Dirty Sanchez

“Absolutely filthy.”

That’s how ESPN’s Baseball Tonight crew described Jonathan Sanchez’s no-hitter tonight.

And while we don’t write about the San Francisco Giants that often on The Bias, we had to give a tip of the hat to Sanchez, a kid who was 2-8 coming in to this start and wouldn’t even be on the bump if not for an injury to The Big Unit.

Yeah, only at The Bias can you have a Big Unit and Dirty Sanchez reference in the first 60 words of a post.

What, you prefer the lame headlines AP and Co. are going to come up with?

Giant Start by Sanchez

Giant No-No (yeah, Yahoo just posted that one)

Giant Feat (ESPN), followed up by a grand headline on its story page: Sanchez makes most of opportunity

Really, you’re hiring away the best sportswriters and newspaper columnists in the country, and you come up with Sanchez makes most of opportunity? Who’s writing this crap?

Not that ESPN and Yahoo are the only guilty parties for lame headlines. In fact, the Sports Network and Fox Sports win the ESPY for the lamest headline of the night, copying ESPN and Yahoo’s brutal heads. Sports Network ripped off Giant Feat. Fox ripped off Giant No-No. Not that we expect anything less from the boys over at Fox.

Clever, guys.

MLB.com’s headline? A Giant Among Men

SOMEBODY DON’T USE THE MASCOT IN THE HEADLINE! PLEASE! (Thank you, CBS Sportsline, for your San Francisco Treat, it was a nice change of pace!)

But at least the League’s site had something on the no-no.

Not sure if the Chronicle even publishes anymore, but their Web site isn’t doing so hot either apparently. AN HOUR after the game, the Chron homepage still had nothing on the No-No. (But the Chron had a link to last night’s gamer, writing about how Tim Lincecum was the Giant who would be making a run at John “The Count” Montefusco’s last no-hitter. How classic is that? Hearst Communications Inc. ain’t doin’ so well in the communications department these days.

Stupid newspapers. I guess breaking news stops at 8 p.m. Then again, Baseball America didn’t have anything either. Must have been vacationing in Canada, covering hockey or something. Nice work boys!

At least SI freaking tried: The Stuff of Legends, which is good because SI doesn’t have the balls to say Dirty Sanchez, but it gets at his stuff being legendary for one night. That’s the story. For one night, he wasn’t a washed up lefty who the Giants were shopping and getting ready to trade/demote. And now he’s going down in baseball lore, even if he doesn’t start another game.

Then again, SI blew the score in their photo caption, so what can I say?

Maybe I shoulda stuck around in sports journalism, it appears y’all need some freaking help.

So we’ll stick with Dirty Sanchez, because dude was straight up filthy tonight.

No hits, not walks, 11 strikeouts, first no-hitter since 1976 – meaning the Giants went my entire lifetime without a no-no until tonight.

And he did it with his old man in the stands, the first MLB game his father had attended. Seriously, does it get any more storybook than that?

Well it coulda. Sanchez was one booted ball away from a perfect game, which would’ve been the Major’s first since The Big Unit’s.

Then again, Sanchez was also saved by one of the better defensive plays of the day – Rowand’s sick catch in deep center to secure the second out of the ninth inning.

Once he made that catch, you knew that no-no was a reality. And you knew it was time to starting thinking about the best Giant … headline, or head on over to rip off ESPN.com and Sports.Yahoo if you weren’t even that clever.

Dirty. Dirty.