and their bullpen was untouchable? Remember when Allan Embree saved every game he appeared in?

Good times...good times.

When does the RCV count begin -- in the District 6 election! And as promised earlier, this week's episode is indeed titled: Everybody Hates The Wait.

--Man, it sounds like we the Dalys' almost-to-victory speeches at the DNA Lounge last night. Savannah Blackwell (yay! she's writing again!) has the good word. We're trying our best to get YouTube footage of Mrs. Chris Daly telling off "the motherf**kers at the Golden Gate Restaurant Association," and if we find it, you know we're going to pimp it in a separate post! And -- nooooo! The Dalys were thinking about moving to the 'burbs? Stay, Chris, stay! Do we have to give you the same speech we gave Potrero Hill Mike?

--On the 39% side, the mood was described by Pat Murphy over at the Sentinel as "grim" and words were "spoken through tightened lips." (Nice pictures of the scene at MoMo's, though!)

--There's some teeth-gnashing by the anti-Dalys on the SF Wall, and some gloating over at the Junto.

--And over there at the MSM, the Chron seems to be trying to make nice with Daly now that they've got four more years of entertaining local politics coverage to look forward to. Look, M&R's outraged -- today -- by the SFSOS lower-intestine ad. Meanwhile, the Examiner kicks the dirt and mutters "nuts!" under its breath in its terse coverage.

--An interesting stat, pointed out on SFJunto. Daly (5471, 49.66%) got fewer votes total than Alix Rosenthal (6260, 30.57%). Low turnout and lots of candidates in District 6, high turnout and fewer candidates in District 8.

--Someone give Matt Drake a job! Also, does anyone know exactly how much money was spent in the District 6 race? We thought we read an estimate of $300,000 in independent expenditures for Black and $120,000 in self-funding by Daly, but we're not sure if that's right. If you know, post it in the comments!

--We saw the headline "Padres Hire Black As Manager" on the Gate and our first thought was maybe that's why Rob Black was always at MoMo's! Similarly, we were shocked to also see the headline Daly Headed To Fourth Divorce.

We'll try and update this throughout the day as we hear stuff.

Picture of a crying Sarah Daly and triumphant Chris Daly by flickr user willsfca.

As this disheartening, dispiriting, and disillusioning Giants' baseball season comes to a close, it is quite possible that there is still a chance that this season could be saved, redeemed even. For all could be forgiven, all forgotten, with just one act, one thing, one simple, simple thing-- knocking the Dodgers out of the playoffs.

Here's the setup: The Dodgers are a game behind the Padres in the division, two games ahead of the Phillies in the Wild Card race. It's impossible to know what sort of combination of games that could happen that would lead to the elimination of the Dodgers but let's just say the Giants need to just win, baby. Anything else and a sight virtually anathema to Giants fans everywhere will happen, that being watching the Dodgers (and Jeff Kent!) celebrate in the Giants' yard.

Cardinals 34- Niners 27: 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.

Padres 10, Giants 2: After taking two from the Padres and moving to 1 1/2 back in the wild card, there was a bit of a buzz in the air. People were starting to believe again, think happy thoughts, start in with the "hell, yeah." So, you know where this is going, right? The Giants lost and lost fairly big. Your Matt Morris Robitussin® Inning Cough Up of the Game came in the third when the Pads scored four on mainly a bunch of singles. Once again, the Giants are looking up at a 2 1/2 deficit behind the Padres for the Wild Card and four back of the Dodgers.

A's 9 Devil Rays 7: Right now, Frank Thomas is making Billy Beane a very happy man. The dude hit his fifth home run in five games and drove in three runs to lead the A's to victory. Some of his numbers: 35 hrs this season (tying him for the most homeruns by an A's DH along with such notables as Dave Kingman and John Jaha) and 97 RBIs. If he were playing in New York or Boston, people would spend endless amounts of time debating his merits as the MVP but since nobody cares about the A's, their not. Either way, with the Angels victory, the A's are still up by 5 1/2 but the magic number is now 15.

But not last night. Nope, fireworks seemed fitting as the Giants have now gone where they haven't gone before -- four game winning streak. How mediocre has this team been? They haven't been able to win more than three games a season. But tonight, they beat the Pads for their fourth game in a row, crushing them once again by a final score of 8-2. For the second night in a row, a Giants starting pitcher had a shutout going until the night inning, this time it being Matt Cain to the previous night's Noah Lowry. The Giants are now 1/2 game behind the Padres for first place in the NL West and tied for first in the Wild Card race. Are we now at the start of the Big Run? And once again, the question is raised: who are these guys and what you done with the Giants?

But there's more reason to celebrate as the Giants pulled off their patented second half trade-a-prospect-for-a-playoff-run move, trading Jeremy Accardo for Shea Hillenbrand and pitcher Vinnie Chulk from the Jays. Hillenbrand is a career .300 hitter with some power, has even worse patience at the plate than Pedro, and is not known for being great with the glove. He is also known as a bit of a douche having earned his trade for a season of bitching and whining, topped off by his writing "This Ship is Sinking" on the Jays chalkboard one day and getting challenged to a fight by the Jays manager. Chulk is an arm.

That's three in a row, putting them 1 1/2 behind the first place Friars for the NL West lead and just a game back in the Wild Card race. This also puts them on the verge of doing what was once unthinkable before-- winning four games in a row.

A boy can dream, can't he?

Anyways, we'll spare the Bonds stuff since we're sure you'll hear plenty of it, but we'll leave you with this wonderful piece of video KCBS put up on their Web site last night (still to be YouTubed, however). It's after yesterday's game as a throng of reporters gathered around Barry to ask him questions about what they all thought would be his impending indictment. All you need to know about Barry, and the relationship between Barry and the press, can be gleaned by this video: as a throng of pathetic looking reporters look on, Barry completely ignores them to bop along with Bobby Brown singing "My Prerogative" on the Tyra Banks show. And yes, we can't but help notice the irony of Bonds bopping along to noted drug user Bobby Brown singing "My Prerogative." It's noticing that kind of stuff that shows how well our BA in English has paid off.