Your 2011 San Francisco Giants: Television Stars

As we roll toward spring training, and the reality of my lifelong baseball team winning the World Series in my lifetime not having fully sunk in, the San Francisco Giants will take the field in 2011 looking nearly the same as they did at the end of 2010.

Pablo Sandoval has been spending the past two months wearing Hefty bags while riding a stationary bike in a sauna as Bobby Southworth insults his father. It's all part of "Operation Dumbo Drop 2" or some similarly-named thing. The Panda had a brutally awful 2010, so one of the largest questions about 2011 is whether the dropped weight will result in a return to form, or whether Pablo will eat fifty Buca di Beppo dessert rafts between now and opening day and keep swinging at pickoff tosses to first.

The playoffs and World Series showed that Bruce Bochy is, shockingly, aware of which of his teammates are his best players in any given situation, so hopefully that means Aaron Rowand sees significantly less playoff time. There's also the returning Mark De Rosa, whose wrist disintegrated early in the season, and the newly-signed Miguel Tejada, about whom the nicest thing that can be said is "he's not Eric Chavez."

There's exciting stuff happening in the minors. Brandon Belt is the first baseman of the future, and apparently his swing is like Will Clark's but with the addition of the Red Dead Redemption "Dead-Eye" feature.

The Giants have also signed a deal to have a "24/7"-style show filmed, which will begin airing on Showtime in the second half of the season. Expect it to feature Brian Wilson amping up his "Andy Kaufman-as-baseball player" routine, and plenty of Aubrey Huff and Pat Burrell punching each other in their bare dicks.

It's Magic Inside.

- Hanstock