Barry Bonds and A Bay Area Sports Round-Up
Don't hate the player, hate the game.
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Barry Bonds is on trial, the Niners are prepping for the seventh pick in the NFL Draft next week; the Giants are gearing up for the rubber match in a key series against the Dodgers; the Sharks are apparently in the playoffs; and the Warriors are wrapping up another season of irrelevance.
It's time for a Bay Area sports roundup.
Harbaugh Time
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NFL Draft 2011: 49ers hold the seventh pick and need a QB, CB, or DE
The 2011 NFL Draft is two weeks away and the chatter about the 49ers' 7th pick in the draft has been pretty quiet given what should be a lot of anticipation around Jim Harbaugh defining his vision for the team with a top ten draft pick.
Maybe it's the impending NFL lockout and the lack of a free agency appetizer to the draft buffet, or maybe it's the fact that Niner fans have had their hopes build up year after year with offseason hype (Erickson! Nolan! Smith! Singletary!) only to be let down continually by poor performance on the field.
Will the Red and Gold dip back into the QB pool to try to strike a jackpot with the likes of Cam Newton, Blaine Gabbert, or trendy favorite Colin Kaepernick?
Or will they go with a stud CB like LSU's Patrick Peterson or Nebraska's Prince Amukamara?
Perhaps it could be pass rushing OLB Von Miller, a dark horse name, or Harbaugh could channel his mentor Bill Walsh and trade down.
Bottom line, no one will know until the light go up at Radio City on April 28, and expectations across Niner Nation are surprisingly muted. And for a team that hasn't had the greatest track record with high expectations as of late, that's probably a good thing.
Showtime's MLB Reality Show "The Franchise" featuring the San Francisco Giants premieres tonight
A few months ago it leaked out that MLB and Showtime were cooking up a reality show following an MLB team over the course of the season, aka a thinly-veiled clone of HBO's "Hard Knocks."
Then it leaked out that the World Series Champion San Francisco Giants were the team in contention to be featured. Yep, the long-haired, pot smoking, rally-thong wearing, beard growing, Marina skirt-chasing, Phillie thumping (had to throw that in there) San Francisco Giants.
Then in a shocking move, the show actually got the greenlight and the Giants agreed to do it. And it looks awesome.
The "preview" episode of the series premieres tonight at 9:30pm ET/PT on Showtime. The series will then take a break for a few months and resume later in the season when the pennant race heats up.
So tonight's episode should set the table, establish the story lines, and of course feature a healthy portion of Brian Wilson.
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Barry Bonds found guilty of obstruction, not guilty of perjury
Weeks after the trial began, years after the crimes allegedly took place, and eons after baseball fans in and out of the Bay Area stopped caring, Barry Bonds has been convicted of one charge of obstruction of justice and acquitted on three charges of perjury. Meanwhile, the government just nearly avoided a federal shutdown, we're engaged in two wars, and the Giants just won the FREAKING WORLD SERIES with CODY EFFING ROSS as their big slugger. But, yeah, glad the government just spent years and plenty of funds nailing a big-headed slugger for doing the same thing everyone else in his era was doing in order to smash almost all of the big offensive records in baseball.
Bonds will serve his sentence and move on, eventually get into the HOF (yes, it will happen eventually, he's too good to keep out), and go down as the Ty Cobb of his era—a human being of questionable character who was just too damn good at baseball to ignore.



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