Schierholtz wears his Olympic Bronze with pride

The first pitch flies today in spring training competition, so I'm in a baseball mood. As I will be from now through October.

I'm a Giants fan. And I find it ironic that in the most family-unfriendly city in the U.S. you also have one of the more good old fashioned teams in baseball. More so now than ever.

In fact, someone on San Francisco's flagship radio station KNBR recently said that there aren't many clubhouses in baseball where you'd feel comfortable leaving your daughter unattended, but the Giants' was one of them.

The game is a universe unto itself, of course. Much as the fans like to pretend otherwise, no team is really a reflection of its hometown, or anything else other than its internal culture. (Witness the cowboy image of the Boston Red Sox in recent years, for an obvious example.)

In the Giants' case, that works in their favor as far as a guy like me is concerned.

It's a team of good guys, led by a good guy of a skipper. Even the games are called buy a couple of good guys in "Kruk & Kuip." And while he's still working through some stuff on the field, Barry Zito still leads the league in goodwill for the troops.

So I love the team despite the town -- though really the Giants belong to Northern California as much as they belong to the gilded turd known as San Francisco.

This piece on Nate Schierholtz is neither here nor there, but it's a good read and has the flavor at least of what I'm talking about. (And explains why I pray Manny Ramirez stays the deuce away from No Cal. Which at this point sounds likely.)