The draft: A few boos (taped), a lot of quarterbacks

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By Art Spander
For Maven Sports

Roger Goodell got his boos — recorded as they might have been. The 49ers got their replacement for DeForest Buckner. And the Raiders got their official acknowledgment they belong to Las Vegas, which as the virus-denying female mayor of the city said on CNN is not China.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2020, The Maven

No sports? Herm Edwards has a way to fill the void

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By Art Spander

So we’re back to Herm Edwards again. And in these uncomfortable times, when there are far too many questions and virtually no answers, why not?

It was Herm who famously told us when he coached the New York Jets that the idea is to win the game. Still true, although now rather than football or baseball it’s the game of life.

Two months ago, when the world was normal and people shot baskets or took batting practice or worked on their bunker shots, Edwards, coach at Arizona State, spoke to the San Francisco Giants during spring training on the values of common purpose.

“Individuals,” he told them, “but also part of a group with a shared goal.”

Thursday morning, Edwards said on ”Good Morning America” that he hoped his athletes — and thus in effect the rest of us — would use this period without workouts or games for reflection.

Which, since we’re sheltered and presumably bored — and perhaps somewhat claustrophobic and, because of the headlines, depressed — makes sense.

“All of a sudden this thing has come upon us,” said Edwards, “and how we are going to react going forward is very important. But you know what? We live in a noisy world. It’s very quiet now. We gotta reflect on our lives.”

Edwards, who grew up in Monterey, will be 66 in a week. He wants to get back to work, certainly, wants the sports world to be what it was, yet he’s a realist.

The PGA Tour has a plan to return. The NFL has announced contingencies for a schedule that would start in September. But what happens to the college game remains a mystery.

When will students be able to return to campus — if they’re able to return? And if the classrooms and dorms are empty, is it proper to have stadiums full? If authorities give clearance.

Already the mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, said, depending on the spread of the coronavirus, large gatherings — as in crowds of spectators — may continue to be prohibited until 2021.

What does that mean for the Rams and Chargers and their $5 billion stadium, which is set to open? What does that mean for the Lakers and Clippers? For USC and UCLA? For the Anaheim Ducks and L.A. Kings?

For the Rose Bowl Game and parade, if the ruling still is in effect? For the Dodgers and Angels? And for the opponents, the Giants, A’s, 49ers, Warriors, Sharks, Cal and Stanford, when scheduled down there?

You’re aware of the schemes of major league baseball, to play all the games in Arizona or divide them between Arizona and Florida, each team staying only in one approved hotel and playing in ballparks without fans.

The PGA Tour has taken that last step. Tournaments are to resume in June. But without people other than the golfers, caddies and officials. Eerie but acceptable, one concedes, even if a $5 million event wouldn’t seem much different than four guys out on a Saturday morning at the club.

Yes, we’re anxious to have our sports return, but at what cost? Baseball without fans? Golf tournaments without galleries? If that is the situation, what sort of option do we have?

The word surreal has been used with frequency and, I suppose, with accuracy. Who would have imagined the havoc the virus would create, the medical emergencies, the deaths? Who would believe in the two months since Herm Edwards addressed the Giants how life and sports have changed for the worse?

We’re facing that most fearsome of enemies, the great unknown.

"That's what you think about as a coach — the unexpected, and what are you gonna do?" Edwards said. "Well, we got to find a way to be on the same page and listen to the game plan of the doctors. That's the game plan; it's not our personal game plan.

"We can't be a selfish player now, as citizens. We have to all be on the same team and respect each other. I think that's very important."

Even more important than scoring a touchdown, which one presumes will take place — before fans — in the not-too-distant future.

The return of sports? Not so fast

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By Art Spander

The Masters was supposed to begin Thursday. But you knew that. You also knew it has been shifted to a weekend in November, one of the few apparent certainties we’ve been offered in sport.

Otherwise, it’s a series of possibilities and wishes. And worries.

We keep hearing there will be improvement, the coronavirus will be limited if not controlled, and life and sport will return to normal — schedules full of games, stands full of fans.

People would be in church on Easter, we were promised. The country would be open. The only masks needed would be worn by catchers.

Then another medical person told us in so many words, “Not so fast, folks.” Never mind searching for a place in the bleachers or lower boxes while epidemiologists still are searching for a vaccine. And before you even think of selling tickets for an NFL game, you’d better sell the players on the idea there’s no danger coming together in a huddle or the locker room.

Only the other day, Dr. Jeffrey Smith, the Santa Clara County executive officer, said he didn’t expect sports until Thanksgiving. “And we’d be lucky to have them then,” he added.

Thanksgiving, when high school football usually concludes. When college football often plays its traditionals. When the NFL — and the 49ers are based in Santa Clara, of course — would be three-quarters of the way into the schedule.

Baseball? Basketball? They’ve almost reached a point of desperation. Or resignation.

By the time the NBA figures how and when to resume a season that never made it past the halfway mark, it will be time to start the next season. Major League Baseball have a bizarre scheme to play every game, all 30 teams, in Arizona, without fans. That doesn’t work.

It can be done. But it shouldn’t be done. Our sports are more than digital matchups among distant athletes. We need people in the seats, behind the ropes, as well as people inside the lines.

Sport is not silence. Sport is huge galleries lining the fairways at Augusta National. Sport is obsessed fans tailgating in the parking lots before Auburn-Alabama. Sport is parents and kids unloading at the 161st Street station in the Bronx to see the Yankees play the Red Sox.

Sport is jerseys and T-shirts, golf hats and baseball caps, anticipation and excitement.

But before any of that, we need a go-ahead from those best qualified to judge our health and safety. Not politicians or football coaches or businessmen who want the economy to rebound and our entertainment to return. But from medical professionals.

The numbers of those stricken by the virus, those who have died from the virus, ought to be warnings not to take chances, not to allow, say, a Warriors-Lakers game to take place until all doubts are eliminated. Sure, we want to see Steph or LeBron, but what we don’t need to see is one more victim.

Impatience? Indeed. Would you expect another response? The head football coach at Oklahoma State, Mike Gundy — remember how he challenged the media a few years back? — insisted his team is getting back to business on May 1. “We’ve got to get these guys back in here,” he said.

Back in where, the locker room? Or since they are student-athletes, the classroom? Most schools around the country have been shut down because of the contagion. And if Oklahoma State hasn’t, the guess is at least the schools of some opponents have.

“From what I read,” said Gundy on a teleconference, “the healthy people can fight this ... we all need to go back to work.”

Until, if we’re callous, careless, the healthy people become infected. As has been the case virtually everywhere.

The future is a question. If it is not safe enough to hold a 49ers game or a Cal or Stanford — or De La Salle — game in September, will it be safe enough to hold the PGA Championship in early August at San Francisco’s Harding Park?

With luck, and maybe a vaccine, the threat of the virus may be diminished to the point where a golf tournament or football game will return to being the attractions and joy that sports are meant to be.

We hardly can wait. But wait we must.

The Masters in November? Better than never

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By Art Spander

Be prepared for disappointment. This is what a senior researcher at Johns Hopkins University told the Washington Post, when asked when sports would return to normal.

“And I’m a huge sports fan,” said Jared Evans, the researcher.

Disappointment? Hasn’t there been enough already? Wasn’t the Open Championship, the British Open, cancelled Monday, joining the Final Four — the title game would have been Monday night — and Wimbledon?

Hasn’t the NBA been placed in limbo, along with baseball? And weren’t so many high school championships scrubbed because of, yes, that apparently unbeatable opponent, the novel coronavirus.

We understand. Our world, the world of fun and games, is not the real world, the one where people are dying from a disease we were barely conscious of three months ago, the one with which doctors and nurses are struggling gallantly and officials debate the distribution of ventilators.

Hard to think of people trying to find ways to win games or tournaments when epidemiologists are trying to find a vaccine against the virus — a necessity, we’re told, if stadiums and arenas are to be packed once more.

Golf is a hope. Not, in this case, as a participant sport but a spectator sport.

We lost The Open, the announcement of cancellation interestingly coming only a few hours after Queen Elizabeth II tried to rally fellow Britons against the crisis created by the virus.

The 149th Open was scheduled for July at Royal St. George’s on the English Channel, but the R&A said a change in date was not possible. For the major events in the United States, fortunately, date changes — if extreme ones — could be made.

The PGA Championship, to be played at Harding Park in San Francisco, has been moved from May to Aug. 6-9, which is ironic. For most of the past 50 years the PGA was played on the first weekend in August, but the decision was made that starting in 2019 the event would shift to May to get away from the start of football season. And now, for a year at least, it’s back against football.

If not positioned as the last year’s major, as it used to be. That slot is to belong to the Masters, which in normal times is an introduction to spring. This year, anything but normal, the Masters will be played Nov. 12-15.

The U.S. Open is moved to Sept. 17-20, from its traditional mid-June dates. As of yet it hasn’t been moved from Winged Foot in the suburbs of New York, although on Monday there were stories it would go to Pebble Beach — site of the 2019 Open — or Torrey Pines, and either of those might happen.

So much of sport is tradition. We know what’s coming and when, from the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day to the last NFL regular season games in December. But the suspensions and cancellations have disturbed our rhythm, thrown us off balance.

No basketball, no baseball, no golf, no tennis, no hockey, not even any Premier League soccer. How are we supposed to know what day it is? Or even what week or month?

The Masters in November is going to be strange, yet better in November than never. If there are no azaleas, there will still be birdies.

What historically has been the start, of the season, of golf — of baseball certainly — will instead become the finish, more or less. That’s if everything works out, and despite the optimism, there’s no promise it does work out.

NFL games in California in September with stadiums — the new one for the Rams and Chargers, Levi’s in Santa Clara for the 49ers? “I’m not anticipating that happening” said Gavin Newsom, the state’s governor. “I would move very cautiously in that expectation.”

Moving cautiously is better than not moving at all. We’re prepared for disappointment. We’re ready for some satisfaction.

Wimbledon loses out to the coronavirus

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By Art Spander

Another announcement. Another disappointment. No Wimbledon. No tennis on the lawns of the All-England Club.

No kidding.

The coronavirus was the winner this year, in straight sets. John McEnroe would have shouted, “You can’t be serious.” Oh, but we are. Sadly.

Ask anyone hunkered down, waiting, hoping, unsure of what will happen next — in sports, in life — worrying about a protein molecule that has hospitals overflowing and our world a mess.

No Wimbledon. No Final Four. Probably no U.S. Open or Masters. Maybe no British Open. The NBA perhaps running into August, if it restarts — and suddenly the optimism of Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who was talking about mid-May, has been dimmed.

Major League baseball perhaps running into Decemeber. If it starts at all.

Hard to complain about what’s not happening in sport when you read and hear what is happening in society.

In normal times, the predictions would be about Roger Federer’s chance for another title. Now they’re about how many people will fall victim to the coronavirus.

Our patterns have been altered, our template shattered.

George Vecsey, the retired New York Times sports columnist, had a book, “A Year in the Sun,” a title that, if not literally accurate, described our sports writing culture. From event to event, across the calendar.

So many places, so many games, and so few that through tradition and location stand out — the Rose Bowl, the Super Bowl, the Masters and, because it’s very name is so instantly recognizable, Wimbledon.

“Devastated,” was Federer’s one-word tweet, when the 2020 tournament, as the British say, was abandoned. His sentiment is understood. For more than a decade, Wimbledon was Roger’s tournament. He won it eight times and believed he could add another.

However, Federer is growing older. At the next Wimbledon, 2021, he’ll be a month from his 40th birthday. His time is ebbing away. The same for Serena Williams, who has won the tournament seven times. She’ll be 40 in September 2021.

So unfortunate for Roger. For Serena. For the kid who didn’t get to play in the NCAA tournament. For all the athletes whose careers have been affected by something beyond their control, beyond our control.

How barren the sports landscape. No basketball, baseball, soccer, golf. Now, nothing.

Two months ago, they held the Super Bowl, which was followed by the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, which was followed by the Genesis L.A. Open. Spring training was underway, just like always. We were loving it.

Then what didn’t come to a halt became a sad apology.

"It is with great regret that the Main Board of the All-England Club (AELTC) and the Committee of Management of The Championships have today decided that The Championships 2020 will be cancelled due to public health concerns linked to the coronavirus epidemic," Wimbledon said on Wednesday, in a statement on its website.

"Uppermost in our mind has been the health and safety of all of those who come together to make Wimbledon happen — the public in the UK and visitors from around the world, our players, guests, members, staff, volunteers, partners, contractors, and local residents — as well as our broader responsibility to society's efforts to tackle this global challenge to our way of life."

There had been talk about holding the tournament without spectators, as there have been suggestions that NBA games end English Premier League games and baseball games be held without fans, in empty stadiums or arenas. But why?

The people who watch, who cheer, who queue for seats at Wimbledon, who wait to give high fives to Steph Curry as he leaves the court, are as much a part of a sport as those who play. Think Rafael Nadal would scramble up the seats after a win at Wimbledon if there were nobody waiting to hug him?

The virus won this time, in straight sets. Wimbledon never had a chance. It was unfair. But as have been reminded of late, so is life.

Sporting tradition can’t compete with the coronavirus

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By Art Spander
For Maven Sports

OAKLAND, Calif. — Every few minutes there’s another email, another postponement or cancellation, another disappointment.

The Kentucky Derby to September; the PGA Championship, the one at San Francisco’s Harding Park, from May to who knows when; the Ryder Cup from September to next year.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2020, The Maven

The A’s: Don’t try to listen up

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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.

At spring training, anger from past crushes hope for future

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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.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2020, The Maven