Just Vegas Baby!

Why the Raiders’ pending move to Vegas makes the most sense of all the things ever.

By Andrew J. Pridgen

The guy who cuts my hair is a Raider fan. He and his cousin have season tickets. <-For starters, this gives credence to my theory that all Raider fans know their way around a no. 2 and have cousins that are Raider fans. Silver and black runs just as thick as blood.

…The last haircut featured a trio of haircut conversation highlights from him.

They were:

Re: Playboy no longer featuring nude pictorials: “I didn’t think I was old-school like that till they took it away. Something about jerking off to my phone then ordering up an Uber then calling up my girlfriend—all within five minutes—is kind of creepy.”

Re: Walking home from the bars the other night and seeing two college kids get in a fight: “It was in front of a 7-Eleven so I just went in, grabbed a beer and watched. It lasted like 8 minutes. That’s a long time for a college fight.”

Re: The Raiders possible relocation: “I started out a LA Raiders fan and was OK with the move to Oakland. I don’t want them to go back to Southern California. There’s no way to get in and out of Carson in under a day—that’s a fact. And then you’re like, ‘Fuck, I came all this way to be in Carson.’ Vegas on the other hand…that would be my dream and my nightmare come true.”

There you have it Raiders marketers, along with Just Vegas Baby!®, Viva Las Raiders!™ …a third-tier slogan might be Las Vegas Raiders: Your Dream and Your Nightmare Come True.

Everyone knows this is going to happen. It’s not the Spanos family trying to fleece the apathetic taxpayers in the heart of the Whale’s Vulva to shoehorn a new stadium right in the heart of San Diego’s downtown and waterfront district. It’s not the 49ers selling their fan base out to Goldman Sachs, moving it two (cross out) four hours south on the 101. This move is pure greed-backed competency (<-which, btw, should be Vegas’s new slogan…’What happens here, stays here’ is ready for its Kobe farewell tour.)

You’ve got Mark Davis, the Dutch Boy stunt double son of sweatsuit provocateur Al. The late Davis Sr.’s slicked back Kiwi polish black hair and gum-snapping sensibility was Vegas before there was Vegas, and his prodigal Mark is ponying up $500 million of the family fortune to make this happen. Keep in mind, this is the same Mark Davis who is more leery of a one-year lease at the Oakland Coliseum than most folks are of timeshare presentations.

There’s Sheldon Adelson, the only man in this country who makes the Koch Brothers look like Peace Corps returnees drafting specs of their art car for this year’s burn. Adelson best known for using his massive Vegas hotel/casino fortune to reshape right-wing politics here and in Israel has made headlines over the last six months. In December, he financed a $140 million takeover of the Las Vegas Review-Journal basically asking, “Why should I keep suing this paper when I can own it?” then firing everyone who knew how to write. In February, he became embroiled in a Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission investigation for his company’s operations in Macau where there were potential illegal dealings with public officials.

Adelson, who will somehow come through cleaner than Andy Dufresne—after all, he’s the 13th richest man in the U.S.—has pledged to give Davis an additional $150 million marker for a total of $650 million private dollars toward a stadium build. The balance of the estimated $1.3 billion cost to erect a domed stadium next to McCarran (see: this scene in Biodome for what it’s going to be like) would be offset by a hotel tax—so Vegas tourists paying an extra buck/night for the next 20 years would about cover it.

What makes this project different from the onset, is instead of a waterfront axe wound dormant but for 24 hours a year in San Diego or a giant Saturday Costco line equivalent of cars clogging freeways in Carson or Santa Clara—Vegas is going to use the shit out of this stadium. Every entertainer from Carrie Underwood to Celine Dion to Cher (OK, basically every entertainer whose name starts with a ‘c’) is going to fill this thing to capacity weekend after weekend. The proximity to the airport and the strip means public transit will be involved making it easier to get in/out of games than it is to find an exit at Caesar’s.

The Nevada State Legislature’s approval seems all but a Battle Born-sized rubber stamp formality, especially with the blessing of the Southern Nevada Tourism Infrastructure Committee already codified. It would behoove them to call a special session between now and February, 2017 because they want to lock the Raiders down before the Chargers announce what they’re doing. Nevada is like a guy who doesn’t necessarily want to leave the bar at 11 p.m. but he’s got a girl down with him now and who knows what’s going to happen during the last call-bell scramble.

If the Chargers were to stay in San Diego (not likely) the Raiders could still opt into the Carson deal. But you read what my barber said—it’s not a good deal for the fans or the franchise—which would now have to compete with the Rams as well.

A special session of the Nevada Legislature could happen as soon as August, if the approval goes through then, ground gets broken in September and the Raiders could be dining out at Nobu the night before kick-off in the fall of 2019.

I feel like the only two questions that remain are:

1. What the fuck is David Beckham doing in the middle of all this? Or was that just a hologram? And why does he appear to be at senate judiciary committee hearing facing a tie clip indictment?

Mark Davis and David Beckham are both at this SNTIC meeting #rjnow #raiders #lasvegas pic.twitter.com/Pl01CXl8Wz

— Brett Le Blanc (@bleblancphoto) April 28, 2016

2. The tailgating scene for the Vegas Raiders is going to be something along the lines of Dave & Buster’s boys night out meets ISIS. For starters, Southwest might as well start painting half its fleet Silver and Black and Dan Cortese should come out of retirement to cover Raider Vegas tailgaters—the most extreme of all sport. My barber, a season ticket holder, said he would fly in/out every weekend, “until my liver can’t take it.” I sort of believe that’s going to be all of #RaiderNation’s battlecry. I guess that’s the dream come true part. The nightmare? Imagine every on purposely douchey Jets fan on his or her worst behavior, every parking-lot-banging Bills fan getting to do it in the sun, every mild-mannered KC fan on a once-a-year bender. NFL fans by nature are already not very well behaved. And Vegas will do just…well, just does what Vegas does to people—makes them the worst. Beer bongs at the concessions? A good idea to keep the lines moving. A drunk tank bigger than the home locker room? A necessity. A halftime show featuring a giant pinata hanging from the dome roof stuffed with adult entertainers? Not out of the question.

Even by Raider standards, this most unholy of all A Little White Chapel weddings with Southern Nevada is going to be the stuff of dreams, of nightmares—but in reality, is the manifestation of Al Davis’s wildest imagination: The Raiders finally finding a permanent home in the one place that’s inherently worse than they are.

Image: Joe Robbins/Getty Images

Go get that ring Vernon

That crosswind you feel tickling your neck isn’t the shrill first breath of winter, it’s an exhale of exaltation from a man who was taken from his career depths up to a mile-high-and-beyond season of possibility. That man’s name is Vernon Davis.  

By Andrew Pridgen

As a former 49er faithful, I can’t wait for Vernon Davis to maul the Lombardi trophy with his paws and kisses in February. I want to see him doused in orange and blue confetti as he rocks with Peyton Manning back and forth on the dais beside a new Chevy truck nobody wants in some kind of end-of-career embrace/slow dance whose tune only they know.

I want to see VD get that ring.

And why shouldn’t I? To me, Vernon Davis personifies the ultimate journey of the modern athlete. From physical specimen who was too-imposing-to-be-a-sure-thing yet too tantalizing not to take, to problem child, to the ultimate teammate and community guy, to veteran stuck in the middle of the worst ownership/coaching/personnel situation since Fiorina’s Whitman’s HP…to a man who’s now got a legitimate shot at the title and redemption in the autumnal moment of his career.

In the spring of 2006, Mike Nolan’s 4-12 49ers needed help at every skill position along with a complete body-off restoration of both lines. Instead, they opted for an art major from Maryland who also happened to be a Consensus All-American and an All-ACC first-team selection. His junior year, The Cyborg led the Terps with 51 receptions and 871 receiving yards, averaging more than 17 per catch. More importantly, he set team records for a TE in bench (480), cleans (380) and squat (685) making him the strongest motherfucker to matriculate from Under Armour U.

Vernon Davis was a pass-catching tight-end, which is the Porsche Panamera of players. Sure, it may be something you say you need, but in the end, you’re just putting an extra set of doors on a luxury item. The 49ers took him 6th overall in the 2006 draft and what followed was an odyssey of Joycean proportions. Injuries (a fractured tibia and a strained right knee) marred production his first two seasons. In October of his third campaign, when scribes started to affix the bust label on the beast, Davis slapped Seahawks safety Brian Russell in the facemask after catching a pass, resulting in a 15-yard penalty.

No-nonsense crazy-man HC Mike Singletary benched Davis, dressed him down on the sideline, then sent him to perma-time-out in the locker room. Post-game, Singletary went on to YouTube glory with “I want winners” screed. As if overnight, Vernon Davis became the prodigal son returned and finished the season with flash and class as one of the league’s breakthrough pass catchers.

The next year, Davis went to the Pro Bowl for the first of two times. The year after that, he was awarded a five-year contract extension for $37 million and finished the season as the linchpin of the 49ers passing attack, hauling in 56 catches for 914 yards

This brings us to 2011, where Davis really began to show his worth in the playoffs. He had seven receptions for 180 yards during the division round game against New Orleans—breaking Kellen Winslow’s record (166) for most in a playoff game. In the NFC Championship Game, he was all the 49ers offense (112 yards, two touchdowns) in a 20-17 overtime loss to the Giants. The year after that, Davis led the 49ers to Super Bowl XLVII where he grabbed six receptions for 104 yards in a losing effort that created the template for horrible red zone play calling Seattle would go on to emulate in 2015.

The Duke leaves the 49ers with 441 receptions for 5,640 yards and 55 touchdowns. Broncos coach Gary Kubiak said Davis will be featured in two-tight end sets, which Manning under center has embraced since the Clinton administration. In return for Davis, the 49ers got pair of consecutive sixth rounders in 2016 and 2017 which will summarily be used on a pair of wideouts who will both be cut from the practice squad sometime in the fall of 2018.

Off the field, Vernon Davis has been portrayed as a head case, a shit starter and a misanthrope. Perhaps at some moment he’s been all of these—like anyone would be after working for the same dysfunctional mom-and-pop shop for a decade. Or perhaps he tired of answering the same six versions of “Are you going to do more to prepare for next week?” from the same nine warmed-over LAP-BAND® pre-op Bay Area scribes who hide behind their recorders as they gurgle down orange chicken and black tray jumbo shrimp between statements-posing-as-questions like giant red-faced baby birds.

I, for one, wish that Davis had gotten a little more positive press.

In a franchise defined by entitled interloper owners who sold their team’s host city fanbase out to Goldman Sachs, serial drunken drivers, gun-wielding-at-party scofflaws and multiple girlfriend beaters—one needn’t look further than Davis’s foundation for the arts, his handing out superhero capes at El Camino Hospital, his recently shuttered art gallery or his time as captain of the US Olympic curling team to see that a complex man can rise from an organization occupied by feckless bad guys and joyless simpletons.

 

What NFL transgression will finally force me to stop watching for good?

The first last straw came early last season when tape surfaced of Ray Rice knocking his fiancé out like Debo in an elevator. On Sept. 9, 2014, I gave up the NFL and its sponsors for good. Well, kind of for good. Knowing full well that I could only avoid the NFL like a Smurf does Gargamel for so long, I kept a spreadsheet and gave to a local women’s shelter one dollar for each slip up (total donation at season’s end: $167).

By Andrew Pridgen

This year, I find myself back in the NFL fold. Without even trying, I’m signed up for a pair of fantasy leagues. I’m craving more articles like this about how terrible individual franchises are. I’m totally looking the other way with Pink Month. And I’m turning to Hard Knocks late night instead of Topless Prophet. I mean, I get it, JJ Watt is a big man. But how big is he really?

In other words, I gave in.

NFL, I wish I knew how to quit you:

So what kind of terrible does the NFL have to do to—in fact—lose me forever?

The NFL endorses Donald Trump: I mean that basically turns off their fastest-growing most tolerant fan base. If the league backed Trump, at least we’d get him maybe doing a funny teaser ‘firing’ of Roger Goodell prior to the season opener.

The NFL awards Los Angeles franchise to ISIS: This would be pretty bad. Though I’m not sure ISIS would do any worse a job than the York family. Guaranteed fewer beheadings.

The NFL expands to Europe and Mexico for players-as-drug-mule purposes only: Can running balloons full of heroine through TSA be any worse for a third-string guard than getting his head smashed in 19 weeks a year for the league minimum and no retirement?

The NFL opens a water theme park in my backyard: This would pretty much suck. I hate water theme parks and I don’t want one close to my home. The good news is maybe Tom Brady would come over.

The NFL reanimates Strom Thurmond: Sadly, I actually had to double-check to make sure he was dead. Google says he’s dead. I’m still not convinced he is.

The NFL releases a statement denying the Holocaust: (Tie) …The other one is the NFL comes in, sits on my couch and beats me at Mario Kart while spitting white supremacist rhetoric and reciting Rick Ross lyrics.

The NFL offers fans the same HGH and performance-enhancers its players use for an ‘more immersive game day experience’: Imagine how many beers I could drink, racks of ribs I could down and cheerleaders I could ogle if I could just take something that would shorten my lifespan by three decades and make me grow hooves.

All NFL officials are registered sex offenders: At least Jared Fogle could then find gainful employment again someday.

The NFL lets Adrian Peterson play again, no strings attached: Wait, you mean he’s playing? This year? Let me check my draft board—I’m feeling third-round sleeper. …As an aside, my (second) favorite off-season All Day update was when he grand marshalled a parade in his hometown and the crowd chanted “Fuck the haters!” NFL fans have the market cornered on all the classy.

Super Bowl 50 turns the field at Levi’s Stadium into a big game preserve at halftime: All the owners and some A-list celebrities (Kim Jong-un, Danny Bonaduce, Shifty Shellshock…Kevin Jonas) go on an endangered species hunt, preferably for koalas, pandas, killer whales and any of Cecil’s remaining cubs.

TV time outs mean only For the Love of Benji clips can be showed on the scoreboard: Sorry, wrong list. This was accidentally imported from ‘20 Things the NFL Can Do to Right Now to Enhance My Experience’. Damn you Google Docs.

Every NFL player gets caught in a gang bang video: Whoops (see: above mix-up.)

The NFL re-boots Indiana Jones, hires back Shia Lebeouf and features Erin Andrews as Marcus: It couldn’t be any worse than ‘Crystal Skulls’…or that one movie where Cate Blanchett played Bob Dylan.

 

There’s no crying in A’s-ball

In Oakland, no change of ownership/no new stadium means no PSLs. No $18 sandwich at Crazy Crab’z. No weighty free-agent contracts. And a family of four can attend, eat (hot dog AND peanuts!) and drink for $60. Plus Barry Zito is on Alert-5 Aircraft in AAA Nashville. So who needs a goddamn trophy?

By Andrew Pridgen

When I was 12, the golden age of Bay Area baseball was represented on the wall above my bed by a pair of adjacent Nike posters. The poster on the left, Will Clark’s compact left-handed stroke frozen over a stanchion of the Golden Gate Bridge. On the right, Mark McGwire’s rhinoceros-horn-sized forearms stretching halfway over the span.

While I knew it was the much-less-scenic Bay Bridge that connected the two teams, the message was simple and direct: The strong- and sweet-swinging duo was the only thing bigger than the region’s most notable landmark.

The bridge as backdrop was also a statement about where the nascent Bay Area was on the rest of the nation’s sports and pop-culture radar. We weren’t New York or Chicago. We weren’t St. Louis or Minnesota. Hell, we weren’t even Los Angeles or Anaheim. To get the Giants and A’s on the map, Nike had to show the rest of the world just where the Giants and A’s were on the map.

The San Francisco of the early ‘90s was a decidedly left-leaning giant homeless shelter disguised as a banking, tourism and textile town. And Oakland, a crime-riddled port of the disappearing wage-earning class.

It was a time before the jargon of possibility took over and the drudgery of today’s hand-held solipsism defined San Francisco.

It was a time before hipster victory gardens and a shakily revitalized downtown “brought back” Oakland—if only for those who can afford to pay more for less food and drink $14 cocktails served unapologetically in Mason jars. The rest of the city simmers with real problems: crumbling infrastructure, capital crime and a school system adrift.

The A’s and Giants last meaningfully squared off in the 1989 World Series, bringing my poster to life. The planet, as it turns out, couldn’t take such gloriousness and at 5:04 p.m. October 17, 1989, just a half hour before the first pitch of game three, the earth opened up to swallow both franchises whole as the Loma Prieta quake struck.

The series closed out with a four-game sweep in the A’s favor. And the mitosis of the two teams, then equal in forgotten West Coast underdog stature, began.

The Giants would go on to never fully repair that version of the team or its home turf. Two years later, the franchise was packed up for Florida—till the mayor intervened and ginned up a reluctant if not innovative local ownership group.

Instead of moving one of baseball’s oldest franchises to the swamplands of St. Petersburg, the savvy businessmen wanted to build a ballpark for their new toy—Willie Mays’ godson and the most expensive free agent to date, Barry Bonds—to hit parabolic blasts into the chilled-to-black bay waters of China Basin. Where once there was an industrial landfill site rose a new, privately funded brick bandbox featuring lovable Rusty the Old Navy Robot.

The Giants rang in a new century with the new digs. Bonds got the single-season and all-time home run record and came within six outs of bringing San Francisco its first title in 2002. But it was homegrown pitchers and position players who eventually landed the franchise an unlikely trio of World Series rings during the last half-decade.

In 2015, the Giants joined the Yankees, Dodgers and Red Sox in baseball’s $2 billion valuation club. Success in excess has bred a new generation of douchebag around San Francisco and their epicenter on any given home stand seems to be AT&T. A willfully ignorant fanbase more likely to turn their backs to the field in-game, extend their arm and take a picture of the action they’re missing is the mark of today’s Giants fan.

In Oakland, things couldn’t have played out more differently. The current ownership group of Lew Wolff, a real estate mogul, and John Fisher, heir to the fading GAP empire, are baseball’s twin Ebenezers. Professional sports’ slumlords. Raking in profit-sharing dollars and giving fewer than two shits whether any of the remaining dozenish chest-painted Oakland faithful bang through the turnstiles like cattle to the slaughter. The A’s are ranked 27th out of 30 MLB teams in valuation ($725 million) and attendance (just over 1.1 million/season).

The team draws fewer than 20,000 per game among OAK International discount parking lots on the exhaust-lined concrete shores of the 880. Renovations in the quarter century since the team’s last title include building a new stadium on top of the existing old one called Mount Davis—a concrete-and-rebar homage to their current roommates’ deceased owner.

There’s no recent hardware to impede the tumbleweed roll of dust bunnies in Oakland’s trophy display. And there’s no such thing as a long-term contract for homegrown players as much as there is a promise of a future windfall elsewhere. Fans have come to think of A’s prospects as interns. They’re young, eager and fun to have around—but eventually learn they’re not making enough for Friday drinks and go get a real job, preferably somewhere where the offices aren’t in the direct flightpath of Southwest’s 12x/daily commuter to Ontario.

A’s GM Billy Beane, though being portrayed as boy-genius by Brad Pitt bought him a lot—maybe too much—leeway from A’s apologists, has spent the last decade or so outmaneuvering himself into this kind of fugue state of a chess master whose pieces are stolen. Beane these days is like the Subway owner who swapped for a Quiznos and then switched back. He routinely makes a mockery of the good work he once did by undoing it and then for good measure, undoing that. Sabermetrics is no longer black arts or exclusive to Oakland. The Athletics plus 29 other MLB teams use analytics and analytics alone to extract value from every draft pick, contract extension and free-agent acquisition.

As baseball’s second-longest tenured GM, (Beane started in 1997, the Giants’ Brian Sabean was hired in 1996) Beane not only hasn’t won a World Series, but has managed to advance past the AL Division Series only once (2006). Though A’s evangelists will note the franchise has made a respectable eight playoff appearances in Beane’s 18 seasons as a small-market/small-payroll team—the consistent effort to keep payroll in the eight-figure range has yielded mixed and sometimes stupefying results.

Take 2008, when Beane dealt closer Huston Street and Carlos Gonzalez to get Matt Holliday in an A’s jersey. The A’s finished 24.5 back and Holliday went on to star for the Cardinals the next season.

Or last off-season…After giving up a four-run lead in the 8th inning of the American League Wild Card Game to eventual pennant winners Kansas City, Beane failed to re-sign his trade deadline acquisitions Jason Hammel and Jon Lester. He moved Josh Donaldson, the game’s premiere third baseman, after months earlier giving up the league’s top shortstop prospect in Addison Russell to acquire four months of service from Jeff Samardzija. Beane also sent Samardzija back to Chicago (this time the South Side) for Berkeley product Marcus Semien, who plays the league’s worst middle-infield defense while batting .251.

The A’s sent a franchise-tying record (1975) seven All Stars to the midsummer night’s classic in 2014. Only one (Sean Doolittle) still wears an elephant on his sleeve.

Here’s how the rest are doing: Yoenis Céspedes (Tigers .287, 15 HR, 55 RBI), Josh Donaldson (Blue Jays 289, 23 HR, 66 RBI), Scott Kazmir (Astros 104 SO, 2.99 ERA), Brandon Moss (Indians 15 HR, 48 RBI), Derek Norris (Padres 11 HR, 45 RBI).

The latest trade, Kazmir to the Astros last Thursday, netted—as most of Beane’s trades do—a pair of AA prospects who may or may not make the club in future years and certainly will do nothing to bolster the team’s playoff chances (still only 11 games out at 44-55) this year.

On the plus side, the A’s are keeping it interesting with the start of a dominant rotation. Ace Sonny Gray is 10-4 with an ERA under 2.40 and though unnamed scouts and analysts like to think that he’ll be part of this season’s fire sale, A’s Assistant GM David Forst said this week Gray’s “not going anywhere” (which means the right-hander could be in pinstripes by week’s end). Kendall Graveman, another righty, is to date the only worthwhile acquisition in the offseason (he came over from Toronto in the Donaldson deal) seems to be getting his footing with a 3.40 ERA and 55 Ks.

The A’s also have a bit of recent history on their side that they’ll rise to respectability again in 2016. In 2011, they dumped a handful of AL representatives from the previous midsummer classic (Gio Gonzalez, Trevor Cahill and Andrew Bailey) and went on to win the AL West.

A’s fans can also exhale about the team relocating any time soon. Wolff, just prior to the start of the season when discussing the current long-term lease stalemate at O.co as it relates to a potential move: “We’d rather stay in the Bay Area than move to Timbuktu.”

That’s right, an on-paper billionaire who refers to San Antonio and Montreal—two cities that regularly make all those liveable/affordable slideshows—as the middle of BFE. It’s not that Fisher (San Francisco) or Wolff (Westwood) have any physical or sentimental ties to the East Bay. It’s just they don’t want shell out the cost of a U-Haul or any of those PODS storage things, even though those seem like a pretty good idea. I’ve never tried one, though I probably would. Next move maybe.

…Unfortunately, there are no suitors to take ownership in Oakland unless for whatever reason the MLB decides it’s OK for a team to be a co-op and hops and heirloom tomatoes can be grown in the outfield. Maybe goats instead of a grounds crew with plenty of chickens scratching at the infield. A circuit court judge won’t allow the A’s to move to San Jose, which is also good because the South Bay already got a publicly funded stadium-sized homage to bland and will be paying back the government-funded thieves at Goldman Sachs for the next four decades or approximately till the 49ers’ next Super Bowl appearance.

Until the MLB finds some McCourt-sized loophole to force them out (and it will) Wolff and Fisher will act like your college landlord and take the security deposit either way—whether they know about the goat and that party in May where the roof of his garden shed was collapsed by people dancing on it or not.

Every Major League Baseball team’s ownership group does what it do, win or lose, for the profit. And since fandom directly belies responsible decision making with the pocketbook, the ownership will always win.

Yet Wolff’s and Fisher’s refusal to improve rosters and infrastructure has introduced a strange concept to most in the Bay Area: affordability.

O.co is held together by Big League Chew and chicken wire. The entire 2015 team payroll is south of what the Dodgers shell out for the services of Clayton Kershaw and Zach Greinke (about $56 million). A’s fans don’t pay PSL fees for the rights to their seats. Because of this, actual families can attend actual baseball games. This season, a Friday Family Pack includes four tickets, four drinks, four hot dogs and four bags of peanuts…for $60. A single Club Level seat for the Friday, Aug. 14 Giants game vs. the Nationals is $65. A beer in Oakland is $2 cheaper than across the bay and pretty much anywhere else in baseball. It’s $20 less to park at the Coliseum than in China Basin and there’s no farmers’ market or dickhead playing cornhole in front of the new North Face Store looking for Instagram attention either. And BART stops at the Will Call window.

Any change in ownership would signal a potential move from the area and/or a new stadium build-renovation that would signal a Giants-inspired fleecing. No #socialmedianight and trio of trophies can hide that there’s only one baseball choice in the Bay Area that’s feasible for the ever-dwindling ranks of the working-class fan.

Maybe put that on a poster.

 

Lon Simmons’ legacy echoes from the booth this Opening Day

Sports columnist Jim Murray was eulogized by broadcaster Jack Whitaker as “one hell of a writer, but even a better person”; similar snippets were said of Lon Simmons, who passed away on the eve of 2015’s Opening Day at his home in Daly City.

By Andrew Pridgen

Lon Simmons, the 91-year-old voice of the Bay Area by way of Elko, Nev., was not just the nicest guy in baseball but maybe the whole of the Western Hemisphere—if morning-after soundbites are to be believed:

• “Just a nice man. He was always there for me in all kinds of situations. I’m really going to miss him.” — Willie Mays

• “I can’t imagine a life more fulfilled than his.” — Duane Kuiper

• “We got closer and closer over the years.” — Willie McCovey

• “There wasn’t a pretentious bone in his body. He was a humble man. He was a gentleman.” — Mike Krukow

• “He was a special guy.” — Dennis Eckersley

We become all the great things we only should have been the minute we stop breathing. And the people who bickered with us, disagreed with us, tolerated us sing the torch songs. Suddenly they’re the lucky ones, not just to be breathing, but to have known us.

It’s how it works.

You fudge a little on this side of the ground for the recently departed, because someday that’s you coughing up worms in the pine box. And that’s someone else clutching the edges of the dais trying to choke back laughter or tears; trying to give the best, cleanest, most mending version of you they can.

Simmons, the recipient of the Hall of Fame’s 2004 Ford C. Frick Award for contributions to broadcasting, was in on all the important Bay Area sporting events—both sides of the Bay Bridge—for the last five decades.

He joined the 49ers on-air team in 1957 and, before moving to the Giants, called A’s games from ‘81-’95 with the legendary Bill King. In 1989, he enjoyed broadcasting both the World Series and the Super Bowl: the A’s took the Giants down in four after a big quake nine months after the 49ers’ last-minute win over the Bengals.

His signature home run call, “Tell it Good-bye” is immortalized by John Forgerty in Put Me in Coach, a snippet of which will be heard in all 15 Major League stadiums today and on every game day until a comet hits us.

Read More A Salute to Scully

But there was something more there, an actual good guy behind the microphone—a man emulated.

To me, Lon Simmons was a bit sandpaper-dry coming through the radio. I much prefer the sub-tropical breezes of Hall-of-Famer Jon Miller’s floral-print Aloha tales and spicy Adios pelota! home run call in broken Spanish.

But it doesn’t stop with Miller. Giants fans have been blessed with the sounds of Kruk and Kuip, two of the most seamless and melodic friends who ever donned headsets. The pair has become the most effortless and endearing broadcast couple in all of sport.

Dave Flemming, the kid who looks like he’s going to water your lawn and get your mail for a week, is starting his second decade in the booth as Miller’s play-by-play partner. Once the cherub-faced Stanford grad fully ripens, say in another season or two, there will be no better voice upstairs than the man who has already made this call:

Lee pitches…Rentería hits a high drive, deep left-center field, David Murphy going back, he’s on the warning track, IT IS…GOOONNNNE! Edgar Rentería…has hit a three-run homer…against Cliff Lee! And the Giants lead here in the World Series, 3-0!

…and this one:

Romo shakes off Posey. Now has the one he likes. Romo’s 2-2 pitch on the way… Cabrera TAKES STRIKE THREE CALLED! And the Giants have won the World Series in Detroit! And the celebration begins as the Giants mob the mound!

Flemming’s timing, ease and acute sense of humor is the direct result of Simmons’ tutelage. It’s a West Coast brand of dropping the rigidity in favor of flavor and a little bit of self-deprecation.

Along with Vin Scully, there was nobody better at chasing a bit of coastal fog into the storm drain to reveal the California Saturday afternoon sun with a clanging Welcome to the ballpark. I remember Lon’s languid summers well. My father, after a morning spent weed wacking, deck stripping or lawn fertilizing with that little red monkey grinder of his, would cast a sun dial’s shadow in his folding chair with Lon and his faithful pooch by his side. Sometimes, my mother would have to go roust him to start up the barbecue.

Beyond the thousands of Bay Area dads catching a quick snooze to his dulcet and drawn-out resonance, Simmons left behind two generations of the best broadcasters in the land. Friends on the air and soulmates, brothers and caretakers off it. Connected to the community and letting us join them, every pitch, every pause to take in the stadium murmur—every explosion off the bat and inside-joke laugh spilling over from the break.

If leaving that legacy doesn’t make you a good person, I don’t know what does.

 

Now that’s using your head Chris Borland

49ers inside linebacker Chris Borland, 24, became the fourth NFL player in his prime this week to announce he was crossing over the chalk line for reasons having nothing to do with any pertinent off-the-field altercation or physical shortcomings on it.

By Andrew Pridgen

Chris Borland’s retirement was for health, consciousness and longevity reasons only. He’s out shopping for rocking chairs today with his linebacking mentor Patrick Willis, 30, Steelers linebacker Jason Worilds, 27, and Titans quarterback Jake Locker, 26, all choosing to leave the game before the game leaves them.

Left on the field for the young history major from Wisconsin was a guaranteed $2.32 million over the next three seasons and then the supposed big extension or free agent contract after that.

Borland was on his way.

As a rookie, he led the 49ers in tackles with 108 in only eight starts. In his second-ever start he collected 22 tackles. He was named NFL Defensive Rookie of the Month after recording more than 70 tackles and two interceptions in November. Go to a couple Pro Bowls, grab the big money, then it’d be all deep-sea fishing trips and being the big, funny old guy with the open tab.

Borland didn’t think so.

He pocketed about $700k for a year of service. Not bad, but not enough to carry him till the AARP mags start showing up in the mail either.

In Borland’s case, he did his research while his brain still looked like a green banana, not the splotchy brown one you find in your top desk drawer. He told ESPN he wanted to be proactive about leaving the game and referenced his study of former NFL players Dave Duerson and Ray Easterling who were diagnosed chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in autopsies performed after each took his own life.

In all, more than 70 former NFL players, including linebacker great Junior Seau, have been diagnosed with brain trauma in studies of their young corpses over the past decade.

Borland said he was concerned if “you wait till you have symptoms it’s too late.”

But the man who now has his eyes set on grad school didn’t need to count the cadavers to help his decision along. There are men in advisory roles, not too much older than him, who are the living examples of the hell of life inside a post-NFL body and mind.

Sean Morey, a former standout from the Ivy League, took his 5’10” frame and wily spirit and turned it into 10-year NFL career on special teams including a Super Bowl win with the Steelers. After the final snap, he became head of the NFL Players Association’s committee on traumatic brain injury and currently is an independent consultant for players suffering from the day-to-day of brain trauma.

He knows the effects well because he’s living with them.

Recently, an NPR reporter looked through Morey’s medicine cabinet to find a prescription pad’s worth of anti-depressants, sleep aids and stimulants: Lexipro, Propranolol, Ritalin and Trazodone all taken multiple times a day in hopes to curb the effect of CTE and its associates: early onset dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and ALS.

All diseases Morey can no longer spear or outrun.

That’s a lot of dark, miserable years to give to have a couple jerseys unraveling in the closet. And, to paraphrase Woody Allen, not enough of them at the same time. Morey often mentions his own death as pending, and in the same sentence, the hell of the prison he’s living while making his way there.

“The dysfunction, the pain, the misery, the confusion, the desperation, the depression,” he told NPR. “There were instances in my life that would never have existed had I not damaged my brain.”

Borland told ESPN he had a concussion last summer and it made him reassess: “Is this how I’m going to live my adult life, banging my head?”

The answer is no.

Instead, he chose to use it.

 

The 49ers: Why I love to hate the team I used to love

I’m having a difficult time with my former 49er fandom. In fact, I think the joy derived from my renounced allegiance growing in conjunction with their current demise is a bit of a psychosis. So, I did what everyone who’s confused about stuff does. I went to a shrink.

By Andrew Pridgen

After 38 whole seconds of clicking over the Google Os at the bottom of my search for a psychiatrist specializing in sports fan-related issues, I came across Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D. Susan is a professor of psychology at UMass and, if her Twitter feed is to be believed, has a thing for sadists.

She recently wrote ardent sports fans suffer from one of two syndromes which sound vaguely like repugnant sexual acts involving flatulence in a bathtub or a campus-wide eating disorder; they are Birging and Corfing.

(I’m not making this shit up.She wrote a paper on it while you were busy pretending to work).

She says Birging stands for ‘Basking in Reflected Glory”. In her words, “When your team is doing great, you feel great.” Birging is the reason why Sportsfanguy says “we” instead of “they” when referring to his team or takes his vanity plates inside the stadium and points “number one” to them on the cutaway.

Birgers are mostly native to the Northeast and can be easily spotted in the wild wearing Tom Brady jerseys, talking about how great Pablo looks this spring and secretly wishing they had A-Rod trapped in their basement.

The other sickness belongs to the Corfers, which stands for “Cut Off Reflected Failure.” Corfers are often discovered on eBay selling their Kobe Bryant jerseys with no reserve. Anyone who took to the streets in Cleveland with a Zippo and a 23 replica jersey circa July 8, 2010 is a Corfer. Corfers are commonly associated with three-initial organizations: SEC, GOP, NRA and FOX.

I’m sure at times I have been both a Birger and a Corfer, but now I’m compelled to wonder what my current diagnosis is.

So I wrote Ms. Dr. Whitbourne and described my condition as such: One the one hand, I am so very happy that big old corporate sell-out Santa Clara-based cruise ship appears to have been piloted by a drunk Italian Captain Merrill Stubing right into a giant concrete freeway barrier on the 101 and is sinking in the shadow of the Facebook campus.

On the other hand, I look at the vintage Chalk Line Forty Niners satin gold number hanging in my closet next to my father’s college letterman jacket, and I shed a tear for what was and what will never be again.

It’s part loathing of what the ownership of my team has done to alienate its faithful both on the field and in the stands, and it’s part self-loathing as I derive so much perverse pleasure from watching the team implode.

It’s clear to me I love to hate the team I used to love.

First crickets, then this:

I am sorry but I’m unable to provide help on this topic at the present time. Thank you for contacting me.

No salutation. No signature.

In other words, I’m either beyond help or she’s scared (or both).

Then I did what all people in need of deep therapy with problems that can’t be solved over an email do, I decided my issues have NOTHING to do with me and everything to do with the 49ers. In fact, losing me as a fan was a decision the 49ers made for me. Kind of like how breakups are always ultimately the fault of the other person who decides to leave the relationship mentally before you decided to physically, or vice-versa.

The team makes shrewd moves all the time to get rid of dead weight. It happened to Roger Craig. It happened to Tom Rathman. It happened to Jerry Rice and Ronnie Lott. It happened to Joe Montana, for goodness sake.

Most recently, it happened to Frank Gore.

Gore will finish his career in a jersey that’s not red wearing a helmet not made of gold, just like me.

If the 49ers were willing to let go of their all-time leading rusher without as much as a press release, think of how willing they were to throw my fandom into the choppy sea of Redwood Shores’ family neglect and commuter exhaust.

I’m not a PSL holder at the new stadium. I haven’t attended a game since 2001. I haven’t bought 49ers merch since I had a size 24 waist and Starter jackets were worn off the shoulder. And, minus a casual check of the score on my phone or a quiet affair with Vernon Davis when he was my number-one tight end, I’ve done nothing in the name of the 49ers (though I recently did offer to take a Candlestick urinal off their hands).

And they certainly haven’t done much for me.

From a distance, I was a fan of Jim Harbaugh’s pleated sensibility. I liked Colin Kaepernick’s resemblance to Squidward. I agreed Patrick Willis was a well-mannered beast. I marveled at Mike Iupati’s footwork. I didn’t mind Michael Crabtree’s rookie year holdout because it gave me something to complain about. And Super Bowl XLVII blacked out before I did—a first.

But now, with the current but perhaps short-term exception of their playcaller, all those pieces are gone. Retired, released, traded—discarded like greasy garlic fry paper, skittering along the empty Candlestick lot and slinking down the chain link as Rose’s hand against the back seat window in Titanic.

And I have been released along with them. My no-revenue-generating self a vestige of a time and an ownership and a stadium long past. Gone and forgotten, immobile like that giant escalator to the upper box concessions at the ‘Stick. I wasn’t able to grow with the team. I wasn’t able to keep up, stay sharp—be attentive. Or simply, attend.

So, they dumped me.

Like most of the scorned, I’m proud to craft the story in a way that suits me best, like it was my decision to go. The message boards are full of trolls like me: “You say goodbye to San Francisco, I say goodbye to you.” “You can keep your four-hour traffic jam getting into your new luxury suite-filled Erector set you call a stadium.” “Have fun rooting for spoiled boy Jed’s broken toy as they win two games (with class!) next year.”

No—at the moment I am no Birger or Corfer. I’m not a psychotic ex fan either. I am simply a number on a spreadsheet in a column that no longer exists. A writedown. A negative value. So I wrote the 49ers to tell them I now understand why they’re done with me and no hard feelings.

And this is what I got back: I am sorry but I’m unable to provide help on this topic at the present time. Thank you for contacting me.

About Face

Ah-hem.

A day after I wrote boxing off as a sport only a mother… could love, no lesser figures than NBC and Al Haymon arrived to save the sport.

The network and promoter announced a March 7 card featuring Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero (32-2-1) and Adrien “The Problem” Broner (29-1, 22 KOs) live, from Vegas, to appear on NBC proper.

Not NBC Sports Net. Not some contrived NBC3 you-pay subscription channel.

The rainbow peacock herself, NBC.

(Collecting my jaw off the ground.)

Broner, considered by many the heir apparent to Floyd Mayweather Jr. in both the remarkable boxer and remarkable heel camps, will fight John Molina in what should be a laugher, and Guerrero will take on interim welterweight champ Keith Thurman in what could be a bloodbath.

It’s not the first time in recent memory that one of the major networks have attempted to bring boxing back to the masses. NBC has flirted with it and CBS actually looked to have some momentum going back in 2012.

These are, however, the most important fights on network TV since at least the late 80s and possibly back to the days when Howard Cosell was narrating the action for ABC. Demographics are moving in the right direction for boxing, though. The sport retains a loyal following in the US Hispanic community—my local bar here in Niners/Giants country fills about as much as it does for either of their playoff games for a big fight—and live sports are a salve to network advertisers smarting from the TiVo effect.

Add to all this rumors—admittedly, we’ve heard them before—that a Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight is close at hand and the breaking news that super middleweight champion Andre Ward has resolved his contractual dispute with his previous promoter and signed with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation sports.

Ward comes back to the ring after two fights in 3 years a more than 14 months of inactivity—but brings with him a lot of cred from insiders. The frightening specter of Gennady “GGG” Golovkin will hang over his every fight until the Son of God gives the God of War a shot in the ring.

I’m giddy. The boxing game is up off the mat with a network showcase, a potential superfight and one of its stars back in the ring.

Fight fans, 2015 might not be a lost cause, after all.

2014: A Year in the Life and Death of the Press Box

Writing a twice-weekly column with volunteer labor reminds me of a quote I keep handy. It’s the Shoeless Joe one from Field of Dreams: Man, I did love this game. I’d have played for food money. It was the game…The hotels…brass spittoons in the lobbies, brass beds in the rooms. It was the crowd, rising to their feet when the ball was hit deep. Shoot, I’d play for nothing!

It’s sort of a corn syrupy heartstring puller, but to me the point of it is to stay true to yourself and your passion and maybe, someday, you’ll get to sleep in a brass bed.

Or maybe not.

Recently I was telling a friend and former newspaper colleague I’d stumbled across a box of my old clips and was surprised—not about how far my writing had come, but how much it had regressed. Three thousand-word features lingered in the moment and news stories were created and edited and polished for a final product with real heft, real sources…that showed real enterprise storytelling skills. All this has since been replaced by 140-character snippets. Sonnets to one-liners.

As the print medium has died and the ad dollars have swelled for Google, Facebook—and not much anyone else, this metrics-based world we occupy now gives us instant gratification, instant feedback and, oftentimes, instant regret.

I know some stories will take hold. The tear-jerkers and the hate reads oftentimes draw the most viewers instantly. What’s missing, however, is consistent bumps for the well-thought-out piece.

Sadly, the stories or interviews I spend the most time obsessing over sentence structure, double-checking sources and even asking for a different set of eyes to proof, pretty much get relegated to “family and friends” single-digit Facebook-like oblivion. It’s discouraging and at once, telling.

Last week, NYT’s Teddy Wayne wrote a story entitled The Rapid Decline of the Movie Quotation. It was a simple breakdown of why our movies are no longer quotable (and why we no longer quote movies). Technology seems to be the number-one culprit. But the following paragraph caught my eye as the real harbinger:

Which brings up another factor that has stymied quotable lines: the tent-pole-movie mentality that has driven Hollywood the last 15 years. The movie industry has long embraced broadly appealing spectacles, but now they must also appeal in translation to foreign markets to show their financiers the money. Greed, for lack of a better word, isn’t always good: it results in sequel-ready franchises with less reliance on nuanced English dialogue and more on eye candy. Therefore, the “Iron Man” and “Hunger Games” series crowd out narratives that, in the 1970s and earlier, wouldn’t have encountered such failure to communicate to wider audiences. Forget it, Jake; it’s Tinseltown.

In other words, we continue to dumb down our language and that, as a result, is making us dumber. While I’ve never been accused of making people smarter with my writing, I hope I made a few of you stop and think or maybe smile this year. Likes or no likes, brass bed or no brass bed, that has always been my goal.

Below are 2014’s top-three most-clicked posts from myself and Kyle Magin as well as a few each that may not have gotten the play they deserved:

1. Seven Reasons Not to say Fuck it and Move to a Mountain Town—Sad but true, write an incendiary piece and put the f-bomb in the title and you’ve got a hit. This one somehow stirred a reaction but it was written after I’d gotten done reading Outside’s best places to live issue. I love when Outside rolls out best places to live/work/visit cover stories. Everything is just so neat and tidy. They always profile these kind of rich hipster couples with perfect glasses and gear and jobs in their subway-tiled kitchens holding giant Central Perk-inspired coffee mugs. They’re just so happy and bright. The reality is most of the places profiled (mountain towns especially) are tough living. The weather is unpredictable. The economy is mercurial. And shit breaks all the time (cars, relationships, water heaters, dog’s legs). I wanted to write a tribute to the real folks doing it in mountain towns—living, working, raising families—despite the odds. Unfortunately, the story had a Costanzian effect and the homage turned up the ire in some communities.
2. The Real Story of Novato’s Round House— This was inspired by a Craigslist ad posted for a home for rent that borders the 101 in the southern-most part of Novato, sort of the unofficial gateway to the town. I grew up and went to high school in Novato and most of my best friends have found their way back there to raise families. Though I’ve been away for two decades now, when I go back, it’s the town equivalent of Cheers. This was a love note of sorts to my home town and the people in it as well as tribute to the tropes every longtime Novatan knows. As one commenter pointed out, Novato residents have always had an incredible, self-effacing sense of humor; one more closely associated with Garrison Keillor and the Midwest. They are kind people and sensible. But most of all, the folks in Novato look after one another and they all, to a person, “get it.” I’ve called many places home but Novato will always be where my heart is.
3. Forever a Giant— My father passed on in January and most of the readers here followed my chronicling of his time with cancer and his ultimate farewell. I tried not to get too sentimental about our relationship. We didn’t have much in common until well into my adult years when I finally had settled down a little and he finally learned to accept that his footsteps were not the ones I would follow. In that time, we discovered we were more alike than we both led on. One evening a couple months before his passing, he turned to me after a particularly tough time together and said, “Just so you know. No matter what, I cherish  you—because that’s what fathers do.”

And now a couple you may have missed:

1. All I want for Christmas…is a Candlestick urinal— Though this one technically came in at the end of 2013, I find the events that followed this year noteworthy. I sent the 49ers and the San Francisco Parks & Recreation Department email and certified letter versions of the note in this article. While it was a bit of a ruse, I would seriously pay $500 for one of those trough urinals. They’ve always been a conversation piece with my friends and any longtime Giant or 49er fan will perk up when you mention the urinals at the ‘Stick. I found it funny that I never got even a form letter or email back…from anyone. This year I stopped paying attention to the NFL. Some reasons are serious, others not so much. The reality is I just can’t accept the fact that the 49ers play in a giant corporate-friendly erector set in the Great America parking lot funded by Goldman Sachs and the city of Santa Clara. It’s a perfect storm nightmare of racketeering, corporate greed and refusal of the current ownership to suck it up and follow the Giants model: use private funds to stay and build in a world-class city on a world-class waterfront. The piece got about as much traction as my request, but I still look at it as my farewell to being a 9er fan.
2. Pints and Picks Week 10: If your name’s not on here, you probably don’t exist—I loved writing Pints and Picks—a weekly breakdown of college football lines with some craft brew recommends co-written with Kyle. Sometimes it became a chore. Sometimes it was a bore. But it is some of the stuff I’m most proud of to date. The columns are dense and the prose is unwieldy at times, but I’m not going to make any excuses. Sometimes (OK, a lot of the time) I purposefully left in a run on or an unnecessary paragraph or two just because it’s my way of saying not everything has to fit in a Buzzfeed .gif. Some things, in other words, are worth sitting down and taking the time—the payout is even greater. I feel week 10 Pints and Picks, as we’d winnowed down to a handful of loyal followers, is a perfect example of why I still find joy in writing. Shoot, I’d write for nothing!

Kyle:

I wonder if 2014 will find its place in my sporting memory with any distinction some day or just get in line with every other year that didn’t include a championship for one of my teams (so, like nearly all.)

It sorta feels like the year sports broke for me.

The NCAA made more money than ever and found new ways not to share it with its own labor pool, a sensitive ecosystem was destroyed by Russia to host the most expensive Olympic games of all time and feted a guy who started a war two weeks later, the NFL is essentially a failed state operated by a warlord and his goons and my Tigers still can’t get the bats and arms to work in unison.

The nice part is all of that makes for tremendous copy. I can’t think of many more compelling sports years to write about. Current events intersected with sports constantly, boxing saw the continued rise of its most exciting force in years (Gennady Golovkin), Madison Bumgarner challenged every fragile-pitcher notion we take as gospel and it all started for me cheering the Michigan State Spartans to victory over Stanford in the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day.

Here’s a look at the stories you thought were most important this last year, and the ones I had the most fun writing.

Top three most-clicked:

1. Boxing Photographer Stephanie Trapp on shooting in the squared circle—Boxing personalities float in and out of our lives for 4-5 months at a time. Gennady Golovkin is all I think about in the two weeks leading up to his fight, and, outside of the announcement of his next fight, he pretty much drops off the radar in the interim. Stephanie was such an intriguing interview because she’s so omnipresent in both the sport and my Instagram and Twitter feeds. She works the circuit year-round to make a living as a boxing photographer and it was interesting to get a firsthand look into her day-to-day and the energy powering her young career. Her ebullient/energizer bunny nature came across in her answers to my queries and there’s little question that the almost frenetic quality of her personality is crucial to her success. We should all find a calling that complements our character so well.
2. May is Money, not a legend—Floyd Mayweather is boxing’s standard bearer but has a desperately warped view of his place in the sport. The divisions he’s in or adjacent to are as packed with talent today as at any time in the last 20 years and he’s managed to duck challengers and handpick guys before they hit their primes or just after they’ve been on top. This year’s first tilt with Marcos Maidana left Floyd looking bored and almost beaten; their second throwdown merely marked his recognition that he’s better than anyone he chooses to fight by degrees of magnitude. Floyd’s always going to have ‘what if’ written about his career, and I don’t think he even cares.
3. The Illusory Michigan Man—Michigan football presented us with a fascinating story this year. Coach Brady Hoke flamed out miserably after being chosen largely for his past connections to the once-proud football program. Many of the schools fans, alums and admins fetishize the Bo Schembechler/Lloyd Carr era and thought an insider with ties to that period would lead them back to the promised land (forgetting that all of Rich Rodriguez’s recruits paved the way for Hoke’s most successful season in 2011.) I thought it was interesting that RichRod was driven away as an outsider and Hoke was so embraced before being heaped with scorn when fans realized what a disaster the hire became. I caught a lot of shit for this column from my Michigan fan friends who say Hoke was the right hire at the time regardless of his connections, but I’ve long found a distrust of outsiders emanating from Ann Arbor that’s one part arrogance and one part fear.

Here are a few of the clickthroughs that didn’t get made that I hope you’ll catch up on:

1. Detroit Tigers Beat Writer Matt Mowery on covering MLB in the post-print era—Matt brought me along as a stringer in my very first foray into the world of paid journalism. He now covers the Tigers at the Oakland Press in the Detroit suburbs. His was our first Q&A for the site, a practice AJ was unsure about at the time–and so was I. These things can frequently turn into an uncritical forum for the question-answerer to spout whatever they’d like to say without providing a lot of insights into their personality. Matt disabused that notion right away. He talks about the realities of covering a professional baseball team today–when fans have so many other outlets to watch and read about their squad, including team-owned outlets. Matt’s had to become ubiquitous–constant updates on Twitter, working the beat while helping out on the preps desk and generally responding to a lot of challenges and technological opportunities his predecessors would have never been comfortable with. His insights and diligent work as a reporter are why readers go to him and they made him an intriguing read here at DPB.
2. Evil Olympic Honchos, Ranked—We know the Olympics are a wretched hive of scum and villany today, pockmarked with scandal, corruption, massive costs and a few questionable personalities. Until embarking on this project, I didn’t really know they’d always been that way. The games have been in the hands of the most infamous dictator of all time (Hitler), a bigot and reactionary from the Windy City (Avery Brundage) and, most recently, a national park-razing strongman (Vlad Putin). It was, I guess edifying is the best word for it, to learn the Olympics have always looked to terrible people to stage our amusement.
3. The Five People you Meet in Vegas—I love Las Vegas the first week of NCAA tournament time. It’s not a new sentiment, but the city’s like a drug–you’re up, you’re down, bright lights, weird people. Here I focused on the weirdos you’re likely to meet when you head down to Sin City with your boys for tourney time. The well-informed and fish-out-of-water alike never cease to entertain when thousands descend on the city to celebrate unpaid kids breaking their legs for your amusement. Do Vegas at tournament time at least once, strictly for the people-watching. You may see Pete Rose with an Asian hooker on his lap and you’d be better for it.

My first Sunday without the NFL

Last Sunday was my first without the NFL. It felt good. It felt right. It felt familiar.

When I was little, I was a 49ers fan. I was a 49ers fan because my father was a 49ers fan. That’s usually how those things work. I remember my father and I would watch 49ers playoff games. I remember we would tune in if the 49ers played on Monday Night Football. I remember reading in the newspaper and Sports Illustrated about how the 49ers were doing. But that’s about all the attention I paid to the 49ers.

As for the rest of the league, I knew the Bears had a cool quarterback who rode a scooter and a giant o-lineman named after an appliance who sometimes ran the football. I knew they made music videos and had a coach with a mustache and gum and a cool sweater vest. I knew Dallas was a big deal and their coach wore suits and a hat like men used to. I knew the Raiders were the worst of the bad and Lyle Alzado looked like a villain and Howie Long a super hero and yet they were both on the same team.

And that’s about all I knew of the NFL.

Sundays, we would work on the yard and drink out of the hose. In the late afternoon, my dad would barbecue with a tumbler of really tinny-smelling stuff in his hand. He would extinguish his cigarettes on the leftover ash pile beneath the grill. In the winters, sometimes we’d go skiing. In the summers, sometimes we’d go swimming. In the fall, sometimes we’d rake leaves and saw branches off trees.

There wasn’t a lot of time for watching football, but there was time for being outside and throwing one.

This is what happened the first Sunday I gave up the NFL: I woke up early with my baby boy, before the sunrise. He had a bottle in the gray of morning and we talked. We read some books together. I packed him up in his car seat and we went and got a New York Times and some coffee for his mother.

On the ride home, Marvin Gaye’s Got to Give it Up came on the radio and he started to punch and kick and smile and scream.

We returned to the couch and read the paper together. He fell asleep. I read some more. Shortly after he woke up, his grandmother came over. He sat on her lap and they enjoyed one other’s company. She brushed his hair and changed his outfit. They told each other secrets.

His mother and I went for a long run together. We started on a golf course and wound through neighborhoods bordering the Pacific Ocean. We hopped on trail through a nature preserve and observed an abandoned farm goose set loose in a riparian zone. She felt bad for the honking white creature whose wings didn’t fully work and thought we might get a farm goose and drop it off as a companion. “At least then he wouldn’t die alone,” she said. We wound down through the bay-front properties and fantasized about how many wishes it would take to own one someday. We ended up sprinting back toward the golf course to break an hour.

Upon our return home, we re-hydrated and showered. The baby’s mother is a horticulturist. She took him outside and she worked curating and readying for sale her succulents and bonsai trees. He lay on the grass and looked at her planting and pruning and potting. His eyes grew big every time she approached him to show what she’d just done. His eyelids flickered and cheeks reddened as he stared up at the trees. This outdoor time spent “helping” is his favorite. He laughs and talks at the sun sprinkled through the leaves and when the breeze picks up he screams with delight. He’ll do this for hours until he’s ready to eat or fall asleep again.

I sat for awhile on the back deck and watched the scene before me. Behind me, in a dark room, the TV remained off. I looked out on the near horizon and saw the marker-blue of the ocean; tiny whitecaps from wave sets acted as seams. I opened a book and read some more.

I cleaned the bathrooms and did the dishes. We put in a load of laundry and made a list of to-dos for the coming week. Sunday evening crept up on us as shadows from the Eucalyptus began to dim the light of our living area. We decided to order pizza and drink a little wine, still watching the last grains of weekend fall and feeling a little lazy on top of it all.

My son got a bath. His mother dressed him in his PJs and rocked him to sleep on the couch. Once he went down, we downloaded a movie but it took about an hour for the wheel to stop spinning. It was a little too late to start a feature, so we just ended up watching a couple episodes of Bored to Death. It’s one of the few shows we both like though we seem to laugh at different parts. We ended up discussing whether we were going to try to drive up to San Francisco for a couple of friends’ birthdays at the end of the month. We yawned consecutively and made our way to bed. Our child in his crib, arms stretched out, breathing deeply. His body a heater. His little face lit from within.

This was my first Sunday without the NFL. A Sunday I’ll always be thankful for. A Sunday I didn’t want to end.