Sergio Romo's Fire, Take 2

Remember this?

When I wrote my blog post about carving this pumpkin, I ended it with:

"And then I enjoyed watching people notice it as they came to the door. That's the most fun of all...unless I get to go give a picture of it to Sergio Romo. Now THAT would be a blast!"

Well, guess what?

Gotta tell you, this guy ROCKS. He was really cool about the picture...once he figured out what it was. They hurry you along at a ridiculous pace at these "signings". So when I leaned over and asked Mr. Romo if he'd hold onto the picture while I took a photo, I got some harsh admonishments from the dude whose job it is to make sure the line keeps moving, but it was worth that and then some. Romo made sure I knew he thought it was awesome as I scurried away.

Before that whole event, of course, there was this:

And a couple hours before that, there was this:

Smunch isn't likely to make it to the big leagues, but who knows? Maybe he can talk his way in, if he knows the right people.

The day started off with this:

I've written so much about this dude in the past year that it's just crazy to think what a joke he was just a year ago. This year, he was something else. Thank you, Barry Zito, and your beautiful curveball. Sorry I didn't carve a pumpkin for you too. You're just too pretty.

Now, all the Giants need is a Cy Young-award-winning knuckleballer and we're all set for 2013.

Sergio Romo's Fire

Unlike the last time the San Francisco Giants went to the World Series, baseball was all wrapped up before Halloween. At a baseball tournament the weekend prior, someone asked me what I was planning to carve for a pumpkin this year. I'm starting to have a reputation, apparently. I hadn't decided. I thought about Posey or Scutaro or Cain, but all of them seemed a little too clean cut for this project.

When it came to me, however, I knew it had to be Sergio Romo. Sergio Romo, erstwhile setup man and now super popular closer for the World Series Champion San Francisco Giants. I've met him before too. He's a super nice guy. He was part of the team of "beards" in the bullpen in 2010 and signed a baseball for Smunch with the inscription "Fear It!" on it. Funny guy.

Anyway, Romo has a great roar he lets out when he successfully closes a game and I wanted to carve that. So here goes...

I chose this picture.

Blew it up nice and big to use as a stencil on a nice, big pumpkin. I freehanded the lettering.

Spent a cool few hours carving and giving myself a blister.

And then I enjoyed watching people notice it as they came to the door. That's the most fun of all...unless I get to go give a picture of it to Sergio Romo. Now THAT would be a blast!

It's Beginning to Feel a Lot Like...Halloween...

What could be more perfect than the San Francisco Giants...a team that always sports the orange and black...playing baseball, in the World Series, no less, on Halloween? Well, I could carve an appropriate pumpkin for the event. And so, the day after our favorite team clinched the National League pennant, I started my pumpkin. Remember this one from last year?Yeah. Something like that, but different.

It was a week before Halloween. I wanted to start early this time, so I wouldn't be carving when kids started ringing the doorbell. This is where I started...But you'll have to wait until Halloween...or sometime after that when I get around to posting...to see the finished product!

Prizes

Late last week, my prizes arrived from the San Francisco Giants. They didn't have any Tim Lincecum signed baseballs to give away...or at least that's what they told me...so we made do with a ball autographed by Matt Cain, the Giants' other pitching ace.

(AP Photo/ George Nikitin)

(No, his signature isn't worth nearly as much.) They also threw in a couple of "extras".

But let's back up. Because the real gift came a few days after Halloween when it was announced that on the day prior to Halloween, our adored Mr. Lincecum was stopped for speeding in his Mercedes on the way up to see his dad up in Washington state. That might not have been so newsworthy (it was hardly newsworthy anyway) if the officer hadn't been smacked in the face with the stench of marijuana and made The Freak had over his little stash and his pipe.

(AP Photo/Tony Avelar)

Now, I have to admit that I don't care a lot about Timmy's personal habits. I hear he doesn't shower very often either. I doubt I'd find that appealing. He was not charged with driving while intoxicated. Either he gave the officer and autograph and got out of that one or he really wasn't. It was 8:30 in the morning, after all. But who knows. There's certainly a contingent out there that says, "Duh, of course Timmy's a stoner."

I don't know. I don't really care. BUT, there's never a time when I care more about that sort of stuff more than when Smunch picks up the sports page in the morning. Like most second graders, he can read and a headline that says, San Francisco Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum faces pot charges in Washington is bound to peak his interest more than just a little. It meant a long, drawn out conversation about drugs and why Timmy made a big mistake. I resent having to have that conversation first thing in the morning. I can't help it. Timmy, do what you want, but please keep your newsworthiness to your pitching.

So, when my package from San Francisco arrived with a grey, knit beanie hat in it, I immediately dubbed it the "stoner beanie". You'll see why if you take a look at the picture below, which Daddy took last year at FanFest.Mine looks just like this, except with a little SF logo on the front. And I look just like Timmy when I wear it.Now all I need is some weed...oh, and a Mercedes to go with it.

And the Winner is...

ME!!!So I worked really hard on this pumpkin carving...mostly just to see if I could pull it off. I could point to all kinds of things that went horribly wrong, including how the whole face fell out on Sunday afternoon (bummer, I wanted to light it up again!). Plenty of things weren't quite how I'd planned, but it still turned out pretty cool.

Because one person asked and because I think it would be cool to preserve this information for posterity, I'll go into some details about this award-winning carving. I started out by choosing an online photo of "The Freak" that I thought would work for my purposes. I chose this one:I cropped it so that only Timmy's face showed and then ran it through Photoshop's "Cutout" filter that made it look something like this:I used that as my template, but it lost some detail, so I had Daddy go back and find me an appropriately sized SF logo for the cap and I added the white of his eyes, which you could see in the original photo.

I used a pin to poke the outlines into the pumpkin, through the paper. I started carving with a Dremel, with a small router bit attached. It kinda worked. At least it gave me a specific depth to carve to. After carving the brightest bits to that depth (the deepest it could go through a 1-inch+ thick rind) and just scraping the skin off the things I wanted to get less light from...that taking a mere several hours...I determined that no light was going to get through that and used a plain ol' knife to cut out the thin parts entirely, then used the Dremel to drill the other parts deeper.

I cut a circle around the outside just so the cap would show up. Unfortunately, I didn't quite think that through all the way. Cutting too far was going to make the face fall out, so I only got part way and ended up with sort of a lightning bolt edge on one side. By then, the pizza had arrived for dinner, so I took a break.

I wanted to write "Beware of the Freak" around the outside, but trick-or-treaters were already starting to come to the door and I was worried that if I tried to cut too much, I'd end up breaking all the delicate stuff I'd already done. Still, I thought the "Freak" aspect was particularly apropos, considering "The Freak" is one of Tim Lincecum's nicknames and because it was Halloween. So, I settled for "Freak". And this is what I ended up with:It looks like it took a lot of work, but it hardly looks like it'd be impressive. i was pretty psyched when I first checked it out with a candle inside. Totally worth the effort!

As mentioned in the previous post, I submitted it to the San Francisco Giants pumpkin carving contest. For all I know, no one else bothered to enter. I mean, the Giants' season has been over for weeks now. I can't even tell you what I was doing poking around on their website, where I noticed the contest ad.

I enter the occasional contest here and there, but I never win. So imagine my surprise when I got this e-mail from the Giants' Marketing and Entertainment Manager:

Stacey,

Congratulations, you are the winner of our Pumpkin Carving contest! You have won a player autographed baseball. If you can please reply all to this e-mail and provide your address we can get this out to you as soon as possible.

Congratulations once again and awesome job, your “Freak” pumpkin is very impressive!

Joe

Huh. Imagine that! We'll have to see how that whole "autographed baseball" thing turns out!