By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
TEMPE, Ariz. — He is young, gifted and unsatisfied. Mike Trout of the Angels has been described as the best player in the game, which only makes him want to get better.
"I keep thinking about putting up good numbers," he said recently. Not the numbers in a bank account. The ones in the record books.
Copyright © 2014 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
PHOENIX — The ballpark was quiet, and so the man's derision was easily heard. "M-V-P-E-D!" he chanted. "M-V-P-E-D!"
Ryan Braun was stepping into the batter's box and into the little world he has created, that of a disgraced user of performance-enhancing drugs.
Copyright © 2014 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
SURPRISE, Ariz. — Such an appropriately named community for what happened to Prince Fielder in November.
Fielder was the centerpiece of a blockbuster trade that had the Tigers sending him to the Rangers. Both teams share a training complex with the Royals each spring in this western suburb of Phoenix.
Copyright © 2014 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to the Times
She went back to where it all started, to the wall in Sochi. Maria Sharapova, out of boredom really, as a child began smacking a tennis ball while her father played his weekly game a few feet away.
"My career started in Sochi," Sharapova said Wednesday, reviewing her trip home and to the Winter Olympics.
Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
GLENDALE, Ariz. — The man has been walked 1,246 times, but his walk Sunday night will be considerably different.
No wide ones from a pitcher. Rather, a stroll on a red carpet in Hollywood.
Copyright © 2014 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
GLENDALE, Ariz. — He agreed to come back for a final year, a farewell tour if you will, which Paul Konerko definitely deserves.
The Chicago White Sox were thinking about their future when they signed Cuban defector Jose Abreu for $68 million to play first base.
Copyright © 2014 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The sun was shining, and the A’s and Giants were playing ball. What else do you need to know? That Sergio Romo couldn’t find his changeup pitch? That Josh Reddick twice reached over the right-field fence to steal away home runs? That 6,498 fans were living it up?
An exhibition, the opener, the two Bay Area teams. And every time they play, for real or not — although isn’t baseball the truest form of reality even when the game doesn’t count? — in our minds it’s the 1989 World Series once again.
Time passes, baseball remains eternal.
It’s all about anticipation, about the new kids on the block, about the veterans, about the players — and the plays. When baseball comes around, we’re all young again, remembering what was, wondering what will be.
Strike three, ball four, go the lyrics from Damn Yankees, “walk a run you’ll tie the score.”
Other lyrics, from South Pacific, “ . . . her skin is tender as DiMaggio’s glove . . .”
A sport, a metaphor, an ideal.
The greatest mass dream America ever had. The great Frank Deford said that of spring training, a time of myth and magic, when winter melts away and no one has a care.
There used to be an eatery near Scottsdale Stadium, Pischke’s, where the posted admonition was “No Sniveling.” Easy advice. Nobody snivels during spring training.
They cheer. They laugh. They hope. They marvel.
“I don’t think I’d seen anybody go higher against the wall here,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said of Reddick’s superb defense. “And he did it twice. Back to back. What do you think the odds were on that?”
Mike Morse, the new Giant, the guy they signed to play left field, to hit home runs, smacked both those balls, one in the second inning, the other in the fourth.
They were over the fence. They were in Reddick’s glove.
"He's known for doing that, man," Morse said. "I'm happy to help him work on it in spring training, I guess."
Reddick even got a standing ovation from Giants fans. They know special when they see it. Those were special.
“When I looked up, it was probably two feet above my head,” said Reddick, “and I guess got lucky to throw my glove at it. I just quick-snatched it, I guess you could say. I was shocked, even being able to come close to it. No idea how I did it.”
The A’s did it to the Giants, 10-5. Four runs in the first for Oakland. Six in the fourth. “A rough day for Romo,” said Bochy of Romo who gave up seven hits and all the runs in that sixth. “He was off a little bit.”
Twenty-six players used by the Athletics, 26 by the Giants. Players with numbers like wide receivers (81, the Giants’ Adam Duvall, who homered in the bottom of the ninth). With numbers like defensive linemen (67, the Giants’ Andrew Susac).
It’s like Little League. Everybody gets in.
Before the game, Larry Baer, the Giants’ president, held court in the dugout. He said he wants to see the A’s get their ballpark. In Oakland.
“If we can help them get it, we will,” said Baer. Sharing AT&T for a while wouldn’t be out of the question, if that fits into the A’s plans.
He said he wants to see the Giants rebound after their awful 2013 season, so out of character for the franchise.
“It felt strange,” he said of not being in the race. “It was like that’s not in our DNA.”
He said he wants to see the Giants sell from 2.8 to 3 million tickets, which presumably they will do.
“Nobody has said the Giants can’t make it on the field because of money,” was Baer’s outlook. Yes, the Dodgers have billions, and won the National League West last year, but don’t think the Giants won’t spend when it’s needed — in August and September.
“Besides,” Baer pointed out, “it’s how the money is spent. Look at the A’s.”
Yes, look at the A’s, careful with their dollars, who won their division again, who in Nick Punto have a shortstop that solidifies the infield defense, who as it was shown Wednesday can be frighteningly aggressive at the plate.
The new signee, Sam Fuld, led off the game with a single to center. And away we went, without hesitation. Bang, boom, wham. In the end 16 hits, and only four walks.
The A’s weren’t waiting. The waiting was done for all. Baseball was back.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
MARANA, Ariz. — The Frenchman who not many knew kept pulling off shots that few could believe, saving pars out of the desert. But in the end it was Jason Day, the Aussie, who ended up the winner on what was one of golf's longest days.
Three holes ahead with only six to play, Day had to make a birdie putt on the 23rd hole Sunday to defeat Victor Dubuisson, 1 up, and take the WGC Accenture Match Play Championship.
Copyright © 2014 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
GLENDALE, Ariz. — For Don Mattingly, in Dodgers blue, the present remains linked with the past, when he wore Yankees pinstripes.
"I was around quality people,'' said Mattingly, whose entire 14-year playing career from 1982-95 was with the Yankees. "People that tried to play the game the right way and tried to be excellent in everything they did."
Copyright © 2014 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
Thirteen years and a hemisphere apart, Ernie Els again is in the semifinals of the Accenture WGC World Match Play Championship after a victory over a kid not half his age.
Els, 44, took advantage of his experience and the ineffectiveness of 20-year-old Jordan Spieth for a 4-and-2 victory Saturday in their quarterfinal at the Golf Club at Dove Mountain in the foothills north of Tucson.
Copyright © 2014 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — Bubba Watson has always been impressed with the history of Riviera Country Club, where Ben Hogan won a U.S. Open, celebrities from Humphrey Bogart to Dean Martin were members and Howard Hughes once took lessons.
It is a tournament once known as the Los Angeles Open that began in 1937 and through the years had winners such as Hogan, Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer, Charlie Sifford and Tom Watson.
Copyright © 2014 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Global Golf Post
PACIFIC PALISADES, CALIFORNIA — This is how you're greeted upon entering the most unique website for anyone who plays golf for a living:
"I love taking something from nothing and turning it into an image that makes you stop and think."
Copyright 2014 Global Golf Post
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — William McGirt is one of those golfers who kept thinking of quitting the game but didn't. Three rounds into the Northern Trust Open, that decision looks like the proper one.
The 34-year-old McGirt, a nonwinner in 10 years as a pro, is at 12-under-par 201 and two shots in front going into Sunday's final round at historic Riviera Country Club.
Copyright © 2014 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — So far from Sochi, but not from reality. This is the other side of the sporting world, the place of eternal spring.
This is the other side of Los Angeles, where, contrary to traffic jams and constant change, one finds a comforting stability.
Up there on the hill, the stucco clubhouse, in the hallways, photos remind what used to be, Ben Hogan, Katherine Hepburn and a Hollywood of evening clothes and Champagne.
Out there on the course are representatives of what is, the Dustin Johnsons and Jason Dufners, the present and future — yet linked inextricably to the past.
Riviera Country Club, off the circuitous wandering of Sunset Boulevard just before the road arrives at the Pacific, is where history resides.
Where there’s a statue of Hogan on the edge of the practice green. Where Howard Hughes once took lessons. Where Humphrey Bogart sipped whiskey from a Thermos while watching Sam Snead and Byron Nelson hit shots.
Where Tiger Woods never has won.
And where Fred Couples plays on and on.
So little is permanent in southern California. Always another freeway, another subdivision.
Riviera is of an earlier time, the 1920s. Bobby Jones played at Riviera. “Very nice,” he said, “but tell me — where do the members play?”
Riviera is of the current time. “I love this course,” said Justin Rose, who last summer won the U.S. Open. “It’s got a very unique look to it.”
Fred Couples has a unique look, a unique game. He is a senior, a player on the Champions Tour. But he isn’t too old to play at Riviera in the Northern Trust Open.
“I’m lucky,” said Couples, who received an invitation. “This is my favorite tournament.”
This is the 32nd time he’s been in the tournament that in typical L.A. fashion has gone through several names, from the Los Angeles Open to the Nissan Open to the Northern Trust Open.
Couples is 54. One of his playing partners in the first two rounds is Jordan Spieth, 20, who wasn’t close to being born when Couples first came to Riviera in 1981. In Thursday’s first round, each shot a one-over-par 72.
“My goal,” said Couples, who now lives about a mile from the course, “is to hang with these (younger) guys.”
Someday Couples’ photo may hang near those of Hogan and the entertainment personalities who through the decades were as much a part of Riviera as the par-3 sixth hole, the one with the bunker in the middle of the green.
That headline from the Jan. 7, 1947, Los Angeles Times calling Hogan a “Tiny Texan” is a classic. So is the picture of Hepburn and the great Babe Zaharias, a consultant for the film “Pat and Mike,” which naturally was shot at Riviera.
“Riviera member” Gregory Peck is shown swinging a club in another photo. And a picture from 1953, taken during the production of the movie “The Caddy,” matches Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.
How wild it must have been at Riviera 70, 80 years ago. Errol Flynn was arrested during one dinner party for attempting to steal a badge from an off-duty policeman. The comedian W.C. Fields, a member, said the only easy shot was the first at the 19th hole.
“There are great courses that people like,” said Couples, who surely likes Riviera, where he’s won twice, “and there are some that don’t, but I don’t know anyone who would not like this course. It’s very fair, and it’s going to be, what, 80 degrees this week?”
Not quite that warm, but it was in the 70s Thursday, and the scores were mostly in the 60s, with Dustin Johnson in front at five-under 66. Johnson was second to Jimmy Walker by a shot Sunday at Pebble Beach, in the drizzle. Now he’s first in the sunshine.
“Ever since the first time I came here,” said Johnson, offering another endorsement of Riviera, “I’ve liked this golf course. It’s a great, great golf course.”
A course that, when constructed in 1926, was the second most expensive course on the planet, behind the course at Yale University. In the days when you could probably buy all of Los Angeles for the price of a Duesenberg, that is saying a great deal.
The big game then was polo, played on fields where a junior high school now sits near the course.
Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks were among Riviera's first members. Clark Gable and Katherine Hepburn rode horses and took late-afternoon walks on trails that meandered through the coastal canyons.
It’s so very Hollywood. And so very remarkable.
By Art Spander
For GlobalGolfPost.com
PEBBLE BEACH, CALIFORNIA — He once was called "the most popular man alive." To a country that only recently had emerged from a world war, in the late 1940s Bing Crosby, all talent, grace and charm, was a reflection of the best of America.
Copyright 2014 Global Golf Post
By Art Spander
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — Somehow it always gets around to the weather. Somebody can be breaking par, even breaking records at these beautiful, tantalizing courses on which they play the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, but the next thing you know we’re talking about the sunshine.
Or, as was the situation for the first round of this year’s tournament, the rain.
“No sporting event anywhere,” wrote Dwayne Netland in The Crosby: The Greatest Show in Golf, “has been more closely associated with the weather than the Crosby.”
That book came out 40 years ago. The name of the tournament has changed. The obsession with meteorological conditions on the Monterey Peninsula has not.
“Weather?” the late Mr. Crosby observed. “There’s lots of it.”
There was enough Thursday to suspend play for about three hours roughly a half-hour into the first round, from 8:39 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Just rain, blessed rain missing from California seemingly since the 1880s, but enough rain to turn the putting greens into small ponds.
And enough to keep numerous golfers from playing a complete 18 holes. Add three hours to the normal six-hour AT&T round, and well, maybe you couldn’t get around Pebble Beach, Spyglass Hill or Monterey Peninsula Country Club, but in that span of time you could fly from San Francisco to London. Fore!
Neither the early downpour nor the delay seemed to bother someone named Andrew Loupe, a rookie from Louisiana — with that name of French derivation, where else could he be from? — who in five previous PGA Tour events hadn’t made a single cut.
But there he was after 18 holes at MPCC, in the tournament lead with an 8-under par 63. (Yes, Monterey is par 70, compared with the 72s of the other two venues.)
Loupe hadn’t even started when play was halted, surely helpful in the routine. “I was walking to the tee,” he said. Then he walked from the tee under shelter. Another tale to add to the compendium of events at the AT&T and its predecessor, the one named for Bing himself.
Gary McCord has become an edgy commentator for the CBS golf telecasts. At one time the man could play. He was, while attending UC Riverside, the NCAA Division II individual champion, which led to him turning pro.
It was both his good fortune and bad to qualify for the Crosby for the first time in 1974, 40 years ago, when the winds blew and hail pounded. Standing at the 17th tee, after staggering through the famous par-3 16th at Cypress Point, McCord was a cumulative 15 over par.
The decision was made then and there by officials to scrub the round and begin anew. Golfers would return the next day without a stroke on their card. According to Jim Nantz, the main man for CBS and a new Pebble Beach resident, McCord, freed form his burdens, came back to shoot a 65, seven under par at Cypress, an improvement of 22 shots.
Johnny Miller was the winner of that '74 tournament, which also got hit by a snowstorm. Sochi should be so lucky.
At the end of the last millennium, the weather gods turned nasty. Once, in 1996, the tournament was called after two rounds, because it was decided the long par-4 16th at Spyglass literally was unplayable. David Eger, in control of PGA Tour competition, made the wildly unpopular declaration.
“We’ve played in worse than this,” said Ken Venturi, who in 1961 won in weather worse than that. “Just drop a ball and hit it.” Instead, the final two rounds were dropped, the purse split equally among the 180 pros.
That led to a situation in 1998, which remains unique. El Nino was ravaging the coast, and when both the Sunday and Monday rounds were swamped, the memory of 1996, a 36-hole event, haunted executives of both the Tour and the AT&T. What to do?
Return on August 17, a day after the PGA Championship at Sahalee in Washington state, and play the third round. The Tour chartered a jet and numerous players — not Tiger Woods — did come back. Phil Mickelson earned the first of his AT&T victories.
“It was weird to have a one-round tournament,” said Mickelson, “but after 1996, I was glad they decided to finish, and not because I won.” Oh, really?
They got only three rounds finished in 2009, although golfers did show up for a fourth round that proved impossible to play. Dustin Johnson was the winner, and the next year, when conditions were perfect, he repeated at a full 72 holes.
There’s a photo from 1967. Phil Harris, the singer-comedian, and pro Doug Sanders, in foul weather gear that made them look like fishermen on a wave-pummeled boat, were standing off Pebble’s 18th green with three announcers from NBC.
One of those holding a microphone was Ralph Kiner, the onetime baseball great, whose death at age 91 was announced Thursday. Let the rain fall.
By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — He is the quiet man, the counter to cornerback Richard Sherman. He is the linebacker who speaks with actions more than words.
Malcolm Smith possesses a humility that belies his skill. The MVP trophy he earned Sunday while helping the Seattle Seahawks to an overwhelming win in Super Bowl XLVIII emphasizes it.
COPYRIGHT © 2014 The Sports Xchange
By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange
NEW YORK — What a brilliant idea bringing the Super Bowl to greater New York, where a feta cheese omelet at Lindy's costs $18, the tabloid stories that haven't been about Peyton Manning have been about brother Eli, and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell makes the concession, "We cannot control the weather."
And we mistakenly believed the league could do anything it wished.
COPYRIGHT © 2014 The Sports Xchange
By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange
JERSEY CITY, N.J. — One was in charge of what journalists derisively labeled "The Good Ship Lollipop." That was Pete Carroll with the New York Jets.
The other was knocked for conservative play-calling that lost a championship game. That was John Fox with the Carolina Panthers.
COPYRIGHT © 2014 The Sports Xchange
By Art Spander
JERSEY CITY, N.J. — He won’t talk. Rather, he doesn’t prefer to talk. For no other reason, Marshawn Lynch has become the Phantom of Super Bowl Forty-Eight — yes, XLVIII, but it’s so much more rhythmic when it's spelled out — replacing Seattle teammate Richard Sherman.
Who gained his position, temporary as it might have been, because he talked too much.
Lynch was at it again Wednesday, and because he felt the media again were at him, he fled another interview session, climbing over chairs when his exit route was blocked by two other Seahawks running backs, Michael Robinson and Robert Turbine.
If opponents couldn’t stop Lynch, the guy nicknamed “Beast Mode,” who ran for 1,257 yards and scored 14 touchdowns during the regular season, then why would anybody a press conference be able to do so?
Lynch calls himself a mama’s boy. Those words have long been tattooed across his back, shoulder blade to shoulder blade, in honor of the woman, Delisa, who raised Marshawn and three other children in a fatherless home in Oakland.
He was a star at Oakland Tech High School, also the alma mater of Rickey Henderson, Leon Powe, former 49er John Brodie, Curt Flood and actor/director Clint Eastwood, and then set rushing records at Cal, a few miles away in Berkeley.
"She made it to each and every one of our games,” Lynch told USA Today in April 2007. That was a few days before the Buffalo Bills made Lynch the second running back — behind Adrian Peterson — selected in that spring’s draft. And before Lynch turned silent.
“That was kind of hard,” Lynch said of his mom’s dedication, “because I'm playing, my little brother had a game and, probably later that night, my sister might have a basketball game. And she would still manage to go and be able to feed us and clothe us and pay the bills. She's just my Superwoman."
A failure to communicate with the media is hardly an indictable offense, but as the NFL season reaches its climax, that failure becomes a fineable one.
Only a couple of weeks ago, Lynch was nailed $50,000 for his months-long refusal to do interviews, which the league said would be rescinded if he showed up as required subsequently.
He therefore was going to comply with the league demand for attendance at Super Bowl sessions.
But he wasn’t going to stay long — under 6½ minutes Tuesday on Media Day, maybe a few seconds more Wednesday — and he wasn’t going to be enlightening or pleasant.
Lynch seemingly would have been happier in a dentist’s office.
Once again, that doesn’t make him a danger to society, but it does irritate the folks with the tape recorders and microphones, sent out to gather quotes and the like.
"I appreciate it," Lynch said of the media's presence and desire to speak with him. "But I just don't get it. I'm just here so I don't get fined."
As Duane Thomas of the Cowboys was there at Super Bowl V. He barely mumbled anything except short, uninformative sentences. Lynch, unknowingly perhaps, had his model.
Lynch Wednesday wore his earphones and a look of disdain. When he spoke, little was disclosed.
Asked what Beast Mode meant, Lynch responded, “It’s just a lifestyle, boss.” And what about the media attention? “I don’t really have much to say, boss.” On the Seahawks' running game becoming ineffective for a few weeks in midseason: “It doesn’t matter. We’re here now.”
Robinson, next to Lynch, maybe taking pity on all involved, volunteered, “I’m going to slide up in this thing to break up the monotony a little bit. If Marshawn ain’t able to say nothing to you guys, you can direct your questions to me.”
Thanks, but no thanks. It's funny, in a way, that Sherman, who went to Stanford, Cal’s rival, starts the week as the villain for his post-NFC Championship ranting and in a matter of hours is elevated to near sainthood because of Lynch’s stubbornness to say diddly.
“I’m just about action,” was one of Lynch’s more telling comments, because he is. Last March, at Cal to watch the annual spring game, Lynch was told a couple of running backs were absent, so he suited up and scored a TD. The Golden Bears' staff and players were enthralled. But they weren’t seeking quotes.
“He’s just a shy kid,” Delton Edwards, who coached Lynch at Oakland Tech, told the New York Daily News.
“He don’t like too many people. He’s been like that all his life. It’s very hard to get inside him because he has to really trust you. When you put trust in people and people let him down, he closes those doors.”
Lynch had what euphemistically were known as minor problems with the Bills, a speeding violation, then a firearms charge that drew a three-game suspension at the start of the 2009 season. A month after opening the 2010 season with a sprained ankle, Lynch was traded a month into the season to Seattle.
For the Seahawks, he’s done what was needed. Except communicate with reporters.
There are worse things in society. Much worse.