Choose your allusion-- the sword of Damocles finally striking, the chickens coming home to roost, karma being an ill-tempered bitch-- but Barry Lamar is now up against it for breaking the law, breaking the law. Personally, we were a bit stunned that it happened coming as it did years after the actual case, but we're cavemen-- we fell on some ice and was later thawed by some of your scientists. Your world frightens and confuses us! ...

Here's todays sports news...

Here's todays sports news...

Here's todays sports news...

Here's todays sports news...

Here's todays sports news...

Here's todays sports news...

Here's todays sports news...

Here's todays sports news...

Sharks 3 Predators 2- SFist did something we haven't done in a long time-- watched a hockey game. Well, the last period at least. For those who've never watched playoff hockey, it's great fun. The sport is already pretty intense with it's speed and occasional bouts of violence and the intensity is turned up several notches during the playoffs. Especially when one is facing elimination. Other than a minute of action, when the Predators scored......

Ahem...... Perhaps you would like a preview of the upcoming season from a totally official source? Well, you’re obviously not going to get that from us, but we are pleased to bring you the very first installment of A’s Anatomy; where the green and gold will be dissected all season, and no one will be spared, even if you’re Billy Beane and his BFF. (Just kidding, Bob Geren; welcome aboard!) ...

If you'd told us last week that we were going to really really dig the new Lone Ranger comic book from Dynamite, we'd have been like, "aw, fiddlesticks." We might've thought that the only way to do a good Lone Ranger would be tongue-in-cheek; giant swaggering guns, aw-shucks hickishness, maybe a Bruce Campbell smirk. Brett Matthews, Sergio Carriello, Dean White, John Cassaday, and Simon Bowland have hit upon great dialog, snazzy characters, and an......

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

First, onto baseball: The Giants are now on a three-game roll after taking two from the Cubbies and beating the Reds in ten innings Monday. Your Black & Orange hero? Shea Hillenbrand who hit the game-winning home run in extra innings. That trade is suddenly looking less like a total disaster these days. Also of note, the heating up of Barry Bonds who hit numero 730 and has now hit five home runs in his past six starts. That gulp you're hearing is of pitchers in the NL, other teams in the Wild Card hunt, and officials at Major League Baseball now pondering the meaning of a so hot right now Barry. The Giants have now won 15 of 21 and are for the first time in a long while, .500. No, we're not going to go there as of yet but we're starting to disbelieve our disbelief. ...

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......

We read an interesting story today on ESPN.com about how the A's are somehow winning despite being everything Moneyball is supposed to be against. You know, things like pitching and defense and situational hitting. Which basically means that somewhere out there, some Stat Head in Stat Head Land is desperately crunching numbers and running spread sheets to try and proof that God is Not Dead....

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..... ...

Shards of what remain of Barry Zito and the rest of Oakland A's pitching staff are still being recovered after yesterday's 14-0 threshing at the hands of the Texas Rangers. We're certain the Arlington faithful are downright giddy about their latent power display, as well they should be. This beating reminded everyone that there is-indeed--a real pennant race fomenting in the AL West. However, the Rangers should take a very hard look at the all-encompassing big picture scoreboard-the Athletics won that series by dominating the small things. And they beat Texas by going toe-to-toe with one of the best offenses in the American League. Moreover, the real battle was won in the trenches-through superior bullpen action, sans Joe Kennedy, Scott Sauerbeck and the rest of the DL boys, a smothering defense and timely hitting from Jay Payton, not through caveman-like hacking at off-speed pitches that Ranger batters have mastered. ...

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. ...

Dear Giants, It's over. Finished. Kapoot. As of this moment, we will no longer start to believe in you. Once again, for like the umpteenth and hundredth time, we started to think that you had turned the corner. That you had figured it all out, had put it all together and were about to go on the Big Run. You know, the run where you win like twenty out of twenty-five games and put the distance between you and the rest of the mediocrities that you run with in your division. ...

Frank Francisco of the Texas Rangers was sentenced for throwing a chair at mamma-taunting A's fan Craig Bueno, and hitting Bueno's wife Jennifer in the face. Francisco pled no contest to the charges of misdemeanor assault, and got three years on probation, 20 days in a sheriff's work program, 500 hours of community service and six months of anger management classes. Francisco can take those classes with fellow Ranger Kenny Rogers. Dude, someone found a foot in an Oakland park on Wednesday. Good thing Anna Ayala's still locked up or the foot would probably have turned up in a bowl of chili. And SF District 5 Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi took a break from coordinating his wardrobe with Matt Gonzalez's to stop some crime! P.J. Corkery and J.K. Dineen from the Ex report that Mirkarimi was walking on Webster Street and saw a "suspicious" guy pulling a knapsack out of the broken window of a parked car. Ross said, "Hey, that's not yours, put it down!" and the guy dropped the bag and fled. Turns out the car was owned by a tourist from Texas, who said, "I know nothing of Mr. Ross and his political ambitions, but he was honorable enough to get my belongings back and for that I am grateful." Ross, ever modest, told the Ex, "Please don't make me out to be the caped crusader, because I'm not. Anyone would do such a thing." Ross, you're our hero! ...

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......

Muy Bueno! (Like that one's never been come up with before.) Jennifer Bueno, the woman who was hit in the face by a folding chair at an A's game, finally filed suit against the Texas Ranger who pitched the lawn decor at her husband for his sassy mouth, and the Rangers' organization. One of the reports we heard said that her husband Craig was supposed to be at the press conference too, but he works at the fire house with the three guys who got in the accident and tied up traffic yesterday on the San Mateo Bridge. Police are baffled about the mysterious beating of a 13-year-old foreign student in South San Francisco last week, just blocks from his host family's home. Robbery wasn't a motive, since the boy had all his money and his mp3 player on him. The boy is in critical condition at SF General, and authorities are offering a $12,000 reward for information. And interestingly, remember how the City of Fremont decided not to enforce burglar alarms unless there was proof of an actual break-in? Well, they did a study to see what happened after they adopted the policy, and robberies in the city are actually down 9%. Burglar alarm associations say it's too soon to tell. ...

As football fades and a weary Bay Area turns to that moment when pitchers and catchers report, yet another reminder of baseball’s little steroid problem bobbed to the surface over the weekend as the publisher for Jose Canceco’s supposed tell-all book leaked some juicy little bits of gossip to the press. Canseco’s book, Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big, will be released on February 21, and the bits of gossip were in this Sunday’s New York Daily News. In the book, Canseco claims that he was sort of like the Pied Piper of steroids, turning on all his teamates to the wonders of synthetic drugs; so much so, he was called “the Chemist.” He claims to have personally injected Mark McGwire in the ass in a bathroom stall when both were rookies and sat around another men’s room stall watching McGwire inject steroid poster boy Jason Giambi in the ass another year. Canseco also claims to have introduced steroids to Texas Rangers’ stars Juan Gonzalez, Ivan Rodriguez, and Rafael Palmerio when he was with the Rangers, an act which he claims was well-known by then-Rangers owner George W. Bush. And yes, it’s the same George W. we all know and love as our President. The very same President who famously called for a ban on steroids in a State of the Union speech....

Bay Area crime roundup...

We're only getting to this story now because it takes four days for magazines to travel across our great lands to us yokels out here in the Western hinterlands -- the New Yorker deigns to focus its little monocle on the far end of Democrat-Blue America and presents a rather one-sided hagiography of our boy wonder mayor, Gavin Newsom. ...

Five games left, three back of the Dodgers, tied with the Cubs, a half game up on the Astros, and Milton Bradley losing his mind in LA. Does that say it all? Not if you're an A's fan. Then it's five games left, tied with the Angels, three distant games ahead of the Rangers, and Ichiro getting ready set a major record on the home turf. The Giants edged the Padres 7-5 in a nail......

SFist had high hopes for a series sweep for the Giants throughout last night's game against the Astros, but the bullpen had different ideas. Taking a three-to-two lead into the ninth inning, the San Francisco relievers did their best early-August impression by allowing five ugly runs, costing Jason Schmidt a well-deserved victory and chipping away at his fading Cy Young chances. You have to wonder if the Giants let their emotions (or their testosterone) get......

Back in the halcyon days when SFist was launching and the Giants were getting their collective ass handed to them by the lowly Cincinnati Reds, it was looking pretty grim down at Third and King, and SFist was starting to think about next year for San Francisco baseball. But, oh, how things have changed. SFist got its playoff tickets in the mail yesterday and is pretty psyched about the idea of October baseball as the......

The story of the injured heckler out of Oakland Coliseum last night just keeps getting better and better....