By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
ARDMORE, Pa. — Tom Watson said that for most golfers, the opportunity to win a major championship doesn't last very long.
"With exceptions such as Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player,'' Watson said, "the window is a small one — five, six, seven years.''
Copyright © 2013 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
ARDMORE, Pa. — Rookie pro Shawn Stefani made a hole-in-one Sunday on one of Merion's toughest holes, the 229-yard 17th, with his 4-iron shot bouncing off the banking to the left of the green and rolling about 50 feet into the cup. It was the first ace in any of Merion's five U.S. Opens but the 43rd in Open history.
"When the crowd went crazy,'' he said, "I knew it went in."
Copyright © 2013 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
ARDMORE, Pa. — Justin Rose pointed to the sky and shed a few tears. Phil Mickelson could only point to himself, swallow hard and talk about heartbreak again and again.
Rose won the 113th U.S. Open on a course that took willingly, gave grudgingly and left the bewildered Mickelson a runner-up for a sixth time in America's national golfing championship.
Copyright © 2013 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
ARDMORE, Pa. — The players first and second in the world golf rankings went at each other at Merion Golf Club Saturday in the third round of the U.S. Open. Is it too strong to say both lost? Certainly neither felt like a winner.
Rory McIlroy, No. 2 in the world, shot 5-over-par 75. The man ahead of him in the rankings, if not the Open standings, did even worse. World No. 1 Tiger Woods finished with a 76.
Copyright © 2013 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
ARDMORE, Pa. — Once more Phil Mickelson is on the brink, with the chance to win the championship he covets, America's national championship, the U.S. Open.
Saturday afternoon, with the lead slipping through one pair of hands after another, as if it was the white sand in the bunkers of famed Merion Golf Club, Mickelson eventually ended up where he had been at the end of the previous two rounds: in first.
Copyright © 2013 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
ARDMORE, Pa. — It began with a yawn, then a bogey. One was expected. For Phil Mickelson, down from the wild blue yonder, perhaps both were.
“Bones and I have a saying,” Mickelson mentioned in reference to his caddy, Jim “Bones” Mackay. “Some of my best rounds of my career have started with a bogey.
“We just kind of looked at each other and laughed.”
This round on Day 1 of the 113th U.S. Open not only was one of the best for Phil Mickelson, it was one of the most remarkable, recorded after a cross-country flight, after very little shuteye and after a weather delay that extended more than three and a half hours.
This is what Phil Mickelson on Wednesday evening in California and Thursday morning and afternoon in Pennsylvania accomplished:
“Yeah,” Mickelson said, “it might be abnormal, but it actually worked out really well.”
Worked out better than most dared imagine, but that’s Phil, a man who challenges the limits, whether hitting a driver off the tee of the 72nd hole of the 2006 Open and taking a double-bogey or commuting daily by jet the 120 miles or so from his home in Carlsbad to the Northern Trust Open at Riviera in Pacific Palisades.
“I might have used just a little caffeine booster at the turn,” confided Mickelson. “Just to keep me sharp. But that was our ninth hole or so, and I just wanted to make sure I had enough energy.”
The man will be 43 Sunday, which is both Father’s Day and the scheduled final round of the Open, a tournament in which Mickelson five times has finished second but never once has come in first.
Maybe getting away will be the trick. He had planned to return home for the graduation speech. “She did a great job,” said Phil of Amanda, “she even quoted Ron Burgundy.” That’s the character played by Will Ferrell in the film Anchorman.
“So,” said Mickelson, “it was funny.”
Others suggested there was nothing funny about Mickelson’s cross-continental journeys, but he can laugh last.
“I got all my work done on Merion when I was here a week and a half ago,” he said. Then, when storms inundated Merion, on Monday he returned home and worked on his game in great weather in the Golden State.
“I think mental preparation is every bit as important as physical,” Mickelson said, “and I was able to take time on the plane to ready my notes, study, relive the golf course, go through how I was going to play each hole, where the pins were, where I want to miss it, where I want to be.”
Where he ultimately wants to be is at the top of the leader board, and with three more rounds to go he could get there.
“This was as easy as the golf course is going to play,” Mickelson said of historic Merion, where Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan and Lee Trevino all won an Open through the years.
“We had very little wind. We had soft fairways, and there were no mud balls . . . But we are struggling because it’s such a penalizing course . . . It’s a course that’s withstood the test of time.”
A course that shared a role in Phil Mickelson’s dramatic, indeed historic, travels and shots. Amanda told her dad not to make the trip, but he wasn’t going to miss her shining moment.
“She worked very hard,” he reminded, “and I’m very proud of her.”
Someone suggested maybe he would fly back to Carlsbad on Thursday evening.
“I don’t want to push it,” insisted Mickelson.
By Art Spander
ARDMORE, Pa. — The site is a work of art in miniature. "Merion the Small," it could be named, a course trapped by geographical restrictions in a leafy suburb of Philadelphia. Yet through the years, it has been large in the history of American golf.
It was at Merion, the 1930 U.S. Amateur, where Bobby Jones completed the fourth and final leg of the Grand Slam. It was at Merion where Ben Hogan, a year removed from his awful auto accident, hit that splendid 1 iron to get into a playoff for the 1950 Open. It was at Merion where Lee Trevino tossed a rubber snake before a playoff in the 1971 Open, in which he would beat Jack Nicklaus.
That’s how we think of Merion. That’s how we think of golf. Who did what and when. And so the question to Tiger Woods on Tuesday, two days before the 2013 Open is to begin at Merion, was more logical than it seemed in a crowded press tent.
When Woods shows up at a special tournament, an Open, a Masters, a British Open, does he feel a responsibility to respond to the situation, to play as we expected him to play in a major, stepping forward into the figurative spotlight if not into the literal lead?
Those who have watched Tiger, who have listened to Tiger, could have predicted the response. If Woods is not always consistent in his golf — who is? — he is in his answers. They remain unchanging.
“I think,” he reminded, “I just enter events to win, and that’s it, whether there’s a lot of people following or nobody out there. It’s still the same. It’s still about winning the event . . . just to try to kick everyone’s butt.”
It’s Tiger’s derriere which has been kicked in major championships of late. Not since the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines has Woods been first in a major. Some good finishes, but not the finishes Woods, “all about winning,” has sought.
A shade under 7,000 yards in this era of 7,500-yard courses, Merion has been judged the perfect place for Woods to get that win — he rarely has to use the driver, the worst club in his bag — but also, because it negates his length, the most difficult course for Woods to get that win.
“I don’t have an exact feel for it yet,” said Woods, “what we’re going to have to do and what we’re doing to have to shoot.” His practice rounds have been played on a Merion soaked by relentless rain, a Merion whose fast greens have been slowed.
“We haven’t dealt with teeing it up in a tournament yet with it raining and drying out and mud balls appearing.”
He has dealt with the Sergio Garcia Affair, and the media forces him to continue doing so. Garcia was angry with Woods when they were paired together last month at The Players. A few days later, at function in London, Garcia attempted to crack wise about Tiger, saying he was inviting him to dinner and would serve fried chicken – a comment that could be considered racist.
Garcia apologized, and Monday, Garcia and Woods shook hands. Queried, Tiger explained, “We didn’t discuss anything. Just came up and said, ‘Hi,’ and that was that . . . He’s already (given an apology). We’ve already gone through it all. It’s time for the U.S. Open, and we tee it up in two days.”
When he spoke, a couple hours after Woods, Garcia confirmed an Associated Press story that he had left a handwritten note for Tiger.
“And hopefully,” Garcia said, “he can take a look at it. And it’s a big week, and I understand that it’s difficult to meet up and stuff. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do it. If not, at least he has read the note, and he’s happy with that.”
What Tiger was unhappy with 10 days ago was his play at the Memorial, a tournament that Woods had won five times but this year ended up in a tie for 65th, making some wonder if that was proper preparation for the Open.
“I didn’t play well,” Woods conceded about the Memorial. “I didn’t putt well. I didn’t really do much that I was pleased about. But it was one of those weeks. It happens, and you move on from there.”
Move on to America’s national championship. Move on to Merion, where the bunkers are large and the crowd will be boisterous. After all, this is Philly, where during a holiday pageant at halftime of an Eagles game the fans began to boo the poor chap dressed as Santa Claus.
“This is our U.S. Open,” said Tiger, "and obviously there won’t be as many people as there were at Bethpage, I think it will be just as loud and just as electric. I’m sure we’ll hear them.”
They will. He will. Merion and its history are special. Tiger Woods and his history are special. The game is on.
By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO — The sign is small but poignant, pasted on the door of the small cabinet where Tim Lincecum keeps items above his locker. It’s in two different colors for obvious emphasis, but here we’ll depict it in lower case and capitals, “momenTIM.”
That’s what he’s been searching for, trying to regain the style and domination that won two Cy Young Awards, that helped the Giants win two World Series — even if he was a reliever in the second one, 2012.
That’s what his ball club was hoping for, waiting for.
And on a Tuesday night at AT&T Park that may have been a breakthrough but at the least was the sort of performance he has produced in his best of times — the best of Tims, if you will — Lincecum woke up more than a few echoes as well as the 196th straight sellout crowd, 41,981.
After giving up a first-inning home run to dead center by Edwin Encarnacion that surely brought thoughts of “Here we go again,” Lincecum gave up only one more hit and no more runs, San Francisco defeating the Toronto Blue Jays, 2-1.
Lincecum had lost his last three starts, had, in order, been responsible for allowing six earned runs against the Rockies, then four earned runs against the Rockies, then last week five earned runs against the Athletics.
More than a hint had been offered about Lincecum taking his unpredictability — well, he was predictable for his failings — and his $20 million salary to the bullpen as, yikes, a middle-inning reliever.
He wasn’t thinking that way. Neither was Giants manager Bruce Bochy, publicly, although Bochy refused to confirm or deny that Lincecum would make what would be his next regular start, Sunday at Arizona. The way balls fly out of Chase Field in Phoenix, well, San Francisco probably would be better using Chad Gaudin.
Desperate times — and the Giants had dropped five of their previous seven — demand desperate measures. But after Tuesday night, with Lincecum retiring 14 in a row at one stretch, striking out six and walking only one, there is considerably less desperation around Willie Mays Plaza.
“We needed that,” Bochy said of Lincecum’s pitching. Did they ever. A team with a collective earned run average of 4.15 (after Tuesday night) and not much of an offense had to find something in which to believe. They think they’ve found it.
“That’s the Timmy we know,” contended Bochy. Well, the Timmy we knew back yonder, the Timmy who didn’t get crushed by a three- or four-running inning, the Timmy who got the ball over the plate.
“His pitches were crisper,” said Bochy, who as he addressed the media appeared more relaxed than before the game. “He had great stuff. This is something he can build. Even when he had bad games, he had good stuff. Last year he was out of rhythm. That hasn’t been the problem this year.”
Whatever the problem was or is, Lincecum, after the fine way he pitched, still had only a 4-5 record with a somewhat astronomical 4.75 ERA. Of course, it was 5.12 before his brilliance against the Blue Jays.
“This should do a lot for his confidence,” said the manager. “This game, that’s more our style, good pitching and good defense. We got it done.”
Indeed. For a second straight game, the Giants — who, with more than 40 errors for the season, have been mishandling grounders and throws like the Bad News Bears — didn’t make a single error. Physical or mental.
Lincecum was pleased but not much more. One game doesn’t atone for what had preceded it, although as Bochy reminded this is the direction the pitcher and the ball club want to head.
“It feels good,” confided Lincecum, “but I’m not jumping up and down. (Wednesday) is another day for work.”
Since his last start, seven days earlier, Lincecum said he worked and worked, attempting to make certain his fastball, the key to his repertoire, found the edges of the plate, strikes that were virtually unhittable and not pitches that either were down the middle or wide.
“I worked my fastball to both sides of the plate,” said Lincecum. “That was the big thing. That opened things for my other pitches. I was hitting my spots more often, more consistently.”
What Andres Torres, the Giants left fielder, hit was a two-run home in the second that turned out to be all the runs San Francisco would score and would need. Torres also made a couple of excellent catches off deep balls in the fourth, one against the fence in the corner.
“Not easy plays to make,” said Lincecum. But plays that are made when good pitches are made and all the pieces fit together almost perfectly. “The rhythm was there, and I was mechanically sound. That makes just throwing the pitches the only factor.”
If the factor that matters most.
By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO — The man never deals in extremes. Well, almost never. Bruce Bochy is the essence of composure. His words carry the reassurance of someone who understands the wonderful — and painful — unpredictability of baseball, a game of fortune as well as skill.
Yet Bochy realized, as did so many others, that his San Francisco Giants were on an edge, faced with as many questions as they had problems, faced with the secondary issue of losing dominion over the Bay Area as well as losing another game to a team unrelentingly determined to claim the territory for themselves.
Three in a row the Giants had dropped to the Oakland Athletics, and suddenly the fourth game, the last game on the schedule between them this season of 2013, became enormous. For the Giants.
“I thought (Thursday) was really critical,” Bochy conceded not long after the Giants did at last beat the A’s. “We had to find a way to win this game. There was pride involved in there.”
They won, 5-2, won at home, at AT&T Park, where they usually win but lost, 9-6, Wednesday night after losing Monday and Tuesday at Oakland.
They won because Barry Zito was able make just enough of the right pitches at the right time, after making seemingly far too many wrong ones. They won because the big hit, absent of late, a two-run double, was delivered by Brandon Belt in the sixth inning. They won because the bright sunshine and light wind of an all-too-typical late spring afternoon by the Bay caused havoc for A’s fielders.
They won, and then they bused to the airport for an immediate trip to St. Louis, where Friday they open a series against the Cardinals, arguably the best team in the majors — or anywhere else.
“And if this game had gotten away from us,” said Bochy, “it would have been a very long flight.”
He meant mentally, but you knew that, with a lot of doubt and confusion, maybe the Giants would be wondering what had happened, the way their fans — and there were 41,250 of them, the 195th straight sellout — would be wondering what had happened.
Pitching failures, injuries, illness. And losses in eight of their previous 12 games, including the three against the A’s. These were the Giants, the defending World Series champions? Yes. And no.
A.J. Griffin, who as Zito grew up in San Diego, pitched beautifully for Oakland. He didn’t give up a hit through three innings, gave up only one through five. “Great, hit the spots,” Bochy said of the opponent. “A great curve ball. Good command.”
Then the manager, a onetime catcher, made the ultimate observation of the sport, to wit, “The pitcher on the mound sets the tone.”
It was true for Griffin. It was no less true for Zito who, like some medieval knight trapped in a maze, kept finding the escape route.
In the first, the A’s had runners on second and third with nobody out. And didn’t score. In the second, they had runners on first and second with two outs and scored only a run. In the fifth, they had runners on first and second with one out and didn’t score.
“The key was we didn’t get down the way we had the last few games,” said Bochy. “Barry kept dodging bullets. He was amazing. He made pitches when he had to. The A’s are a tough team, a good team. We needed this game.”
Zito turned 35 two weeks ago. He’s been in the majors since 2000. He won a Cy Young Award, with the A’s. He’s been booed by Giants fans. He’s been cheered by Giants fans. He hardly needed anyone giving him an explanation of the game’s importance. Or his performance.
“Way too many walks,” said Zito. Six, to be specific, in six innings. Actually in five, because in the sixth, he retired the A’s in order for the only inning. “I was able to come up with stuff when I had to.”
Too many walks, very few hits, three, all to Coco Crisp. Zito, as Bochy put it, was Houdini, a magician, making base runners disappear, or at least keeping them stranded.
“Pitching is not always about location,” Zito reminded. It’s about speed and effectiveness and — when a batter misses a fat one — about fortune. It’s about courage, about, as the saying goes, hanging in there.
“This was a big series,” agreed Zito. “Big crowds in both parks. It was nice for us to take one.”
It was essential.
“These games are fun,” said Belt, the lefty who hit the lefty — reliever Hideki Okajima. “They bring a lot of energy for both clubs. We did just enough to win the ball game.”
Which is all that counts.
By Art Spander
OAKLAND — There was no magic. The Michael Kickham debut wasn’t Hall of Fame stuff, wasn’t even enough to get the San Francisco Giants a win.
These are the majors. These guys are the best. “Mistakes here,” conceded Kickham, “are magnified.”
For an individual. For a team.
The Giants are not doing very much right these days. Across the Bay from their home park, at the O.co Coliseum, against the Athletics, they’ve done everything wrong.
So the A’s made it two in a row over the Giants, one in a row over the rookie Kickham up from the minors, beating San Francisco, 6-3, Tuesday night. That follows a 4-1 win Monday.
The best team in Northern California at the moment, and maybe for a period longer than that, is Oakland. The A’s have won five in a row, 10 of their last 11.
The Giants are the defending World Series champions, but that was then, this is now, and now is a team whose strength, starting pitching, is no longer its strength. And whose weakness, offense, is magnified.
Angel Pagan, the table setter, the leadoff man, is ailing. Without him in the lineup the Giants seem flat, the middle of the order ineffective. Pablo Sandoval, with the flu or a virus, something keeping from his best, was 0-for-3, and is 2 of his last 21. Buster Posey didn’t have a hit in either game at Oakland.
“We got guys struggling at the plate,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said in a statement impossible to deny. “Our offense is not scoring runs. Give their pitchers credit.”
The A’s starting pitcher Tuesday night, when again Oakland sold out the restricted-seat Coliseum, was Jarrod Parker. He gave up a run in the first and another in the sixth. Two runs allowed in seven innings.
Giants pitching used to do that. A’s pitching is doing it now.
“It was exciting catching him and watching him,” Derek Norris said of Parker. “He’s a potential Cy Young winner.”
So Norris was a bit carried away. That is allowable. He hit a two-run homer off Kickham in the second. And he was superb at the most important job for any catcher, making sure his own pitcher is in control.
The interleague series goes west Wednesday and Thursday, if not very far, to the other side of the bridge, San Francisco, where the Giants have a winning record, as opposed to the losing one they have on the road, where they’ve dropped seven out of eight.
Tim Lincecum starts for the Giants, and as things go these days that’s hardly a sure thing. He’ll probably last longer than Kickham, whose contract was purchased from Triple-A Fresno only hours before his first pitch Tuesday. He’s the fill-in for Ryan Vogelsong. He went 2 1/3 innings. He’s not the savior.
“He showed really good stuff early,” said Bochy. Yeah, like one inning, the first, when the 24-year-old Kickham retired the A’s on eight pitches. Wow! And then whoops.
A strikeout to open the second, after which Oakland’s Jed Lowrie singled. Then a strikeout. But on a 3-1 count, Norris smashed one into the left field seats.
“It was a decent pitch,” said Kickham. “But it came on a hitter’s count.”
And the hitter hit, but if Madison Bumgarner can’t beat the A’s — although Monday he didn’t pitch badly — it’s difficult to fault Kickham for not beating the A’s.
“His stuff was impressive,” said Bochy, maybe trying to make himself feel as good about the defeat as Kickham. “He just started missing by a little bit. A couple of mistakes.”
One, insisted Bochy, after the Giants lost for the fourth time in six games, was not the decision to elevate Kickham to the big-league team. Kickham can get wild on occasion, but some of his fastballs reached 94 mph. Still, out of 65 pitches in fewer than three full innings, he had only 36 strikes.
“It was awesome just to get the opportunity to put on a Giants jersey,” said Kickham, who has been in pro ball only since 2010. “It’s a great opportunity. (The game) didn’t go how I wanted, obviously, but it was something to learn from.”
Before the game, Bochy described what he liked about Kickham, his repertoire, his manner.
“It’s a big day for him, as it is for anyone his first big-league game,” said Bochy. “He probably could use another year at Triple-A, but he’s here. We’ll know more about him after the game.”
They do. So do the Oakland A’s.
By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO — That’s who they really are, the Giants. At least who they’re supposed to be, a team that keeps the game close, which has great pitching and effective fielding. For three games, three reassuring games, that’s exactly what they did.
There was a loss Wednesday, an agonizing, grinding 2-1 loss to the Washington Nationals at AT&T Park, a loss that reminded how difficult it is to win in baseball.
A loss, but not a downer.
Not one of those “What the heck is going on here?” type of exhibitions the Giants had a week ago at Toronto and Colorado when they got pummeled, giving up extra-base hits, dropping ground balls — or throwing them away — and dropping five games out six.
A “horrible trip” is what Bruce Bochy called it, and for a manager perennially upbeat, that’s a concession as shocking as what happened to the pitching and defense.
But the return to the ballpark by the bay brought a return to what we had known as Giants baseball, an 8-0 win over the Nats on Monday, a 4-2 win in 10 innings on Tuesday, and then that 10-inning, 2-1 defeat on Wednesday. Four runs allowed in three games.
"The guys bounced back," said Bochy. "They got on track here. This was more (like) our baseball. It was very encouraging how we played in this series. We played well again.
“Sure it was a loss (Wednesday), but the way we played was encouraging. Good pitching. What we thought we could do.”
Which was hang to in there. To go through some of that sweet torture made famous in that championship season of 2010.
On Tuesday, they rallied to tie and then won in 10 on Pablo Sandoval’s home run.
On Wednesday, they rallied to tie, then lost in 10 when the superkid, Bryce Harper, who earlier had homered, doubled and scored on Ian Desmond’s single.
“Their defense beat us,” said Bochy. Quite probably. After Buster Posey singled home Angel Pagan with one out in the eighth, Hunter Pence drove a liner to right that Harper grabbed on a dive. Then when Brandon Belt smashed one on the ground to right, first baseman Adam LaRoche stopped the ball from going through and forced Posey at second.
Two innings later, Washington, underachieving this season, got the run that got the win.
“He’s a good hitter,” Bochy said of Harper, an understatement.
Harper, the 2012 NL Rookie of the Year, has been labeled the “New Natural.” He was the overall No. 1 pick in the 2010 amateur draft — a year after teammate, Stephen Strasburg, the pitcher, was the No. 1 overall pick in the 2009 draft.
The Nats have talent. So do the Giants, or they wouldn’t have won the World Series twice in the past three seasons. The Giants also had problems, those one-sided losses in Toronto and Colorado. With Ryan Vogelsong out with a broken finger and Santiago Casilla also on the disabled list, they still have them.
Yet Matt Cain’s start on Tuesday, only two runs allowed, and Madison Bumgarner’s on Wednesday — seven innings, one run — were reminders of the way it was and should be once more.
“It was no fun to give it up (at Colorado), but we know what we can do,” said Bumgarner. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
What he didn’t say was that the ugly exhibition on the road wasn’t what people have come think of as the San Francisco Giants. “No,” was his one-word response when asked if that was anything close to what he or his teammates expected.
What Bochy and the 190th consecutive sellout crowd at AT&T expected Wednesday was exactly what they got, great pitching, Washington’s Gio Gonzalez — formerly with the Oakland A’s — and Bumgarner matching shutouts through five innings.
Then, leading off the sixth, Harper, a left-handed batter, powered a 1-2 pitch off Bumgarner, a left-handed thrower, into the left field stands.
"I think he made it pretty clear that he's going to play as hard as he can every day," Bumgarner said of Harper. "It's fun to play against guys like that. Most everybody plays that way, but ... he's the kind of player who can bring out the best in you."
The Giants, with a day off Thursday, believe the games against the Nats brought out the best in them after a week when they played their worst.
The only disappointing thing Wednesday, other than the final score, was the end of Marco Scutaro’s hitting streak, which had reached 19 consecutive games.
Scutaro was the Giants’ final batter. With two outs in the bottom of the 10th, he hit one that appeared might reach the fence but was caught on the warning track by Roger Bernadina.
“He just missed it,” said Bochy.
By Art Spander
For GlobalGolfPost.com
This was at a dinner in conjunction with the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am a couple of years ago, a California Golf Writers function, and Ken Venturi, the most famous man in the room, looked out at an audience comprised of those he saw more as acquaintances than admirers.
They knew his story, his triumphs and his failures. How he had battled himself as well as the best...
Copyright 2013 Global Golf Post
By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange
OAKLAND — Someone wondered before the first pitch what Oakland Athletics' manager Bob Melvin was going to do about Yoenis Cespedes.
The second-year major-leaguer from Cuba was hitting below the dreaded "Mendoza Line" of .200, at .198. Or as the players say, he's on the wrong interstate, I-98.
Copyright 2013 The Sports Xchange
By Art Spander
OAKLAND — Such a perfect name. Warriors. Because they were. Warriors. Fighters, Battlers. Their coach called them “an inspiration.” The other coach called them really competitive. High praise, and that counts, if not as much as the final score in what for the Golden State Warriors the season of 2012-13 would be the final game.
It is done now, finished. Or has it just begun? The future looks wonderful for the Warriors. Yet that doesn’t ease the pain. It is the here and now that was important for the W’s, the game Thursday night at Oracle in front of fans so enthusiastic and loud it seemed they could will Golden State to a victory. They couldn’t.
The San Antonio Spurs, the old guys, the four-time champions, were too much for the Warriors, resilient as champions always are, and holding on to a 94-82 victory.
So the Spurs win the NBA Western Conference semifinal, four games to two. They go on to play the Memphis Grizzlies in the next round. The Warriors needed this one to keep the season alive. They didn’t get it. There will be no seventh game.
There will be only thoughts of what could have been. Those and the chants of the passionate 19,956 at Oracle.
Disappointment, certainly, for Mark Jackson, the coach; for the players; maybe most of all for the fans, clad in their yellow T-shirts and limitless hopes. They wouldn’t leave, serenading the players and no less themselves with the rolling, repetitive word, “Warr-iors . . . Warr-iors.”
A salute to the season, maybe to reason. The Spurs figured out this series quickly. If they were going to win, they had to stop Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson. And after Game 2, mostly they did.
They jammed the middle and fought through the picks. They shoved and clawed. And, as in Thursday night’s game, even when their own offense was ineffective — Tony Parker, the San Antonio guard, was 3 for 16, while teammate Manu Ginobili was 1 for 6 — the Spurs stayed in and on top. Only briefly in the first quarter, and only by two points, did the Warriors ever lead.
“Defense,” said Gregg Popovich, the Spurs coach. “Yeah, if we can hold them in the 80s, we should have a decent chance at the end of the game . . . Down the stretch, we made a couple of shots and they didn’t.”
Down the stretch is where 90 percent of all NBA games are won. Down the stretch, the Warriors closed from seven points to four to two. Yes, two, 77-75, with 4:52 left, and regaining the ball and Oracle going mad, a cauldron of sound. But then Curry missed a 3-pointer and Parker made one. Then Kawhi Leonard made a 2-pointer.
Reality. The Spurs would win. The deed was done. Except for the fans.
“As an announcer,” said Jackson, the Warriors coach who did NBA games for ESPN, “I can recall calling the (Oklahoma City) Thunder game in the playoffs. They got knocked out. We’re sitting there closing on the air, and the fans are chanting, acknowledging the great season. I’m sitting there as an announcer thinking, ‘This is cool.’
“We’ve got the best fans in the business. It was an incredible moment for them to acknowledge what took place this year and also for my guys to acknowledge that we don’t take these fans for granted. It’s been a great ride.”
If Thursday night a wobbly one. Center Andrew Bogut’s bad ankle, surgically repaired more than a year ago when he still was with Milwaukee, was sore even before the game, and he played only some six minutes in the second half.
Forward Harrison Barnes, just named to the all-rookie team, caught an elbow above an eye near the end of the first half, went down for the longest while, had to helped to the locker room and was given six stitches. He returned after intermission but was unable to stay in the game.
David Lee, of course, had torn a hip flexor in the first game of the Denver series and was declared out until next season. His courageous comeback was part of the story, but he was limited.
Curry’s right ankle, a chronic problem, was tweaked in Game 3, and he wasn’t completely right in the last three games. Even then, he ended up with 22 Thursday night, the best of either team.
So when Jackson insisted, “My guys gave me everything they had,” it wasn’t fiction.
“It was incredible. I can go out and win championships, and I will not be any prouder of any group that I ever coached than this group. At the end of the day, our tank will be empty and the light will be beaming bright.”
The light has been dimmed. The season has been concluded. But it was a joy. “Warr-iors, Warr-iors.”
By Art Spander
OAKLAND — Another one of those "tote that barge, lift that bale" situations for the Oakland Athletics, another game that was worked and not played, agonized and not enjoyed.
“Our type of baseball,” said Josh Donaldson.
On Tuesday night, however, that type, the type that drags on when most of the fans have dragged themselves home — and when the announced attendance is 12,969, that doesn’t leave many in the stands — wasn’t successful.
The Texas Rangers got a couple of home runs in the 10th off a star-crossed A’s reliever named Chris Resop, and when this one came to a close, long after every other game in the majors already had done so, 3 hours 43 minutes after the first pitch, the Rangers were 6-5 winners.
Resop was the sixth A’s pitcher. He came in for the 10th, got Lance Berkman to ground out. Then he went 3-0 on Adrian Beltre. It’s like baiting a lion.
“I was just trying to get back in the strike zone,” Resop would say quietly, his right shoulder encased in ice.
The ball stayed there for a blink of an eye, then Beltre, who already had a double and a single in the game, powered it over the center field fence to break a 4-4 tie. After Nelson Cruz was retired, Resop threw another over the plate, and Mitch Moreland, who had hit one out in the fourth off Bartolo Colon, hit one out in the 10th off Resop.
“It’s not what I wanted,” said Resop.
“Rough,” someone sympathized. Resop disagreed. “This is worse than rough,” he said. “This is tough. This is not fun at all. You hate to let the others down. It’s a team game, but at the end of the day, there’s one person who could make the difference. I was trying to be too fine.”
The Swingin’ A’s, they used to call the franchise in a different time. Now it’s the Plodding A’s, the team that turns a sporting event into a seven-act production of Shakespeare. Nothing is easy. Nothing is quick. Nothing is brief.
There was that 19-inning game a couple weeks ago, right here at O.Co Coliseum. Then Tuesday night, when the pace was acceptable, everything slowed and slowed.
The A’s trailed 3-0. The A’s led 4-3. Seven innings had passed. It wasn’t going to be tidy, but at least it would be a win, and in regulation. The A’s needed it. Oh, did the Bay Area need it. The Warriors had lost. The Sharks had lost. The Giants had lost. Saved by the A’s? It was to dream.
The Rangers tied the game in the eighth, and then, boom (Beltre), boom (Moreland), they led by two in the 10th, 6-4, and they held on despite an Oakland run.
Maybe 1,500 fans were left. Maybe 30 or so beat their drums and blew their horns. So few people, so much noise. So little satisfaction.
“(Resop) is just going through a bad stretch,” said Bob Melvin, the A’s manager. Melvin has gone through his own bad stretch.
Last week he was ejected in Cleveland for arguing, correctly, that a ball hit by Oakland’s Adam Rosales was a home run, not a double. Tuesday night he was ejected, incorrectly, for arguing that Daric Barton beat out a grounder to short in the eighth.
“I probably deserved to go,” said Melvin of getting thumbed over the Barton play. “From where I was, I thought he was safe. But he (umpire D.J. Reyburn) got the call right, so I deserved it.”
The A’s have lost seven of nine. Sometimes it’s the hitting, or lack of it. Sometimes it’s the pitching. Or lack of it. When a team rallies from being down 3-0, goes ahead and then squanders a lead and a game, the feelings are mixed.
“We continue to battle,” reminded Melvin, “especially here at home.”
That’s admirable, but moral victories are of little use, especially for a team that was in the playoffs last season and is expected — was expected — to return in 2013.
Josh Donaldson, the A’s third baseman, had four straight hits, including two doubles, before flying out in the 10th. He’s hitting .315. He’s optimistic, not about his numbers but about his team.
“We feel competitive,” said Donaldson. “We’re aggressive. We play hard.”
Unquestionably. Now, if they only could play faster and with less stress.
By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange
SAN FRANCISCO — The game is not that complex. If a team pitches and hits better than the one it's playing, it's going to win. Which is exactly what the San Francisco Giants did for three games against the Atlanta Braves.
Not only did the Giants make it three in a row after dropping the Thursday series opener, but they outscored the Braves 23-4 over the final three games. San Francisco cruised to a 5-1 win Sunday afternoon.
Copyright © 2013 The Sports Xchange
By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange
SAN FRANCISCO -- Matt Cain pitched as expected. Tim Hudson did not. And so the San Francisco Giants, who have haven't had an easy victory in a while, got one Friday night, defeating the Atlanta Braves 8-2.
"We don't have a lot of these games," Giants manager Bruce Bochy said. "It's kind of nice."
Copyright © 2013 The Sports Xchange
By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO — They call him a manager, don’t they? Bruce Bochy manages, in every possible way. Manages his players with grace and skill. Manages his own emotions with superb calm.
Baseball will drive a man crazy, but only if he lets it.
The San Francisco Giants have done things the hard way for several seasons now. “Sweet Torture,” it was labeled by TV announcer Mike Krukow. Sweet because somehow the Giants make all the gnawed nails and deep breaths worth it.
As they did Wednesday at AT&T.
The Giants couldn’t hold a two-run lead in the ninth but as normal held their composure, and then won in the 10th, beating the Phillies, 4-3, and avoiding a sweep.
Not what Bochy desires, but almost what Bochy has come to expect.
“I’m used to it,” said Bochy. He looks more grizzled every game, but after this game, after the halt of a two-game losing streak, he also looked satisfied, a twinkle in his eyes.
What doesn’t break a man makes him laugh, right?
“These guys are entertainers,” Bochy said. If he was being sarcastic, and the possibility existed, it was hard to detect.
“I enjoy the game.”
He might have enjoyed it more if Sergio Romo didn’t give up a couple of runs in the ninth, but that’s baseball. Imperfection is everywhere. If you lose 62 times during a major league season, you’ll be a winner. It helps to be philosophical, maybe even fatalistic.
“Sergio’s been so good,” said Bochy. Which, certainly, he wasn’t on this afternoon by the Bay, but you’re not going to hear Bochy rip his players. You’re more likely to hear him credit the opposition, as he did with the Phils. “They’ve got a good club too,” he pointed out.
A club that beat the Giants on Monday and Tuesday.
What Bochy wanted was for his starting pitcher, Barry Zito, to get deep into the game, giving an overworked bullpen a rest. Zito responded, giving up only one run in seven plus innings and even adding a run-scoring single.
But Philly scoring twice in the next inning, off Romo, meant for a third straight game, after the Padres, after the Dodgers, Zito was not involved in the decision, even if in a larger sense, walking none, giving up only four hits and one run, he was very involved.
His control was a reason the Giants never trailed. It’s considerably easier when a team isn’t always playing from behind
“What a job Barry did,” Bochy said with emphasis. “He was throwing strikes. We’re not clicking on offense. It’s too bad he didn’t get the win, but it was a quality start.”
After the squandered lead, there also was a quality finish. Buster Posey was hauled out of the dugout on what was supposed to be his day of rest and opened the bottom of the 10th with a single. Then, after moving to second on a sacrifice and third on a wild pitch, he scored the winning run on a single by Andres Torres, who also had begun the game on the bench.
For Torres, who was with the Mets in 2012 before returning to San Francisco this season, it was the fourth walk-off hit of his career. It also was the Giants fifth walk-off win of the season and — time to exhale — their third in the last six games.
“I just tried to be aggressive,” said Torres. “I was looking for a slider. I just reacted. I think it was a fastball.”
Torres was buried under celebrating teammates, as was Buster Posey on Friday night and then Guillermo Quiroz on Saturday night after game-winning home runs against the Dodgers.
“This type of win is a confidence booster to us,” said a magnanimous Zito, “to get it done in the bottom of the 9th or 10th when the other side battles back.”
Zito’s performance had to be a particular boost to a franchise built on starting pitching but in the past two weeks rarely getting the starting pitching it needed.
Matt Cain did achieve his first win of the season Sunday, and Tim Lincecum, after a wobbly beginning, lasted seven innings on Tuesday night, if in a loss.
“It was important for me to be aggressive,” said Zito, “to make those guys swing their bats so I could keep my pitch count down.”
He met that requirement, lasting 101 pitches, the last one smacked into left for a single by Carlos Ruiz. Santiago Casilla took over for Zito but hurt his knee and two batters later was replaced by Jeremy Affeldt.
“We’re going to have a hiccup now and then,” said Bochy.
The cure for hiccups is water sipped slowly, we’re advised. Or in a game as this one, a run-scoring single by Andres Torres.
Entertainment? Whatever Bochy wants to call it is fine with the fans if it’s a win.
By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO — The game wasn’t merely about Matt Cain and his vexing month of winless pitching. Then again, it was mostly about Matt Cain.
When a guy is your ace, throws a perfect game, is the All-Star starter and then has zero for April in the victory column, he is the central character in the mystery.
Dodgers-Giants remains the essential component of San Francisco baseball, as the unrelenting chants of “Beat L.A., Beat L.A.” bear witness. The final score means everything.
Sunday night’s final score, 4-3 in favor the franchise that carried “GIGANTES’’ on its uniforms for Cinco de Mayo, meant those Gigantes had swept the three-game series from Los Angeles.
Yet the Cain performance was not to be underestimated. To the Giants, who knew once more Matt was the rock of a pitching staff that is the team’s strength, and yes, to Cain himself.
No matter how much success a player has experienced, an 0-2 record with a 6.49 earned run average in six games must be bewildering at the least.
He and probably everyone else knew sooner or later the wrongs would be corrected, but the issue was when. The response was delivered by Cain along with his fastballs and breaking pitches in 7 1/3 reassuring innings.
“It was a solid effort,” said Giants manager Bruce Bochy of Cain. “A great job. No runs.”
Until an eighth inning Bochy said has become all too familiar for the Giants, when a 4-0 lead ebbed, relievers entered and departed and the normal sellout crowd of 41,000-plus at AT&T Park wondered why it always had to be so nerve-wracking.
“Our boys made it entertaining,” said Bochy, who by his subsequent smile made us understand he’d accept something less so. “It’s our nature. We made it close.”
But close or not, it was the Giants’ sixth straight win, three over the Dodgers, each by a run, after three over Arizona, following five straight defeats. Some chewed fingernails, some beautiful hitting — Sunday night Hunter Pence drove in all the San Francisco runs — and a lot of happy patrons.
The mini-achievement, Cain getting off the schneid for 2013 and also becoming the first Giant starter in 12 games to get a victory — oh, that bullpen has been spectacular — was simple enough.
“I didn’t make as many mistakes,” said Cain, “and some of the mistakes I was making were hit at guys.”
It is a baseball truism that nothing in the game is fair. Line drives are caught — as three line drives, or at least deep flies, off Sergio Romo were caught in the top of the ninth — while bloops and dribblers fall for hits.
“A couple ground balls go through,” Bochy said of the Dodgers' eighth. “Then in the (top of) ninth, hard-hit balls right at them.”
Still, it isn’t only a matter of fortune. When a pitcher is sharp, the breaks, good or bad, don’t have that much of an effect. Twice this season, Cain had given up three home runs in a single game. Sunday night he allowed nothing more destructive than a first-inning double by Matt Kemp, who never moved from second.
“All of the starters hadn’t been doing what we wanted to do,” said Cain. “To get off that skid, it just took some time.
“I had those bits where I was giving up home runs while ahead in the count. I wasn’t necessarily thinking about that, but about bearing down and just thinking about pitching. (Catcher Guillermo) Quiroz did a good job keeping me focused.”
Cain gave up five hits and three walks and, although charged only with one of the Dodger runs, still has an ERA 5.57. It will decline.
There was a report on ESPN, which televised the game nationally, that the Giants felt Cain’s problems were physical, he had dropped the angle of his delivery, causing his balls to flatten out. Bochy was in full denial about that or any other issue with Cain’s body.
“I never thought something was wrong with Matt,” said the manager. “I said along he was healthy, his arm was fine. And tonight he showed it.”
Cain was not one to disagree,
“My arm always felt good,” Cain said. “I was just making bad pitches. I didn’t pitch well. Tonight I made better pitches at times. Yes, sometimes when you make a bad pitch they’ll pop it up, but that wasn’t what happened.”
The Giants continued a remarkable record. Never in their 56 years in San Francisco have they lost a home game to the Dodgers when they built a lead of three runs or more.
That beat goes on. Matt Cain’s beating finally has changed.
“The most encouraging part,” answered Cain when asked, “was I got kind of better as the game went along.”
He’s a winner now. Of course, he always has been.
By Art Spander
OAKLAND — They kept using the underdog card, telling us nobody expected them to win this first-round NBA playoff series, which is more fiction than fact because once the thing got rolling, and rocking, it was obvious the Golden State Warriors should have been the favorite.
Sports is like that, full of people who seem more intent on showing us, proving to the world, that they can succeed than actually succeeding. It’s a crutch many use, so if they fail, well, then they concede, “We weren’t supposed to win anyway.”
But on this wild Thursday night, in this sixth game of a first-round series against the Denver Nuggets, the Warriors in truth weren’t supposed to lose. They weren’t going to lose. And after a 92-88 victory at Oracle Arena that gave them the series, four games to two, it’s time to contemplate the reason as provided by Nuggets coach George Karl.
“We didn’t lose the series tonight,” said Karl. His team was the third seed in the Western Conference, the Warriors the sixth seed.
“We lost the series in Game 1 and 2. We didn’t play well enough to sustain some confidence. In Game 1, we won a close game. In Game 2, we gave everything back that we worked for 57 (regular season) games to get . . . We didn’t play well in Game 1. We played worse in Game 2. Then we came in here and fought pretty hard.”
Sounds like the underdog, doesn’t it? In retrospect, the way the Warriors performed, turning the odds, upside down, maybe Denver was. The Warriors were exposed, in a positive way, as a team that belongs, a team that deserved to win.
Game 6 was a perfect reflection of the series and the NBA, the Warriors coming from behind, the Warriors going far ahead — 18 points — and finally the Warriors holding on.
Confetti poured down. Deafening screams resounded, but in truth there surely was as much relief as of elation. Underdog? Favorite? The optimum word might be survivor.
“I get emotional,” said Warriors coach Mark Jackson. He is a pastor. He is religious. He had been fined $25,000 earlier in the day for what the league said were remarks intended to influence the officials.
“I think God has a sense of humor,” said the coach-pastor, “because he wanted to show folks at the end as we threw the ball all over the place, and it’s only a miracle that we advanced.”
Jackson, who went from a position as a TV commentator to the Warriors job, tends to deal in the dramatic. More often than not he uses the phrase “at the end of the day.” And for this game he brought back forward David Lee, who a couple of weeks ago Warriors management said wouldn’t play again this year because of an injury.
A New Yorker, Jackson grew up on the tale of Willis Reed hobbling out of the Madison Square Garden locker room in the 1970 NBA finals, moving into the Knicks lineup and beating the Lakers. Jackson was only five when that occurred, but if he didn’t see it, he heard about it.
“I guess the New York City in me,” said Jackson, explaining his decision to use Lee — if only for fewer than two minutes. “The Willis Reed impact as a kid really played a role. Not only did I put Lee in, bit I ran a play for him for a shot, just about where Willis hit his shot.”
Great theater, but it was, as always, super guard Stephen Curry and finally hulking 7-foot center Andrew Bogut, who made the difference. In Game 4, Curry scored 22 points in the third quarter. In Game 6 he scored 14 in the third quarter, 22 for the game.
Bogut, obtained in a trade a year ago from Milwaukee but seemly recovering forever from a fractured ankle, had 21 rebounds, a career high, 14 points, four blocked shots and three assists.
“Bogut,” said Karl, “I’m not worried about him offensively. I mean, he would be their second most valuable player in the series. Curry was fantastic. Bogut’s ability to clog up the middle, you know, I’d forgotten how good he was at it. He’s a veteran player that I think showed a lot of professional class tonight.”
The Nuggets, who led by 11 in the first half, had Curry stymied. He had taken a mere six shots and made only one. But then, once more, the telling third quarter. Three 3-pointers, and the small deficit had become a large lead.
“I’m just trying to be patient,” said Curry. “The way Denver was defending me, they were trying to run me off the 3-point line a lot, blitzing, a lot of pick-and-rolls, trying to get the ball out of my hands. I try to be aggressive. I don’t want to force any possessions. Third quarter, I got my rhythm.”
Curry was asked what went through his mind as the 18-point lead kept shrinking. “Each possession,” he said, “it can’t get any worse than this. Then it does . . . But we got to learn from it.”
Underdogs always do. Even when they’re not underdogs.