Giants’ day: Mad Bum with a rope, Smyly with a fastball
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Give Mad Bum enough rope, and he’ll have us tied in knots, if not exactly like the cattle he pursued.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
Fiers off the soapbox, back on the mound
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
MESA, Ariz. — The guy at the center of the controversy, the one who spoke out, got off his figurative soapbox on Sunday and back on the mound.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
The A’s: Don’t try to listen up
By Art Spander
MESA, Ariz. — My first memories of baseball came from what I heard — on the radio.
Nights I would listen to Bob Kelly doing the Angels — the L.A. Angels of the Pacific Coast League. Lucky Lager beer was the sponsor, and Kelly’s home run call, borrowing the product’s advertising, was, “It’s mild and mellow.”
Baseball always has been a game of voices.
Vin Scully arguably became the most important member of the Dodgers when the majors moved West in 1958.
Maybe it was because of the fans’ ignorance (who’s that Wally Moon guy anyway?). Whatever the reason, the Dodgers felt compelled to set up small loudspeakers in an area of the Los Angeles Coliseum — where the team played from 1958 through ’61 — so people could listen as they watched.
Baseball and radio, radio and baseball, inseparable, Red Barber (“Back, back, back…”) and Mel Allen (“How about that?”).
By the Bay, Russ Hodges (who while in New York in 1951 shouted into our souls, “The Giants win the pennant, the Giants win the pennant”) and Lon Simmons; Bill King; Hank Greenwald; Al Michaels; now for the Giants, Jon Miller and Dave Fleming; for the A’s, Ken Korach and Vince Cotroneo.
Except we never again may hear Korach and Cotroneo. The A’s will not be on the radio. At least the way they and other teams always have been, via on-air broadcasts, clicking the on-off switch.
Which is unfortunate. And idiotic. As the headline in the Washington Post a few days ago declared, referencing the Astros cheating, “Scandals won’t kill baseball. Kicking the games off radio just might.”
Since they arrived in Oakland in 1968, the A’s have had a torturous connection to radio. They didn’t like the station. The station didn’t like them. Sometimes the signal was so weak it wouldn’t get out of the Coliseum parking lot. In 1978 they were broadcast on the Cal university station by a 20-year-old student — who is now president of the Giants, Larry Baer.
But beginning this season of 2020, the Athletics, who begin their exhibition schedule on Friday against the Chicago Cubs, will be available online. Meaning, for most of us, they won’t be available.
It’s the future, says Dave Kaval, the A’s president. Of what, a city without baseball?
The game, like every other product, must be sold constantly. Every mention on radio is the advertising, paid or unpaid, that keeps everyone attuned.
Back in the 1980s, NBC-TV televised an NFL game that had no announcers. That lasted one game.
This isn’t a secret society. It’s tough enough finding games when we know they’re being broadcast. It will be impossible if they are only being streamed.
Take out the ”r” and that will be the reaction, steamed, of the guy who takes his family to an A’s game, leaves in the eighth of a 5-5 tie because the kids have to go to bed and then is unable to find out what happened until he gets home and turns on the TV news.
“The primary motivation for this endeavor is around fan development, marketing, and really understanding how that can acquire new fans,” said Kaval, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
The odds are they’ll drive away old fans.
In an essay last summer in the National Review, Rich Lowery wrote, “Baseball on the radio remains an iconic American sound.”
Except for the Oakland A’s.
You can get the games on your phone, probably if you have an understanding of quantum physics. Baseball is simple. All you need is a bat and a ball. The ability to hear a game should not be complex.
The Raiders have moved. The Warriors have moved. Now the only team left in Oakland, the A’s, has moved its broadcasts to a place where most of us can’t listen to them.
Baseball's Giants get advice from a football coach
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The Giants brought in Herman Edwards on Thursday. To talk, not play.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
At spring training, anger from past crushes hope for future
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The weather is fine enough, the low 80s. Perfect for spring training, perfect for baseball. But what a terrible time, and that’s beyond the jolting reality that Don & Charlie’s, great ribs, great history — Babe Ruth’s autograph among the dozens — has closed.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
This time, Scott gets to keep the Riviera win
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — He said he was delighted to be in the same final grouping as Rory McIlroy, who just had moved atop the world golf rankings. This way, Adam Scott told us, he would, “see how I stack up.”
Copyright 2020, The Maven
Adam Scott got the trophy at Riviera; now he wants the win
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — They gave Adam Scott the trophy but not the win. He came in first in a tournament that didn’t count. Now, 15 years later, in the same event, with a different name, Scott has the chance to do it again, this time officially.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
At the Genesis, Tiger is in it — and out of it
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
For Tiger at Riviera, a great start and deflating finish
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
Rory back at No. 1 and at Riviera; what's not to like?
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
The Genesis is the Tiger Tournament in everything but name
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
Mickelson: ‘I got outplayed, and I’m fine with that’
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
At Pebble it's good ol' Phil — brilliance and arrogance
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
For Jason Day, an eagle, six birdies and balloons
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
Spieth still trying to get back to being the golfer he was
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
Phil Mickelson, always unconventional
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
Chiefs take the Super Bowl the Niners should have won
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
A chance for Jimmy G, the other quarterback in this Super Bowl
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
Will Shanahan find retribution in this Super Bowl?
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
Richard Sherman, waiting for KC, reminisces about Kobe
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