Warriors have the look of a contender

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — The owner, Joe Lacob, walked out of the tunnel that goes from the court to the locker room and said to nobody in particular, “I feel better now.” Of course.

The Warriors had won, had stopped a mini-losing streak at two games. Still, with the team he has, Lacob should always feel good.

As should the Warriors fans.

This team has the look of, well, it’s tough to say champion, what with San Antonio and Cleveland very much a part off the NBA, but a definite contender, a team that will not crash out until very late in the playoffs. If at all.

The two guys we have declared as the heart and shooting soul of the W’s, Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, the “Splash Brothers,” were imperfect Thursday night. But with Andrew Bogut at his very best and Draymond Green quite magnificent, the result at Oracle Arena was anything but imperfect, a 107-99 win over the Brooklyn Nets.

And so the W’s, after a 5-0 start and consecutive defeats, are 6-2. Asked if he was pleased that with his stars not exactly starring (Thompson was only 8 of 22 from the floor, although he had a game-high 25 points) the team could win, Kerr chose not to be that specific.

“I am pleased anytime we win,” was his answer, implying it didn’t matter how or who.

It did matter that the 7-foot Bogut, unfettered and healthy, had 11 points, 14 rebounds and five assists.

“Bogey,” said Kerr, “was terrific. He can dominate defensively at the rim. He can rebound and he’s a terrific passer. That’s why we run the offense the way we do, with all those dribble handoffs.

“We need him to roll to the rim hard and get fouled. It was good to see him get to the line a little bit (3 of 5 on free throws) and get in the paint.”

He got to the Nets. Bogut doesn’t have a great touch, but he has great emotion and intensity. His dunks set off the crowd, which didn’t get going until about a third of the way into the second quarter once the Warriors got going.

The game was tied, 44-44, with a bit under eight minutes in the half, then, wham — or in deference to Bogut, should we say “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi”? — the Warriors were in front, 66-55.

“One of our goals this year,” said Kerr, “is to dominate the home court. The crowd was fantastic. It took us a while to get going. I think the whole key to getting the crowd involved is defense. Once you get the stops and get rebounds you can get out and run, and then the crowd gets into it.”

The first half, the Warriors had 18 assists and only three — three, count them — turnovers. That’s the stuff of a winner.

“We have a deep team,” said Curry, who finished with 17 points (for him, we say “only" 17 points). “Any night, someone can step up and make the right play.”

Like Bogut, or Green, who had 17 points and was three of eight on three-pointers.

“Our job,” said Curry, the captain, “is to be aggressive, create offense and make the right play. We need that second and third punch.”

Kerr contends that even with a winning record the Warriors are a work in progress. After all, the season’s only a couple weeks old. “We’ll get better,” he said, knowing full well every other team in the league will also — other than the sad-sack Philadelphia 76ers, that is.

“We are still adjusting and finding our identity,” said Kerr. “I want them to be explosive but a little less wild. That can be done, but it’s tricky.

“You don’t want to take away their spirit, but you have to be smart too. For the most part tonight it was pretty good, 30 assists and 11 turnovers. We missed some shots we normally make, and we had some open ones. What I tell our guys is that we are six weeks into this as a staff, and as a team we are just scratching the surface of what we are going to be.”

Which is one of the top teams in pro basketball.

There's something wrong with Niners, stadium

By Art Spander

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — There’s something wrong. With the football team, which is evident. With the new stadium, which is apparent. The 49ers are showing up as a mystery, one that has coach Jim Harbaugh so perplexed he can’t even get angry with media questions.

The fans after halftime aren’t even showing up at all.

A new home, a $1.3 billion beauty of steel and class constructed in honor of champions of the past. The tickets are sold, but the people who hold them must not be sold on the Niners.

This is what happened Sunday. The nation returned to standard time. The 49ers, however, didn’t turn their game clocks ahead or back. They just stood figuratively still before all those empty seats at Levi’s Stadium, and they were upset by the St. Louis Rams, 13-10.

The Rams, 3-5, were not very impressive. The Niners, 4-4, were very unimpressive.

Niner quarterback Colin Kaepernick was sacked eight times — by a team that had six sacks total in its previous seven games.

“We have all the talent in the world,” said Niners left tackle Joe Staley. “We’ve been doing some dumb stuff, and they took advantage of it.”

Like not keeping the Ram defense out of the Niner backfield. Again. Two weeks ago, Kaepernick was sacked six times at Denver. Then, after a bye week to make fixes, he was sacked eight times.

“We prepared for this during the week,” said Kaepernick. Maybe the situation is unfixable.

Maybe Harbaugh is as distressed as he is bewildered. Usually, when he’s asked what went wrong, the competitive, combative man he is takes issue, as if the media doesn’t have a clue so just sit down and be quiet.

Not this game. Harbaugh was restrained, responding with generalities, not specifics, the old, “Not enough good football, we got beat.”

Old, except for Harbaugh, who normally is loathe to concede that his squad was outplayed. This was a new frontier for the Niners’ fourth-year leader. This took some swallowing.

Yes, as poorly as they played, the Niners could have won. They had the ball, third and goal on the Rams one, with nine seconds remaining. A field goal would have sent the game into overtime. Instead, Kaepernick bulled up the middle and fumbled. The Rams recovered.

“I was juggling the ball,” Kaepernick conceded. He also believed he had crossed the goal. A replay review verified he did not.

Could have won. But did not win, because now, at the midpoint of the season, when the Niners usually are becoming their best, priming for the playoffs, San Francisco is a mess. And the next game is against the Saints at the Superdome, where the Niners invariably have problems.

The Niner offensive line seemed confused, not only because rookie Marcus Martin was starting at center for the first time. The pressure on Kaepernick came from everywhere, from William Hayes at left defensive end, from James Laurinaitis at middle linebacker, from Robert Quinn at right defensive end.

“We’ve been talking up those things,” said Rams coach Jeff Fisher about harassing the quarterback, “and I said we’d been getting close. You’ve got to credit the guys up front. These were individual efforts.”

So in a way, as Staley confessed, were the Niner failures. “Penalties,” said Staley in review, “dumb blocks, dumb techniques and dumb schemes.”

By supposedly some very smart football linemen, certainly for the most part by veteran football linemen, who two years ago helped the Niners to the Super Bowl.

Could they have grown too old? Could they have grown complacent? Change is a constant in sports at any level. No team remains at the top all the time. No players remain the best forever.

They tell us O-lines have great staying power. Maybe this one has stayed too long.

“We’ve got to suck it up,” said Harbaugh, avoiding mention of individuals. “Got to play better.”

Of course they do, but how? Does the blocking have to improve? Does Kaepernick have to get rid of the ball quicker — and more accurately? And how much is attributable to the fact that the Niners, who like to set up the pass with the run, could rush for only 80 net yards?

“We had opportunities in both halves,” said Kaepernick, “and we didn’t take advantage.” Not when they score a paltry 10 points. Not when the quarterback is tackled eight times behind the line of scrimmage.

“That’s why I’m here,” said Kaepernick. “I’m here to make plays. I can make people miss. So that’s part of my job.”

They aren’t going to miss when they sweep in from every direction, and they didn’t miss. The Rams knew something about the Niner offensive line. And now everyone knows.

“We’ve got to look at ourselves in the mirror,” said running back Frank Gore, the spiritual leader of the Niners, “and we’re going to try to get to this postseason. We’ve got to do it and stop playing around.”

Or, when the postseason arrives, they’ll be forced to stop playing. Period.

Nobody wins seventh game on road — except Giants

By Art Spander

The story was in my head if not yet in my computer: Giants lose. Road teams don’t win the seventh game. Not after they’ve dropped the sixth game. Look at history. Look at the Giants in 2002.

What I failed to look at was the Giants of 2014.

Home teams had won the seventh game nine times in a row since 1979. Too bad, Giants. No, too good. Precedent be damned. Somebody had to break the streak. Did we dare imagine it would be the Giants?

The last time the Giants were in this position was 12 years ago in Anaheim. The Angels, as we know, won the last two and won the Series. And J.T. Snow, then the Giants' first baseman, sat staring at his locker and saying so quietly, “You play seven months, and it all comes down to one game.”

That game belonged to the Giants on Wednesday night, the Giants and remarkable Madison Bumgarner and brilliant Bruce Bochy and everyone else in the visiting clubhouse. That game made nervous wrecks of fans watching at San Francisco’s Civic Center and in taverns from Sausalito to San Leandro. That game, a 3-2 victory over Kansas City, also made the Giants champions a third time in five years.

Maybe not a dynasty, compared to the Yankees of the late 1940s and early '50s, but not unimpressive either, particularly since after moving to San Francisco in 1958, the Giants couldn’t win a single championship for 52 years.

"Nearly men" is the British phrase. People who come close but never reach the top. But that’s all done now. Three in five years. This one with Matt Cain out half the season. This one with a search for a second baseman until Joe Panik arrived in late summer. This one with Brandon Belt missing because of a concussion. This one after the Giants were stomped by the Dodgers during the regular season.

“Ya gotta believe.” The Mets fans originated that phrase when their expansion team rose from hopelessness (40-120 in 1962) to win the 1969 World Series. The team gained a nickname the New York tabloids still use, “Amazin’.” The Post only calls them “The Amazin’s.”

The Amazin’ Giants. Wild cards. Wild champions. Defier of odds who win in the evens: ’10, ’12 and now ’14. How did they do it?

Tim Lincecum slumps. Matt Cain needs surgery. Marco Scutaro never shows. Angel Pagan is out much of the year. “These guys are resilient,” Bochy has said so many times. Unquestionably.

And something I ignored: Winning breeds winning. The Giants, as are all great teams — and three titles in five years allows the use of the word “great” — understand who they are and how to succeed.

You’ve head the cliché so often. They do the little things, which turn out big. Kansas City was going to run the Giants to the Missouri state line. It didn’t work out that way. The Giants are the ones who took the extra base. The Giants were the ones who found heroes at virtually every position or in front of virtually every locker.

Panik turns a probable hit into a double play. Juan Perez, a 170 hitter, hangs one off the centerfield wall at AT&T Park. Travis Ishikawa comes out of the minors to hit the Giants' biggest home run in 63 years. Pablo Sandoval can’t hit in April and can’t miss in October. And Hunter Pence is irrepressible.

What this World Series reminded us is what the 1960 World Series, won by the Pirates over the Yankees, taught us: each game is a separate entity. A 10-0 loss is no different than a 1-0 loss. In fact it’s probably better. Except for the fans.

The Giants were pummeled Tuesday. That wasn’t as important as the simple fact that the Royals, who at the start of this postseason won their first eight games, had drawn even in the 2014 World Series. And had the seventh game at home. Which meant they would win.

Except they didn’t win. The Giants won. The Giants are the new Yankees. The Giants are the new Cardinals. The Giants are the team that doesn’t care what anyone predicts or says.

On Tuesday, after that one-sided defeat, Bochy was asked why he wouldn’t start Bumgarner in the seventh game. He smirked, but instead of berating the questioner, responding with something like, “What do you know about baseball?” Bochy said something like, “Everybody is a manager.”

On the Giants there is but one manager, Bruce Bochy. He brought in Bumgarner at just the perfect time. But of course.

These are the perfect times for the Giants, the times of their lives, the times of our lives. Who knows what the future holds? The present is fantastic. I don’t think I’ll write that “Giants lose’’ story. Ever.

Giants carry lead, and bad memories, to K.C.

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — This is a tale of accomplishment, of a man so skilled in his profession that he leaves others, his opponents, virtually helpless.

This also is a tale of wariness, of being alert that no matter how much Madison Bumgarner has done, winning World Series games and calling down echoes of Koufax, Gibson and Whitey Ford, the San Francisco Giants are far from done.

Mad Bum once more was magnificent Sunday night in Game 5 of the Series, a 5-0 Giants victory that gave them a three-to-two lead. “He was fantastic again,” affirmed Ned Yost,  the guy who manages the other team, Kansas City.

But as Yost made so clear and Giants followers know so well, the Series now goes to the other team’s ballpark, and that brings up unhappy thoughts.

It was 2002 when the Giants led the Angels three to two, went to Anaheim and lost the last two games and the Series.

Brandon Crawford is the Giants’ shortstop now and was one of the heroes Sunday night, driving in the first two runs. But in 2002 he was a 15-year-old in Danville, and a fan as passionate as those who filled AT&T Park Sunday night screaming and chanting.

“When we lost,” said Crawford of the Series 12 years ago, “I was depressed for a couple of days. I remember in Game 6 they had a 5-0 lead, and they lost.”

So it’s all there, the bad times, and now the thought of more good times, of adding another Series title to those of 2010 and 2012.   

The Giants are one game away. As they were in Anaheim.

“We’re going back to our home crowd,” said Yost, sticking in a dart. Game 6 is Tuesday. Game 7, if needed, is Wednesday.

“The place is going to be absolutely crazy. We’ve got to walk the tightrope now without a net, but our guys aren’t afraid of walking without a net.

“We fall off, and we’re dead. But we win Tuesday, nobody’s got a net.”

What the Giants have are memories. Long ago memories. Unpleasant memories.

If it could happen in ’02, it could happen in ’14. What the Giants probably won’t have unless there is a seventh game is Bumgarner.

“Would he be available if that situation came up?” Giants manager Bruce Bochy asked rhetorically after some journalist wondered if Bumgarner, who went nine innings and 117 pitches, could come in as a reliever in Game 7.

“Yeah,” said Bochy. “He’d have two days off, and he’s a strong kid. We wouldn’t mind pushing him one time, but the talk about doing it twice, we did have some concern.”

Bumgarner is 4-0 in four World Series starts, including two this time, with an 0.29 ERA. He’s allowed only 12 hits in 31 innings, and struck out 27, eight of those Sunday night.

It’s a truism of sport that if the opponent doesn’t score the worst you’ll ever get is a 0-0 tie. But the Giants are able to score, in their own unique manner. On Sunday night they got their first run when Crawford grounded out, their second when Crawford singled.

Then, most unlikely of all, they broke loose in the eighth when Juan Perez, a defensive specialist who had a paltry .170 batting average in the regular season, was sent up to bat for Travis Ishikawa — and hit a ball off the centerfield fence which scored two more runs.

The wizards keep casting their spell.

“That’s the way we do it,” said Crawford. “Our averages may not be high, but we can produce when we have to.”

Bumgarner, the 25-year-old lefty from North Carolina, has been remarkably productive. And to the other team, baffling. The Royals had only four hits and were able to get only one man as far as second.

"He's so fun to watch,” Crawford said of Bumgarner. “He's always fun to watch. In the postseason, you could look at him and he looks like he's just pitching in the middle of June, like it's no big deal. He takes the pressure off of everybody else. We just feed off of him."

Said Yost, the K.C. manager, “You know what (Bumgarner) does so well, and what he’s so impressive doing, he commands his fastball in and out and up and down. He commands his breaking ball in and out, and really can command that pitch down and away in the dirt when he needs to get a strike.”

Bumgarner, pure country, and the last year or two quite shaggy, with a beard and long hair, said he’s humbled to be compared with the greats of history.

When he did a TV interview in front of the Giants dugout, fans who had been yelling “MVP, MVP” simply let loose a resounding cheer. Always polite, Bumgarner tipped his cap.

“It’s something that’s tough to say right now,” Bumgarner insisted when asked about the meaning of the victory. “I’m just happy we won. That was a big game for us.”

Which put them in position for the game that’s even bigger, the one that would give them another World Series. The one they couldn’t get back when Brandon Crawford was a fan, not a hero.

Pablo, Petit, Pence are Giant together

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — This World Series of unpredictability took a few more wild steps on Saturday night, swinging from disappointment to relief, and leaving an emotionally spent crowd wondering what more can go wrong. Or right?

Friday night ended with a couple hundred spectators dressed in blue chanting from behind the first-base dugout, “Let’s go Royals,” and certainly a few hours later when Kansas City burst to a 4-1 lead it seemed the Royals were on their way.

But like that, the Giants, and about 98 percent of the sellout crowd of 43,066 at AT&T Park, awoke in a blend of big hits and big cheers, and after a enthralling, captivating game that lasted exactly four hours, San Francisco had an 11-4 victory and the Series was tied at two apiece.

And not even Royals manager Ned Yost could find fault, saying, “Oh, man. Somewhere inside of me secretly I had hoped it would go seven games for the excitement and the thrill of it. Sure looks that way.’’

We’ll know in two games, but now it’s certain to go six, with the fifth game Sunday night again amongst the bedlam and breezes of AT&T, where for good measure Saturday night not only did the Giants’ drought end but briefly so did Northern California’s. Yes, rain, if only a smattering, by the Bay.

We saw the past, what happened Saturday night, Pablo Sandoval proving he can hit as a righthanded batter, Hunter Pence coming through again and Yusmeiro Petit pitching beautifully, blending with the future — the pivotal fifth game, the Giants last in San Francisco this 2014 season.

Madison Bumgarner, who Giants manager Bruce Bochy so stubbornly and correctly held to his normal rest period instead of using him in the fourth game, will start against “Big Game” James Shields. Bumgarner won that matchup in the Series opener, but the way everything has gone so far precedent may be of no consequence.

“We got our tails whipped,” said Yost, who a long while ago grew up in Hayward, south of Oakland. “But it’s Game 4 of the World Series. We’re tied 2-2. How much more fun can than be. There is nothing better in the world. I never felt so good about getting my tail whooped in my life ... This is a phenomenal series. It’s exciting. It’s fun.”

The whoopers in this case, the Giants, would hardly disagree. Look, after the KC half of the third, the Royals were ahead 3-1, San Francisco starter Ryan Vogelsong was finished and although the players later said they knew they had time to come back, you can surmise the people in the seats were skeptical.

That top of the third took a half hour. It was excruciating for fans, as well as Vogelsong. Fall behind the Royals, and when the seventh inning rolls around the opponent rolls over, so dominating is their bullpen.

But the Giants picked up a run in the bottom of third when Buster Posey, who was hitting an awful .154 in the first three games, singled home pinch hitter Matt Duffy. Then, boom. Two more runs in the fifth to tie. Three more in the sixth. Four more in the seventh.

“When the lights go down in the city ...” Those lyrics to the Journey song were bellowed by a delirious, if off-tune, group of individuals finally able to let loose because their baseball team had broken loose.

Petit, the super fill-in, the guy who took over when Matt Cain underwent surgery and when Tim Lincecum couldn’t get people out, was — dare we use the word? — brilliant.

The winning pitcher, Petit went three scoreless innings to extend his postseason streak to 12. He is 3-0 in the postseason, including six innings in that 18-inning win over the Nationals in the Division series. He also set a major league record of retiring 46 consecutive batters.

“It’s a pretty nice weapon to have in the bullpen,” said Bochy, “a long guy like Petit who seems to calm things down the way he goes about his business, and of course the way he pitches.”

Sandoval had been sick Friday when his streak of reaching base safely in 25 straight postseason games came to a halt, and Saturday, batting righthanded against KC lefty Jason Vargas, struck out in his first two plate appearances.

But he singled in the fifth, part of the rally, then singled in two runs in the sixth. And no one seemed to care he hit .199 righthanded in the regular season.

“(Friday) night, he was feeling worse,” Bochy said about Sandoval. “I talked to him today. He felt great. I was a little concerned about him being a little washed out today. He goes out there and has a great game. It’s nice to have a switch-hitter that swings it well from both sides of the plate, and he seems to rise to the occasion when you need him.”

The Giants rose when the fans needed them.

“Yeah,” said Bochy, “it is exciting. Great game tonight. It’s obvious we think it’s a great game. These guys fought hard. I mean they scratched and clawed to get back into it. You get down against this club and that bullpen, and you have your work cut out.

“Do I wish it would go seven? The way these two teams go at it, it wouldn’t surprise me.”

The 2014 Royals are the 2012 and 2010 Giants

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — The template is as old as the game. The Giants used it in 2010 and 2012.

Now the 2014 Kansas City Royals are using it. The Royals are the new Giants.

Pitching wins, and the Royals have pitching, great pitching. From start to finish. Especially at the finish.

This supposedly was the one that tips the balance. When the first two games of the World Series are split, the metrics tell us, 70 percent of the time the team that wins the third game win the Series.

Well, the Royals took Game 3, won it, 3-2, Friday night at AT&T Park, and the mood by the Bay has gone gloomy. The crowd filed out in a state of disbelief.

The Giants never lost at home in their last two World Series, never failed before their boisterous fans. In fact, home or away, against the Rangers and Tigers they barely lost at all.

This is different, a shock perhaps, although to those who have followed the Royals through their remarkable postseason when they’ve won 10 of 11 games, probably not a shock.

It’s an electric, exciting baseball team that keeps on the pressure — just as the Giants are a team that never gives anything away, most of all a game.

No designated hitter for the American League Royals on Friday in a National League ballpark. No problem. Except for the Giants, who were down 1-0 three batters into the game and never caught up. Now, with Ryan Vogelsong scheduled to pitch for San Francisco on Saturday night in Game 4 — as scheduled — the Giants never may catch the Royals.

“If you look at their pitching,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said philosophically, “you can say they might not need the DH. That’s how well they threw the ball. It’s more like a National League team. Very well balanced. Speed. They do the little things well.

“Their defense played very well. We hit some balls hard. We couldn’t find one to fall in. Cain (rightfielder Lorenzo Cain) made a couple nice plays out there, but it always comes down to pitching. I don’t care if you’re in the National League or American League. If you pitched well, you probably have a chance to win.”

The Giants pitched well, although the very first ball thrown by Tim Hudson, finally in a World Series game after 16 big league seasons, was smacked off the left field wall — out there by the Chevron cars — for a double by Alcides Escobar.

“It was a fastball,” said Hudson. “He could just as easily have popped it up.” But these Royals don’t pop up, they pound. Two batters later, Cain, that pest, grounded out and scored Escobar from third.

When it was 2-0, in the top of the sixth, with one out and a runner on second, Javier Lopez, the lefty, was bought in to face Eric Hosmer, a lefthanded batter. Lopez got two strikes, but Hosmer stretched the count to 3-2, then singled home Alex Gordon. That run was the difference. Kansas City forces the issue.

“He did what the Royals have been doing all postseason,” said Lopez.

Which is finding a way to beat you.

There was some discussion between Bochy and pitching coach Dave Righetti about perhaps using Madison Bumgarner on Saturday in a game of such importance.

A loss in Game 4, and the Giants would be where in 2010 and 2012 they had the other teams, in a hole from which excavation would be impossible.

But what we’ve learned about Bochy in the seasons he’s been in control is that he is very much in control. He stays the course, allows the patterns to remain unchanged.

“It’s confidence in (Vogelsong),” said Bochy, “and we’ve pushed Madison pretty good here. So we’re going to keep things in order and go with Vogey. He has experience. He’s pitched great in postseason. It was a good ballgame tonight, but we’re not going to change things because we lost.”

And, Bochy reminded, “If Madison pitched (Saturday), we’re going to have to pitch somebody the next day.”

San Francisco’s pitching wasn’t the problem for San Francisco. Kansas City’s pitching was the problem for San Francisco. The Giants had only four hits, received no walks. 

Jeremy Guthrie, the Stanford kid, was excellent in the five-plus innings he worked. The people who followed from that in-your-face bullpen, Kelvin Herrera, Brandon Finnegan, Wade Davis and Greg Holland, were no less excellent. Maybe more, if that’s possible.

“It’s a pretty good bullpen,” said Bochy, understating the situation somewhat. “It’s the reason they’re here. You get late in the ballgame, and you’re going to face those guys. You have your work cut out. We know that. Still, you hope to score off them.”

In the bottom of the ninth, against Holland, the Giants had their big three: Buster Posey, Pablo Sandoval and Hunter Pence. Posey was the only one to get a ball out of the infield. A soft, sad response.

“The key factor in all this for us,” said Ned Yost, the Royals’ manager, “is timely hitting, great defense, really solid starting pitching but a dynamic back of the bullpen.”

Sounds like the Giants when they were champions.

Will Raider mess ever be cleaned up?

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — The question is not whether the Raiders are broken. We know they are. It’s obvious. It was obvious before they fell to 0-6 on Sunday.

They can’t stop anybody, and in football if you can’t stop anyone, can’t play defense, you have no chance. That’s understood.

But how can the Raiders be fixed? Can they ever be fixed? To look back and blame it on the late Al Davis doesn’t do any good, except maybe for some vindictive sorts.

If Al made some bad draft picks, if Al kept trying to play 1980s football in the 2010s, railing against him in 2014 doesn’t help the situation.

For the second game under interim coach Tony Sparano, in control only for two games, the Raiders hung in there, at times played effectively. But against a better team, which the Arizona Cardinals are — a very good team, at 5-1 — bits and pieces are not good enough. Oakland was beaten 24-13 at O.co Coliseum.

What you need to succeed in football at any level are a defense and a quarterback. In rookie Derek Carr the Raiders very well may have that quarterback, the man who can lead them into the future. But they don’t have a defense.

They haven’t a defense for years.

“We put ourselves in position to win,” said Sparano. “But we didn’t win. In the 140-odd plays there are eight or nine that are critical. You’ve got to make those plays to win. We have to get better on third down. We have to get off the field.”

They have to stop the other team when it matters. The Cardinals had 15 third-down plays on Sunday. On nine they made first downs, 60 percent.

They never relinquished the ball. They had it for almost 37 minutes of the 60, and while possession time is not always a determining factor in this game — as was the case in last weekend’s against the Chargers — it certainly was.

The opposition just grinds up and down the field, holding the ball, holding the game. Is there an individual to blame?

Mark Davis, Al’s only son, is the one in charge, the team president. But he’s not really a football man as was his late father. Mark hired Reggie McKenzie to fill that role. It appears he hasn’t done it very well.

For two years Oakland and McKenzie were hobbled by the salary cap. Then, before this season, his third, he signed veteran free agents who have not done much, if anything, except earn huge salaries.

Do the Raiders start over? Does Mark Davis hire new executives? People with a plan? Or at least a plan that  might be better than the one installed by McKenzie?

Dennis Allen, a defensive specialist, was McKenzie’s choice as coach. He was fired at the end of September, four games into his third season.

Maybe he didn’t have the players. Maybe he couldn’t be a head coach. The team has been more competitive under Sparano.

However, Sparano is the interim coach. Who will replace him? And does Oakland replace McKenzie?

Where to begin? When to decide? Do you clean house? Do you stay patient?

Charles Woodson is in his 17^th season. He played safety on Sunday as he has forever, with the Raiders after he was the fourth player picked in the 1998 draft, then with the Green Bay Packers where he helped them win Super Bowl XLV, then in 2013 back to the Raiders.

He’s old. He’s still competent. In the second quarter, Charles Woodson, 38, 1997 Heisman Trophy winner, intercepted a pass thrown by Carson Palmer, 34, 2002 Heisman Trophy winner.

The Cardinals probably will have Palmer for a while. Woodson’s days are not so certain. He does provide good quotes.

“I think it’s pretty much snowballed on us,” said Woodson of a season that supposedly had promise and now at almost the halfway point doesn’t even have a single victory.

“We had a close game that first game (a 19-14 loss to the Jets) and it felt like we were on the right track. We just weren’t able to capitalize on that first game. We haven’t been able to put four quarters of football together. But again, third downs, on both sides of the ball, are really killing us.”

Not as much on offense as on defense. If you rarely have the ball, you’ll never have any rhythm. If the defense is ineffective, you’ll rarely have the ball.

“We didn’t do the job on third downs,” repeated Sparano. “Some of that we have to look at scheme. Some of that we may have to look at players.”

Some of whom were signed by McKenzie, who was signed by Mark Davis, who got the team as a legacy. They’re all in it together, and what they’re in is a mess that some way needs to be cleaned up.

Ishikawa’s shot brings Giants a pennant, and memories

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — Always the Giants, in New York, in San Francisco. Always the miracle workers, bending reality, banging dramatic home runs, winning pennants.

This one, on a Thursday night by the Bay that will cling to the memory, wasn’t exactly Bobby Thomson homering off Ralph Branca, and the great Red Smith writing, “Truth has overcome anything fiction could envision.” But it will do.

In 1951, the Giants came from more than a dozen games behind the Brooklyn Dodgers to tie, and Thomson’s “shot heard ‘round the world,” gave them the playoff series. That was forever.

This was for now, and yet still for a lifetime. “What a story,” said Giants manager Bruce Bochy.” Indeed.

Travis Ishikawa, once a Giant, then a castoff, returned to hit his own Thomson-esque three-run blow in the bottom of the ninth Thursday, giving San Francisco a 6-3 victory and the pennant.

The Giants won the best-of-seven National League Championship Series from St. Louis, four games to one, and for the third time in five years march on to the baseball’s ultimate, the World Series.

For four games the Giants did the little things, racing the bases, forcing the issue, riding key hits and a bit of luck. But in the fifth game they went big, breaking loose after six postseason games without a home run to get three homers, including the game-winner by the most unlikely of heroes, Ishikawa.

Joe Panik, the rookie second baseman, had a two-run shot in the third. Then off the bench, Michael Morse, pinch-hitting, tied the game, 3-3, with a ball into the left field bleachers in the eighth. After that, it was a given somehow the Giants would get this game.

But no one figured on Ishikawa, a first baseman forced to play left field where in the second he misplayed a fly ball that allowed the Cards to score. “It was a terrible read on my part,” said Ishikawa. “I ran a tough route.”

His teammates wouldn’t let him suffer. “I told him don’t worry,” said Jake Peavy, the pitcher San Francisco got in a trade from Boston. “We’ll get it back. That’s the way this team is, so spirited.”

And so intriguing. Ishikawa was a backup on the Giants’ 2010 World Series champions, but he ached to play. What he did, however, was move, not play, joining four major league and numerous minor league franchises. The worst season was 2013 when he was with teams in four eastern cities and rarely saw his family in San Jose. He thought about quitting.

Instead for 2014 he signed with Pittsburgh, but when early in the season the Pirates wanted to ship him to Triple A, he requested his release. He joined the Giants — who sent him to the minors.

“I remember calling a buddy of mine halfway through the year,” said Ishikawa, “crying in Texas. No matter what, I was 0-for-4 and just didn’t look like I could hit a ball off a tee. He continued to encourage me.

“And after the All-Star break I was able to do just enough to allow the Giants to bring me up, which I wasn’t expecting ... I came up, just thinking I was going to be a pinch-hitter, and obviously Bochy, with his mastermind of intuition, just throwing me out in the outfield and giving me this opportunity. It’s unbelievable.”

A phrase that describes the first home run to decide a pennant for the Giants since, yes, Thomson’s six decades earlier.”

Not that the 31-year-old Ishikawa thought it was clearing the bricks in right field when he connected. He believed it would be off the wall, still enough to bring home Joaquin Arias, running for Pablo Sandoval, from third with the winner.

“It was a 2-0 count,” said Ishikawa. “I knew (Michael Wacha, who had been brought in to pitch the ninth) didn’t want to go to 3-0. I was just trying to be aggressive, put the barrel of the bat on the ball.

“When I first hit it I thought it was going to be a walkoff hit, so I was throwing my hands in the air, and then I just heard the crowd going crazy. So my thought was, ‘OK, if this gets out, it’s going to be fantastic.’ “

Which it did, and which it was.

All this way, and no mention yet of the wonderful Madison Bumgarner, who started and allowed only five hits, but because two were home runs, one each in the fourth by Matt Adams and Tony Cruz, left after eight innings trailing 3-2.

“That was as fun a game as you can have,” said Mad Bum, chosen the MVP of the NLCS for shutting out the Cards in the first game and keeping them under control in this fifth game.

“I don’t know I’m 100 percent deserving of it,” said Bumgarner. “We’re just excited to be moving on.”

Probably no less excited to get out a clubhouse where for a half-hour the Giants had doused each other, and trapped media, in Mumm’s sparkling wine. “It’s time to celebrate,” confirmed Bochy.

Not surprisingly when the Series begins Tuesday against the Royals in Kansas City, Bumgarner will be the Giants pitcher. “Yeah, definitely,” said Bochy.

And the guess is Ishikawa, the out-of-position first baseman, will be in left.

“I’m sure he’s going to wake up and realize what just happened,” said Bochy. “He’s such a great kid. ... You know it’s all about perseverance, and he didn’t give up. He said there’s a time or two he thought about it, and I’m sure it’s all worthwhile now.”

Giants' clubhouse sign says it all: ‘Never Unprepared’

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — This was the game they should have lost. Well, could have lost. Their starting pitcher couldn’t make it into the fourth. The other team, the Cardinals, was banging balls off fences and, like that, was in front, 4-1.

Yet once again, the Giants found a way.

Once again the Giants pecked and pestered, getting great work from the bullpen and great movement from base runners, pressing the issue until the Cardinals were forced into making wrong decisions.

“Never Unprepared.” That small sign is posted on the Giants’ clubhouse door. Always ready. Always willing. To take the extra base. To take the mound, if only to face one batter.

“Whatever we need,” said Javier Lopez, the lefthander who was the fifth of the seven San Francisco pitchers. “We’re not flashy.”

Who needs flashy? The Giants beat St. Louis, 6-4, Wednesday night at AT&T Park, where the music pounded and the rally rags waved. They’re up three games to one in the best of seven National League Championship Series. They’re one game away from making to the World Series for the third time in five years.

But they’re also wary. Two years ago, 2012, it was the Cardinals who had the 3-1 lead in the NLCS. And the Giants won three in a row. They know what’s possible. Even with Madison Bumgarner pitching in Thursday’s Game 5.

“Great win, great comeback,” said Giants manager Bruce Bochy. “We’ve won three. But we have work to do.”

The work they’ve done in the first four games has been outstanding, if understated. Once more, no home runs — for the sixth straight game of the postseason — but beautiful defense and capable offense, waiting out a walk instead of flailing at a pitch, knowing what to do if there’s a deep fly or a soft grounder.

“It has to start somewhere,” said Bochy.

It started everywhere. It started when Yusmeiro Petit came in to pitch the fourth inning after Ryan Vogelsong, who had been so effective in his previous five postseason games, was so ineffective.

Petit, who would get the win, went three innings, allowing only one hit. Then Jeremy Affeldt went two-thirds of an inning. And Jean Machi one batter. And Lopez one-third of an inning. And Sergio Romo one inning. And finally Santiago Casilla one inning, the ninth, if one in which he gave up his first hit since September 11, a stretch of 10 games.

It started with pinch hitter Joaquin Arias singling to begin the third, Buster Posey singling, Pablo Sandoval walking and Hunter Pence singling. Now the score was 4-3. Now the momentum had switched.

The sixth was classic Giants less-is-more baseball. Juan Perez, pinch hitting (well, pinch walking), got to first. Brandon Crawford singled. Pinch hitter Matt Duffy sacrificed. Gregor Blanco grounded to first, but Matt Adams, after fielding the ball, couldn’t get Perez at the plate. The game was tied.

Not for long. Joe Panik also grounded to first, but Adams stepped on the bag, removing the force, and when he threw high to second to try for Blanco, Crawford dashed home from third.

Fundamental baseball. “Never Unprepared” baseball.

“I had talked to (third base coach) Tim Flannery,” said Crawford. “He said if there was a throw to second to take off for home. That’s what happened. We’re putting the pressure on.

“A big reason for our success is we’ve been getting on base and playing defense.”

Said Bochy, “Great base running by Crawford. If you’re not hitting the long ball, you have to find ways to manufacture runs.”

Neither team made an error that would be recorded in the box score in the a game that was just seven minutes short of four hours, but the Cardinals made the sort of botches that are the difference in playoff baseball.    

“We found a way to score a couple of weird ones there,” said Posey, the Giants' leader. He drove in three runs and scored one.

“I can speak as a catcher. Sometimes those two-out RBIs can be big in shifting momentum.”

The runs in the third, the ones that brought the Giants into the game, as they also did the unsettled sellout crowd of 43,147, were scored with two outs. You sensed then the Cards might be in trouble.

“You have to do the little things,” said Bochy in a message repeated more than once of late. “Granted we’ve gotten a couple breaks, but at the same time, we’ve done some good things, little things. Arias pinch hits, and we find a way to get him across. Now you’re getting a little bit closer, and the hope starts to build up and the momentum starts to change, and that’s what happened.

“I’ve always said, to win a game you need pitching and you need timely hits. And tonight we got them.”

And got to within a game of another World Series.

Giants are lucky — and good

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — Oh, those lucky Giants. Oh, those remarkable Giants.

They can’t hit a home run. They squander first-inning leads. They score on bloop hits. They score on wild pitches. They score when a bunt is thrown into right field. Is that luck or what?

“It’s a great thing to have,” said Giants manager Bruce Bochy, of the black magic and good fortune. “But you don’t get this far by being lucky. You have to be good.”

You have to have players who are tough, talented and most of all resilient.

You have to have players who can go through the fifth through ninth innings as they did Tuesday against the St. Louis Cardinals, with only two base runners and one hit, and remain unfazed.

You have to have players who appear as if they’re going to blow another game as they did on Sunday night when the Cardinals rallied again and again and won on a walkoff home run.

And then, as a sellout crowd at AT&T Park stops gasping and starts screaming, you have to have players who do the little things that turn out so big and win in what seems the most unlikeliest of fashions — but to the Giants is, yawn, the norm.

In the bottom of the 10th, Brandon Crawford, hitless in three at bats, leads off with a walk. Ninth-place batter Juan Perez fouls off two balls attempting to bunt, swings away and singles. Gregor Blanco lays down a bunt, which reliever Randy Choate fields and flings into right field for an error as Crawford dashes home to give San Francisco a 5-4 win and a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven National League Championship Series.

“I’m a little delirious, I guess,” said a half-joking Bochy when asked what it’s like to manage this team in these games. “Man, these are hard-fought games. We don’t do anything easy.”

When have they ever? Sweet Torture is how the broadcasters Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper labeled Giants baseball back in 2010, when the torture sweetly climaxed with a World Series triumph.

The template was created, and it’s being followed once again — chomped cuticle by chomped cuticle.

“I’m not sure if I assume something is going to happen,” said Bochy, “but it couldn’t have worked out better. Perez, he couldn’t get a bunt down and gets a base hit. Now you’re playing with house money.”

Now you’re playing Giants baseball, making the easy difficult, making the absurd reasonable. The Giants had a homer (by Crawford) in the wild card game at Pittsburgh. The Giants had a homer (by Brandon Belt in the 18th) in the second NL Division Series game against Washington.

That was six postseason games ago. They haven’t had one since.

“It’s kind of our way,” conceded Bochy of the scrambling. "We play a lot of tight games ... We didn’t get a lot of chances with men on, but we took advantage of them. Ishi with the big hit. Pence that first inning, two outs, two strikes and he hits the ball down the line.”

Hunter Pence, not unexpected. Travis Ishikawa, reacquired during the season after seasons in the minors,  quite unexpected.

Two outs in the first, none on. Buster Posey singles, Pablo Sandoval singles, Pence doubles, Belt walks and then Ishikawa hits it deep and high to right center, where the ball is blown around by wind that would have done Candlestick proud. Ishikawa has a double, two runs batted in, and San Francisco has a 4-0 lead.

“One of the toughest winds I can remember,” said Pence, who despite being the Giants regular right fielder misjudged a shot by the Cards’ Kolten Wong in the fourth that ended up a two-RBI triple. “I started to my left and it blew over my head to the right.”

The subplot in this one was the tale of Giants starter Tim Hudson, who at age 39, in the majors since 1997 with Oakland, Atlanta and now San Francisco, had never pitched in a league championship game.

He made it to the seventh, then with one out gave up a home run to rookie Randal Grichuk. The 4-0 lead was now a 4-4 tie, and Hudson was relieved by Jeremy Affeldt.

“One thing that can kill you,” sighed Hudson, “is giving up a homer right there to the number eight hitter, and you know they are going to pinch-hit for the pitcher after him. It was probably the worst cutter (cut fastball) I’ve thrown all day ... Obviously it was a tough one for me to swallow. But the guys battled and picked me up as they have all year.

“That’s our personality as a team. We have guys who scratch and claw and do whatever it takes to get some runs across and keep the game close at times, and try to find ways to win in the end.”

Which, when the other team turned a simple bunt into a mammoth mistake, is exactly what they did.

“It doesn’t matter how we score our runs,” said Ishikawa. “It’s been a big topic on how we scored on wild pitches and passed balls and things like that. Somebody asked me if there’s another way we can score a run other than a non-conventional way. I said, 'If there is, we’re going to find a way.'”

Call them lucky. Call them resourceful. Call them remarkable. Call them winners.

Raiders' best game still not a winning game

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — He’s a kid, a rookie, a cornerback on an NFL team that five games into a painful season has changed coaches and even though winless well into October perhaps on Sunday finally changed direction.

“We all feel like we did something today,” said TJ Carrie.

What the Oakland Raiders did, at last, was compete, keep a game in doubt, show they are anything but hopeless.

What the Raiders didn’t do was win. As they haven’t won this season. The San Diego Chargers came from behind and beat Oakland 31-28 at O.co Coliseum. Even with professed Raider fan Tiger Woods in attendance.

It was the Raiders’ best game of the season, on offense. Quarterback Derek Carr, also a rookie, threw four touchdown passes. Darren McFadden ran for 80 yards. So encouraging.

But the Chargers, 5-1, as compared to the Raiders, 0-5, controlled the ball, had it 37 minutes of the total 60, gained 423 yards. It is a cliché that defense wins. In this case, for the Raiders, unable to halt Charger drives, especially the final one that climaxed with a Branden Oliver touchdown with 1:56 remaining.

A new coach for the Raiders, an interim coach, Tony Sparano, who was chosen to replace hard-luck Dennis Allen two weeks ago. An old result.

The players are the same. They seemed more spirited, more aggressive, more upbeat. But they were no more successful.

There are two requirements to create a winning football team, a defense and a quarterback. Without a defense, you virtually never get the ball — and when your time of possession is 15 fewer minutes, as it was for the Raiders, they virtually never had the ball. Without a quarterback, well, he touches the ball on every offensive play.

The Raiders appear to have the quarterback in Carr. He has started every game, and if Carrie, the cornerback, who got beat often enough, said he learned something, so did we about Carr. He’s poised. He’s aggressive. And he has a fantastic arm. Hey, on the third play from scrimmage he unloaded a 77-yard beauty to Andre Holmes for a touchdown. Shades of Peyton Manning.

“I thought our quarterback made some big plays,” said Sparano. He also made some mistakes, getting called for intentional grounding and then in the last minute, on a meticulous drive that seemed destined to produce a game-tying field goal, throwing a ball to the Charger 10 that was intercepted, ending not only a chance for victory but also a record.

Since the merger of the mid 1960s, the only rookies to throw four touchdown passes without an interception in a game were Robert Griffin III and Trent Edwards.

“He’s getting better and better,” said Sparano of Carr, who played collegiately at Fresno State. "On that first touchdown, they came with pressure, we expected the pressure, the guys handled it pretty well, but Derek kept through the progression and getting the ball to the right guy. That’s progress.

“The play at the end of the game, it’s second and very short (1 yard), we felt like we’d make the first down, took a shot and that kid (Jason Verrett, also a rookie, from Fairfield, about 35 miles from the Coliseum) made a great play.”

Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers, as expected, made a ton of great plays. He threw three touchdown passes and has 15 in six games, with only two interceptions.

“We thought about blitzing him,” Sparano said about Rivers. “We blitzed him a couple of times early. We got to him a couple of different ways, but with Philip, as I said earlier in the week, if you don’t tackle him he’s a guy that buys time. He’s going to hurt you in those situations, and he hurt us in one or two of those situations today. You have to pick your poison a little bit with him.”

They’ll find no antidote in Carson Palmer of Arizona, next week’s opponent. The Cardinals are 4-1, and Palmer, who was with the Raiders three years ago, has recovered from his injuries.

“That’s the best team in the league according to some,” Sparano said of the Cardinals, and then switching to San Diego, “That’s one of the best teams out there today, and our kids played hard. We have to be in these kind of football games and finally one of these kind of games. That’s how we turn this thing around.”

They turn it around by shutting down the opponent, by playing the sort of defense the Raiders have not displayed for years.

Carrie could be part of that renaissance.

“His impact,” Sparano said of Carrie, ”was in two areas. I felt him challenging the ball on defense. I felt him around the ball. And then on special teams, on kickoffs (3 for 85 yards) and the punt returns, he really did a nice job.

“Look at TJ. Look at (rookie linebacker) Khalil Mack flying around and Gabe Jackson and these kids. It’s a good place to be right now.”

Did he mean for the Raiders or, as was the case for the Chargers and their dominant time of possession, the opposition? For Oakland there weren’t enough stops. And at 0-5, there certainly aren’t enough wins.

Giants: Lunacy, magic, destiny

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — This was lunacy. This was magic.  This was destiny.

This was baseball at its best and worst, baseball of misplays, brilliance and autumn satisfaction.

This was the no-chance Giants doing what that they seem programmed to do, lurching through the first round of the playoffs, while their opponents, this time the Washington Nationals, wonder how life and sport can be so unfair.

They were lucky to be here, the Giants, needing a wild-card win — on the road, against Pittsburgh — to get to the National League Division Series. That enabled them to advance to the best-of-five against the Nats, who had the more wins than any team in the league during the regular season.

But this isn’t the regular season, this is the Giants’ season, as was obvious from the Mumm’s Napa sparkling wine being spritzed Tuesday night through a clubhouse reeking in grapiness and joy.     

Yes, there were the Giants, celebrating their very bizarre, but very real, 3-2 win over the Nats, and the series victory, three games to one.

This was Hunter Pence crashing into the padding between the fourth and fifth archways in right field at AT&T Park to make a catch, which surely was shown on a dozen replays and should have been on a hundred.

This was beleaguered Ryan Vogelsong courageously going 5 2/3 innings in what some suspected might be the last game he would ever pitch for the Giants — of course, now it will not — and saying his thoughts were about getting teammate Tim Hudson into the next round for the first time in Hudson’s career.

This was the offensively challenged Giants, who kept leaving the bases loaded and had only nine runs in the four games, scoring on a walk, an unfielded bunt, a ground out and finally, breaking a 2-2 tie in the seventh, on a wild pitch.

“I have a gritty bunch out there,” said Giants manager Bruce Bochy. “I told them earlier, there’s nobody’s will that’s stronger than theirs.”

And probably nobody’s fans who were louder than theirs.

When the Giants went out for the ninth, under a full moon that had risen behind the centerfield scoreboard, AT&T Park was cauldron of noise.

And not long after the final out, a grounder to second baseman Joe Panik, the Giants raced around the extremities of the ballpark, slapping hands with fans who they could reach or waving gleefully at those in the upper decks.

“We were determined not to get back on the plane and go to Washington,” said Bochy of a possible fifth game.

Instead, they will get on a plane and fly to St. Louis, where Saturday they play the Cardinals in the opener of the best-of-seven NL Championship Series.

As if things couldn’t be any better by the docks of the Bay, the Cards earlier in the evening came from behind to stun Clayton Kershaw and the Dodgers. As we know, many of the good people in Northern California so despise L.A. they’d just as soon the Dodgers lose as the Giants win.

On Tuesday, both took place.

What a screwball few days. On Saturday, Buster Posey gets thrown out at the plate trying to score from second, and the game goes 18 innings, the Giants winning. On Tuesday, Posey again gets thrown out at home place trying to score from third when Nats reliever Aaron Barrett flung one over the catcher’s head on an intentional walk.

“I was just trying to score, both times,” said Posey. He was ducking sprays of sparkling wine and trying to grab his twins, who along with the members of many Giants’ families had been brought to the clubhouse.

What a screwball few days. Tony Bennett, the 88-year-old crooner best known for “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” was brought in Monday to sing “God Bless America,” done before the home seventh of important nationally televised games.

He botched one of the verses, transforming “ ...oceans white with foam...” to what sounded like “ripe with gold.”

People laughed. People shrugged. A botch, but not nearly as critical as the botches made by the Nats, letting bunts roll untouched, bouncing pitches in front of home plate.

"I wish I knew the formula, the secret," Bochy said of the Giants’ success. "They seem to thrive on this type of play. They elevate their play. I tell them, 'It's in your DNA.' But I can't say there's a silver bullet. I've been on the other end, too, in these short series. There's no magic formula, trust me.

“It was one of the strangest games, how we scored. But that’s our way sometimes. We scratch and paw for runs. And we got a break.”

They also got a tremendous effort from Vogelsong, who, despite his struggles in the season, somehow got it done in the postseason.

The 37-year-old, 0-4 with a 5.53 earned run average in September, held the Nats hitless until the fifth.

"That's what I expect out of myself in these games," Vogelsong said. "You can't treat it like any other game. I don't. Some guys do, but I treat it like the last game I'm ever going to pitch."

When he was replaced in the top of the seventh by Javier Lopez, after Pence’s great catch and a long out by Jayson Werth, the crowd began to chant, “Vogey, Vogey, Vogey.”

“Just a gutty effort,” said Bochy. “I’m proud of him. I really am. He really came through for us tonight.”

He wasn’t alone. At AT&T, maybe the oceans truly are ripe with gold.

Did Bumgarner’s throw let Nats get away?

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — It just got away. Madison Bumgarner was talking about the bunt he picked up and hurled into left field. He could have been talking about history, about the National League Division Series, the one that may have slipped out of the Giants’ grasp as surely as the ball did from Bumgarner’s grasp.

A sacrifice bunt with runners on first and second and nobody out in the top of the seventh of a scoreless game. Bumgarner grabbed the ball. He’s a lefthander.

He’s a great pitcher, probably San Francisco’s best. He was out there to wrap up the Series, to give the Giants a sweep over the Washington Nationals. For six innings Monday afternoon he was impressive, as was the other starter, Doug Fister.   

In the seventh, Bumgarner gave up a leadoff double to Ian Desmond and then a walk to the dangerous Bryce Harper. The Nats needed a win. The Nats needed a run. Wilson Ramos tried to sacrifice, but the count went to 1-2. Washington manager Matt Williams wouldn’t back away from the bunt.

Ramos dumped it down, and Bumgarner picked it up. And threw away the baseball. Maybe, knowing how little things grow large and fateful in the playoffs, threw away the postseason. Flung the ball past third baseman Pablo Sandoval. Maybe flung the Giants' chances into oblivion.

Desmond would score from second, Harper from first. The Nats would beat the Giants, 4-1, and not only would stay alive but perhaps also would change the direction of the series.

Washington had a win. Washington had momentum.

“It just got away from me,” said Bumgarner. He had gone 22 innings in the postseason without permitting a run, six in this game. He was the man who would clinch. But with the bunt in his hand, he clutched. “I felt good throwing it,” said Bumgarner.

A door was opened. The Nats had the best record in the National League during the regular season. But the Giants were baffling them, frustrating them, beating them, 3-2, the first game then in a record 18 hours, 2-1 the second. Everything was going the Giants way. Until Bumgarner’s throw went the wrong way.

Do the Giants come back? Do the Nationals, waiting for the break, win the last two? Was that error in the nightmarish litany of fairy stories the clock striking midnight? The Giants did win the World Series in 2010 and 2012, but their legacy is of heartbreak, of line drives caught and other miseries.

Giants manager Bruce Bochy saw everything unfolding and winced. “I was hoping we would get an out there,” said Bochy. Instead he got a figurative punch in the jaw.

“He tried to do too a little too much there on the bunt,” Bochy said of Bumgarner. “You know you take the out. He tried to rush it. He threw it away.”

Then as if to lighten a grim setting, Bochy added, “He threw it away well, too.”

There was laughter. There was jolting reality. The Nats had been given life, and in baseball, where time stands still, where there is no clock, that’s all you need. Especially when you have Denard Span, Anthony Rendon (7 of 15 in the three games), Jayson Werth and Adam LaRoche at the top of the lineup.

Ryan Vogelsong pitches for the Giants when the teams play again Tuesday night at AT&T Park. “He’s one of our starters,” said Bochy, explaining why Vogelsong was chosen. “He’s a guy we have all the confidence in the world in. He’s been in this situation before.”

Gio Gonzalez will go for the Nats. He used to be on the Oakland A’s. He knows AT&T. “Spent half my career here,” said Gonzalez, exaggerating only a trifle. What he didn’t know Monday morning was he would have the opportunity to pitch one more time. One very big time.

“We all want to win,” said Gonzalez. “We can’t dwell on the past.”

That was the Nats’ mantra after the 18-inning loss Saturday night. That is the Giants’ mantra after the stunning loss Monday afternoon.

“I don’t know if shock’s the word,” Bochy said of the way the way things turned in the seventh. “It’s such an intense game, and I know that they wanted to get that out at third base. They played so well in these type of games. We made a mistake. We’ve got to learn from it.”

It may be too late. It may be that the only thing Bumgarner and the Giants will learn is they gave the Nationals the break that may break the Giants.

“Well,” said Bochy, “I don’t know how many times I’ve heard down the stretch in September ‘must win’ and all that. That’s why you play the game. We’re fortunate not to be in that situation quite yet with our two wins in Washington.

“But they are all important games. We know how good this club is we’re playing, and you have to play your best ball to beat them. Today we didn’t, and we made a mistake that hurt us. But we’ll come out and get after it (Friday).”

Niners' Harbaugh takes on critics and doubters

By Art Spander

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Jim Harbaugh was having his way a few minutes after his team had its way. There’s no direct line from A to Z with Harbaugh, whose very existence seems designed to keep everybody off balance.

With Jim you buckle your seat belt, button your lip and go for a ride that is never unexciting. Or unenlightening.

Harbaugh’s San Francisco 49ers were 22-17 winners over Kansas City on Sunday at Levi’s Stadium, and the story could even stop right there, since coaches invariably say the only thing that matters is the final score.

If the coach isn’t Jim Harbaugh.

A couple weeks back, former defensive star Deion Sanders, now employed by the NFL Network, said publicly there are people on the Niners, in uniform, in executive positions, unhappy with Harbaugh. To which the immediate response is, “So?’’

Except every time Colin Kaepernick throws an interception or Frank Gore fails on third-and-one, the issue is tossed out there again. The idea is to get attention, right? And what gets more attention than another tale about the non-conformist leader of arguably the most popular team in Northern Cal?

Even if we’re told there’s no basis for the reports.

“All this noise, I don’t understand the whole thing,” said kicker Phil Dawson. “It’s certainly not consistent with the noise you hear outside the locker room. There is zero problem in the locker room. We believe in our coach and love playing for him.”

Dawson is in his second year as the Niners’ placekicker after a long career in Cleveland. Against the Chiefs on Sunday, he made field goals of, in ascending but not chronological order, 27, 30, 31, 52 and 55 yards, 15 points of the team’s 22.

Harbaugh, who sees his athletes as semi-mythical, pointed out that Dawson and others who contributed to the victory — Kaepernick, Gore, defensive back Eric Reid — should be so satisfied with their performance they can look at themselves in the mirror and say, "I’m a football player.’"

Of course they’re football players, or they wouldn’t be in the NFL, but Dawson, his nearly bald head shaved clean, isn’t certain he needs such self-congratulatory methods.

“At 39 years old,” Dawson said, “I don’t enjoy looking in the mirror very much. I’ll pretend to be a football player without looking in the mirror.”

The Harbaugh advice, of course, is figurative. He’s big on machismo, on individual success evolving into team success. Beat the guy across the line, and the team beats the opponent. Grrr.

The Niners are 3-2 now, and while expectations may have been for better, against the Chiefs they played effective defense and competent offense. And they’re still without two of the NFL’s best defenders, NaVorro Bowman, recovering from that knee injury, and Aldon Smith, on a nine-week suspension. If and when those two return, San Francisco might be pretty good.

Harbaugh knows what he has and what he doesn’t have. What Harbaugh himself has is an overwhelming desire to prove his capabilities. Just when you think you know the man, he’ll get you. Or his team will.

Early in the fourth quarter, the Niners, trailing 17-16, had the ball four-and-one on their own 29. They lined up to punt, naturally, but, sneaky devils, called a running play up the middle. The first down eventually led to Dawson’s fourth field goal and a 19-16 lead.

“Yeah,” said Harbaugh, tempering a boast. “Thought it was an important call, important play in the game. Strong important win for our team. Thought it was a great team win.”

It was a grind-out, we’re-stronger-physically-and-mentally kind of win that Harbaugh relishes, the sort of victory that registers not only on the scoreboard but the opponents’ psyches.

Harbaugh certainly was questioned again about the Deion Sanders contention that will live as long as the season does.

“The team doesn’t have to respond,” said Harbaugh in his own response. “The team has to do their job and play football. It’s my job to love them — those players, those coaches, everybody in our organization.

“It’s their job to love each other. They don’t need to respond in any other way than their job. The football team has done good. And the better you do, the more you do, then people try to trip you up. Whether you’re getting praised, whether you’re getting criticized or whether you’re having silence, all three have their obstacles. But also all three, any of the three, can add to the competitiveness, the determination. And our football is very determined and very competitive.”

Exactly like the head coach.

Bleacher Report: USA Getting Dominated Means Ryder Cup Is More Irrelevant Than Ever in America

By Art Spander
Featured Columnist

GLENEAGLES, Scotland — When Andy Roddick, the now-retired tennis star, was asked about his rivalry with Roger Federer, he answered, “That’s not a rivalry. He keeps winning.”

The same could be said for the European team's dominance against the United States in the Ryder Cup. Once it was a rivalry. Now it’s an irrelevancy. At least in the U.S.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2014 Bleacher Report, Inc.

Bleacher Report: Team USA Giving Captain Tom Watson a Dismal Farewell at 2014 Ryder Cup

By Art Spander
Featured Columnist

GLENEAGLES, Scotland — This was going to be an exclamation point on Tom Watson’s great career, a final glorious farewell for a man appropriately in a land where much of his golfing reputation was established.

He would step out of the past, return as captain of an American Ryder Cup team and through his words and wisdom earn another generation’s accolades, maneuvering and persuading players, some of whom weren’t even born when Watson was one of the game’s greatest stars.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2014 Bleacher Report, Inc.

Bleacher Report: Afternoon Momentum Shift Puts Bewildered Team USA in Trouble at 2014 Ryder Cup

By Art Spander
Featured Columnist

GLENEAGLES, Scotland — It was golf’s version of a Hail Mary pass. Or a bottom of the ninth home run. Or really a kick in the head.

The United States grabbed control in the opening morning of Ryder Cup 2014 and then, stunningly, painfully, lost control in the afternoon.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2014 Bleacher Report, Inc.

Bleacher Report: Why Has Team Europe Dominated Team USA at the Ryder Cup?

By Art Spander
Featured Columnist

GLENEAGLES, Scotland — Losing is the great American sin. A Harvard-educated author of young adult fiction, John Tunis, said that first. Losing is what America has done in the Ryder Cup.

With Tiger Woods. Without Tiger Woods, who is not on the team that this week in the rolling countryside of Perthshire will face Europe. With a deficit going into the last of the three days of play. With a lead, as was the situation last year at Medinah

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2014 Bleacher Report, Inc.

Joy is gone from the A’s season

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — The joy is gone from the Athletics’ season. There’s a sense of helplessness at O.co Coliseum, a feeling that no matter what happens — and technically, they even could get to the World Series — the ending will be gloomy.

They’ll never catch the Angels, who remarkably about a month ago they led by 3½ games and now trail by 10½. That’s a given. The Angels got hot as the A’s went cold. And even by losing, the Angels on Tuesday night reduced their magic number to two.

What the A’s needed in their return home after a tough road trip with a decent ending was not only a victory but an efficiently played game, one that their fans — starting with the 19,385 in attendance — could use as a benchmark. Hey, they’re out of it, but they’re in it.

No, they’re not.

The A’s were dreadful Tuesday. Scott Kazmir threw two wild pitches. The infielders threw balls all over the place, charged with only two errors. The Texas Rangers, the team with the worst record in the majors, beat Oakland, 6-3. And everyone including A’s manager Bob Melvin was rocked mentally.

It’s like dressing up in a new suit and five minutes at dinner spilling ketchup on the trousers. It’s embarrassing. Or in Melvin’s words, “It’s disappointing.”

Poor Bo Mel. All a manager can to is encourage his players and fill out the lineup card. OK, in that madding lefty-right business, in the eighth, he can yank Brandon Moss, who had homered in the sixth, for righthanded batting Nate Freiman, who struck out. But playing percentages isn’t entirely sinful. Playing as did the A’s — spaced out, it seems — is very sinful. And very irritating.

“We just didn’t look like we were ready to play,” said Melvin, “for whatever reason. We got beat all the way around.”

The A’s yet may get to the wild card game. Then what? Do they perform as they did Tuesday night, watching Rangers' grounders bounce their way to hits and then watch Jake Smolinski hit his first major-league home run? Or are they able to reach back to the team they used to be in May and June?

“It was a hard thing to do,” Melvin said of pinch-hitting for Moss. Moss hasn’t had much success against lefties, and the Rangers had brought in Neal Cotts. Well and good, but a guy puts one into the seats his previous at bat, even against starter Nick Tepesch, and you figure he’s doing something right.

Then again, pulling Moss and inserting Freiman wasn’t the reason the A’s got bounced. They were, in a word, inept. They were too much like the team that lost 21 of its last 31 games. Whatever happened to the team that won 30 of its first 51?

“We didn’t play very good defense tonight,” said Melvin. “That’s the disappointing part. There’s an urgency.”

There’s also a mystery, or is there? The A’s have not been the same since they traded Yoenis Cespedes for Jon Lester the last day of July.

The A’s surmised with their budget they couldn’t sign Cespedes when his contract expired at the end of the 2015 season. The A’s — general manager Billy Beane — surmised, as the last two years in the playoffs they couldn’t beat Detroit without one more great starting pitcher.

Everything flip-flopped. Now the A’s not only might not face the Tigers, they might not even make the postseason. And the young A’s, who were built both physically and mentally around the enthusiastic Cespedes, fell apart after the deal.

The other kids start thinking, “If they trade him, what’s going to happen to me?” They lose their confidence. The team starts losing games.

So, Cespedes, a fan favorite, is gone. Lester probably also will be gone. And worst of all, the A’s postseason chances may be gone. Such a fragile balance.

Melvin, who’s been through the good times and bad times, with Arizona before coming over to manage the A’s, was asked how he deals with what happened to the A’s against Texas.

“Yes,” he admitted, “it bothers you. But you have to come back and play another game.”

And, they hope, play it far better than the last one.

49ers Were ‘Terrible’

By Art Spander

SANTA CLARA — This one is summed up perfectly by Colin Kaepernick, who as most everyone on the 49ers was perfectly imperfect. “Terrible,” said Kaepernick.

Indeed. And maybe worse than that.

Another opening, another show. Another stunning letdown.

The first NFL game at billion-dollar-plus Levi’s Stadium, the jewel of Silicon Valley. A 17-0 lead over the Chicago Bears. And then?  

Well, 16 penalties by the Niners. Four turnovers by Kaepernick. Ineptitude at the highest level, and finally, painfully, Sunday night a 28-20 loss.

“It stings,” said Niner coach Jim Harbaugh. Yes, and it stinks, in a figurative way. The new place, 70,799 fans paying some very high prices. A beautiful beginning, and then clunk.

This one belonged at Kezar Stadium, where in 1946, their inaugural season, the Niners lost their first game ever played. Or at Candlestick Park, where in 1971 the Niners lost their first game after the shift from Kezar.

Who even thought the script would be the same? Start like a klutz.

This is a Niner team headed for the Super Bowl? Please! Sixteen penalties for 118 yards. Absurd. Disgraceful. Impossible to overcome.

Harbaugh stood in the post-game interview room like a deer in headlights, giving the briefest answers in the softest voice. Either he was bewildered by what took place or appalled. Probably both.

Earlier in the day, at San Diego, the Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks, the team the Niners must overtake, lost to the Chargers. The score went up on those huge video boards. The fans cheered. The Niners would be ahead of the Seahawks.

Not on your life. They would be wallowing in their own despair. They would be flagellating themselves. They would be ruing what could have been, what should have been — but was not to be.

“When you’re up, and like you said, new stadium, with the fans, great fans,” agreed Frank Gore, the Niners running back and spiritual leader, “when you’re up like that, you’ve got to go for the kill. We let them back in the game. We didn’t finish, and they beat us.”

More accurately, the Niners beat themselves. They got called for defensive holding. They got called for illegal procedure. They got called for illegal use of hands. They got called for false starts. And most of all, at the end of the first half, still in front, 17-0, they got called for roughing the passer, with only a bit more than a minute to go in the half.

That moved the ball to the San Francisco 25, and in three plays quarterback Jay Cutler moved it into the end zone on the first of three touchdown passes to Brandon Marshall.

“He’s a tough guy,” Niners linebacker Patrick Willis said of Marshall. “He’s tough to cover by anyone on the field. It’s just him getting in the red zone. He’s a big body (6-foot-4, 230 pounds).

“The youngster (Jimmie Ward) was fighting his tail off and doing all we ask him to do. The plays just went their way on those.”

They didn’t go Kaepernick’s way. Three interceptions and a fumble. Arguably Kaepernick’s worst game since he became a starter two years ago in a game against, yes, the Bears.

“I think he was seeing things good,” Harbaugh said in support of his quarterback. “He threw some pretty darn good balls. The defense made some great plays.”

Kaepernick made plays that, to be kind, were very much less than great. He seemed flummoxed by a Bears defense that literally had him on the run.

“I saw the coverages,” said Kaepernick. “I didn’t make the plays.”

What we he made were mistakes, joining teammates in a universal effort.

The funny thing is the Levi’s Stadium field was for the third time in six weeks replanted. The grass had been coming apart. It didn’t on Sunday night. It was the Niners who disintegrated.

“Turnovers and penalties,” said  fullback Bruce Miller, in what was becoming litany, “especially at the point in the game when they were made, that’s losing football.”

It was for the Dallas Cowboys a week ago against the Niners.

It was for the Niners on Sunday night against the Bears.

“Wins are tough to come by,” said Anquan Boldin, the Niners wide receiver. “When you have a team down, you definitely have to put your foot on their throat because nobody’s going to quit in this league.”

The Bears lost three key defensive players through injuries, including cornerback Charles Tillman. Yet it was the Niners who lost the game.

“It stings to lose,” Harbaugh said once again. “And we all have fingerprints on it.”

Do they ever. Someone get the furniture polish.