Dear Timmy An open letter to Tim Lincecum on the occasion of his probable Giants farewell. By Dan Fost | September 4, 2015 It’s painful to think of this as a farewell letter, although that’s probably what it is. With your hip surgery complete, your contract expiring, and nothing but rehab and uncertainty on the […]
Category: Baseball
The Wizard of O.co: San Francisco magazine, September 2014
The Wizard of O.co A decade after Moneyball, the cult of Billy Beane is alive and well—perhaps nowhere more than in Silicon Valley. By Dan Fost Sept. 26, 2014 Billy Beane is so over Moneyball. “I’m sort of sick of me,” the Oakland A’s general manager tells me over the phone in early August. You […]
Opening Day in Oakland, With Prospects of Doubleheader of Anguish for A’s Fans: New York Times, April 6, 2012
Opening Day in Oakland, With Prospects of Doubleheader of Anguish for A’s Fans As the A’s take the field for their home opener Friday against the Seattle Mariners, the team’s overachieving glory days depicted in last year’s “Moneyball” starring Brad Pitt as General Manager Billy Beane are a warm, if distant glimmer. While Opening Day […]
From Bowling to Bars: Urban Baseball Parks Boost Business: CNBC.com, April 2, 2012
From Bowling to Bars: Urban Baseball Parks Boost Business Twenty years ago, the Baltimore Orioles did something that at the time ran counter to every trend in stadium construction: They built their new ballpark right in the heart of downtown Baltimore. That not only proved beneficial to the Orioles, who continue to draw crowds to […]
Top Fantasy Baseball Tips: Executive Travel, March 2012
Writing this story led me to the tip about pig farmer Lindy Hinkelman’s fantasy baseball expertise, which I wrote for the New York Times. Top Fantasy Baseball Tips Follow this fantasy baseball advice to build and manage a winning lineup. The movie Moneyball made it clear: Anyone with a computer, a head for stats and […]
Pig Farmer’s True Prizewinner is His Fantasy Baseball Team: New York Times, October 2011
I broke this story at the end of the 2011 baseball season, when the best fantasy baseball player in the world – with winnings of more than $300,000 over the past three years – was revealed to be Idaho pig farmer Lindy Hinkelman. Modest Farmer, Managing Mogul The National Fantasy Baseball Championship, a contest paying […]
Bay Area’s Little Leagues Overflow With Would-Be Giants: New York Times, April 2011
SAN FRANCISCO — The good vibrations from the San Francisco Giants’ World Series victory last fall continue to reverberate in the Bay Area, where children inspired by the improbable success of the Giants’ assemblage of castoffs have overwhelmed local Little Leagues. Youths who had never played the game suddenly saw themselves as Cody Ross or Tim […]
Giants Past and Present
Dan Fost is a freelance writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area, specializing in technology coverage for newspapers and magazines and interested in a wide range of other subjects as well. Dan is the author of the baseball book “Giants Past and Present,” for MVP Books, which was published in March 2010. The San Francisco Giants’ 2010 World Series victory has provided the icing on the cake for a very sweet year!
Further proof of the curse
The only way to truly understand how the seemingly lame LA Dodgers, champions of the worst division in baseball, are steamrolling the seemingly unstoppable Chicago Cubs, the best team in baseball this year, is to be a student of baseball curses. And I’m not just talking about the curse that’s afflicted the Cubs for the […]
Right and wrong, Giants style
I’m at the ballpark right now, where as my friend Mike Shapiro just put it, it’s a Super Bowl feeling: The commercials are better than the game. In this case, the Giants on the field are playing the pathetic baseball that has them in last place, but between innings, the fans are treated to highlight […]