I think that Aaron Rowand has already established himself as a leader on this team. Two things happened today that confirmed this for me. In the first photo you can see how Rowand is talking and every single outfielder (except one) is paying attention to what Aaron has to say. Heck, the coaches can't get that much attention when they are explaining something to the players.

The second photo is of Rowand in the batting cage. As you may or may not know......the Giants tend to do a lot of "tracking" in their first batting practice against live pitching. What that means is the batter simply tracks the ball thrown by the pitchers, without swinging at it. I would say that last year the Giants batters swung at maybe 1 out of 10 pitches on the first day. They just watched the ball as it left the pitcher's hand and followed it all the way into the catcher's mitt. Rowand was the third batter of the day. He was preceeded by Guillermo Rodriguez and Dave Roberts....both of whom did a lot of tracking and very little swinging in their first go round.

I took this photo because I like to get any new player's first swing as a Giant. Of course you have to time the shot, because if you wait until you know the batter is swinging...it is too late to take the photo. Well, to my surprise, Rowand swung at the first pitch from Barry Zito and lined it down the 3B line for what would have been a sure double. If you look closely at the photo you can see the ball leaving the frame at the far right (it looks elongated rather than round). Well, after that....EVERY player (including Roberts and Rodriguez their next time around) started taking a lot more swings and as a matter of fact.......I would say no one was "tracking". Whenever a batter didn't swing, it was because he didn't like the pitch. This incident seemed pretty telling to me.