San Francisco Giants

The trouble began sometime after the first pitch at the Dodgers' opening day game against the San Francisco Giants. Dodgers fans Louie Sanchez, 29, and Marvin Norwood, 30 — friends and neighbors from Rialto — yelled taunts at Giants fans and threw soda at them, according to several law enforcement sources. They were so unruly that people sitting nearby in the stands behind third base later reported the pair to police. As the game wound down, the men allegedly grew more hostile.

  Join Times Dodgers writer Dylan Hernandez today at 11:30 a.m. for a live video discussion of the Dodgers and what ails them. You can ask questions of Hernandez during the chat. The Dodgers lost their fifth in a row Monday night. As Hernandez wrote , "The most expensive team in baseball history is in last place. "After a 9-2 defeat by the Arizona Diamondbacks on Monday night at Dodger Stadium, the Dodgers are now looking up at every other team in the National League West.

Record-breaking major league contracts were the order of the day, but baseball's newest financial power may yet be heard from. People familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity said Friday that the Dodgers were having contract conversations with former National League Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw . The cost of securing Kershaw long term rose earlier Friday when right-hander Justin Verlander agreed to a $180-million,...

With a nod toward Saturday's Kentucky Derby, these are Times staff writer Kevin Baxter's rankings as the teams come out of the clubhouse turn. (Statistics through Friday's game. Last week's rankings in parentheses): Setting the pace 1; BOSTON Trying to go wire to wire behind Buchholz (6-0, 1.01), Ortiz (.465, 15 RBIs in 11 games) (4) 2; TEXAS Yu Darvish (5-1, MLB-best 58 strikeouts) has Rangers riding high in the saddle (1) 3; ST. LOUIS Cards charges though pack to division lead despite losing two closers (3)

SAN FRANCISCO - The world headquarters of Twitter are barely two miles from the home of the San Francisco Giants. Little wonder, then, that Giants fans have flocked to the social media outlet to show their suppport for the home team. Fans of the St. Louis Cardinals are clicking in as well. They thought they had spotted the digital equivalent of bulletin board fodder Monday morning, in a tweet from Giants reliever George Kontos. "I woke up and I'm wired already," Kontos tweeted.

Game 1: Sunday, 5 p.m. St. Louis (RHP Lance Lynn, 18-7, 3.78) at San Francisco (LHP Madison Bumgarner, 16-11, 3.37) Game 2: Monday, 5 p.m. St. Louis (RHP Chris Carpenter, 0-2, 3.71) at San Francisco (RHP Ryan Vogelsong, 14-9, 3.37) Game 3: Wednesday, 1 p.m. San Francisco (RHP Matt Cain, 16-5, 2.79) at St. Louis (RHP Kyle Lohse, 16-3, 2.86)) Game 4: Thursday, 5 p.m. San Francisco (RHP Tim Lincecum, 10-15, 5.18) at St. Louis (RHP Adam Wainwright, 14-13, 3.94)

SAN FRANCISCO — In the clubhouse of the San Francisco Giants, Marco Scutaro answers to the nickname "Blockbuster. " As in: The Dodgers got $260 million worth of players from the Boston Red Sox, and we got you. The Giants could not be happier. If they win the National League Championship Series, their scrappy second baseman just might be selected the most valuable player. Scutaro batted .362 after the Giants acquired him from the Colorado Rockies on July 28. He is batting .458 in the NLCS, including a .474 average since St. Louis outfielder Matt Holliday injured him in a controversial slide in Game 2. "I got a little fame from getting hit from Holliday," Scutaro said.

The San Francisco Giants announced Wednesday that its proposed waterfront ballpark will be known as Pacific Bell Park under a $50-million, 24-year agreement with the telecommunications company. The Giants called the deal with PacBell "one of the largest and most comprehensive strategic alliances of its kind in the history of professional sports."

A San Francisco Giants executive assailed state Sen. Quentin Kopp after a ballot proposal that would have financed a new ballpark was defeated. "We pleaded with him several times early on in this process to sit down with us and to look at all the documents and to ask whatever questions he had about Proposition P," Giants Executive Vice President Corey Busch said. "He refused to do it." Busch criticized Kopp for remaining silent on the ballpark issue, which lost by only about 1,800 votes.

The Homestead High School marching band had just left the field, one-half hour before the scheduled start of Tuesday night's World Series game, when Candlestick Park began to move. From the vantage point of the upper deck, where most of the media covering the game were seated, it wasn't an unfamiliar sensation. Get 40,000 fans stomping their approval for the home team, and whole sections of a stadium have been known to sway. But never for this long. And never this hard.

SAN FRANCISCO - There was no anger or frustration in the voice of Dodgers Manager Don Mattingly. His team had just lost again - - on a walkoff hit, against the rival San Francisco Giants, for the second consecutive night - - and Mattingly sounded surprisingly chirpy. “In a sense, it's encouraging, as much as you can be encouraged from a loss,” Mattingly said. “It's as good as you can feel about a loss.” Guillermo Quiroz hit a walk-off home run off Dodgers closer Brandon League in the 10th inning on Saturday, lifting the Giants to a 10-9 victory over the Dodgers.

SAN FRANCISCO - The elements were all there for an evening of drama, of triumph, of celebration of the human spirit. Instead, the evening might be best remembered for another devastating injury. The Dodgers braced for the extended loss of Hanley Ramirez - four games into his injury-delayed season - because of a hamstring injury that made a 2-1 walk-off loss to the San Francisco Giants that much more depressing. Buster Posey led off the ninth inning with a home run off Ronald Belisario, snapping a 1-1 tie and sending a sellout crowd erupting into chants of “Beat L.A.!

A commemorative plaque honoring Barry Bonds' record-breaking 756 th home run hanging at the San Francisco Giants' AT&T Park has vanished. CBS and other Bay Area media affiliates are reporting the plaque vanished sometime in the last few days. Team and stadium officials are reviewing stadium security video to try and find when it was taken and by whom, a San Francisco police official said. The team has opted to handle the issue internally and has not asked for police assistance, officials said.

Barry Bonds' home run record has been removed ... not from the record books, like many people have wished, but from the walls of the San Francisco Giants' ballpark in San Francisco. The commemorative plaque honoring Bonds' record-setting 756th home run has disappeared from the right-center brick facade in AT&T Park, where it has hung since the start of the 2008 season. No one seems to know exactly what happened to it. Giants spokeswoman Staci Slaughter said Tuesday night that the team is conducting an investigation as to where the hardware may be. “We're not sure what happened," she said.

Things vanish and are replaced at the San Francisco Giants' AT&T Park all the time, so a lost Barry Bonds commemorative plaque shouldn't be a big deal, a team spokeswoman said Wednesday. “It's a stadium with 41,000 people, things disappear from the ballpark and we replace them,” said Giants spokeswoman Staci Slaughter. “It's a wooden, painted sign.” The team said it will replace the sign. PHOTOS: Barry Bonds through the years Slaughter and Giants officials are in the midst of a busy week.

With a nod to the Masters, Kevin Baxter's rankings through Friday. (last week's ranking in parenthesis) ATOP THE LEADERBOARD 1. ATLANTA Staff earned-run average of 2.08 is the best in baseball. (10) 2. WASHINGTON Bryce Harper second player under 21 to hit five HRs in team's first 10 games. (1) 3. SAN FRANCISCO Giants have won last 16 starts by Barry Zito, who hasn't given up a run this year. (2) 4. OAKLAND A's top majors in 8 offensive categories including runs, steals and homers.

A graduate of the Florida State law school and a member of the Florida bar, Tony La Russa understands the risk of circumstantial evidence and avoids employing it in his role as the Oakland Athletics' manager. La Russa operates from a bank of computers, scouting reports, statistics and comparative percentages. No manager, his players insist, is better prepared.

Joe Morgan, announcer for the San Francisco Giants, has played in both leagues and said that the biggest factor in the Giants' favor this week is the company they keep. "The National League is definitely the harder league, no question," Morgan said. "If Kevin Mitchell was in the American League, he would have been chasing Roger Maris' home run record. The NL ballparks are bigger, and the teams play better.

Carlos Quentin gets hit by a lot of pitches. Just ask him. That was part of his defense Thursday night after the Dodgers' Zack Greinke hit him near the left shoulder with a pitch. Quentin, the Padres' slugging outfielder, then charged the mound and threw Greinke to the ground, breaking his collarbone in the process. Quentin said he never had charged the mound in his major league career. He blamed the incident on what he called a "history" with Greinke, who has hit Quentin three times.

Nicolas Cendoya, the 19-year-old college student rescued last week after getting lost while hiking with a friend in the Trabuco Canyon area of Orange County, on Sunday offered his first detailed public account of the ordeal that nearly cost the two their lives. Cendoya said he and Kyndall Jack, 18, realized they were in trouble as night began falling during a lengthy and poorly planned Easter Sunday hike in the Santa Ana Mountains. By then their water bottle was nearly empty, and he was shirtless and drenched in sweat from an arduous climb.