After a beer and the TV remote, for Kerr it’s the Lakers

No plans for Steve Kerr, and no worries. Both could come later. His Sunday evening would be simple enough. As he said, “A beer and a TV clicker.”

He would watch basketball on the tube, as would so many others, if with a considerably different approach.

To find out the next opponent for his Warriors.

And now he knows, as we all know — it will be the Lakers, Wednesday in Los Angeles. Maybe yet another surprise in a season of surprises. At least for the Warriors. Most of all for the Warriors.

A couple months ago, the Dubs, getting adjusted, seemed without a chance, But Sunday afternoon they closed the regular season with a sixth straight win, 113-102 over the Memphis Grizzlies at Chase Center, to get the eighth spot in the NBA’s Western Conference.

Yes, Steph Curry was the star, as he almost always needs to be, getting 46 points — the 11th time this year he’s reached 40 or more, and in the process becoming at 33 the second oldest (next to 38-year-old Michael Jordan) to take the season scoring title, which Curry did for a second time.

A lot or praise for Steph, not unexpectedly, from his coach — “He’s never been better,” said Kerr. And from his teammates — “He’s like the Picasso of our time,” said Juan Toscano-Anderson. “You can’t have a knock on him. He’s the best doing it right now.”

If the Warriors aren’t the best, as they were not long ago, they are fascinating and quite competent. Also, enjoyable. Sometimes it’s better to be the underdog and do the unexpected. Sure, everyone thinks about those championship Warriors. But Curry at least thinks about the non-champions, the “We believe” team that in 2007 beat the No. 1 seeded Mavericks in the first round.

When he pulled up his perspiration-soaked jersey at game’s end, as Baron Davis did back in ’07, Curry yelled “Shout out to BD.”

There will be plenty of shouting if somehow the Warriors can beat the Lakers, who after all, despite injuries to LeBron James and Anthony Davis, still are defending NBA champions.

Kerr seemed particularly elated with the Warriors’ progress the past few months. They’ve been blown out a few times, but now, following the loud and decisive on-court orders of Draymond Green, they are playing defense — and as we’ve been instructed by everyone from Kerr to Curry to Draymond his ownself, defense wins.

When the Warriors are rolling, it’s because they’re stopping the other team and picking up easy baskets.

Asked about the Warriors. Kerr pointed out that the entire organization, especially retiring president Rick Welts, deserves credit to hanging in during the pandemic. No Klay Thompson, no fans until only a few days ago because of restrictions, yet here’s the team preparing for the Lakers.

“The whole organization just has to endure this season,” said Kerr. “I’m really proud not only of the team but the whole organization. It’s been tough playing most of the year without fans, obviously taking huge financial losses. It’s been great the last games.”

Curry has been great virtually every game, with an understandable exception for someone who rarely gets a moment to rest — including playing 40 of the possible 48 minutes Sunday. 

“He’s a machine,” Kerr said of Curry. “What he means to the team, the way he conducts himself, that includes the way he takes care of his body, coming in to get treatment, getting on the floor and his skill work. I think he is just in love with the process.”

“When we were in China a few years ago, we met Roger Federer. And that’s what I see in Steph. He loves his life, loves his family, loves his routine. He’s well prepared for every season and every game.”

Will Giants own their tomorrow?

SAN FRANCISCO — The sign out there in centerfield at Oracle Park, above the new bullpen, is just one of many ballpark billboards but also one with a pertinent message for a team playing unexpectedly well.

“Own your tomorrows,” the sign reads. It’s a Charles Schwab slogan, about investing, but these days it could refer to the Giants, whose tomorrows suddenly seem excellent.

The Giants are off on Wednesday, off the field and on a jet, headed for Pittsburgh where they hope to carry the joy and the magic — and the fine pitching and timely hitting — they had at home. Five games in their ballpark, four wins including a 4-2 victory on Tuesday that gave them a sweep of the two-game mini-series against the Texas Rangers.

Patience at the plate, aggressiveness on the mound, 14 wins in the last 18 home games for San Francisco, for first-place San Francisco. And who knows what to think?

The Dodgers are better. The Padres are better. And yet, for the moment, they trail the Giants. As Sinatra sang, is that Granada we see or only Asbury Park?

No Mookie Betts. No Fernando Tatis Jr. Only a well-designed plan worked out by Giants manager Gabe Kapler and his coaches to emphasize the potential provided by head of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi.

They’ve got older players who still have it, Buster Posey, Brandon Belt, Evan Longoria, Brandon Crawford, Alex Wood; and younger players who are getting it, Wilmer Flores, Mike Yastrzemski and Tuesday’s starting pitcher, Logan Webb, who went six innings, allowing only two hits and two runs and striking out a career high 10.

“He has a long way to go before he reaches his ceiling,” Kapler promised about Webb. The Giants similarly have a long way to go before they, or we, should get excited about their postseason chances. Then again, after four straight losing seasons, this one at least offers a tantalizing hint of improvement.

And reminders of not-so-long-ago victories, those three World Series championships over a period of five years when the Giants stayed close on pitching and — as Hunter Pence, in town to comment on the recent games for local TV — came up with the big hit.

One thing the Giants are not doing is trying to perform beyond their capabilities. They aren’t the Yankees or Astros.

They’ll be happy with a walk. Rangers starter Jordan Lyles threw 34 pitches in his half of a first inning that lasted 35 minutes.

“Our approach is simple,” Kapler said of the offense. “Go after a pitch we can hit. Take pitches until we find one we like.”

On the other side, don’t throw too many pitches the other guys can hit, which is where Webb comes in. He had one of his better games, after the Giants catchers — Curt Casali, who was in the lineup, and Buster Posey, who wasn’t — told Webb to speed up his tempo. Which he did.

Asked what he thought of Webb’s performance, and whether it was his best game in his three seasons with the Giants, Kapler was properly measured in his answer. He liked the strikeouts. He liked the result, but best? Let’s wait before passing judgment. “Webby has a high ceiling,” Kapler said. “Let’s wait a couple of years.”

Three Texas challenges on calls in the first four innings. The Rangers won each, but Kapler didn’t care, pointing out that the idea of the replays is to end up with the correct decision.

Yes, we should wait until October. But here in the merry month of May, the controversial decision to hire Kapler a couple years ago — remember the outrage — and the decisions by he and his staff have been more than acceptable.

Mays turns 90; he gave us our strawberries in winter time

When he was the 49ers’ coach, Jim Harbaugh would ignore my questions. But as he walked by me, he often posed one of his own, to wit, “Who was better, Ruth or Mays?”

As much out of belief as Bay Area bias, I answered, “Mays,” meaning of course Willie Mays as compared to Babe Ruth.

Harbaugh would pause, then say, “Ruth pitched.” To which I would respond, “Mays could have.”

As Mays himself would remind when I told him the story, “I did pitch.” Indeed, he did.

Maybe not as a professional, but everywhere else along the way. “And I was good,” he would add.

Willie Howard Mays turns 90 years old Friday. The “Say Hey Kid,” as he was called because in his early days in New York he addressed people, “Say, hey,” is no longer a kid. But he remains a beacon and a reminder. To have watched him, at Candlestick Park, on television, was our good fortune.

There was no magic in his approach. There merely was brilliance. As kids we all play baseball, such a simple game. “They throw the ball,” Mays said, “I hit it. They hit the ball. I catch it.”

Two observations defined a career that produced 660 home runs, 3,283 hits and in 1954 arguably the most famous catch in World Series history.

This from Garry Schumacher, the onetime Giants public relations man, in New York and San Francisco, after Mays came up to the Giants in 1951: “We got to take care of this kid. We got to make sure he gets in no trouble because this is the guy — well, I’m not saying he’s going to win pennants by himself, but he’s the guy who’ll have us all eating strawberries in the winter time.”

This is from Bob Stevens, who covered baseball, Seals and Giants, for the San Francisco Chronicle from the 1930s to the 1990s, on a Mays extra-base drive past an outfielder: “The only man who could have caught it, hit it.”

No question Mays hit the spot for an America seeking sporting excitement after emerging from World War II, an America looking for good times and new heroes.

Baseball still was our game. The NFL would get its burst in the 1958 overtime championship game between the Baltimore Colts and New York Giants. And fate and fable combined to provide NYC with Mays, Mantle and Snider — Willie, Mickey and the Duke.

There were debates in Queens and Brooklyn. Years later, there was a song by Terry Cashman. Now there is only Mays. Father Time hasn’t quite caught up with the guy who could catch anything on a ball field.

Tallulah Bankhead, an actress, amongst other purists, once said, “There have been only two geniuses in the world, Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare. But darling, I think you’d better put Shakespeare first.”

Geniuses are not always easy to comprehend, especially as in Mays’ case when they grow up in the segregated south of the 1930s and ‘40s. Mays developed in the Negro Leagues, but when he arrived in New York, sportswriters from the city’s six dailies looked out for him, rather than looking for trouble.

Mays was uncomfortable when the Giants shifted to San Francisco before the 1958 season. He couldn’t immediately find housing. He didn’t know the territory or the journalists. Finally, a banker, Jake Shemano, befriended Mays and helped him with his finances and locating a residence.

Willie was private, maybe suspicious. His story remained untold until 10 years ago, when he agreed to do an autobiography with James Hirsch, a former reporter for the New York Times — that NYC connection again. Then in 2020, Mays and San Francisco Chronicle baseball writer John Shea cooperated on 24: Life Stories from the Say Hey Kid.

My dealings with Mays were peripheral. A golf junkie, he knew of me writing the game. At spring training, I would reintroduce myself to Willie, and invariably he would ask about Tiger Woods.

And not, as Jim Harbaugh might have phrased it, if I thought he was better than Jack Nicklaus.

Mystery solved for Niners: it’s Trey Lance; is he the right man?

All we wanted to know was who the 49ers would select. Todd McShay of ESPN told us it would be Trey Lance, and Mel Kiper of the same network said it would be Mac Jones. Of course we had to stay tuned, as much to find out who was wrong as to learn who would be the Niners QB after Jimmy G — whenever that inevitability takes place.

But darn if that didn’t take in more time than one of those Super Bowl halftime shows.

The NFL knows how to lure us in and hold on, through country singers, the presentation of the colors and, how appropriate, a Draft Kings commercial.

We know now: Trey Lance.

Sorry, Mr. Kiper. The Niners, who traded three first-round picks for the one they used to take Lance, have to hope they’re not sorry.

Lance played only 17 games at North Dakota State, whose football history doesn’t exactly remind anyone of the schools from which the two players, both quarterbacks, picked ahead of Lance, were taken: No. 1 Trevor Lawrence of Clemson, No. 2 Zach Wilson of BYU.

But Phil Simms went to Morehead State in Kentucky and led the New York Giants to Super Bowl wins.

Joe Montana was a third-round pick and Tom Brady a sixth-round pick, although these days, with changes in the game, a need for more mobile quarterbacks who can escape the rush — as Patrick Mahomes does — top prospects don’t slip that far.

The only thing certain is that Garoppolo, who some predicted would either be traded perhaps to the Patriots, from where the Niners got him, or waived, will be starting the 2021 season as San Francisco’s quarterback. Trey Lance might be the quarterback of the future, but with lack of experience, the future isn’t now.

Mac Jones led Alabama to an undefeated season and a national championship. Yet Niners coach Kyle Shanahan, known as a quarterback specialist, and general manager John Lynch obviously believe in Lance’s potential — and that Garoppolo, who led the team to one Super Bowl, will be more than adequate for a year or two.

Toss Justin Fields of Ohio State into the mix of Niner possible draftees, along with Jones and Lance, until a few days ago, at least, and the impression was that Lance was below the other two.

“I’d be surprised if it’s Trey Lance, unless they decide to go with Jimmy G for another year,” was what NFL Network commentator and former 49er head coach Steve Maricucci told the San Jose Mercury News.

“If they are (keeping Garoppolo, as advertised), any of them could fit. If not, and somebody wants him and grabs Jimmy for a second-round pick, Trey Lance has the most work to do to start in the NFL. Not only did he not play last year (other than one game), he played at another level (FCS) and has the most catching up to do. It would benefit him a lot to sit and watch a veteran guy. All of these quarterbacks would benefit from that.”

You need more than a quarterback — the Chiefs lost in the Super Bowl in February because the offensive line was inadequate. Still, most of all you need a quarterback. He wins the games you should have lost. Lynch and Shanahan decided it was time to acquire that quarterback.

Lance is 6-foot-4 and rushed for 1,100 yards in his lone full season as a starter. He’s known for his football intelligence. And didn’t throw an interception in 287 pass attempts.

“He’s played a year of football (and) it is at a smaller school,” Shanahan said. “So it takes work. You’re not going to see it all. It is a hard process, and that there is no guarantee for any of us. So it’s about believing. You see what they asked him to do. And you see it very consistently done at a high level.”

One mystery is solved. We know the Niners’ next QB. Another remains: Is he the right man?

Giants’ Webb is a gem on mound, at bat

SAN FRANCISCO — So the Giants may not catch the Dodgers. Probably nobody else in the National League will either. Forget what cannot be. Consider what can — a winning season for San Francisco, the first in years.

It’s early. Too early maybe to draw conclusions or make predictions. And yet as April heads into May, there may be a reason to believe.

Not that the Giants will win the pennant, but that they will be respectable, perhaps even sneak into the postseason as a wild card.

The Giants, on a Sunday at Oracle Park that went from rain to sunshine, made life tense but eventually satisfying for 7,572 fans, holding on to a 4-3 win over the Miami Marlins.

Logan Webb pitched the way the Giants believed he could (seven shutout innings) and had a triple to drive in two runs. (That was last done by a Giants pitcher we knew as “The Freak,” Tim Lincecum.)

If that were not enough, Jason Vosler, brought up Saturday from the alternate training site (doesn’t the label "alternate training site" make it seem like a mysterious place in Peru?), singled in the eighth, his first major league hit.

He has the ball. What the Giants have is a series victory and the second-best record in the NL.

How? Not with their bats certainly. The team average before the game was .214. Someone only half-seriously even asked Giants manager Gabe Kapler if Webb, as Madison Bumgarner had in the past, might be used as a pinch hitter.

As with previous efficient Giants teams, they’re doing it with pitching.

Webb had a great spring in the desert, but Kapler pointed out, “I just think the version of Logan Webb in spring training wasn’t as good as the version today. And to be rewarded with that ball to right center field (the triple) was awesome.”

That’s an appropriate word for the Oracle Park ground crew, which as a drizzle persisted the first three innings spent as much time on the diamond as the players, between innings dumping bags of a drying agent on the infield.

The bravest spectators watched the ballgame and field repair in the lower uncovered sections from under umbrellas.

The wet conditions caused the ball to slip out of Webb’s hand on a few pitches. There were three batters hit by pitches, although only one was Webb’s.

Mostly Webb, who wears No. 62 (does he double as an offensive lineman?), hit the target. “We worked on a lot of things,” Webb said of his preparation. giving credit to catcher Curt Casali.

“I’m still not where I want to be, honestly. I gained a lot of confidence from this game.”

Why not? He didn’t give up a run in seven innings, allowed three hits, three walks and struck out eight. There can be no debate. This was a quality start. This also was a revelation for Webb.

“Now I know why hitters like hitting so much,” said Webb, referring to what he thought was his first triple since high school.

“When you hit it, it just feels good. That was fun, but I was definitely tired. when I got there.”

Kapler said, “Impressive swing. When I took him out (after seven) the guys on the bench were joking that I took the best bat out of the lineup.”

Hey, Gabe, are you sure they were joking?

A year ago, most everyone in baseball was joking about the Giants. A scout was quoted before the season saying he thought San Francisco was barely a major league team. It certainly is now.

If a bit beat up.

Vosler got his chance when Wilmer Flores came out of the game with an injury. Evan Longoria and Brandon Crawford didn’t play because they were hurt previously.

What the Giants did have was Logan Webb, the pitcher who Sunday was the hitter, a perfect combination.

Steph’s 49 tops a great few days in Bay Area sports

This is as good as it gets. There are fans in the stands. There is joy in the air. There is Steph Curry still on a tear.

We can say goodbye to retiring Alex Smith — remember, this is where he started, with the 49ers — and say thank you to Patrick Marleau, who started and will finish here, meaning in both cases the Bay Area.

Let’s acknowledge this era as one of special regional success.

Let’s acknowledge Marleau for setting the NHL record for games played, which he did as a member the Sharks at Vegas on Monday night.

And let’s again acknowledge Curry, remarkable, unstoppable, for what he continues to do — which Monday night was score 49 points, including 10 3-pointers, leading the Warriors to a 107-96 win over the 76ers in Philadelphia.

It was Steph’s 11th straight game scoring at least 30.

That, arguably, was the highlight of an unforgettable few days in Northern Cal sports.

Also Monday night, also at Philly, Brandon Belt, who could be labeled ageless (he was around for the World Series wins years ago), homered for the game’s only runs and pitcher Kevin Gausman (who could be considered dominant) led the Giants over the Phillies, 2-0.

The Athletics are not to be ignored, although their scheduled game at Oakland was postponed when the opponent, the Minnesota Twins, failed to pass a Covid test. The A’s, who started the season by losing a team record 6 straight, have now won eight in a row.

The Athletics finally are playing as expected. The Giants are playing better than forecast. The Warriors are playing the way a team with a great player sometimes does.

The Sharks? Let’s call them the exception that proves the rule, whatever the rule is. Besides, who wants to knock the team just as Marleau sets the mark for most NHL games played?

We haven’t beaten Covid-19. Maybe we never will. But we’re making progress, gaining momentum, getting back to the way we were, and the way our sports were — or because of Steph, advancing in leaps and bounds.

We’re smiling more, laughing a lot, able to think about colors of team uniforms rather than those of the Covid tiers; people at games other than catchers still need to wear masks, but we’ll adjust as needed.

So it’s not the best of times, not with restrictions on attendance still in effect. It’s been worse. Six months ago, it was worse.

The only access to our games was through TV or over the internet. Now, the U.S. Golf Association has announced that a limited amount of spectators will be allowed to attend the U.S. Women’s Open in June at San Francisco’s Olympic Club.

Now you can go to an A’s game and sit two rows in front of a guy who was the most accomplished bench jockey I’ve heard in years — OK, so he had couple of beers; still he knew all the classics, and his voice carried throughout the Coliseum. No obscenities either.

ESPN wants us to believe Dodgers-Padres suddenly is the biggest rivalry on the West Coast, but it’s 100 years behind Dodgers-Giants. Fans up here are testier and more accomplished. No beach balls either, only the basketballs Curry is utilizing in the most spectacular way.

Asked for yet another post-game comment about Curry, his star — the NBA’s star, if you will — Warriors coach Steve Kerr sighed, “I don’t know what else to say about what I think of Steph and his performance. I was in utter amazement. He is simply amazing.”

As have been the past few days in Bay Area sports.

Scoring by Steph brings reminder of Wilt

He was a big man. Literally and significantly. At 7-foot-1, 270 pounds, Wilt Chamberlain would be hard to miss; also in various categories, on a running track, or in basketball scoring statistics, hard to catch. 

But Steph Curry has caught him, overtaken him. With an asterisk, maybe.

Steph scored 53 points on Monday night and broke the record for total points while playing for the Warriors — a mark that, with Curry seemingly years from retirement (he’s 33), is destined to grow and grow.

And what Steph did was not only remind us of his remarkable skill but also of Wilt’s, whose game was unique, both for his style and of an era.

Chamberlain, who started with the Warriors as a rookie in Philadelphia — he was (laughter) a territorial pick, but more about that later — through the team’s move to San Francisco before the 1962-63 season.

The team struggled. “Wilt scores 50, Warriors lose” was a frequent headline in one of the city’s three dailies at the time, the Chronicle, Examiner or Call-Bulletin. Then they did win, making the NBA finals in 1964 with the help of rookie Nate Thurmond.

But times got bad again. Wilt reportedly griped about the playoff gift from owner Franklin Mieuli, and Mieuli traded Chamberlain to the new team in Philly, the 76ers.

Back home again for Wilt. In front finally for Steph.

“To be anywhere near him in any record book or now be on top, it’s surreal and it’s wild,” Curry said after the game. “If you grow up in the game of basketball and you hear [Chamberlain’s] name, you know it’s something extremely special, no matter what it is.” The Warriors had been allowed to take him back in 1959 in something called the territorial draft, which allowed NBA teams to take local prospects, even though he had gone to the University of Kansas.

Wilt played 429 games for the Warriors and scored 17,783 points, averaging 41 points a game. Curry already has played 745 games and is averaging 25. This is not to knock Curry. This is to appreciate Chamberlain.

So many of Curry’s points have come on 3-point field goals. There was no 3-pointer in the league until 1979; Wilt retired in 1973.

Not that Chamberlain would have shot many threes.

In that 1962 Philly Warriors game in Hershey, Pa. (the NBA would go anywhere), the night he scored 100, Wilt was 28 of 32 from the line. And in 1972, when Chamberlain was in his mid-40s, on a bet with John Trapp, he hit five 3-point range shots in a row, all hook shots. All swishes.

Wilt, who died in 1999 at 63, was unique, an athlete. He ran the 100 at Philly’s Overbrook High. He high jumped 6-8 and broke 50 seconds in the quarter mile at Kansas. He became a top beach volleyball player. As a publicity gimmick, he agreed to box Muhammad Ali, but the fight never came off.

An autobiography, the one in which he claimed he slept with 20,000 women, was subtitled “Just like any other 7-foot black millionaire who lives next door.” Next door if you resided in the posh Bel-Air section of Los Angeles.

During an interview one time, the conversation, naturally, turned to the 100-point game. “I knew I had a lot of points,” Chamberlain told me, “but not how many. The fans starting chanting, “Hundred, hundred. I thought they were crazy.”

That record sorely will last forever — Kobe Bryant scored 81 in 2006 — unlike Wilt’s total with the Warriors. It did last half a century.

Now it belongs to Steph Curry, who understands what it all means. Swish!

In a Masters without drama, a green jacket for Matsuyama

The crew in the CBS booth kept hoping, kept pointing out that Xander Schauffele might hole that putt or Will Zalatoris could close the gap. And who could blame them?

They didn’t necessarily want Hideki Matsuyama to stumble in this Masters. They simply wanted some competition, some drama, some reason to watch and listen other than to view another shot of the azaleas — yes, they were in bloom — or hear for the 50th time how nobody from Japan ever had won the tournament.

They wanted someone to be able use the line, “The Masters doesn’t begin until the back nine on Sunday.”

But they didn’t get it. What they did get was an historic win by Matsuyama.

The other players never really made a run, and Matsuyama only stumbled occasionally, holding a lead in the final round that usually was at least two strokes and at times was as much as six.

At the end of the 85th Masters, in which the 29-year-old Matsuyama made history by making off with the famed prize to the champion, the green jacket, the margin of victory was only one. But that was because he bogeyed the 72nd hole, which was all he needed to do.

This was Matsuyama’s Masters since he grabbed the lead Saturday and entered the last round four shots in front. Sure, he had a shaky start, in the last day, a bogey on the first hole, but immediately Matsuyama birdied the second. 

The others were going to have to catch him.  But they could not, even though he shot a 1-over 73 for a 72-hole total of 278, and with bogies three of the last four holes, he became first Masters champ since Trevor Immelman in 2008 with an over-par closing round.

Matsuyama finished at 10-under 278. Zalatoris, who grew up in the Bay Area before moving, had a 70 for 279. Jordan Spieth and the star-crossed Schauffele — he had a double bogey and then at 16, into the pond, a triple — tied at 281.

Immelman, interestingly, was one of the announcers on Sunday for CBS where a main theme as play progressed was the unrelenting pressure on Matsuyama, real or perceived, from the country of Japan, impatient for their first men’s major golf champion.

Yet Matsuyama never flinched.

After his one large error, a ball into the water on the par-5 15th — the hole where a few years ago Tiger Woods also hit one in, and then when an official blew it, was allowed to drop in the wrong place — Matsuyama took only a bogey.

Y.E. Yang of Korea became first Asian man to win a major, holding off Woods in the 2009 PGA Championship at Hazeltine. That Matsuyama would join him is no surprise.

Ten years ago, he was low amateur in the Masters. When Matsuyama won the 2014 Memorial, Jack Nicklaus’ event at Muirfield, Nicklaus said, “I think you’ve seen the start of one of the world’s best players the next few years. This young man is going to win a lot of golf tournaments.”

He’s won 15 around the world, six on the PGA Tour. He doesn’t speak much English, a translator being used for interviews — although when he walked off the course on Sunday, Matsuyama said in English, “I’m really happy.”

Then he said in Japanese, “Hopefully I’ll be a pioneer in this and many Japanese will follow. I’m glad to be able to open the floodgates so more will follow.”  

Eight days before the Masters, Tsubasa Kajitani of Japan won the Augusta National Women’s amateur. Matsuyama didn’t see that, because he was in the Valero Texas Open. But you can be certain Kajitani saw Matsuyama.

The entire world of golf did.

“I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like,” he said, “but it will be a thrill to take the green jacket back to Japan.

It will be no less a thrill for all the country.

No Tiger, but his news dominates Masters week

There was a story two days ago when the tournament was about to begin that lamented Tiger Woods, the man who wasn’t there, of course. But if Woods is not in the field or on the property, he’s still the biggest golf story of this Masters week.

With the exclusion of Japan, certainly because three rounds into the 2021 Masters the leader, by a good margin, four strokes, is Hideki Matsuyama of Japan.

Matsuyama, coming out of a one-hour-plus storm delay Saturday, played the final eight holes 6 under par and shot a 7-under 65.

And yet by accident — the pun is intentional — the news in the sport belonged to Woods.

It’s all about recognition, about headlines, and for better or worse, over a decade those have been earned by Tiger, both for his achievements — 82 wins, sharing the record with Sam Snead — and difficulties.

It’s always been that way in sport and life.

There are big names, and there are huge names. In New York, on the day Lou Gehrig hit his record 23rd grand slam, Babe Ruth announced his retirement. The Babe got the attention.

So it has been this week with Woods.

After the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department announced it determined the cause of the February 23 car crash, from which according to some, Tiger was lucky to survive, the information had to remain private. There are legal protections.

Then almost inexplicably, Woods gave permission for the information to become public. That it was released the week of the year’s first major golf championship, the event Woods won five times including unexpectedly, and spectacularly, in 2019?

Only Woods and his advisors would know.

Matsuyama on Sunday could very well become the first from Japan to win any major, and wouldn’t that be poetic justice for the anti-Asian violence and comments of late?

Still, except for golf purists, it doesn’t compare with anything involving Woods.

Matsuyama might get the cover of a golf journal; in an earlier time (say, five years ago before the magazine changed), even the cover of Sports Illustrated. Tiger, on course or off, gets everything.

Woods is no mere sporting hero, he’s an A-list celebrity. If only just for one of the most famous single names in the world. People who don’t know an unplayable lie from a politician’s lie know Tiger.

What none of us knows at the moment is why Woods went public with the crash investigation results, but in the end the choice may be beneficial to Woods and as a warning to others.

The determination was that Woods was driving too fast. Way too fast. Something like 85 to 90 mph in a 45 mph zone in a residential area near Los Angeles.

Woods always pushed the limits, wherever and whatever, channeling his late father, Earl, a Green Beret. Tiger skydived, bungee-jumped, went through military training.

Although not quite the same, he took his chances in golf, going for the green instead of laying up. That Tiger would step on the gas would not be unexpected.

Woods’ nature was never to ease up. He won the 2008 US Open at Torrey Pines despite playing with a virtual broken leg that caused him to wince with pain after a swing. He never conceded, to his body or to other competitors.

The Genesis SUV that Tiger was driving hit the center divider and rolled several times. He was critically injured and after first going to a medical facility in southern California is now recovering at home in Florida.

USA Today is covering the Masters, if not quite with the urgency and depth it has covered Tiger — hiring forensic analysts who criticized the conclusions of the L.A. County Sheriff’s report.

Controversy sells, we’re told. But if Matsuyama holds the lead in the Masters, there should be no controversy.

He will have earned the victory that in itself may not make him as famous — or infamous — as Tiger Woods.

But he’ll be a Masters champion, which should be enough.

Giants get shimmies, a big hit and a win in the home opener

SAN FRANCISCO — “The morning fog may fill the air, but I don’t care.” Yes, the words of Tony Bennett, filling the air at Oracle Park. What little fog there had been was gone on these best-of-all home openers for the Giants, who true to the last line of the song found their golden sun shining.

What a day. Orlando Cepeda and Barry Bonds were in the stands. Johnny Cueto was in a groove. Hometown guy Brandon Crawford — well, he’s from across the bay — got the big hit.

Does it get any better than this?

The Giants, climbing above .500 for the first time this very young season, defeated the Colorado Rockies, 3-1, in a game as well played and as enjoyable as any since the last time there were fans in the seats at Oracle Park.

That was the year Cueto returned from shoulder surgery, and this game for Cueto, with his shimmies and dreadlocks flying, was his best game since. He got within one out of a complete game, holding firm the first time manager Gabe Kapler came out with the apparent intent to relieve him.

Kapler, booed by virtually everybody in the crowd of 7,390 — if good naturedly — didn’t take out Cueto the first time, the fans chanting “Johnny, Johnny,” but then did, if reluctantly.

“He pitched his best game I’ve seen,” said Kapler. “He mixed things up.”

His normal procedure is to shake things up. “I like to entertain,” said Cueto through a translator.

Going four innings without allowing a hit and in the end striking out seven will entertain most managers. Even those of opposing clubs.

"He's a great competitor, first of all,” Bud Black, the Rockies manager, said of Cueto. “He's passed the time with success, and I do think there's a little bit of an entertainer aspect to Johnny, and I think that's a good thing, because he backs it up."

Cueto, Crawford and Brandon Belt, who didn’t play, supposedly are in their last season with a Giants team trying to build for the future. But Crawford certainly seems to be a keeper for awhile.

He and Buster Posey get the cheers from fans still appreciative of contributions to the Giants’ three World Series championships. Posey, of course, opted out of the shortened Covid-19 season of 2020, after adopting babies, so he’s getting recognition that was somewhat overdue.

And after the response Thursday, Posey had a single.

"He deserves all that support, he's meant so much to the city, this franchise, the players that are on the team right now," Kapler said. "I certainly love when he gets that level of respect.”

Crawford’s family was at the game, the first in two years to which fans have been permitted. Then he gets the deciding hit with his family in the ballpark.

“It was definitely special,” said the shortstop. “Just being out there, just being back at home. Being able to get the big hit in a situation was a lot of fun.

“The crowd was loud, louder than the number of fans who were announced.”

Why not? Giants fans, waiting to be involved in the fun of cheering and booing — if in an unusual circumstance — were watching good baseball.

For Crawford, it was fun backing Cueto. “He did such a good job of keeping them off balance,” Crawford said about the pitcher. “His timing was great.”

So, too, was the timing of the Giants. Over the years, even the title years, they dropped the home opener. But Thursday, returning from the void and the vaccinations, from the lonely season, the Giants won.

Just as scripted and as hoped.

Masters success still elusive for Rory; he shoots a 76

Sam Snead won 82 pro golf tournaments, more than Jack Nicklaus, more than Gary Player. More than anyone except Tiger Woods, who also has 82 victories.

But Snead never won the U.S. Open, and that bothered him until his final days.

The four majors, the tournaments we remember, the ones we remember. Or in the case of Snead, choose not to forget. Snead won three of the four, as did Arnold Palmer and Phil Mickelson.

Rory McIlroy also has three. He lacks the Masters, and although Rory is skilled enough, and days from his 32nd birthday young enough, it is legitimate to wonder if that shortcoming can be conquered.

Not only because of what McIlroy shot Thursday in the opening round of the 2021 Masters, a 4-over-par 76 that left him 11 shots behind Justin Rose, whose play at Augusta National of late has been as exciting as McIlroy’s has been discouraging, but because McIlroy seems perplexed by what continues to happen year after year — from heartbreak (that collapse in 2011 when he shot 40 the back nine) to humor (on Thursday he hit his own father in the small gallery with an approach shot to the seventh green).

“Obviously there have been a few rounds where I’ve put myself behind the 8-ball, not being able to get any momentum,” McIlroy said Tuesday when asked to describe his relationship with a course that should fit his game.

“But they all are learning lessons, and you just try to go out next time and do a little better.”

What he did the first day here was par the first four holes, then bogey the next three. You win at Augusta by making birdies, and McIlroy had only two on 8 and 15, both par-5s. Yes, the greens were hard and slick, and the wind was blowing, but you’re talking about a young man who has been No. 1 in the world rankings.

“It was tricky,” said McIlroy. Not so tricky, one must remark, that Rose couldn’t shoot 65, even though he was 2 over par after seven holes.

Surely there’s a zone of comfort — in 2017, Rose tied Sergio Garcia for first and lost in a playoff — or a zone of discomfort. Ten years on, what befell McIlroy remains the stuff of nightmares.

Tied for first with the final nine holes to go, McIlroy yanked his drive from the 10th tee so far left the ball nearly smacked into one of those buildings Augusta calls cabins and took a triple bogey. He followed that with a four-putt double bogey at 12. A final score of 80 dropped him into 15th.

Other majors, the U.S. Open, the PGA, the British, rotate among several courses. The Masters goes nowhere. It’s always at Augusta National, and so are the memories and agonies.

The Masters is back. So is Rory. So are the same questions.

Sort of golf’s version of the film Groundhog Day. Say, Rory, can we talk about where the ball landed at 10?

What McIlroy discussed after his round Thursday was everything from plunking his dad down at the seventh to the instructor with whom he once worked and again is providing assistance, Pete Cowen.

“My goal is to play well,” said McIlroy, “at least give myself a chance. Honestly, I’m quite encouraged the way I hit it on the way in. I think anytime you’re working with things on your swing it’s going to feel different.”

His father? “I knew it was my dad when I was aiming at him,” McIlroy said. “Give him an autographed glove? I don’t know. He needs to go and put some ice on it. Maybe I’ll autograph a bag of frozen peas.”

For A’s, ‘just another game’ is a special one

OAKLAND — Just another game. That’s what the A’s implied, if they didn’t say it specifically.

Just another game, when they’ve opened the season with an historical losing streak.

Just another game, when the media is emphasizing everything that’s negative while ignoring anything that’s positive.

Nobody’s panicking. Or so they told us. What we told them was the Oakland A’s never had started a year as poorly as they started this one, going way back to the beginning of the 20th century, dropping each of their first six.

This is baseball, someone said. Even the best team, the World Series champion, loses 50 games, maybe 60. Things go wrong. Then they go well.

They finally went well for the A’s on Wednesday, Oakland coming back first to tie the Los Angeles Dodgers and then beat L.A., 4-3, in 10 innings on Mitch Moreland’s hit that brought home Mark Canha.

Sure, the A’s dugout emptied, teammates racing to surround Moreland between first and second, and that 1980s hit “Celebration” by Kool & the Gang, a theme song from the winning past, boomed from the loudspeakers. But that was about it.  

Ballplayers, managers, look at the big picture. Once I confronted Tom Lasorda, when the Dodgers lost their first two games on the schedule, and he was almost indignant.

“Didn’t you think we were going to lose two games this year?” was Lasorda’s rhetorical response. Of course, but not before you hadn’t won any. And who thought the A’s, a playoff team last season, would lose six before they won any?

“Obviously, we’ve been needing that one,” agreed Moreland, “kind of waiting on it.” Obviously.

And it wasn’t just how many the A’s lost, it was how.

First came the Houston Astros, with one rout after another, and all at the Coliseum, where before 8,131 fans Oakland got its victory.

During the seven games, the A’s were outscored 44-17.

That they got a split in the last two is amazing in a way, facing Cy Young Award winners back to back, Clayton Kershaw on Tuesday and new Dodger Trevor Bauer on Wednesday. Bauer couldn’t hold a two-run lead.

A’s manager Bob Melvin seemed somewhat unemotional about ending the losing streak that was beginning the 2021 season, pointing out he was relieved. You’d have thought his choice of words would more likely have been ecstatic.

But you know the oft-repeated advice: Don’t get too high when you win or too low when you lose. Apparently that holds even when you’re getting pounded.

What impressed Melvin was the way A’s starter Jesus Luzardo made it through a first inning when he threw 35 pitches and only gave up one run.

“You never want to go through a six-game losing streak, but to start the season it’s tough,” said Melvin. “Jesús, after having to deal with what he did in the first inning, to get us as far as he did was fantastic. That’s really kind of taking it to another gear.”

Strange, you might say, that during the regular schedule the American League A’s play the National League Dodgers even before L.A. faces its longtime NL rival, the Giants. But nothing seems to make sense in sports any more, in part because of Covid-19.

Baseball wants regional matchups as much as possible to reduce cross-country travel.

Besides, the Dodgers, finally champions, have fans in every city, National League or American. Maybe a third of the spectators at the Coliseum on Wednesday wore Dodgers attire.

A’s fans are more vocal than visual, continually chanting “Let’s go Oakland.” The team at last responded.

“I think over the past six games, we all just got tired of getting our ass kicked, to be honest with you,” Luzardo said. “And after the first, it was just internally, I’m done with it. I’m done getting embarrassed.”

Just another game but a long-awaited one, a victory.

A’s baseball: Fans and nostalgia

OAKLAND — So much joy, the return of baseball. “Baseball reminds us what was good,” James Earl Jones said in “Field of Dreams.”   

A grandiose contention, although not an unacceptable one.

So much nostalgia, those A’s Hall of Famers, whose names — Reggie Jackson, Rickey Henderson, Dennis Eckersley, Rollie Fingers, Catfish Hunter — are painted in yellow on the green tarp that covers so many bleacher seats.

So much sadness, reminders of onetime A’s players or staff personnel, from public address announcer Dick Callahan to Don Sutton to Joe Morgan to Lew Krause to Angel Mangual, all of whom died in the past few months.

Baseball, a constant in a changing America. So said Jones’ character, using poetic license, as written by W.P. Kinsella.

Sure, it’s still 90 feet between bases — the nearest man has come to perfection, or so said Red Smith. It’s still three strikes you’re out.

But as this baseball season of 2021 began with a game Thursday at Yankee Stadium and continued until Thursday night at Oakland Coliseum, so much was different — on the diamond, where too often it’s a home run or strikeout, or off, where we’re governed by measures of health.

At Oakland, impatient fans who couldn’t wait to see a baseball game in person for the first time in a year and a half were crowded outside the south end of the old stadium, while impatient people waiting for a Covid-19 vaccination were crowded at the north end.

Nobody seemed unhappy. You might say they were hoping for the best shot. Shot attendance was not announced.

The ballplayers wanted spectators. “The more the better,” said A’s manager Bob Melvin. “The fans make baseball.”

Or make a show of it, as opposed to a mere game. The passion is real and vocal. The drums pounded at the Coliseum.

We knew we were at a genuine, cover-your-ears ballgame when the crowd, small as it might have been, 10,436, booed the Astros during pre-game introductions. Yes, I forgot another constant: Disliking a team accused of cheating.

Another change is behind a microphone. The A’s have added Amelia Schimmel, who becomes the third female public address announcer in the majors. Melvin said Schimmel is terrific. If she could throw the sinker, he might be more enthralled.

Nobody knows what’s on the horizon, but the A’s, who made it again to the playoffs in the truncated 2020 season, only to fall to the Astros, should be as terrific as their public address announcer.

Matt Chapman has escaped his injuries and his woes — ”The mental is tougher,” he said — and although exhibition isn’t the real thing, Chapman had a great Cactus League.

“They predict us to win like 81 games, which is absurd,” said Chapman shortly before the first pitch. “But that’s their opinion.

“I am not constantly checking those things (the various forecasts), but I pay attention. I see those things. I don’t value them too much because I don’t agree with their opinions.”

The A’s, with Chapman struggling, last year won their first American League West title since 2013, and they've reached the postseason in each of the previous three years.

However, Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA projections have Oakland finishing with 82.6 wins on average in simulations, which would put the club third in the division standings behind the Angels and Astros. 

Then again nothing is certain, which is part of the fun. Along with booing the Astros.

“We like our depth,” said Melvin. “Losing Chapman last year hurt us, but he’s back.”

So is baseball with fans.

Jets' pick of Darnold should make 49ers wary of a QB

The safest quarterback prospect in the draft. That was the observation in a New York daily about Sam Darnold, on the day he was taken by the Jets in April 2018. “The Darnold era has begun,” said the story.

That it may end prematurely is a reminder and a warning.

The Jets traded up in that draft to get the No. 3 overall selection, to get the man they wanted — “the arm, the legs and temperament to be a franchise quarterback.”

Three years later, amid much glee and explanation, it is the San Francisco 49ers who have traded up to the No. 3 overall selection to get, well, we learn in April, but presumably a quarterback. Depending on who is available, it might be Zach Wilson of BYU, Justin Fields of Ohio State, Trey Lance of North Dakota State or Mac Jones of Alabama.

The chosen individual — dare we designate him as a “franchise quarterback”? — will be expected to lead the Niners to the Super Bowl. Which, two seasons past, Jimmy Garoppolo did. That was so long ago, and in the NFL, there’s nothing constant except change.

Other than Tom Brady, of course, and he was a sixth-round pick and at age 43 still brilliant. So much for probability.

If nothing else, and when the situation involves the 49ers there’s always something else, the trade for that No. 3 overall selection has put the team back in the Bay Area headlines, in front of the Warriors and, even though the season is about to begin, in front of baseball.

Where, with all the speculation about who will be their pick and probably their star, the Niners will stay for months, if not forever. 

The new guy will be labeled the “next Joe Montana,” naturally because he was not only the franchise QB but through adulation dubbed “St. Joe.”

But what if he doesn’t become a champion, much less another sporting saint? There are no guarantees.

Darnold has been less than hoped for. Talk continues that he might be traded. It’s been awhile since Ryan Leaf was the No. 2 overall pick and maybe the No. 1 overall bust. And only weeks ago, the Rams gave up on Jared Goff, No. 1 overall in 2016, and traded him to the Detroit Lions for Matthew Stafford.

Owners are impatient, not to mention oil-sheik wealthy. This makes general managers impatient. This makes coaches impatient. This makes players uncomfortable. Just don’t look over your shoulder — unless you’re about to be sacked.

The Niners’ GM John Lynch and head coach Kyle Shanahan were looking ahead after looking around. All those other teams, excluding Tampa Bay and Brady, had young first-round picks at QB: Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Goff.  

Garoppolo is out again? Have to move. Now.

“You hope to be competing, to get into the playoffs every single year, which is the ultimate goal,” said Shanahan, Niners coach for a fifth season.

“The more you look at this league. especially our four years here, it’s hard to succeed when your starting quarterback doesn’t stay healthy,” emphasized Shanahan. “He’s played at a very high level when he’s played.”

When he hasn’t played, the idea to develop a replacement for Jimmy G. became a necessity. And surely that replacement had to be developed from a prospect who will be a high pick in the coming draft.

When you trade away first-round choices, you’re thinking less of what you never had than what you will have, a player on the roster. How can you lose what you never had? 

The Niners, the way the team was built, seemingly believed they lost games they should have won. A quarterback could change that. If he’s not the wrong one.

Elgin Baylor lifted basketball from the floor to the skies

They say his first name came from the brand of watch his mother wore when Elgin Baylor was born. Where his talent came from, only the gods would know.

If you never saw Elgin Baylor on a basketball court, well, he was LeBron James before LeBron James.

They say Baylor, who died Monday at 86, was the first superstar in Los Angeles. Maybe in basketball, although there were football players named Jon Arnett and Bob Waterfield who were very great.

Besides, in the fall of 1960, when Baylor arrived in L.A. along with the former Minneapolis Lakers, the team had a rookie named Jerry West, who not only became quite super but whose profile, dribbling, was adopted as the logo of the NBA.

Baylor changed basketball the way his successors, Michael Jordan and James, would later change it in their own way, with moves that few could make. He was 6-foot-5 and looked like a linebacker but played like a gazelle.

He lifted the game from the floor to the skies.

His style was unique. That term by the late Lakers announcer Chick Hearn, “yo-yo-ing the dribble,” that was a perfect description of the manner in which Baylor handled the basketball.

At times, as he thundered down the court, it almost seemed to be attached to a string.

He loved needling the media or giving nicknames. Elgin was the one who called West ”Zeke from Cabin Creek,” which if rhythmically pleasing was not accurate, since West was from another town in West Virginia.

The Soviet Union invaded Berlin in 1961, and Baylor went into the Army Reserves as a private first class. In the spring of ’62, the Lakers faced the Celtics in the finals. Baylor was allowed to play. 

Out of one uniform, the military’s, and into another, the Lakers’, Baylor scored a then-postseason record 62 points. The lead from the Associated Press started, “PFC Elgin Baylor, the Los Angeles Lakers’ one-man army…”

But the Lakers didn’t win the championship that year, or any year, until 1982, after Baylor had retired and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson were in the lineup.

In battle or in basketball, it’s not easy for one-man armies.

Baylor grew up in Washington, D.C. He crossed the country to stay and play briefly and successfully at Seattle U., and then College of Idaho. He wasn’t much of a student, but he was a hell of a basketball player.

The NBA wasn’t what it became. Television was minimal. So were salaries.

The Lakers, shifting west, played before crowds of about 5,000 some games at the Los Angeles Sports Arena. Fans in Southern California were unfamiliar with the league. Jerry West lived in a modest home in Venice. Elgin Baylor was full of wisecracks but not himself.

I was with United Press International and would cover some Lakers practices where Baylor, looking for an easy mark, would bet me — a dime or a quarter, since sportswriters’ salaries were even more minimal than those of rookies — that he could make at least two of five shooting back over his head.

The game was well, a game, yet to become the towering international business of a half-century later. The Lakers finally captured the public’s imagination in April 1962 when they upended the St. Louis Hawks in the semis.

There was a digital crowd counter under the roof of the L.A. Sports Arena, so just as you knew how many Baylor and West had scored. you knew how many fans had seen them score.

Or for Elgin, seen him soar.

Baylor was voted into the NBA Hall of Fame. But not until a few years ago was a statue in his honor erected alongside Staples Center, now the Lakers’ home court.

A fantastic player. A fine human being. Hard to beat that combination. And it was hard to beat Elgin Baylor when he bet he could hit those half-court shots.

Low-cost A’s pound high-cost Angels; raise a glass

TEMPE, Ariz. — The advertising on the outfield fences at Cactus League games seems divided between gambling and alcohol.

At Tempe Diablo Stadium, where the A’s played the Angels on Saturday, the boards offered Bulleit Bourbon, Bud Light and Corona Premier. In the other category was Casino Arizona and Pechanga Resort.

Did someone say, take a chance and then take a drink?

The contrast between the franchises on display this beautiful afternoon, the first two American League clubs west of the Mississippi, was fascinating. And maybe instructional.

One spends huge amounts of money. The other spends huge amounts of time explaining why it doesn’t have money to spend — and still has been competitive.

The Angels started in 1961, from scratch, baseball’s original post-World War II expansion club. The A’s moved to Oakland from Kansas City in 1968, succeeding on the field but never at the gate — or, so far, in attempts to flee the Oakland Coliseum and build a new stadium.

It is an undeniable fact, not to mention a sad one, that many of the spring training locales down here, including the A’s facility, Hohokam Stadium in Mesa, are better than the Coliseum. Still is. The Angels have the highest paid player in the game, Mike Trout with a $426 million contract.

He was 0-for-2 on Saturday in the A’s 11-2 win, not that his plate appearances or the final score mean much. Still, if a game is going to be one-sided, even in exhibition play, a team and its manager would be much more satisfied with a victory. A’s manager Bob Melvin was.

The contrast between the teams is remarkable and maybe instructional. The Angels, in their bright red jerseys, have gone to the bank, not only for Trout, arguably baseball’s best player, but for others such as Albert Pujols.

It’s 230 miles or so from Tempe to Anaheim, where the Angels, trying to con the geographers, play under the label “Los Angeles.” In the spring of 2012, right after the acquisition of Pujols, there were billboards announcing as much along I-10, the main route through the desert.

The A’s either wouldn’t or couldn’t keep their great shortstop, Marcus Semien, who joined Toronto for deserved money. So the A’s traded for Elvis Andrus, who Melvin said not only can hit and field but is a presence in the clubhouse with his personality and experience.

No billboards along the freeway in his honor, however. If anyone on the A’s deserves one after Saturday, it is Matt Olson. Yes, his ball soars in Arizona, and yes, the pitching isn’t what it will be.

But Olson hit a ball that almost took out a palm tree, his fifth home run and ninth extra base hit of the Cactus League. The only way out could have been more impressive is if it took apart a saguaro, the cactus that’s protected by Arizona law.

“I’ve gotten to a couple of pitches early that I wasn’t handling well last year,” Olson said. “It’s good to get out here and see those results in live action and get the barrel on some pitches.”

Teammates are encouraged, particularly those who benefit, the pitching staff.

“A healthy Matt Olson is frightening for the league,” said Chris Bassitt, who started and pitched 3 2/3 scoreless innings. Home runs are awesome, and the A’s did hit a great many in 2020, but it all comes down to pitching.

If you can hold a team scoreless in the Cactus League, especially with people named Trout and Pujols in the other lineup, you’d be owed the products that are on the billboards.

For Giants, blue skies and green hats

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — This was at spring training a few years ago. The Giants had lost seven games in succession, almost a quarter of their Cactus League schedule, and a sports columnist (blush) asked Bruce Bochy, then the manager, if the streak bothered him.

“Only when you ask me about it,” was his virtual shrug of a reply. To the guys in uniform and usually in the front office, the games are what they’re listed as, exhibitions.

The fans in the ballparks, few as they might be in these days of Covid-19 restrictions, treat the games as if they really matter, which is understandable when you’re paying $90 or more a ticket. After all, why attend if you don’t care who wins or loses? But the players and the manager approach it differently. The idea is to get in the work, to improve, perhaps to develop a new pitch. Sure, they’d like to win, which on a beautiful Wednesday afternoon at Salt River Fields — under blue skies and because of St. Patrick’s Day under green hats — is what the Giants did, beating the Colorado Rockies, 11-8.

That’s not an atypical score in the desert. Scottsdale’s elevation may be only 1,200 feet, compared to the Rockies’ Coors Field, 5,280 feet in Denver, where home runs are frequent.

Gausman, who signed a one-year, $18.9 million contract over the winter, threw 48 pitches in his starter-relief combo, allowing three runs — only one earned, and the Giants’ sloppy fielding does have manager Gabe Kapler concerned — unlike, we’re told, the hip that has benched Buster Posey or the spinal ailment affecting pitcher Chris Shaw.

There’s certainly a gap between the Giants and the World Series champion Dodgers, who are pounding balls hither and yon at their Camelback Ranch facility, near Glendale, but Kapler at least has implied his team will have strong pitching.

Just as a matter of history, you note how the baseball world, at least, has done a 180. It was the Giants with Mays, McCovey and Cepeda, who had the offensive numbers, and the Dodgers with Koufax and Drysdale who had the superb pitching.

While hardly Hall of Famers, the Giants’ pitchers now should — or is that could? — be decent, which is all you can hope for on a team that’s rebuilding.

After his divided routine Wednesday (didn’t we used to bring pitchers back in playground softball games?) Gausman was asked what he thought about possibly being called on to start Opening Day against the Mariners.

“Obviously, it would be a huge honor,” Gausman said. “Any of the first five games and being one of those top five guys. But yeah, it would be a lot of fun, for sure.”

Of starting and relieving in the same exhibition game, Gausman admitted, “Obviously, it’s not the traditional way, but I actually think it’s pretty awesome for the starting pitchers. The whole thing is to get used to the up-downs and get your three, four (innings}.”

Maybe the Giants didn’t get too excited about homers, but on Monday night Evan Longoria hit two, and Brandon Crawford hit one. The hints are that those two, veterans from another era, may not be part of the future.

An outfielder who may be, Austin Slater, had a double and an RBI. He’s part of the new Giants. That group is headed by Mike Yastrzemski, who not only arguably is the team’s best player but is credited by rookie Heliot Ramos with helping him learn. Ramos temporarily avoided getting sent to the minors.

Even the top kids need time. And work, which of course, as you know, is why spring training exists.

Sunshine and thrills return to Arizona spring training

MESA, Ariz. — This was more like it. Sunshine, a great leaping catch, excellent pitching, and nearly 2,000 extremely partisan and extremely noisy fans.

True, there was only one run scored — and it wasn’t by the A’s — but let’s not get too picky.

Maybe the change had something to do with the arrival of Daylight Savings Time, not that here in Arizona the idea would ever have a chance of going into effect. Or maybe it’s the undeniable fact that the baseball regular season is only two weeks away.

Whatever, on Sunday in a Chicago White Sox 1-0 win over the A’s (Matt Reynolds led off the eighth with a home run) there was a complete difference in atmosphere, attendance and weather compared with 24 hours earlier and 10 miles away at Saturday’s Giants-Indians game in Scottsdale.

Suddenly it felt like spring training. Suddenly it felt like we should care once more.

Every city in the desert, Phoenix, Tempe, Goodyear, Scottsdale, has different policies regarding the response to Covid-19. And yes, Hohokam Stadium is marginally larger than Scottsdale Stadium.

And yes, A’s fans are more vocal than Giants fans, who the late Robin Williams — seen occasionally at what now is Oracle Park — said paid more attention to what was on their cell phones than what was on the ball field.

An announcement from A’s headquarters in Oakland on Sunday morning said the franchise would accept payment for season-ticket suites in Bitcoin. By late afternoon, the only thing A’s fans were willing to buy was a run.

Oakland was limited to two hits, a single in the second by Stephen Piscotty and then finally another single in the eighth by Tyler Soderstrom, the No. 1 draft pick last year.

Hard to win a game when you don’t score, but Oakland manager Bob Melvin was more excited by the positive — the performance of starter Frankie Montas — than the negative.

He and everyone else were thrilled by the way the A’s Buddy Reed soared above the center field fence in the fourth to steal an apparent home run from the American League MVP, Jose Abreu.

There’s an advertising sign at Hohokam just to the right of center, white on blue, that reads,”Baseballism, bet you can’t say it five times fast.”  Especially wearing the mask that is mandatory. You can’t even get on the elevator to the press box without a face covering.

What the A’s haven’t been able to do is get deep into the postseason. A full complement of healthy pitchers may be the step needed to get them there. So what Frankie Montas did Sunday on the mound arguably was more significant than what Oakland batters couldn’t do at the plate.

Montas had a late beginning to spring training because he had been stricken with Covid-19. Although not ready for camp until a week ago, he pitched well Sunday in his first start, shutting out the White Sox for three innings — that’s quite a distance when you haven’t pitched. He struck out two, including Abreu, and reached 99 mph with his sinker.

What sunk the A’s in the exhibition on Sunday, of course, is that their batters were even less effective against Chicago than Chicago batters were against Montas.

Still, you win or lose on pitching, say the experts — hey, didn’t the Yankees pay $324 million to Gerrit Cole? — so the pennant race in effect is an arms race. The more the better.

Said Melvin, “Velo was there,” alluding to Montas’ velocity, “breaking stuff was there. After a slow start getting here, it was nice to see.”

So was a game in the sunshine and with just enough boisterous A’s fans to remind us of spring training as we once knew it.

Empty seats in a Cactus League without joy

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The day was as gray as a road uniform. At least a uniform before baseball jerseys became a swarm of red, blue or, in the case of the San Francisco Giants, black.

It’s been cold in Arizona, and two days ago it was wet, rain. The weather forecast is for better days before the weekend, however, temperatures in the high 70s. 

Maybe life will feel more like what we knew as normal.

It still doesn’t feel that way down here, even with balls flying off bats or thudding into gloves. Roger Angell wrote about the sounds of baseball, the conversations in the stands, the cheers. In the first two weeks of Cactus League, it’s mostly been the sounds of silence.

The game, as everything else, remains haunted by the virus. Restrictions persist; attendance for the Giants’ 5-4 win over Cleveland Friday at 10,000-seat Scottsdale Stadium was only 1.507.

People want to go, want to talk, want to cheer, but they can’t. Tickets were going for $100, but few were available. “It was dead in the stands,” said one woman able to attend. “It wasn’t any fun.”

For the players and management, fun is incidental. The purpose of the exhibition season, the Cactus League here in the desert — places like Scottsdale and Mesa, Goodyear and Surprise — and the Grapefruit League in Florida is to prepare for the regular season.

For the fans, exhibition games are a time to escape winter and connect again to the joys of baseball, to buy a beer or a Coke or a hot dog.  But there were no roving vendors at Scottsdale, no programs, no souvenirs.

There’s not much joy in a ballpark when most of the seats are empty.

Until this year, only catchers wore masks; now everybody must wear one, of course, and be socially distant. How can you argue Mays vs. Mantle with the guy next to you when there’s nobody next to you?

There’s no argument about the performance of Logan Webb, who started for the Giants on Friday against Cleveland in that chilly, lonely ballpark. He struck out six, including four in the first inning; a passed ball by Buster Posey after one of the strikeouts in effect giving Cleveland the ”extra” out.

Is pitching ahead of hitting in spring, or vice versa? Whatever, Webb was incredibly sharp for a Giants team in need of pitching. When asked if that was as good as he’s seen Webb, Giants manger Gabe Kapler said, “He was doing exactly what he needs to be doing, using his secondary weapons.

“It’s as good as I’ve ever seen his changeup look. I don’t want to overdo it here, but he’s been really impressive in this camp.”

Posey was one of the few recognizable names in the Giants’ starting lineup. Another was Austin Slater, who hit a three-run homer as the Giants built up a 4-0 lead. Then it was a home run by Curt Casali that was the winner after the Indians tied it up.

If the Giants’ batting order seems confused, that’s because it is. Brandon Belt still hasn’t played. He underwent heel surgery; then was stricken with the coronavirus; then while recovering from that, Belt was hit with mononucleosis.

“I tested positive (in January),” Belt said. “I didn’t have any symptoms at first until I reached the end of my quarantine when I was working out, I started feeling really winded, really lightheaded, really dizzy and lost all energy after about 10 minutes of working out.”

As soon as Belt started to feel better, he was diagnosed with mono.

“I had to deal with (COVID-19 symptoms) for about three to four weeks,” Belt said. “And right at the end of that three to four weeks is when I got mono. All of that kind of came together and I got hit pretty hard.”

There had been suggestions this might be the final season for the 32-year-old. Now you wonder if he’ll make it that far, although not in Belt’s mind.

“Now I feel pretty dang good, and every couple of days I’m taking huge jumps forward,” he said. “I feel like I’m pretty close to getting back to normal. It was a long ordeal, obviously wasn’t that fun, but right now I feel like I’m getting back on track.”

You would hope we could say the same for baseball.

If Pats get Garoppolo, who plays QB for Niners?

So the New England Patriots would like to have Jimmy Garoppolo as their quarterback, according to a Boston journalist — as if any journalist knows what he’s writing or talking about — and that leaves us with one question.

Who would play quarterback for the 49ers, the team to which Garoppolo now is under contract?

It certainly won’t be Dak Prescott, who on Tuesday re-signed with the Dallas Cowboys for four years and a mere $160 million.

Or Russell Wilson, desperate to escape Seattle, which apparently no longer trusts in his capability but did not list the Niners among the teams he finds acceptable.

Or Aaron Rodgers, now that management at Green Bay has given him the ringing endorsement he deserves.

These are days of instability and outrageous dreams in the NFL, particularly when it comes to quarterbacks, whom we know — despite homilies to the contrary — are the most important guys in the offensive lineup.

Consider the Patriots with Tom Brady. Six Super Bowl victories. Consider the Patriots without Tom Brady. So awful that, if we believe Greg Bredard of the Boston Sports Journal, the Pats want Jimmy.

Who was drafted by them in 2014 with the idea of him eventually becoming Brady’s replacement; who was traded to the 49ers after a few games in 2017 when it became obvious Brady never would need a replacement as long as he was with New England; who led the Niners to the Super Bowl in 2019; who was out much of 2020 with a leg injury, bringing about demands for a change; who now is a target of the Patriots to fill the role for which he first was labeled, Brady’s successor. 

The only things certain at the moment are the Patriots, ineffective in 2020 with Cam Newton botching up the position, do not have a quarterback; and the 49ers, with two years remaining on Garoppolo’s five-year, $137.5 million contract, do have one.

Is it the one they prefer? Well, the Niners insist Garoppolo is their man. That means he is. Until he isn’t.

“Do I believe 49ers general manager John Lynch when he claims that Garoppolo will be his starter in 2021? Of course not,” NFL insider Michael Lombardi recently wrote in The Athletic.

“They are too active, too aggressive to run it back one more year with someone they don’t have complete trust in.”

The 49ers have called the Panthers about Teddy Bridgewater, according to The Athletic, another sign they’re looking for a new quarterback.

Two of the four teams in the Niners’ division, the NFC West, have either obtained a new quarterback for 2021 (the Rams trading for Matthew Stafford) or will need to obtain one (the Seahawks, mentioned above).

The Rams had Jared Goff, the overall No. 1 pick in the 2016 draft who led them to the Super Bowl in 2018. Such a wonderful future. Or so it seemed. A few bad plays, and, voila, Goff was sent to the Lions for Stafford — who has played in one Super Bowl fewer than Garoppolo. None.

And five fewer than Joe Montana, against whom everyone from now until forever any 49ers quarterback will be rated.

Joe often was hesitant to give opinions when he played, but now, out of the game, his status quite safe, he is more outspoken.

“You know the biggest question on everybody’s mind is Garoppolo, and can they keep him healthy,” Montana told Can Inman, the longtime Niners writer for the San Jose Mercury News.

“Obviously they’re a better team when he’s playing, but who knows what goes in those guys’ minds?”

What goes is to employ a quarterback who wins games, maybe directs his team to the Super Bowl.

As Garoppolo did two years ago. And as the Patriots are well aware.