SF Chronicle 49ers Insider: How bad could it be?

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By Art Spander
San Francisco Chronicle 49ers Insider

There’s a word for how the 49ers played against Seattle on Sunday night: Awful. The question is why?

Because defensive tackle Justin Smith was missing? Because Colin Kaepernick was missing? Because as linebacker Patrick Willis said, “Sometimes the best of us in sports have those moments”?

Or because, perish the thought, the Niners were not who we thought they were.

Without Smith, injured a week earlier, the 49ers defense wasn’t what it had been. The Seahawks, riding a wave and running figuratively at will – at least in the case of Marshawn Lynch – crushed San Francisco, 42-13.

A team that ranked No. 2 in overall defense, No. 1 against the run, was helpless and hopeless. Lynch – starting with the opening minute 12 seconds when be crashed and smashed 24 yards for a touchdown through the hole where Smith would have been – gained 111 yards by the end of the night.

On the other side, quarterback Kaepernick, denying the obvious, that he was frazzled by the insanely loud crowd at Seattle’s CenturyLink Field, had trouble either getting off plays or getting yards from those plays.

After a brilliant game eight days earlier against the Patriots, Kaep reverted to the second-year player he is, twice getting called for delay of game penalties, twice needing to call time out to avoid delay of game penalties and, although completing 19 of 36 for 244 yards, throwing as many interceptions (one) as touchdowns (one).

One report: Seattle coach Pete Carroll had noted that Kaepernick and the Niners were pitifully slow in having a play run off once they came to the line of scrimmage. In the noise and tumult of a place where the crowd, known as the 12th man, has its own flag flying from a pole, that tardiness would haunt.

The 49ers’ success has come from stopping the run, which they couldn’t do, and running without a stop, which they couldn’t do either. San Francisco gained only 82 yards rushing, and its main man, Frank Gore, had only 28 yards on six carries.

Now, with their seeding in the playoffs having dropped to No. 3, meaning no bye the first weekend, the Niners are confronted with some unnerving reality: How are they going to win in the postseason if the offense and defense are no better than they were against the Seahawks?

“We didn’t coach well enough,” said a grim, and newly 49, Jim Harbaugh. “Didn’t play well enough. We didn’t win the down enough. Everybody came away after this with the same feeling. This wasn’t good.”

This was depressing. This was awful.

“But we’ll wake up (Monday),’’ Harbaugh reminded, “and still have a half-game lead in the division. Our hand will be on the dial.”

The program to which they tune hardly will be the one the Niners expected to watch. The Niners fell a half-game behind Green Bay for the No. 2 seeding in the NFC. Unless the Vikings beat the Packers on Sunday, while the 49ers defeat Arizona, San Francisco will be playing wild card weekend.

And with Smith questionable – surely, as Adam Schefter of ESPN tweeted, Smith will not face Arizona – Mario Manningham on crutches after having his knee smashed and Vernon Davis recovering from a “mild” concussion, the 49ers could use a recuperative period.

“I thought it would be a closer game,” said Harbaugh tersely of the most one-sided loss in his two-year tenure as the 49ers' coach. “We don’t feel good about it. It’s how we handle it, how we respond.”

On a night of rain and revelry along the Puget Sound, Pete Carroll, Harbaugh’s adversary since Carroll was at USC and Harbaugh at Stanford, got his points (Seattle has scored an even 150 total its last three games) and, gleefully, his revenge.

The Seahawks were 0-for-3 against Harbaugh, and who would forget when, three years ago, Harbaugh had Stanford go for a 2-point conversion with a 30-point lead and Carroll at the post-game handshake queried him, “What’s your deal?’’

Carroll’s deal Sunday night as the Seahawks gained a place in the post-season was to stand hatless on the sideline and laugh and cheer at each Seattle score. There went a happy man.

Two of Harbaugh’s former Stanford team members, now with Seattle, receiver Doug Baldwin and defensive back Richard Sherman, were no less delighted. Baldwin caught two of the four touchdown passes thrown by Seahawks rookie quarterback Russell Wilson. Sherman returned a blocked David Akers field goal 90 yards for a touchdown in the opening minute of the second quarter.

“A 10-point swing,” said Harbaugh, meaning the three the Niners should have had and the seven Seattle did have.

The 10 points didn’t matter that much in the end. The runback, however, proved stunning, leading to speculation that the Niners’ focus didn’t make the trip from the Bay Area.

“I don’t know about that,” said Willis, “but whatever it was out there tonight, it wasn’t good.” Not at all. Not at all.

Copyright 2012 San Francisco Chronicle

SF Chronicle 49ers Insider: All for one: Harbaugh, Kaepernick joined at the lip

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By Art Spander
San Francisco Chronicle 49ers Insider

His father, Jack Harbaugh, said it specifically a while back: “Loose lips sink ships.” Provide no information that will benefit the enemy. To Jim Harbaugh, that would be every other team in the NFL.
  
Also the media.
  
We’re never going to learn much from a Jim Harbaugh press conference other than what we already know.
    
Grass is green, rain is wet, and each game will be difficult.  
   
Hey, Jim, how are you going to prepare for Seattle, one of the loudest stadiums in the league?
  
“We’re going to prepare like we do for all our away games,” was the Harbaugh answer.
   
Thanks, that was informative.
    
Now and then, Harbaugh adds a fillip, as when asked about his quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, being voted NFC Offensive Player of the Week, for the four touchdown passes in the win over the Patriots.
   
“As always, we’re happy for the other guy’s success,” said Harbaugh. “And our team won a big game on the road. Great team victory. Sometimes a rising tide lifts all ships.”
   
Aye, aye, admiral.
   
Jim’s troops, well taught, are no more informative than their leader. You might say they are joined at the hip. Or the lip.
   
Kaepernick, asked if on the bus back to the airport in Boston, he thought to himself, “This was a pretty darn good game, worthy of that kind of award,” answered: “I was just happy we got the win.”
   
His predecessor, the now diminished Alex Smith, wasn’t much more outspoken – when he was starting. After he was benched, Alex came out with a legitimate gripe that he only thing he did wrong to lose his first-string spot was incur a concussion.
   
A coach’s first priority is to win games, of course, and as long as the Niners do so – ESPN’s Adam Schefter put them atop his NFL rankings this week – Harbaugh blithely will continue withholding what information he chooses.
 
Jim is a graduate, literally and symbolically, of the Bo Schembechler School, Michigan, where Bo coached Harbaugh – and Jack was an assistant – a place where both the opposition and the press were kept in the dark.
  
You want to learn about a Harbaugh team, watch the game. Bo was historically brief in his dealings with the press, which barely was allowed to do interviews after games. Harbaugh is brief, if not quite historically.
   
And while Harbaugh may quote from poets and poseurs, probably to tease, his own quotes are of little value.
  
What did (the 49er) defense do to succeed against QB Russell Wilson (of the Seahawks) the first time the teams played in October?
  
“Well, they made plays,” said Harbaugh, “We made plays.”
   
That’s usually what occurs in a football game.
    
For Harbaugh, as preached by Schembechler, “No man is more important than the team. No coach is more important than the team. The team. The team. The team.”
  
A fine concept, but obviously not entirely accurate. If Kaepernick were not more important, he wouldn’t be first string, having replaced Alex Smith. If Aldon Smith were not more important, the Niner defense wouldn’t be what it is.
        
Indeed, football is a team game, and a quarterback is nothing without an offensive line or receivers, while a linebacker requires other defenders to get his shots and his tackles. The Harbaugh argument – never given – would be with Kaepernick at QB, The Team is better than it was with the other guy, now consigned to stand and watch.
   
What, someone wondered, was Kaepernick’s reaction to being chosen the top NFC player? “Excited about it.”
  
Why? “I think it’s a great accolade for the team.”
   
No less an accolade for Kaepernick and Harbaugh.
  
“He’s crazy,” defensive tackle Ricky Jean-Francois, said of Harbaugh last year. “Plus, he’s comfortable with the way he is.”
  
A way that perhaps makes others, such as sports writers and TV and radio journalists uncomfortable.
  
“Jim, are you expecting a higher-scoring game this time around against Seattle?”
   
“It’s possible,’’ said Harbaugh.
    
Anything is possible, except the coach or his players offering in-depth information.
  
“Colin, you and Michael Crabtree work well together. What do you like about him as a receiver?”
   
“He catches the ball and makes plays after he catches it,” said Kaepernick.
   
As they tell you in English 101, make it clear and simple. Kaepernick and his coach have done that, so apparently criticism be damned.
 
The Niners will do what they must; their players will say what they’re allowed. Maybe their football, wins over the Patriots, the Packers, the Saints, all on the road, are more eloquent than any words.
  
“But Colin, we have this job, as you have your job, and if you were standing in our spot, what would you ask you?”
  
“The same questions every week like you all do,” said Kaepernick, and then he laughed.
  
Presumably the joke’s on us.

Copyright 2012 San Francisco Chronicle

SF Chronicle: 49ers Insider: Frank Gore Is a Football Player

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By Art Spander
San Francisco Chronicle: 49ers Insider

The accolade was simple yet elegant. “Frank Gore,’’ said his coach, “is a football player.”  From one man to another, from Jim Harbaugh, who believes in toughness and persistence, to Frank Gore, there could be no greater compliment.
 
A football player, a back who will run over you if he can’t run past you, a back who can block on passing assignments, a back who as time goes by never looks back and as his play Sunday showed, never looks bad.
  
The 49ers weren’t brilliant against Miami, but they were effective. They made enough plays to overcome both themselves and the Dolphins, gaining a 27-13 victory before the usual announced sellout of 69,732 at Candlestick Park.
   
Colin Kaepernick’s minor mistakes, a few overthrows that brought a few boos – hey, San Francisco fans demand much of their quarterbacks – and a fumble, were offset by a 50-yard touchdown run in the final minutes.
   
Rookie LaMichael James' awaited debut was satisfying, eight carries for 30 yards, some decent blocking and one reception. “It’s been a long time,” said James, the Niners’ second-round pick in April, “but great things come when you’re patient.”
   
The defense was the defense, allowing only a cumulative 227 yards to the Dolphins, although we’ll learn a great deal more about the Niners this Sunday night when they play the best offensive team in the NFL, the New England Patriots.
   
There’s not much to learn about Frank Gore but plenty to admire. His 63 yards on 12 carries, one of those over a yard for the 49ers' first touchdown in more than 96 minutes, lifted him above 1,000 yards rushing for the sixth time in eight seasons.
   
He’s been nicknamed “The Inconvenient Truth,” borrowed from the title of a book about global warming by another Gore, Al, the Democratic presidential candidate in 2000. But there’s nothing inconvenient about Frank, to the Niners’ thinking.
   
“Frank Gore had another phenomenal game,’’ said Harbaugh. “Some great running throughout the game. Blocking, everything that Frank does . . . Let me just reiterate this, Frank is a football player.”
  
Frank is part of the season James had not been activated. They play the same position, although at the moment very few in the NFL play it as well as Gore.
 
“He’s got tremendous ability and great heart,” said Harbaugh when asked about Gore’s endurance. “The assignments, the technique. He’s just on everything. He goes into every one of these games so on mentally.”
   
The talk is that 30 is the age of decline for a running back, who by then is starting to slow and beginning to take more hits. A man loses a step, and subsequently loses his job. Gore, at 29, won’t listen.
   
“When you (hear) everybody say, ‘When you turn 29, 30 you can’t do it anymore,’ when I got to 29, I told myself I’m going to overcome that.  And it’s all about training, training in the off-season, working, being smart during the week. And I love the game of football. I’ve been playing it since I’ve been four, and I’m just having fun.”
   
The Niners have used modifications of the Pistol offense that Kaepernick played at Nevada-Reno. “I don’t like it,’’ said Gore. He laughed. “No, it’s good. Kaep did a great job reading. He made the big play. Everything came toward me, and Mr. Everything did his thing.”
   
Not a bad nickname for Kaepernick, Mr. Everything, although with the Niners struggling to score, leading only 6-3 at halftime, for a while Kaep looked like Mr. Nothing.
  
“These games are really hard,” Harbaugh said in defense of his offense, and particularly his QB. “Miami’s a heck of a team. We knew they were going to be tough to move the football on.”
   
Said Kaepernick, asked the obligatory question whether he was pleased,  “I wish I had a few throws back, a few different decisions, but overall, yeah.”
  
He doesn’t wish he had different running backs, however.
  
“LaMichael,” said Kaepernick. "Very shifty, very fast. He opens up a lot of things for this offense. For Frank, a greater appreciation. I always knew he was a great running back. Being out there on the field and seeing some of the cuts he makes and how he protects in pass protection, I don’t think there’s another back like him in the league.”
  
When Gore, who went to the University of Miami and off-season lives in the Miami area, came out of locker room, he was wearing a gray sweatshirt with the print of a dolphin on the front, the dolphin’s tail up and head down.
  
“I know we had the Dolphins on the schedule,” Gore said, then smiled. “I’m not a planner, so I said, ‘We’ve got to flip them upside down when we play them.’ I was a Niners fan.”
   
More than that, he’s a football player. One of the best.

Global Golf Post: Woods Still Casts Long Shadow

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By Art Spander
For GlobalGolfPost.com

THOUSAND OAKS, CALIFORNIA — Tiger Woods still is the man, even if to some he's no longer The Man. He's gone three-and-a-half years without a major. He's had lifestyle problems. Yet no one in golf — including that kid Rory — has Woods' presence.

Tiger remains the game's single most important individual. Remains the name...

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2012 Global Golf Post

Rory replaces Tiger as ‘Da Man’

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By Art Spander

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. – Tiger Woods would stand at a tee, and the imposed silence frequently was shattered by a shout of “You da man,” which in golf he very much was. But seemingly no longer is.
  
The man in golf now is Rory McIlroy, who, as the newer Tiger, the younger Tiger, has found room at the top of both the PGA Tour and European Tour, who has had the sort of year – five wins, one of those a major, the PGA Championship – Woods used to have.
  
Not that Tiger was awful. He did have four wins in 2012, three on Tour. Except none was a major. None, indeed, has been a major since the 2008 U.S. Open. And, as Woods agreed Tuesday, “Winning a major takes it to a whole new level.”
  
Woods figuratively is home this week, at Sherwood Country Club, just into Ventura County from the L.A. County line, where he’s the host – and defending champion, for a fifth time – in the World Challenge, now presented by Northwestern Mutual.
  
A small-field event, 18 golfers. An elite-field event, with Woods, Masters champ Bubba Watson, U.S. Open champ Webb Simpson, 2010 U.S. Open winner Graeme McDowell, 2011 PGA Championship winner Keegan Bradley and various Ryder Cup players. The World Challenge funds the Tiger Woods Foundation and learning center.
 
So much of the pre-tournament discussions for the World Challenge, which starts Thursday, were on the imminent joint announcement by the USGA and R&A of the probable banning of belly or anchored putters. Simpson uses one, for example, and said he has been practicing with what we would call a normal putter, in which only the hands are in use, not the body.
  
Still, it’s people who make golf – make every sport – and not equipment. It’s competition. And for this, we return to the game’s ultimate truism: It isn’t how, it’s how many. How many shots did you need? The golfer who requires the fewest wins.
  
Which McIlroy did last weekend in Dubai. He birdied the last five holes and came in two shots in front of Justin Rose. "I just wanted to finish the season the way I thought it deserved to be finished," said McIlroy.
  
The question was whether he finished Tiger’s chances of ever overtaking him. McIlroy is 23. The best is ahead. Tiger, in a month, will be 37. Is his best in the rear-view mirror?
  
“Rory is ranked No. 1 (in the world),” said Woods. “He deserves it . . . He should be very proud of the season he’s had, and I’m sure he’s excited about what next year holds for him as well, coming off a great year like this.”
   
The words are magnanimous, expected from one champion about another. But deep down, does Tiger think to himself, “I still can beat him, beat anyone”? Is he intent on proving those who belittle him, who degrade him, who make predictions of his demise?
 
“I needed to get to a point where I was playing a full season,” was Tiger’s response, “and where I was competitive, not where I was missing big chunks of time, which I had been over the past years.
  
“There were quite a few people out there who said I would never win again. Well, starting at this event, I won four times. That’s not too bad.”
  
"Not too bad" hardly is the description we once applied to Woods. A victory in the AT&T National in July was the 74th of his career, elevating him into second all-time, one better than Jack Nicklaus and eight behind Sam Snead.
  
Yet, we know and he knows – because Woods has reiterated the thought so often – without a major, the season is merely “not too bad.”
  
Nicklaus has 18 major triumphs. For four and half years, since the playoff victory in the 2008 U.S. Open, Woods has been stuck on 14, been stuck answering the unanswerable question of whether he’ll surpass Jack, or even equal Jack.
  
“Any time you’ve won a major championship, you’ve had a great year,’’ Woods insisted. “There are four guys (McIlroy, Watson. Simpson, Ernie Els) who have had great years this year in my opinion. And any time you get a chance to be part of history and put your name on one of the biggest trophies in our sport, it’s a great year.
   
“I know how it feels, and it feels incredible. It lasts with you, and that’s something I would like to have happen again.”
   
But will it? With Tiger slipping back in the final rounds of the U.S. Open, British Open and PGA this year, one wonders what the future holds. The adage is we’re not getting older, we’re getting better, but can a 37-year-old get better?
    
Tiger invariably had been good enough, until Rory McIlroy stepped forward and very much became Da Man. Silence please.

Yahoo! Sports: Spander: Irish stand up to challenge

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By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange

LOS ANGELES -- The kid, a freshman making his debut as a starter, didn't have much of a chance. Against that Notre Dame defense no one had much of a chance. USC went with freshman quarterback Max Wittek.

The Irish went off to the national championship game. The echoes are awake and inescapable. Like the Irish defense. That Notre Dame has a linebacker who's a Heisman Trophy candidate is only proper.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2012 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

Newsday (N.Y.): Irish stop USC, head to national title game

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By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

LOS ANGELES -- Send a volley cheer on high. Top-ranked Notre Dame defeated USC, 22-13, Saturday night to finish unbeaten for the first time in almost a quarter-century.

The Irish called down echoes of past success with a defense led by linebacker Manti Te'o that was so unyielding that USC couldn't even score with a first down at the 2-yard line, along with an offense that enabled Kyle Brindza to kick a school-record five field goals.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2012 Newsday. All rights reserved.

S.F. Chronicle 49ers Insider: 49ers make a statement

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By Art Spander
Special for 49ers Insider

It wasn’t so much that the 49ers didn’t miss a beat, more that Colin Kaepernick didn’t miss an opportunity – nor, rarely, a receiver -- and Aldon Smith didn’t miss Bears quarterback Jason Campbell.

The Niners’ class of ’11 proved very much the class of the game.

Nine days after San Francisco could do nothing more than gain a tie against the mediocre St. Louis Rams, it came back Monday night at the ’Stick and tied the Bears, the team some believed was superior to the Niners, in knots, 32-7.

It did so using a backup quarterback, Kaepernick, forced to start for a first time because Alex Smith’s concussion symptoms had not improved, and a virtually unmovable defense featuring Smith’s five and a half sacks.

It did so before a national TV audience, which surely had to agree with Smith’s dead-on assessment of the result when asked if the Niners made a statement: “I’d say so.”

Not only for a game, a game that lifted the Niners’ record to 7-2-1 to the Bears’ 7-3, but a season.

“Who’s got it better than us, nobody,’’ the crowd of 69,732, chanted in accompaniment to a repetitive video in the game’s final seconds, and indeed at the moment maybe nobody in the NFL has a better team than the 49ers.
  
And this side of the New York Jets, with their Mark Sanchez-Tim Tebow debate, maybe nobody now has a quarterback controversy like the Niners.
  
Kaepernick, the kid from Turlock and the University of Nevada, the Niners’ second-round pick in last year’s draft – Aldon Smith was the first-rounder – stepped in for Alex Smith and perhaps stepped up all the way to the top.
  
Not that San Francisco coach Jim Harbaugh would say as much, insisting, “We’ll go with the quarterback with the hot hand, and we’ve got two quarterbacks with the hot hand.”
   
Kaepernick’s hand probably registered 212 degrees Fahrenheit. He connected on seven of his first eight pass attempts, 16 of 23 in all for 243 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions. He finished with a passer rating of 133.1 – numbers reminiscent of Steve Young, who was doing the postgame show for ESPN.
  
“He did an outstanding job,” was the Harbaugh keep-it-cool observation. “Accuracy, poise in the pocket, play-making ability, understanding the game plan.”
  
What everyone must understand is that the Bears had the fifth-ranked defense in the league (the Niners were second) and led in takeaways, grabbing interceptions and fumbles.
   
But against Kaepernick and the Niners, they took nothing except a figurative punch to the ego.
   
Kaepernick threw the first play from scrimmage – “You expect they think you’re going to run with a backup quarterback,” Harbaugh explained – and kept throwing.
   
One of those passes was to Kyle Williams for 57 yards, a bomb, the sort Alex doesn’t throw. Another was a progression read to Michael Crabtree for 10 yards and a touchdown, the sort Alex does throw.
   
Kaepernick completed six, including one for a TD to Vernon Davis, who of late could have been reported to the Bureau of Missing Receivers.
   
This was as close to a perfect game as the Niners have played. The offensive line was effective. The defense was awesome. Numbers can be misleading, but these aren’t. At halftime, San Francisco had 249 total yards, Chicago 35.
  
“They started fast,” Bears coach Lovie Smith said of the 49ers, “and really kept us off balance through the night  . . . They had a quarterback that hadn’t played an awful lot, but he was on and looked like a seasoned vet from the start of the game. On the other side of the ball, we couldn’t get our running game going. We couldn’t protect our quarterback.”
  
Campbell, also a backup, for Jay Cutler, who as Alex Smith had a concussion, was sacked six times in all, Justin Smith getting the half to go with Aldon Smith’s 5.5 (All those Smiths are unrelated except for their ability to play football).
   
“I really just try to make people respect my power,” said Aldon Smith, who added, “I have a thing for night games. I love playing at night. I love the lights.”
  
They’re getting brighter, for all the Niners.
  
“Kaepernick played an amazing game,’’ said Aldon Smith. “Before the game I told him, ‘Don’t worry about the cameras, go play the game.’ And he put a good game together.”
  
It was a sensational game, a Tom Brady-Peyton Manning sort of game, but a game that, depending on Alex Smith’s health – Harbaugh told Kaepernick Sunday he would start – may not keep Colin in the lineup.
  
“I wanted to come out and show what I’m capable of and that I can be a starter,” said Kaepernick. “That’s what I’ve been trying to prove since I’ve been in the league.”
 
He proved it.

© 2012 Hearst Communications Inc.

SF Chronicle: Running woes doom Raiders' Carson Palmer

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By Art Spander
Special to the San Francisco Chronicle

It wasn't the old Raiders, it was the newly revised old Raiders, unable to stop the run and thus unable to stop the bleeding; out of running backs and, when Carson Palmer missed Denarius Moore, out of luck.

You know the adage, the only stat that matters is the final score, which Sunday at O.co Coliseum was Tampa Bay 42, Oakland 32.

Read the full story here.

© 2012 Hearst Communications Inc.

 

The Giants, the Team That Knew How

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SAN FRANCISCO – The city that knows how. That’s the slogan of this town, the one of little cable cars and World Series titles. A little too much, perhaps. Or maybe not enough.

This is a city in love with its hills, its food, its views, its bridges, even its fog.

A city of diversity and lunacy, where a century ago a man named Norton declared himself Emperor and the hallowed Rudyard Kipling described the citizens as mad.

A city of hippies and gays and Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Bookstore. And the latest vintages from Napa.

And, now, maybe most of all, of the San Francisco Giants.

The once-again-champion San Francisco Giants.

They weren’t supposed to be there, on top of the baseball world. The Detroit Tigers were the favorites, the overwhelming choice.

The Tigers had – have – Miguel Cabrera, the first Triple Crown winner in 47 years. They had Justin Verlander, arguably the best pitcher in baseball. What they also have now are the blues.

How did it happen? The sporting mavens will spend the winter trying to explain. They’ll decide the Tigers again were burdened with too many off days between the league championship series and the World Series.

Or the baseball gods were totally on the side of the Giants, pointing out Angel Pagan’s ball, which ricocheted off third for a double, or those Tiger line drives that kept ending up in Pablo Sandoval’s glove.

The Giants, we’ll be told, caught lightning in a bottle, and if the teams played again next week, Detroit would win, instead of – how embarrassing – getting swept by a team that hit the fewest home runs in baseball during the regular season.

It’s all true, and who cares? In 2010 it was Brian Wilson closing things out in Texas. This time – with Wilson missing almost from the start of the season because of arm surgery – it was his doppelganger, Sergio Romo.

This team lost Wilson. This team lost Melky Cabrera – and for a while Guillermo Mota. Pablo Sandoval underwent surgery on a hamate bone. Freddy Sanchez never made it out of spring training. Tim Lincecum went from Cy Young winner to Mystery Man, although in the postseason some of that mystery was solved.

But it wasn’t what the Giants didn’t have, it’s what they did have. Which, as that song from the musical “Damn Yankees’’ told us, was heart. Along with some wise thinking just before the World Series by manager Bruce Bochy’s wife, Kim.

Remembering that the Bochys attended the pre-series gala in San Francisco two years ago, and the Giants won, she persuaded him, a bit superstitiously, to take her to this year’s gala, last Tuesday at the Fairmont Hotel, the one night off between the NLCS win and the start of the World Series.

Watching him for a few minutes, you sensed Bochy would rather be somewhere else, but she thought he shouldn’t change the routine from 2010. He didn’t. In the end his team didn’t.

In four games the Tigers, so powerful on offense, scored a total of six runs, three in the first game, three in the second, which the Giants won, 4-3 in 10 innings. Good pitching always will beat good hitting. The Giants’ pitching wasn’t good, it was great.

Add the 27 innings from the last three games against the Cardinals in the NLCS, a total of 64 innings, and the Giants allowed only seven runs.

“Unbelievable,” Vida Blue, the pitching great of the 1970s, said on CSN Bay Area.

“You don’t need a superstar at every position. Just tell a guy, you’re my shortstop, you’re my first baseman and go out and play.”

When you’re playing for Bruce Bochy, who treats everyone with respect, it’s easier.

“Our guys had a date with destiny,” Bochy said on postgame TV. “What made them special was they were such an unselfish group. They played for each other and the fans.”

The fans. San Francisco had its virtues, but one of them wasn’t the way it went about supporting teams. We were blasé, unemotional.   

The 49ers helped change the image. Winning five Super Bowls will get attention. Then two years ago, Giants general manager Brian Sabean, whose handiwork can be seen on the roster, said, “This is a baseball town.”

It hasn’t stopped being one. The Giants sold out every game the last two seasons. On Sunday night, an estimated 10,000 people showed up at Civic Center Plaza to watch Game 4 on a very big-screen TV.

You have to be happy for all of them, in their orange and black, in their Panda outfits – fittingly, deservingly, Sandoval was the Series MVP.

You have to be happy for Barry Zito, who stoically accepted many seasons of boos.

You have to be happy for Ryan Vogelsong, who two years ago seemed at the end of a career that was spent mostly in the minors or in Japan.

You have to be happy for San Francisco, for the whole Bay Area.  

The good guys won. Great Unexpectations.

Giants outplaying, outpitching the Tigers

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By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO – Jim Leyland took exception to the question. “Breaks?’’ he responded rhetorically. “I don’t think the Giants are getting any breaks. They’re outplaying us.”

Most of all, they’re outpitching the Detroit Tigers. Which in baseball is where it all begins. And ends. The adage can be repeated forever: If the other team doesn’t score, you can’t lose.

The other team, the Detroit Tigers, managed by Jim Leyland, didn’t score Thursday night. And so beaten, 2-0, by a team that barely scored, Detroit has lost the first two games of the 2012 World Series.

Defense wins. In baseball, defense begins with pitching. And ends with pitching.

With Barry Zito fooling the Tigers on Wednesday night. With Madison Bumgarner, who had been fighting himself, who had been getting chased from games in the fourth inning, stunning them Thursday night.

These are the Giants we’ve come to expect, the Giants who throw strikes and make big plays, such as Gregor Blanco firing to Marco Scutaro, whose relay cut down Prince Fielder at the plate. And make scoring against them almost an impossibility.

In the last five postseason games, the closing three against St. Louis in the National League Championship Series and the first two in the World Series, Giant pitching has given up runs in only three different innings. Three of 45.

A run in 27 innings to the Cards. Three runs in 18 innings to the Tigers, who were shut out only twice during the regular season. One run in the sixth on Wednesday, then, almost as a gift, two runs in the ninth. And none Thursday on an evening at AT&T so full of noise and tension that 42,855 fans at AT&T Park may never unwind.

The way they were starting to think the Tigers would never score.

“This was a really good World Series game,’’ said Leyland. “It didn’t turn out right for us . . . I don’t have any perspective. We got two hits tonight. I’m certainly not going to sit here and rip my offense. I think our offense is fine . . .”

It’s just that the Giants’ pitching has been better.

Santiago Casillla took over for Bumgarner in the eighth. Sergio Romo took over for Casilla in the ninth. “Those fans,’’ said Casilla of the crowd, “I’m 5-feet-10. The way they cheer when I’m on the mound, I feel about 6-feet-10. They’re unbelievable.”

A word some might apply to the Giants’ pitching. Zito overcame his demons of the past. Bumgarner overcame his struggles of the present. San Francisco manager Bruce Bochy even took Bumgarner out of the rotation after he couldn’t make it through the fourth inning of the NLCS opener against St. Louis.

“I thought the first inning would be critical for him, for his confidence,” Bochy said of Bumgarner’s opportunity Thursday night. “Also to see where he was at.”

Where he was at was back in 2010, when as a rookie Bumgarner was so impressive in a World Series start against the Texas Rangers.

“I mean,” said Bochy, after Bumgarner allowed only two hits and two walks to the Tigers, “what a job he did. Dave Righetti, our pitching coach, did a great job getting him back on track. He had great poise out there with a great delivery, and he stayed on it for seven innings.

“He needed a break, and I thought he benefited from it, both mentally and physically.”

No question everything so far has gone the way of the Giants, who, along with the nightly sellout crowds, waving their “rally rags,” singing along with the music of Journey, dressing in all sorts of loony attire of orange and black, have turned AT&T into a magical place.

On Wednesday night, Angel Pagan’s bouncer hit third, spun crazily and bounced into left for a double. On Thursday night, Gregor Blanco’s sacrifice bunt virtually dug a hole inches inside the third base line, loading the bases with nobody out in the seventh.

When Brandon Crawford grounded to second, the Tigers chose to go after the double play – which they got – instead of throwing home, and the Giants went in front, 1-0.

“It’s not debatable,” Leyland said of the decision, “because if we don’t score it doesn’t make any difference anyway. I can’t let them open the game up.”

Bochy said the difference in Bumgarner from his last few games was the delivery. “It was simpler, more compact,” he said, “and I think he was able to get the ball where he wanted to because of that.”

Asked if there was a different feel, Bumgarner, a laconic sort, but not without a sense of humor, answered, “Yeah, I went into the seventh inning instead of getting took out in the third.”

OK, his English isn’t perfect, but his fastball was.

“I think the only difference,” Bumgarner added, “was being able to make pitches. I hadn’t been able to do that this postseason, and tonight Buster (Posey) caught a great game, the defense did great.“I wanted to go out there and pitch well for our guys and the fans.”

He, Casilla and Romo couldn’t have pitched any better. If the other team doesn’t score you can’t lose. And the Giants didn’t.

Pablo and Zito: End of the bench to top of the world

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By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO – They sat side by side on the dais, heroes on a heroic night, so near to each other and so far from the pain of 2010. That was the World Series that Barry Zito didn’t even get on the roster, the World Series that Pablo Sandoval only started one day.

That Series they also were also side by side, on the end of the bench, watching their Giant teammates, supportive but surely disappointed – one not even being allowed to play, the other having misplayed himself out the lineup.

But now it’s the Series of 2012, and on a wild and historic Wednesday night by the bay, everything changed.

Sandoval rang down the echoes of the Babe, of Mr. October, of Albert Pujols, hitting three home runs.

Zito pitched elegantly and tantalizingly, keeping one of the baseball’s top offensive teams to a single run before leaving.

And the Giants, the underdogs, the team nobody east of the Sierra Nevada understands or tries to understand, clubbed the Detroit Tigers, 8-3, in Game 1 of the Series.

That the other starter, the guy for the Tigers, was Justin Verlander, arguably the best pitcher in baseball, seemed make everything perfect – for Sandoval, for Zito, for all the Giants and maybe most of all for 42,855 fans engulfed in their own gleeful bedlam.

Four in a row now for the Giants, three over St. Louis in the National League Championship Series and then the opener of the World Series. Four in a row, in which the opposition scored a total of four runs – and two of those came in the ninth inning by Detroit. Four in a row in which San Francisco scored a total of 29 runs.

Sandoval got it going, a homer with no one on to dead center in the first. Then he kept it going, a two-run home to left in the third. Then he made it go some more, another solo to center in the fifth. Each inning climaxed with a playing of that long-ago song from the days of Mays, McCovey and Cepeda, “Bye Bye, Baby.’’

“To hit three home runs,’’ said Giants manager Bruce Bochy, “that’s always a surprise. But the guy can hit. He’s got great ability to get the good part of the bat on the ball and threw out some great at-bats . . . Just a tremendous night. A night I know he’ll never forget.”

Nor will anyone else. Sandoval, the Panda, the player replaced by Juan Uribe in the 2010 Series because he was overweight and underachieving, is the first ever to hit home runs his first three at bats in a Series game.  Babe Ruth, who twice hit three, Reggie Jackson and Pujols needed to come to the plate four times. In his fourth at bat, Sandoval singled.

“Man, I still can’t believe it,” was Sandoval’s opening statement of his accomplishment, even if everyone in the place could believe it.

“When you’re a little kid, you dream of being in the World Series, but I was thinking of being in this situation, three homers one game. You have to keep focused, keep focused and playing your game.”

Sandoval had a big hit off Verlander during July’s All-Star Game, where the National League's win gave the Giants the home field advantage in the best-of-seven Series, four games if it lasts the full seven.

“For me, I just go there and don’t think too much,’’ he said. “This means a lot. In 2010 I was part of the World Series. I didn’t get a chance to play too much. I’m enjoying this World Series. I’m enjoying all my moments. You never know when it’s going to happen again.”

Sandoval is 26. Zito, 34, may have wondered it was going to happen ever. He had that $127-million contract. He struggled. The fans booed. He was an outcast. Until 2012. The Giants have won 14 consecutive games in which Barry Zito started.

“I battled in September to make the postseason roster,’’ admitted Zito, haunted by his failure two years earlier. “The last thing I would have expected was to be starting in Game 1. Just the opportunity was magical. To be able to go up against Verlander and give our team a chance to up, 1-0, and the fact that we won, it’s just kind of surreal.”

Sandoval tried to stay cool about his night, unlike his teammates.

“When he hit his third,” Zito said, “man we were just going nuts in there. We were going nuts.”

A glance at the rally-rag waving, shrieking fans proved they weren’t the only ones.

“We didn’t know at that point if it ever had been done,’’ said Zito, “and we’re just like, ‘Oh, my gosh.’ “

Or, linking Sandoval and Zito, oh, good gosh.

“We got ups and downs in our career,” Sandoval insisted. “Not every year is going to be up . . . so I see my teammate, Barry, and I’m very happy for him. He started the first game of the World Series. We were sitting down on the bench in 2010.”

Now they’re on top of the world.

Newsday (N.Y.): Giants overcome 3-1 series deficit to win NL pennant

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By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

SAN FRANCISCO -- The Giants, using their usual fine pitching and some very unusual big hitting, completed another improbable playoff comeback Monday night, defeating the Cardinals, 9-0, in Game 7 to win the National League pennant.

After falling behind three games to one in the NLCS, the Giants outscored the Cardinals 20-1 in the final three games behind stellar starting pitching by Barry Zito, Ryan Vogelsong and Matt Cain. The Giants, who won the world championship in 2010, will face the American League champion Tigers in the World Series, which begins here Wednesday night.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2012 Newsday. All rights reserved.

Newsday (N.Y.): Ryan Vogelsong excels as Giants force Game 7 in NLCS

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By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

SAN FRANCISCO -- A pitcher who two years ago was stuck at his 10th minor-league stop put the Giants into Game 7 of the National League Championship Series.

Righthander Ryan Vogelsong allowed only one run and four hits in seven innings and struck out a career-high nine as the Giants defeated the Cardinals, 6-1, Sunday night at AT&T Park.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2012 Newsday. All rights reserved.

In the Big Game, not just another loss for Cal

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By Art Spander

BERKELEY, Calif. – Just another loss. The Cal safety Josh Hill said it. He was wrong.

This was a loss to Stanford, a loss when Cal couldn’t cross the goal line, a loss when Jeff Tedford’s future again was called into question, although much like the Golden Bears offense Saturday he isn’t going anywhere.

The Big Game came at the wrong time, smacked off its traditional late-November date to mid-October because of disdainful planning by the Pac-12 Conference.

We don’t care how it’s been done for 114 years, was the unwritten word from the Pac-12; you’ll hold it when we tell you. Even when the baseball season hasn’t ended.
   
For Cal, maybe, anytime would be the wrong time.
  
Stanford beat the Bears, 21-3. It could have been worse. The Cardinal threw only three passes in the fourth quarter, had no completions. Stanford coach David Shaw was kind and satisfied.
   
“Dominating, suffocating defense,’’ advised Shaw.
    
His school kept the trophy, The Axe, earned for a third straight year. His players gleefully marched The Axe to the south end zone of rebuilt Memorial Stadium where the Stanford partisans from the crowd of 61,024, including that intentionally ditsy pep band, cheered and chanted and rocked.

There they were, the enemy, symbolically speaking, the conquerors, lording it up while the Cal players walked slowly to their quarters, whipped. Just another loss? Hardly.
 
“Offensively, that was just a poor performance,” Tedford said, reaffirming what everyone had seen, what everyone already knew.
  
Offensively, Cal had a pathetic 217 yards – Stepfan Taylor of Stanford had run for 189 by his ownself – and, of course, for the first time in 15 years in a Big Game, and only the second in 36 years, no touchdowns.
   
“We couldn’t block them,” said Tedford. “There was too much pressure on the passer, and we couldn’t convert on third downs. Give them credit. They played hard and were better than we were today.”
   
Much better. The Cardinal, 5-2, are headed toward a bowl. Cal, 3-5, with Washington, Oregon and Oregon State among the teams left on its schedule, is headed for a losing season. And Tedford, in his 11th year, is headed for more criticism.
  
“We need to do a better job as coaches putting (Cal players) into places to be successful,’’ conceded Tedford.
   
The Old Blues and some newer Blues wonder if Tedford has stayed too long at the fair. Sure, Cal has tough academic standards. It was recently judged America’s No. 1 public institution of higher learning, with UCLA, another part of the great university, coming in second.

Not everybody is admitted, no matter how fast they run or far they throw. Cal isn’t LSU or Alabama.
   
But Cal people admit, gritting their teeth, neither is Stanford, and the Cardinal play physical, beat-your-face-in football.
   
Those smarties are toughies. Those toughies are smarties. And they took it to Cal in Cal’s new house.
  
It’s unlikely Tedford will be dismissed. He raised Cal from the depths of 1-11, and made the Bears successful and respectable. His players graduate.

Athletic director Sandy Barbour is not one to make rash decisions. On Saturday afternoon, along with members of the media, she took a seat and listened to Tedford explain but never try to justify.
  
In the previous two weeks, the Bears had crushed UCLA, crushed Washington State, improved an awful 1-4 record to a mediocre 3-4. There was optimism before Stanford. There is depression after Stanford.
 
“Those were the last two weeks,” said Tedford when asked for comparison. “This team (Stanford) is a different team. They are very stout to run the ball against. We need to get better to play a group like that.”

They need to have more than three net yards on the ground. They need to have the ball in their possession more than 23 minutes and 2 seconds out of the 60 (Stanford had it 36:58). They need to be more efficient near the end zone, the Bears throwing a fourth-down interception from the Stanford 12 after they had a first down at the Stanford 10.

“It’s always frustrating when you don’t score,” said Tedford. He sat behind a microphone in his familiar white coaching jacket, sunglasses pushed up on his cap. He spoke clearly and honestly. But he spoke as a defeated coach.

"We had the opportunity down deep and couldn’t score.” 

Then repeating himself, understandable because there wasn’t much else to say, he added, “It was a very frustrating day offensively, without a doubt. We have to go back to the drawing board . . . Their defense is as good as any defense we have played. We knew going in it was going to be a dogfight. You know they are going to get theirs. We didn’t have enough on our side to keep it going.”

Keep it going? They couldn’t even get it going.

 

Cardinals’ new version of Gas House Gang

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By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO – They were called the “Gas House Gang,’’ the 1934 St. Louis Cardinals, people such as Leo Durocher and Ducky Medwick, ballplayers who would just as soon knock you over as win the game. “I come to beat you,” was a Durocher warning.

The new Cardinals, the 2012 version, can still play that roughhouse style, can still barrel into an infielder to try to break up a double play and perhaps break an opponent’s bones, the way Monday night Matt Holliday crashed into the Giants’ Marco Scutaro on a slide in the first inning.

A slide that sent Scutaro, the San Francisco second baseman, out of the game eventually, a slide that angered Giants manager Bruce Bochy, a longtime baseball man who rarely seems upset about anything.

Yes, the Giants won the game before a raucous sellout crowd of 42,679 at AT&T Park. They defeated the Cards, 7-1, and so the best-of-seven National League Championship Series, which resumes Wednesday in St. Louis, is tied at a game apiece.

But Scutaro, with a sore hip where Holliday rolled into him like an offensive tackle might a linebacker, successfully breaking up a double-play attempt, is facing an MRI and could face a game or more of inactivity.

“I think they got away with an illegal slide there,’’ said Bochy, his voice tight. “The rule was changed a while back. And (Holliday) really didn’t hit the dirt until he was past the bag. Marco was behind the bag and got smoked.”

And lay there to the right of the bag for a while, then got up and in the fourth singled home two runs. After the fifth, however, Scutaro, picked up late in the season from the Rockies, was replaced by Ryan Theriot. Scutaro was seen leaving the ballpark before the final out.

“It’s a shame somebody got hurt because of this,’’ said Bochy. “And that was more of a roadblock. (Marco) got hit pretty good.”

It’s also a shame the incident came to dominate a game that in another way was dominated by Ryan Vogelsong, who went seven innings and threw 106 pitches, finally giving the Giants their first solid performance by a starter in seven postseason games.

He not only got the victory but the support of fans chanting, “Vogey, Vogey, Vogey.’’ After those same fans rocked the park with boos every time Holliday came to the plate following his first-inning take-out slide.

“We’ve got our second baseman hurt,’’ Bochy pointed out when someone sensed his irritation. “And again he was behind the bag. You’re all for playing hard, but again, hoping for good news with Marco. He got a big hit, but he was hobbling. It got to the point where he said ‘I can’t move out there,’ so we had to take him out.”

After Holliday figuratively had taken him out.

Brandon Crawford, the Giants shortstop, had fielded the ball hit by Allen Craig and thrown to Scutaro to force Holliday. “It was pretty late,” Crawford said of the slide, “but I don’t think Holliday is a dirty player.”

Asked if he were surprised by Holliday’s contact, Bradford said, “I’m surprised Scutaro got off the throw to first.” Which Craig beat. But then Vogelsong retired Yadier Molina on another grounder.

Cardinals manager Mike Matheny, as expected, defended his player. He could do nothing else. Teams are taught to support their own, right or wrong.

“I didn’t see a replay,” explained Matheny, who as Bochy is a former catcher. “But as I watched it live, it looked like it was a hard slide. It didn’t go out of the baseline to get him. We teach our guys to go hard. Play the game clean, play it hard, not try to hurt anybody. We go hard but within the rules.”

Giants fans could be kind, their team finally winning a home playoff game. Back in the seventh game of the 1934 World Series, Medwick slid hard into third baseman Marv Owen of the Detroit Tigers. The two fought, Detroit fans showered Medwick with garbage when he went to left field and the commissioner of baseball, Kennesaw Landis, ordered Medwick removed from the game.

The incident Monday night had no chance of escalating into that. Holliday, in fact, was somewhat apologetic.

“In hindsight,” he said, “I wish I had started my slide a step earlier. It was happening fast, and you’re trying to get him so he can’t turn the double play.”

He couldn’t, of course, and the crowd turned on Holliday, but as the Giants broke away the mood changed. It was back to the AT&T staples, mugging for the video screen and singing along with Journey in the eighth inning.
   
“He’s a great player,” Holliday said of Scutaro. “He’s a good guy. I was trying to keep us out of a double play.”

 

Newsday (N.Y.): 49ers humbled by Super Bowl champion Giants

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By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

SAN FRANCISCO -- The 49ers were waiting for this one. The Giants beat them in overtime in the NFC Championship Game last season on a field goal after a fumble, and the 49ers kept thinking they should have won that game and gone to the Super Bowl.

That's not what they're thinking now -- not after the Giants battered the 49ers, 26-3, at Candlestick Park, where by game's end, it seemed as if the only people left from the announced crowd of 69,732 were blue-shirted fans chanting "Let's go, Giants!''

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2012 Newsday. All rights reserved.

Newsday (N.Y.): Brandon Jacobs says emotions got best of him

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By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- A circumspect Brandon Jacobs, backing off a bit from comments a day earlier, expressed appreciation Thursday to the San Francisco 49ers for allowing him to heal a leg injury which has kept him from playing a single NFL game this season.

Jacobs, the big running back who couldn't reach an agreement with the Giants on a restructured contract after the Super Bowl season of 2011, joined the 49ers in March. He hurt his knee...

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2012 Newsday. All rights reserved.