Welcome back to the Big Leagues, Justin Duchscherer! Throwing to live hitters for the first time after missing all of last season, the A’s starter had a scary moment in Phoenix today.

Catcher Max Stassi smoked a line drive that Duchscherer barely had time to react to, and the ball hit off his hand and then his shoulder. Duchscherer spent a few moments in shock but otherwise was unharmed. As was evident by his comments:

He hits that rocket at me and I’m like, ‘Oh, my God’ … I just had to gather my thoughts and come sit down. And wipe the poop out of (my) pants.

Well that’s a fun image. Fans, please don’t send Depends. Video is here, if it loads.

CSN Bay Area’s Mychael Urban has been posting Flip video updates from Scottsdale throughout the Giants’ spring training and the footage has been mildly entertaining at best. Until today.

7th Inning Stache and Big League Stew were all over Urban’s tremendous video of Tim Lincecum’s photoshoot, wherein the Freakanchise begins to undo his pants before sporting a Snuggie Wizard Cape Wearable Blanket to promote one of the Giants’ many giveaways this season. Wearable Blanket Night is April 23.

At least two other teams will give away fleece blankets with sleeves, including the Cardinals and A’s. Both teams are referring to their giveaways as Sluggies, which we suspect are more like the Sluggies that Justin Morneau and his friends undoubtedly wore during Sunday’s gold medal game than the original Sluggie made of ShamWow material.

Another day, another video of two people fighting on a bus. This YouTube video of old white man v. young black man is a ‘net sensation and follows in the fist-steps of that other bus fight sensation video from San Francisco. Warning before you click play: There is much NSFW language and blood. But you knew that, otherwise it wouldn’t be a ‘net sensation now would it.

SFist, your bus-fight headquarters, claims the bearded guy now dubbed Epic Beard Man is the same one who was Tasered at an A’s game in August. The white beard and blatant ignorance of common social norms do bear a striking resemblance. SFist also passes along a story from the blog Caliber.

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There’s a highly controversial situation brewing in Arizona heading into Spring Training this year. Lawmakers have introduced a bill that would add a surcharge to all Cactus League tickets to help fund a new stadium for the Chicago Cubs. The bill would also tax car rentals in the state to help fund the stadium.

You don’t need to be an economist to figure out this deal isn’t going over well. The Oakland A’s were among the first teams to vocally oppose the plan, and now all Cactus League teams, including the San Francisco Giants, reportedly stand in opposition. From Big League Stew:

Arizona and the Cubs will contend that the franchise is the cornerstone of the Cactus League and that other facilities are packed to the brim when its fans travel across the Valley. They’re right, of course, but it bends all logic that a visiting Mariners fan should have to pay a surcharge on all of his tickets when he has no intentions of seeing the Cubs play.

But what of those baseball fans? What about the legions of A’s and Giants fans heading down to Spring Training who will be slapped with higher ticket costs and higher car rental fees? So far, it seems, they either don’t know about the bill, or they don’t care, or they’re taking the bus everywhere.

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Willie Mays is on the promotional circuit for his new biography “Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend.” This New York Times article says it’s “the  first time Mays has cooperated with a biographer,” but what about 1989’s classic “Say Hey: The Autobiography of Willie Mays“? Since Willie cooperated with himself on that one, it must not count.

Willie is apparently now sharing even more intimate details of his playing career, and avoiding controversy as ever. On steroids, he tells the Times:

I keep telling people, I don’t even know what that stuff is. I played 22 years in baseball and I never tried to analyze things I don’t know about. I’m not a doctor.

Willie Mays may not be a doctor, but he is an amazing catcher of fly balls and the inspiration for amazing songs. When doing research for this post, we stumbled across hundreds of similar athlete-songs. Not shockingly, the worlds of music and athletics often collide, and others have documented it here and here.

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After winning Arizona Fall League MVP honors on the heels of a minor league season in which he hit 31 home runs and stole 40 bases between Kane County and Stockton, Oakland A’s prospect Grant Desme had the look of a future star, or a Scott Hairston type, depending on who you asked.

This much was clear: Desme was never going to be the team’s savior, because, well, that would be downright blasphemous!

Desme, an outfielder who was scheduled to begin the season at Double-A Midland, instead announced his intentions to enter the Catholic seminary on Friday. It will take about 10 years for Desme, 23, to become a priest, a process he compared to re-entering the minor leagues — without the road beef, of course. His former teammate, Shawn Haviland, says Desme has an innate ability to lead, so he should be a good one. Billy Beane was apparently surprised by the news, but supportive of Desme’s decision. Judging by some of the comments on The Drumbeat, some A’s fans were a little less understanding.

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This will not end well. Many an athlete has waded into the muck that is Twitter, sparred with fans, and subsequently deleted their accounts. A moment of silence for Barry Zito, please.

Jose Canseco has been waging a Tweet war over steroids over the last two days. And the tone has taken on some of the desperate defensiveness of Zito’s final Twittering hours. Canseco has had a Twitter account for a while but admitted that he only recently took over from his minions and started Tweeting himself. You can tell it’s actually Canseco because he takes pot shots at Mark McGwire, discusses dreams about cars leaving him behind, and tries to curry sympathy by mentioning how the books he wrote ruined his life.

Here are the highlights, too numerous to even Tweetshot.

Sunday

– I just saw Big Mac’s interview, he got a positive reception in Saint Louis. I’m glad for him, but he is still a liar.

– Hey mac, there is No crying in Baseball.

Tuesday

– At this point i rarely trust anyone. It gets lonely in my world. It seems like i wrote 2 books, and my life became an open book in return.
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Hustlin’ outfielder Eric Byrnes has been designated for assignment and cut loose by the Arizona Diamondbacks, who will eat the $11 million they owe him this year. Mmmm, tasty money burger.

Byrnes, a Redwood City native, has let it be known he would like to play for the Giants next year. And this isn’t one of those laugh-at-the-guy-dictating-his-moves things, it might actually work out. The Giants could sign him for the league minimum and have a low-risk alternative in the outfield.

If Byrnesie does make the move, he will join the shortlist of athletes who have played for both the Giants and A’s. And with his Bay Area background, that puts him on the shortlist of the Bay Areaest Bay Area athletes ever. Who else is on that list? We’ll have to think about that and maybe even make it the subject of this year’s March Badness tourney.

For now, here’s Byrnes’ resume:

Very Bay

-Grew up in Redwood City as a Giants fan.

-Two-sport star at St. Francis HS in Mountain View.

-Played for the A’s from 2000-05, and once displayed his love for the team by tackling an intruder on the field

-Was a FOX correspondent for the 2007 All-Star Game … reporting from McCovey Cove. Sent his dog, Bruin, into the Cove after a ball, Bruin promptly started paddling away.

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Tony LaRussa was a hotter topic than Mark McGwire on KNBR Wednesday. That’s because KNBR and KRON smart guy Gary Radnich called out his friend LaRussa about his alleged ignorance of McGwire’s steroid use, then played the clip on loop on the radio.

Turns out people around the country were calling out LaRussa on Tuesday, and congratulations world, you finally cracked Mr. ARF. In an interview on ESPN 101 in St. Louis, LaRussa got all testy when asked about fans who had called and texted their disbelief in LaRussa’s statements.

Well they can believe it or not. I don’t really give a f— to be honest. If they think that I’m lying, then they think I’m lying. I’ve tried to build my career on credibility and trust, that’s what we do with our players. I’m telling you — we ran a clean program. That’s the way it is. That’s what I say, that’s what I believe. If they believe differently, that’s America, they can believe anything they want to.

This seems to be LaRussa’s stance on the whole issue. “I know my statements look ridiculous, I don’t care.” Of course he’s going to say that.  He’s not in the same position as McGwire. He still has something to lose in the situation: the trust of his current players and maybe, in a long shot, his job. So he’s forced into the politician’s role of “I knew but I didn’t know.” “I smoked the marijuana cigarette but I did not inhale.”

So yeah, LaRussa is lying, or he’s in deep denial, but either way let’s get off his back for it. Let him tend his flock of ARFies in peace. And maybe someday, LaRussa will be sitting in front of Bob Costas, talking about how he knew his guys were juicing, but he doesn’t believe it helped them hit home runs. And we can rip him anew.

Sixty years after the most famous photo of the Loch Ness Monster appeared in The Daily Mail, Christian Spurling, the stepson of flamboyant filmmaker and big-game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell, confessed that the serpentine figure in the grainy image was in fact bogus. At the request of his stepbrother, Spurling constructed a 12-inch model made of plastic and mounted on a toy submarine that would help grow the legend of Nessie.

It didn’t take Mark McGwire quite as long to confirm something else that most rational people had suspected all along, or at least since 2005. Big Mac admitted to taking steroids throughout the second half of his career, including 1998, when he slugged 70 home runs. At long last, the former Bash Brother confessed that his gawdy slugging percentage and monster blasts, including a 538-foot shot off of Randy Johnson at the Kingdome in 1997, were artificially enhanced mirages, not much unlike Spurling’s toy submarine. Or were they?

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