By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
GLENDALE, Ariz. — This wasn’t exactly joining the enemy. Baseball people change teams and uniforms all the time. And yet ... “Yes,” acknowledged Bob Geren, “one of the players said to me, ‘Now that you’re on the other side ... ’ ’’
Neither the player nor Geren had to finish. He knew. Everybody knows.
Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
MESA, Ariz. — Joe Maddon believes in time-tested methods and items. His transportation is a ’76 Dodge Tradesman van. His spectacles are horn-rimmed, popularized in the 1960s. And, not unlike most major-league manager, he understands great pitching is the essence of baseball.
As was confirmed in last year’s National League Championship Series by the Mets against Maddon’s Cubs.
Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — For Bubba Watson, it was two weeks filled with trouble, with joy and finally with yet another victory in the Northern Trust Open, his second in the Los Angeles-area event in three years.
With birdies Sunday on the 16th and 17th holes at Riviera Country Club, Watson overcame a one-shot deficit to win by one stroke.
Copyright © 2016 The Sports Xchange
By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — One moment Jason Kokrak was in front of the Northern Trust Open. Then it was Chez Reavie. When the third round came to a close, it was Bubba Watson.
Two-time Masters champion Watson, who won this tournament in 2014, shot a 4-under par 67 on Saturday at Riviera Country Club to take a one-stroke lead over Kokrak (70), Reavie (69) and Dustin Johnson (68) with a 54-hole total of 12-under 201.
Copyright © 2016 The Sports Xchange
By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — The PGA Tour chooses to describe golfers' skills with a tidy phrase: These guys are good.
That might be an understatement. As the leaderboard of the Northern Trust Open verifies, these guys are fantastic.
Copyright 2016 The Sports Xchange
By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — Bubba Watson warned of the dangers that can befall a golfer at Riviera Country Club.
"This place will bite you," Watson said.
Copyright 2016 The Sports Xchange
By Art Spander
Global Golf Post
PEBBLE BEACH, CALIFORNIA — His legacy lives on the bluffs above Carmel Bay, flourishes in the comfortable tavern called the Tap Room. Bing Crosby is a name out of the past and yet into the future. The new kids on the block, the millenials, may know know of the man, but they do know his golf tournament.
Copyright 2016 Global Golf Post
By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — It would have been a great story if Phil Mickelson had won. It might be an even better story because Vaughn Taylor did win.
Golf, as tennis, is built on personality, recognition, and certainly, success. Mickelson is famous, beloved even, and at 45 is in the final stages of an excellent career. He hadn't finished first in two-and-a-half years, and after he came so close in this AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, just missing a five-foot putt on the final green which would have forced a playoff, you can wonder if he'll ever again finish first.
Copyright © 2016 The Sports Xchange
By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — Phil Mickelson always was the most cooperative man on the PGA Tour, amiable, informative.
When Mickelson was called "Lefty," it wasn't only because of the manner he swung a golf club but a term of endearment, an appreciation of his style, easy going, helpful, a nicknamed you'd give your best friend.
Copyright © 2016 The Sports Xchange
By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — It's not exactly Augusta National. Or the neighbor around the bend, Pebble Beach. Rather, Monterey Peninsula Country Club, one of the three courses used for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, is just exactly what the name implies, a club course, but it's an appealing one that curls around the edge of Monterey Bay and wists through shore-side dunes.
There are great views of water and mountains, and holes that mid-to-high handicappers are able to enjoy. Holes that the pros, when they're on their games as Sung Kang and Phil Mickelson definitely were Friday in the second round, take apart.
Copyright © 2016 The Sports Xchange
By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — The words hit Chez Reavie as hard as he might hit a five-iron.
For weeks, he continued to play the PGA Tour, absorbing the pain in his left wrist and, to use a cliche, gutting it out.
Copyright © 2016 The Sports Xchange
By Art Spander
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — The room, the interview room for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, had been chock-a-block full. Then Jordan Spieth was finished, and even though another major champion was ready to sit down, most of the media also were finished. Jason Day, the new guy, only shrugged at what at best was disregard and at worst an insult.
But first Day showed he had a sense of humor. “I think Jake Owen pulled most of those people in here,” said Day about Spieth’s amateur partner, the country and western singer — and two handicap golfer. Then after a pause, Day added a rhetorical, “Didn’t he?”
Certain performers, athletes, entertainers and politicians have the “it factor," charisma, a quality that, well, fills rooms, TV screens, front pages and their bank accounts. Not that Jason Day, one of the top three in the World Golf Rankings, hasn’t made the big bucks. What he and many others haven’t made is the big splash.
Arnold Palmer was the first and perhaps still the most memorable. Arnie was just a guy who liked people and could hit a ball a mile. And that’s what golf needed, still needs, because golf has no team loyalty.
Thousands of people can make birdies. Arnie made us pay attention, pay homage. So did Jack Nicklaus. And certainly Tiger Woods. And now Jordan Spieth.
And if Spieth isn't yet Tiger as far as history — Woods has more wins than anybody besides Sam Snead, more majors than anybody besides Nicklaus — or in personality, Jordan is heading in the right direction as far as results. His personality always has been sunnier than Tiger's.
Two majors in 2015 for Spieth, seven victories before age 25. But no less important, confidence without a scintilla of arrogance and an ability to give long, thoughtful answers to questions, a rare virtue in a hurried, impatient world.
“It doesn’t worry me,” said Day of the people fleeing before his interview. “It just needs, it just shows I need to work harder, and hopefully a couple more people will fill the room after that.” Unfortunately, it’s not so easy. Or understandable.
A star isn’t always born or developed. The progression begins with talent. Lady Gaga’s rendition of the Star Spangled Banner to open the Super Bowl was an event unto itself. She already had a reputation, a career, then left us with a memory. Perfect timing, the biggest event of any year in the United States and wham, she left us gasping. Wow.
As did Spieth, already heading toward greatness by becoming only the third in a half-century, next to Arnie and Jack, to start the year with wins in both the Masters and the U.S. Open. He gave the Grand Slam a run, just missing a playoff in the British. Wow.
We used to call Tiger “The Man.” Spieth, then, is “The Man II.” Although he appears embarrassed by the comparison. To Spieth, at 22, fundamentally half as old as the 40-year-old Tiger, Woods is an inspiration, not an association.
His climb into the No. 1 place in the rankings, a position long held by Woods and more recently by Rory McIlroy and Day, is seen by Spieth as an opportunity rather than verification.
It isn’t “Hey, look at me,” it’s “You know what I’ve been able to do?”
Such as play against Woods, and even shoot 63 on the North Course at Torrey Pines, in 2014. Such as being introduced to one man he long has admired from his hometown Dallas Mavericks, Dirk Nowitzki.
“I grew up living half a mile from him,” said Spieth of the 2007 NBA most valuable player, “and he was my hero growing up in Dallas. I never met him. The other day I got to take pictures and hang out with him. And I thought that was pretty awesome. I wouldn’t say that’s probably an advantage to the position we’re in, but with (the No.1 ranking) it becomes a responsibility for sure.”
The key in life, we’re told, is to take your job and responsibilities seriously, but not yourself. Spieth has full comprehension. He can needle and joke with others, unworried what they might say in response.
Owen, the singer, sitting next to Spieth, said Colt Knost, another Texas pro — and winner of the 2007 U.S. Amateur at San Francisco’s Olympic Club — told him, “When Jordan talks to the ball, the ball listens to him.”
In Singapore, Spieth hits a ball to the edge of a bunker, yells, “Just give me a normal bounce,” and the shot ends up in the middle of the fairway. “That’s a normal bounce?” questioned Owen.
Nothing’s normal for Jordan Spieth. “But you haven’t changed in the four years I’ve known you,” said Owen to Spieth, “as far as your graciousness to the people around you and the way you handle yourself ... I really admire that.”
Who wouldn’t?
By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner
“The best laid plans …” You know the rest, words from a poem by Bobby Burns, the Scot who more than a century ago wrote words of warning, words telling us that our hopes and dreams more often do not work out. Or as Burns wrote, “ ..gang oft a-gley,” or as we would say, go often astray.
But not the plans of John Elway. Or the hopes of Peyton Manning. Or the long-ago dreams of the family of Pat Bowlen.
©2016 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner
He was the stranger from Youngstown, the little guy who had to earn his spurs and, more importantly after some missteps owning the 49ers — “This team is not a toy,” he grumbled at the media so critical of his mismanagement — earn the cheers. They were there at Super Bowls in past years. And they were there Saturday night, when Eddie DeBartolo was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
So timely. So appropriate that DeBartolo, now 69 and far away in time and distance, having moved to Tampa, Fla., would be one of the chosen few when the Super Bowl, the Half-Century Super Bowl, No. 50, would be played in the area where he built a champion in the 1980s and early 1990s.
©2016 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner
It’s as if the game already has been played. As if the Carolina Panthers won the Super Bowl. When, in fact, the Denver Broncos will win it. Win it ugly, the way underdogs usually do. Win it by keeping the Panthers from winning it, with defense, with ball control, with the sort of breaks teams like Denver inevitably get in games like this, and thus are described as lucky rather than good.
But in football, luck is not so much bestowed as created.
©2016 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner
A letter from the president. So few are sent. Katrina Smith had to be special, and in a way she was, holding the letter from President Barack Obama that commuted an excessively severe prison sentence which had taken her away from society, away from a son who was to become a football star while she had become an inmate.
Demaryius Thomas was a sixth grader, 11 years old, when Smith and her own mother, Minnie Thomas, were convicted and incarcerated 16 years ago for making and selling crack cocaine in Georgia.
©2016 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner
The distance Cortelle Javon Anderson traveled should not be measured in distance — practicing for Super Bowl 50, he is only 70 miles from his hometown of Vallejo — but in achievement. He’s done what few beyond Anderson or his mother believed was possible in the classroom or on the football field.
It’s a tough, industrial community, Vallejo, filled with the offspring of workers — many African-American, many from the South — who came to work in the Mare Island shipyards during World War II. The headlines from Vallejo these days too often are negative ones dealing with crime or unemployment.
©2016 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner
The current Raiders coach, Jack Del Rio, was the Broncos previous defensive coach. The current Broncos defensive coach, Wade Phillips, was out of work but hardly out of ideas. Or out of superlatives about the current player who concerns him most, Carolina quarterback Cam Newton.
“He makes plays nobody else makes,” Phillips said.
©2016 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner
He was the coach’s kid, and there’s no better place to begin. But John Elway was his own man and is still his own man, using talent and lessons acquired if not necessarily taught. It wasn’t that Elway could throw a football so hard — when his receivers occasionally missed one of his passes, they often were left with a bruise, a mark that looked like the seams of the ball, or the “Elway Cross” — it’s that he knew when to throw or when not to throw.
The offspring of those in athletics have an advantage. Not only genetically but also perceptively. They grow up within the game, grasping the nuances. Look at Barry Bonds, who as a toddler was with his father, Bobby, in the Giants clubhouse, listening and watching. Never mind the steroid stuff. Barry understood how and where. He always threw to the right base. He always set up in the perfect position in the outfield.
©2016 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner
It is disease that frustrates as well as debilitates. You lose contact with loved ones, friends. And they with you. The moments that would be shared, should be shared, the joy, the pain, can no longer be. “They can no longer communicate with you,” said Beth Bowlen Wallace about the victims of Alzheimer’s. “You feel like you’ve lost them.”
Her father, Pat Bowlen, is one of those victims. He also is the longtime owner of the Denver Broncos, who Sunday at Levi’s Stadium play the Carolina Panthers in Super Bowl 50. Not that Bowlen is aware. The team that is his no longer is his.
©2016 The San Francisco Examiner