Wild National League West.

If I could live in anytime, I would definitely go and live in the wild west. How cool would that be? Shoot outs in saloons, cowboy hats, rodeo shows...

It was probably not as cool as it is on TV,

nothing is as it is portrayed on television. Things are tampered with, bleeped out, edited. There are retakes...oh and of course, 99% of that stuff is pure fiction, or at least a fiction alloy.

The television, however, can not hide a bad start by pitcher Jonathan Sanchez.

I turned on the television, and he walks the first batter.

Great.

Following that, I turned it off.

He started on the wrong foot, but you know, I wasn't ready to pray that Bochy start warming up the bullpen just yet, after all it was the top of the first. 

Sanchez has been a pretty solid pitcher; now is NOT the time to start playing games.

I know that they're playing through a heat wave.

Yup, amidst the end of September, the 90 degree weather in the usual cool and foggy San Francisco.

But it's not an excuse to let them score in the 2nd inning. I can't say that it's all bad news, considering the fact that as long as I'm doing my elementary school math correctly, we still have 7 innings left. After a long road trip, I hope that our offense isn't sleeping-in, because believe me, this isn't the time to be hitting the snooze button repeatedly.

With Torres back in, my unofficial right hand man (not Zito), Ross, is not in tonight. Can't honestly say I'm not happy to see Torres back in again though. The dude needs to take it slow.

Luckily, we are getting men on base...

Un-luckily? Unfortunately, we aren't getting those men home, which logically means that no runs are scored for us. Boo-hoo.

More unfortunately, the Diamondbacks are playing just fine, homering off Sanchez in the third.

Now would be a great time to call up the bullpen. Again, it's only the 3rd, we have 6 innings to come back. Maybe we're so used to be in nurtured in a fog cloud of mild weather that the heat is screwing with our brains. The Diamondbacks on the other hand, are after all, from Arizona, so this heat, it's not even making them sweat.

Speaking of Torres, he hit a triple out to right field in the 4th, and was knocked in one pitch later by Mike Fontenot. It's good news that we're no longer depending on only on home runs to score. Especially on a night like this, with minimal wind. However, it's not that home runs are bad. Juan Uribe tied the game at 2 in the bottom of the 4th inning with a solo shot. It'd be a lie to say that home runs are bad.

Looks like we're getting used to the heat.

This whole summer was sans the heat. A cloud basically smothered the city, and save for a few warm days here and there, the Giants played in the fog.

We HAVE to be getting used to the heat because we're HAWT. I'm not a huge Schierholtz fan. I like seeing him up at the plate every once in awhile for a pinch hit or two. Today was good for example, since he knocked in the tie-breaking run (Sandoval coming home to score.) You know what I want to see? I want to see Cody Ross...I know his specialty is center field, but he's slightly flexible right? By slightly flexible I mean, he isn't Aaron Rowand. I mean, Guillen isn't being all that productive, so we should just put Cody in, but I might be a little biased.

I guess in the end, it doesn't matter so long as we won, which we did 4-2. It wasn't really an easy win.

While everyone else is busy clinching their divisions, the situation in the NL West is a little more complicated

It's a tight race and each win and each loss has an unbelievable magnitude in the standings.

All in all, it's good to have a win the first night back here at home...during a heat wave. It was good to see the lights at the park come on again and swarms of orange and black getting on BART. It's almost a relief.

It's maybe a little bit of a sad day today because the Red Sox are officially done. Even though I saw it coming, it still hurts a little bit. They had a good run, and I think it'd be GREAT for them to get some rest and heal those wounds; battle scars. I am no doubt excited for the first Red Sox pitch next April, and I will be so happy once spring training starts.

For now, I've turned my attention to my home team, the Giants. With five games left, things are looking up. They'll finish the season through the heatwave. Personally, I like to think that they're return into San Francisco caused it.
The weatherman would likely disagree, unless he was a Giants fan too.