By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — Bill Veeck was a promoter. He also owned different baseball teams, the St. Louis Browns (who were to become the Baltimore Orioles), the Cleveland Indians and the Chicago White Sox. He understood sports and the public’s acceptance or rejection.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — He was 2-under-par after one hole. An eagle 3 to open, an auspicious beginning. But you on know the sporting cliché. It’s not so much how you start, it’s how you finish.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — What’s not to like? Rory McIlroy asked the question, and indirectly he provided the answer. Which, of course, is “Nothing.”
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — It used to be Bing Crosby. Then Bob Hope. But is there a singular figure from the dozens of 21st-century entertainers and sporting heroes both famous enough and connected to the game to host his own golf tournament?
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — For a moment there, when he was 3-under-par on the first six holes, it seemed Phil Mickelson, back on the course he loves, was going to show us again it didn’t matter how old he was or how few fairways he hit — that it was magic time once more.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif.--You know the line, that in golf it ain’t how, it’s how many, that what matters is the score not how you got it. Except the way Phil Mickelson plays golf.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — It was Jason Day’s darkest hour. He was in pain. He was in doubt. Nothing is more important to any athlete in any sport than his body.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — He finished strong, a birdie on 17. Sure, Jordan Spieth after a 2-under 70 is a mile out of the lead. But he played a much tougher course, Spyglass Hill, than the guy, Nick Taylor, who shot a 63 at Monterey Peninsula.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — For years, golf was not a game for left-handers. In part because left-handed clubs were as rare as snow on the Monterey Peninsula.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
MIAMI — This is what the great ones do. They win a game that could have been lost, maybe should have been lost. The 49ers and their fans know all about it. They watched Joe Montana and Steve Young do it for them in the good old days.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
MIAMI — Jimmy G made the ultimate observation: “We know why we’re here.” He and everyone else.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
MIAMI — Our major sporting events are both a blessing and a curse. We choose to remember the victories. We can’t forget the losses.
For Kyle Shanahan, one defeat in particular stands out. So does one play.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
MIAMI — This time Richard Sherman had the stage to himself, as if it ever seems to matter. He’s one of a kind, a man who can talk a great game and play an even greater one, who went from the tough streets of Compton to the campus of elite Stanford and then to star in pro football.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
MIAMI — Jimmy Garoppolo understands, which in the game of football is no less a measure of his position than an ability to perform.
Copyright 2020 The Maven
By Art Spander
MIAMI — Of course there was a question about the backpack. But by Deion Sanders.
Who better to exploit the silliness and salesmanship of the Super Bowl’s media function — relabled Opening Night — than a man who played in the game and now works for the NFL Network, Deion Sanders, old Prime Time himself?
Either Deion has been out of touch or the guys behind the telecast goaded him into asking Kyle Shanahan about the incident, but there was Deion standing next to Shanahan. Network types get individual access, which ordinary journalists do not.
So there is Sanders, who helped the 49ers win Super Bowl XXIX, right where No. LIV will be played Sunday — it’s now called Hard Rock Stadium, formerly Joe Robbie Stadium.
Let’s just say Deion was more impressive with a football in his hands than a microphone. But that doesn’t seem to matter.
Opening Night (sounds like an opera, not a media show) on Monday was at Marlins Park, the baseball stadium, appropriate perhaps because the one that was held three years ago, prior to Super Bowl LI, was at Minute Maid Park, where the Astros play home games.
Shanahan was offensive coordinator for the Atlanta Falcons, who would blow a big lead and lose to New England. But more significantly everyone knew he was about to be named the Niners' new coach.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one, but I came late, put down my backpack with my laptop and joined the group around Shanahan. Then, I picked up my backpack and went to write. Only, when someone tracked me down, it wasn’t my backpack, it was Shanahan’s.
Hey, it was dark and both packs were green. Both of us ended up with the proper backpacks. We’re three years on. But Shanahan has returned to a Super Bowl.
After Shanahan on Monday night tells Sanders there will be a different approach to this Super Bowl than the one three years ago, Deion casually mentions the backpack.
“I was pretty upset,” said Shanahan. “One minute I have it, the next minute it’s gone.” He wasn’t worried about the Patriots learning his game plan — “That was on an iPad and could be deleted” — but about the $15,000 in tickets he had acquired an hour earlier.
I never opened the pack. But I opened a wound. The story became huge. It’s still large. When half-jokingly a week ago, I asked Shanahan if for nostalgia’s sake he would bring the backpack to this Super Bowl, he said, “If I do, I’m going to keep it locked up to my arm so you can’t get it.”
Sanders, as if he had been on the moon, asked, “Wasn’t there an incident with a backpack? “
“Someone picked it up,” said the coach, cleverly using no names.
The issue now is not the backpack but quarterbacks and running backs. Can the Niners move the ball with the effectiveness they did against Green Bay in the NFC Championship game? San Francisco did it almost entirely on the ground.
Pack that up.
SANTA CLARA,Calif. — And so they are back, if not to the top of the mountain, then at least close enough, to once more be a part of the NFL elite, a team and a franchise that, through reputation and resilience, is nothing less than a champion.
The journey for the 49ers was at times confusing and at other times disappointing as they lost games and, a few years ago, seemingly lost their way.
But a young quarterback, a young coach and a relatively young general manager helped restore the greatness.
They remain one brick short of a load, another Super Bowl victory to go with the five wins that made them the team of the '80s. The opportunity for that was achieved Sunday in the NFC Championship game at Levi’s Stadium, where a boisterous crowd made it a home field in more than just name. The Niners, aggressive, obsessive, overwhelming, built up a 27-0 halftime lead and whipped the Green Bay Packers, 37-20.
They still have one more step to go, and a tough one it will be against a Chiefs team that stomped the Tennessee Titans, 35-24, in the AFC title game. Yet considering how the Niners got to where they are, logic and forecasts are best ignored.
Everything was going south until Kyle Shanahan was hired from Atlanta to be head coach and John Lynch, a onetime All-Pro defensive back left broadcasting to join him as GM. Then the Niners traded for Jimmy Garoppolo, who was backing up Tom Brady with the Patriots.
In 2017, the first year of the new regime, the Niners lost their first nine games. In 2018 they were 4-12, when in the third game Garoppolo was lost for the season with an injury.
But in 2019, with the QB returning, with a rookie defensive end named Nick Bosa and with a determination to play knock-'em-down football, the Niners turned back the clock and now boast a 15-3 record for the season.
If there’s one person who would seem to represent the 49ers perserverance, it is running back Raheem Mostert. He was not drafted, then from 2015 to 2016 was with five different teams.
On Sunday, needing to replace the ailing Tevin Coleman, he set an NFL record by becoming the first player ever to rush for at least 200 yards (he had 220) and score four touchdowns in a playoff game.
“I never gave up,” said Mostert, who grew up in Florida — where Super Bowl LIV will be held on February 2 — and then went north to play at Purdue. In the pros, he bounced between the Dolphins, Ravens, Browns, Jets and Bears in a year and a half.
Then, fortunately for both, came the 49ers.
“It’s hard to believe after all this I’m not only going to the Super Bowl," Mostert said, “but it is in my home state.”
The Niners, as they did in the divisional win over Minnesota, just kept running the ball. They had 42 rushes compared to only eight passes. Stone Age football, perhaps, but obviously successful football.
Said Niners receiver Debo Samuels of Mostert, “Man, it was crazy. It seemed like every run that he did, he was about to score. I was just out there going crazy.”
While Mostert, who carried 29 times and averaged 7.6 yards a run, was going wild.
”I did have a lot of doubters and naysayers,” said Mostert. “But this is surreal. I can’t believe I’m in the position I’m in and did the things I did tonight. The journey’s been crazy.”
For Shanahan, it’s been the result of hard work. “These guys are a bunch of fighters,” he said of his team’s intensity.
Then, considering Mostert, he could have added, “and runners.”
By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO — They did what they could, what they were capable of, which pleased their coach, Steve Kerr, if not the fans. It was another loss for the Warriors, the 10th in a row, their longest winless streak in 17 years.
And yet not just another loss.
This season is going nowhere. We knew it the night Steph Curry broke his hand, the fourth game of the schedule, against Phoenix here at Chase Center. And we know it now, two and a half months later.
You can’t lose your stars, in a league where stars control the game, and not expect to lose games.
After that, with Kevin Durant gone and with Klay Thompson in rehab, the question was what the kids on the court could do, the young kids like Eric Paschall and Jordan Poole, the older kids like Willie Cauley-Stein and D’Angelo Russell.
They could stumble and bumble and look awful, as they did a couple of nights back against Dallas. Or they could perform as well as possible against a team acknowledgably superior, take the lead, be there at the end and then fail in overtime, as the Dubs did, 134-131, on Thursday night against Denver.
It’s a familiar story, if a sad one. The other team is better, and even though the Nuggets were without key players, Jamal Murray and Paul Millsap, even though they had played the previous night, even though they trailed by 19 points in the first quarter, they won.
A year ago, two, three, four, five years ago, the Warriors would have won. But this is now. This isn’t then. And Kerr seemed less concerned with the defeat — hey, they have the worst winning percentage in the NBA — then the undeniable fact his team was wonderfully competitive.
“I thought our guys were great tonight,” said Warriors coach Steve Kerr. They were.
Not great, compared to the Warriors who had the Splash Brothers, who had the settling influences of Andre Iguodala and Shaun Livingston, who had the unstoppable Durant and the fiery Draymond Green.
But great for what they provided.
Great for giving the Warriors insight to what they can do — and what they can’t.
The Nuggets came in with a 28-12 record, the Warriors 9-33. What happened was hardly a surprise. Denver outscored the Warriors by 12 points, 40-28, in the fourth quarter. Good teams find a way. So do teams that aren’t good.
“They were going to (Nikola) Jokic, who might be the best center in the league,” said Kerr. Jokic had 23 points, 10 in the fourth quarter, 12 rebounds and two blocked shots.
“One of the best offensive teams in the league,” Kerr said of Denver, “and they are a tough team to guard. So the key in the fourth quarter, any time you are trying to close the game, you want to execute and not turn the ball over. We had a couple of turnovers that really hurt us.”
A couple turnovers that maybe don't happen with more experience and a teammate or two, in addition to Draymond Green, who will seem less flustered when under pressure.
“Defensively,” said Kerr, “we battled, and we were trying. But (Denver) got going. They are capable of doing that. I’m proud of our guys. I feel bad for them because they played well enough to win and just couldn’t do it.”
There’s a painful reminder of the Warriors of years past. They would take the lead, hang in and then fade.
“I mean 18 turnovers didn’t help,” said Damion Lee, “and their shooters got going. Of course we could have played better, but you’ve got to give them credit.”
Lee, who had been on one of those stressful two-way contracts (up and back between San Francisco and Santa Cruz), was playing his first game after signing a three-year contract with the Warriors. He had 21 points (Alec Burks led the Dubs with 25) and six assists, one of which enabled Eric Paschall to score with two seconds left in regulation.
“The ball tends to find energy,” said Lee. “As long as everybody’s touching it, make the easy play and get back on defense.”
This season, no play is easy for the Warriors.
By Art Spander
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — It was a television reporter who asked Kyle Shanahan, the 49ers coach, the question nobody who regularly covers the team would have asked, to wit:
Did Shanahan get a sense of regional uplifting that a win such as the one over the Vikings can do for the Bay Area?
There are football people who would have dismissed the idea out of hand, telling us their job is about what happens on the field, not in the stands. But that’s not Shanahan.
“That stuff does it for me too,” Shanahan said Monday at Niners headquarters, responding to the question. “Not just as a coach, but as a fan. I love sport.
“When I watched the Warriors do good here for the two years I was here prior to this year, that uplifts me, and I love what sports does for people.”
What the 49ers have done this season is call down some recent echoes. They are in the NFC Championship game Sunday night against Green Bay at Levi’s Stadium. Suddenly, it’s the 1980s once again.
This isn’t Charlotte where, when a major golf tournament, the PGA Championship, was played there, a local reporter asked the golfers what they thought of the city. Not the course, the city, the restaurants, the stores.
We know what people think of San Francisco, of Oakland, of San Jose. Who cares if the Niners play in Santa Clara? Not TV, which during games offers shots of the Bay Bridge, when it isn’t showing us the Golden Gate.
Kyle Shanahan has been around and part of winners: offensive coordinator on the Falcons, who went to the Super Bowl three years ago; an intern with his dad’s Broncos, Super Bowl champions in 1997 and 1998.
“Anytime you have a team that has a chance to be in the situation we’re in,” Kyle Shanahan said, “where the Warriors have been a lot, sports are great. It gives everyone a break from stuff. You always want to support your home team, and I’m glad we’re giving something to be proud of this year.”
True, Northern Cal has had its share of titles, every pro team other than the Sharks taking a championship. When the Niners finally won, in the 1981 season, it was, dare we use the word, a virtual earthquake — the team that was here first, after seasons of disappointment, coming in first last.
The Bay Area, California, the entire west, had only college sports and minor league baseball until 1946. Then the Cleveland Rams moved to Los Angeles. Then the 49ers were formed in San Francisco.
No Giants until 1958. No Raiders until 1960. No Warriors until 1962. No A’s until 1968. No Sharks until 1991 (although the California Golden Seals were around from 1967-76).
The Niners were the original, the attraction and, for 35 years without any sort of playoff win, eternal frustration. So when Dwight Clark made “The Catch” in January 1982 against Dallas (after a divisional victory over the New York Giants), the elation was understandable. And, for a long while, unstoppable.
Bill Walsh was the coach who broke the spell. “You can stop writing we can’t win the big one,” he told me maybe an hour after Clark’s catch. Since then, there have been numerous big ones.
Another is Sunday. Will this be a return to greatness, to the Super Bowl, a game that in the 1980s and early ‘90s almost seemed part of the Niners’ regular schedule? Or will this be only a letdown?
In the glory years, the Niners won their championships while playing at deteriorating Candlestick Park — then-owner Eddie DeBartolo called the stadium “a dump.” But it was full and loud. But now the home games, as this coming Sunday's game will be, are at Levi’s, which was mostly empty and very quiet. Until last weekend.
“The fan noise,” said Shanahan of the last game, “is as big of a difference as probably our team is. They’ve gotten a lot louder as we’ve gotten better. It was just unbelievable Saturday.
“All I saw in the stands were red jerseys. It gave us a special feeling.”
Just as winning teams invariably give their communities.
By Art Spander
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — This was back in the 1980s, when another 49ers team of another era — a very good one at that — hit the road and got hit, 17-3, in a playoff game by the New York Giants.
The Niners were unable to move the ball against the defense and the weather.
That was when the New York coach, Bill Parcells, sneered at the system of Niners coach Bill Walsh, giving it a name, contending in so many words, “Back here when it gets cold and windy, that West Coast offense doesn’t work. You’ve got to be able to run the ball.”
It doesn’t really matter what the conditions are. A team always needs to run the ball. Maybe not as emphatically as the Niners, the 2020 Niners, did Saturday, defeating the Minnesota Vikings, 27-10, in their NFC Divisional playoff win, but run frequently and consistently.
For all the talk about how the NFL has morphed into a passing league, the run remains the essence of football. You take the ball and virtually shove it through the other team. Then do it again. And again, building your momentum and wearing down the opposition.
Never mind balance, this is battering. The Niners ran the ball 47 times. In one third-quarter-sequence, they ran it eight plays in a row and scored.
It was football out of the 50s, the old Woody Hayes game at Ohio State, three yards and a cloud of dust. It was boring. It was beautiful. It was successful.
It also helped keep the ball from the Vikings; the time of possession was a highly disproportionate 38 minutes and 27 seconds for the Niners compared to 21 minutes and 33 seconds for Minnesota.
“I think 47 rushes is pretty good, right?” was Niners tight end George Kittle’s assessment. “I personally feel we don’t run the ball enough every single week.”
They’ll have another chance Sunday in the NFC Championship game against either Seattle or Green Bay, each of which the 14-3 Niners defeated during the regular season.
San Francisco was the No. 1 NFC seed in the postseason, so it didn’t have to be cute — why take chances when you’re favored? — only dominant.
“We’ve been playing good football all year,” said Kittle. “People keep telling us we’re not very good.”
What they can say now is the Niners are one game away from the Super Bowl.
And one reason is the young quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, who obviously passed infrequently (the Niners throwing a mere 19 times, completing 11 for 131 yards).
But on this afternoon when Levi’s Stadium hosted its first postseason game, and when the seats at last were packed with fans, many chanting “Defense, defense,” Garoppolo showed a skill unknown for many quarterbacks.
On one of the 47 runs, a run by Debo Samuel, Garoppolo was a blocker.
“I saw an opportunity,” said Garoppolo. “He was a little off balance. Had to get a pancake.” That’s the term for flattening a potential tackler.
On the other side, Niners cornerback Richard Sherman figuratively flattened all Vikings hopes with an interception, which led to the repetitive runs that resulted in the third-period touchdown.
“It’s that complementary football,” said Garoppolo, linking the defense to the offense and the offense to the defense.
And having the crowd linked to everything. It’s been a while since the Niners created so much excitement in Northern California. Since the last Super Bowl victory, the Warriors became the best team in the NBA and the Giants won three World Series. Now we've got the Niners renaissance.
“I was pumped up with the defense,” said Niners coach Kyle Shanahan, who then spoke of the offense.
“We had a pre-game goal,” said Shanahan. “We thought the team that got over 30 runs would win this game.”
It did, easily.
“We knew coming into the season we had a chance to compete in every game,” said Shanahan. “Now I can’t wait to watch these games Sunday to find out who we’re playing.”