Can the Giants get Ohtani?

It’s not an issue of money. At least that’s the word from the San Francisco Giants. They have plenty. What they lack is a team that makes the postseason and draws national attention.

Unlike the Los Angeles Dodgers, who as the Giants (and so many other teams), are actively pursuing the most attractive of free agents, Shohei Ohtani.

The major league general managers convened a few days ago in Scottsdale, Arizona, which happens to be where the Giants home for spring training. And, what else, they were pestered about the big guy who hits home runs and throws fastballs (or did until elbow surgery).

 So this was headlined in the Los Angeles Times: “The Dodgers want Shohei Ohtani. But how far will they go in a potential bidding war?”

And this was the headline in the San Francisco Chronicle: “Giants preparing for full-court press on free-agent superstar Shohei Ohtani.”

You would guess (and hope if you’re one of the frustrated souls who does little but chant, “Beat L.A.”) that in this competition the Giants have the edge. But the history of free agency has not been favorable for the Giants, or has everyone forgotten the recent saga of Aaron Judge?

A Northern Californian, Judge stopped by for a moment or two and then (sigh) re-signed with his former team, the New York Yankees.

Ohtani, now 29, is not a one-man team. But he was close, a unanimous American League MVP in 2021, and a pitcher who could (should?) have been a Cy Young Award winner.

Maybe more than the statistics he produces as a two-way sensation for the Los Angeles Angels is the excitement—and fans—he has brought to the American sport since arriving from Japan in 2017.  

He has helped make what was known as “America’s Pastime,” into an international attraction. In Japan he’s God. In the U.S. he’s a hero, arguably the best two-way player since Babe Ruth, who you may not remember began as a pitcher and then became “The Sultan of Swat.”

Ruth, as the story goes, was asked in the early 1920s, if he deserved to be earning more money than President Herbert Hoover and answered, “Why not? I had a better year.” 

In a matter of days, Shohei Otani, about to be offered a contract that may be as huge as $400 million a season, will be earning more than anyone in the history of baseball.

After several seasons with the Angels, Ohtani may prefer to remain in southern California, meaning going to the Dodgers. Or maybe he can be persuaded to head north to the Giants.

Ohtani in 2023 batted .304 and led the American League with 44 home runs. His pitching ended with the injury. His appeal, however, is unending.

That all goes into the thinking of the Giants and the Dodgers.

“We’ve got a good amount of payroll flexibility,” said Giants’ president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi. “So anybody we think can be an impact player, even on a long-term deal, we’re going to be looking at.”

In free agency looking is fine. Signing is essential.

Sharks season even worse than the A’s

The San Jose Sharks, a hockey team, reportedly, are doing what seemed impossible — having a worse season than the Oakland Athletics, a baseball team, reportedly.

Different sports, but similar ineptitude. Must be something in the Bay Area water. Or considering the number of vineyards, the wine.

The A’s had the worst record in the game in 2023. The Sharks very well may end up with the worst record in NHL history. There still is a question because the hockey season still has weeks and weeks to go.

Unfortunately, perhaps.

As of November 7, Tuesday, the Sharks had played 11 games and haven only won a single one. They also have a tie. As if that matters. 

The only thing that does matter is getting more goals (or runs) than the opponent. So far that’s been a hopeless task for the Sharks, as most of the  spring and summer it was for the A’s

Twice the Sharks have given up 10 goals in a game. Yikes.   

The two franchises ended up in similarly dire straits for the most obvious of reasons, a notable lack of playing talent, their rosters depleted and their fans deprived  

The Sharks found it necessary to rebuild, trading among others Eri  Karlsson (Norris Trophy winner as the league’s best defenseman) for younger players.   

The A’s trick was to go after cheaper players, telling us they couldn’t compete financially—and then (snigger, snigger) announcing they were going to shift the team to Las Vegas. 

The Sharks aren’t going anywhere, literally as well as figuratively. They’ll be a San Jose for a long while, whether their once-loyal fans will be is the issue.

In the last few years, attendance at SAP Center has declined.  

The Sharks were wildly popular, as San Jose’s own, they were the local product of a city seeking its own sporting identity. However, they were often put in the shade by the burg up the coast at 49ers games in neighboring Santa Clara TV shows and views of the Golden Gate Bridge, in San Francisco.  

San Jose is hockey territory and yet at the same time, it isn’t hockey territory like Toronto or Boston. Does a revised roster fill up the seats again?  

The A’s actually had a winning record one day into the season, but from 1-0, reality took over. A ball club peopled with prospects and suspects is doomed to tumble. 

Maybe the best part of the A’s season was the reverse boycotts staged by fans trying to persuade owner John Fisher to sell the team. Stubbornly he wouldn’t, and so he’s prepared to move.

For the Sharks and the A’s, it’s been the worst of times.

What's happened to the Raiders?

There are team owners in sports who know what they’re doing. The Golden State Warriors’ Joe Lacob is a perfect example. And then there are owners such as Mark Davis of the former Oakland Raiders.

As is evident from the way the Raiders play football. 

Mark’s late father, Al, built the team into a Super Bowl champion. But if a franchise is transferred to the next of kin because of the legal system, there’s no guarantee the qualities to make that franchise successful also will be.

Mark, who grew up in Piedmont, the tony suburb of Oakland, just surreptitiously fired another coach late Monday night, a few hours after the Raiders suffered a 26-14 defeat by the ascendant Detroit Lions.

The Raiders, explained Davis, “were heading in the wrong direction.” Which a good part of the group called Raider Nation, would point out the team began to do years ago. Literally. 

When like fugitives on the run they fled the Oakland Coliseum for, well, it’s hard to call the landscape around Las Vegas greener pastures. Only more financially beneficial ones. 

Meaning the 68-year-old Davis and his partners, who cashed in elegantly and wealthily, provided a new luxurious stadium and the upcoming Super Bowl, which, no surprise, will not include the Raiders.

Bill Walsh, the legendary 49ers coach, once told me a problem in the NFL when a team is struggling is the owners’ friends will sit near him during games and belittle the franchise. How embarrassing. 

That the Raiders’ woes with Football shown throughout the nation on ESPN’s Monday Night, was more embarrassing. What to do? What Davis did was fire head coach, Josh Mcdaniels.

And oh yeah, even though he’s still on the team, quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, late of the 49ers, has been benched. When he wasn’t injured, he was throwing interceptions.  

In the publication “Pro Football Talk” Mike Florio, a longtime observer and NFL writer, asks a very pertinent question, to which: Who is advising Mark Davis?

“Whoever Davis is listening to,” wrote Florio, “presumably had influence over what he’s done and over what he’ll do next . . . Given his track record of hires since he inherited the team he hasn’t been getting good advice, or he’s ignoring any good advice he’s gotten.”  

The advice Raider fans from an earlier era could have given was to keep the team in Oakland, where it not only was a contender but a major part of the community.

Too late for that, certainly. The Raiders are long gone, leaving only memories and an owner who flew the coop and has been unable to build a winner.

Niners can’t stop anything, and that includes losing

They seem unable to stop anything—primarily their losing streak.

The defense that was the heart and soul of the San Francisco 49ers is now clueless and unable to tackle. The season that had people repeating the precious words, “Super Bowl,” suddenly has them mumbling to themselves with phrases that other adults shouldn’t hear. Much less children.

The worst thing for the Niners and their fans, the so-called “Faithful,” may not be the how many, three straight defeats, after the 31-17 debacle against the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday at Levi’s Stadium. But the how.

They were run over, run past and run through by a team that began the game last in the NFL in offense and third from last in rushing. The Bengals finished with 400 net yards, 134 on the ground. 

The comments from 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan and his players were the typical ones you'd expect after a team that is supposed to win, according to the oddsmakers, fails to win: "We've got to play better."

Oh yes, you do. But how does that occur? Sure, some of the answers—or was it all of them?—contained the word “execution.”

That brings to mind the immortal quote from the late John McKay when he was coaching the expansion (and awful Tampa Bay Bucs). Asked after one game what he thought of their execution, McKay remarked, “I’m in favor of it.”

Nothing that severe (or comical) from the Niners postgame, but Shanahan and his crew would be in favor of stepping back to early October when they overwhelmed the Dallas Cowboys, who you may have noticed on Sunday routed the Los Angeles Rams (Lambs?) 43-20.

The NFL is full of surprises, indeed. The Broncos even defeated the Chiefs. But the issue is consistency, to play well—at least to your strength—as often as possible, to be feared by the opponent.  

Nobody fears the 49ers anymore, except maybe the men in charge of the franchise.  

There was so much worry about Brock Purdy coming out of concussion protocol and getting onto the field and into the huddle. He made it. He threw a couple of interceptions and lost a fumble, three turnovers in all.

Far from the magic he appeared to possess for the opening games, yet not being able to get yards wasn’t what doomed the 49ers. It was their inability to keep Cincinnati from getting theirs. 

So much has been written or spoken of Purdy being the last man picked in the draft of 2022. The first man picked in the 2020 draft was Joe Burrow, the Bengals quarterback, and he completed 18 straight passes at one stretch on Sunday.

How much was attributable to Burrow and how much to the 49ers’ ineffective pass defense is a matter to be contemplated. What had to sting was the Fox TV announcer borrowing the line about Joe Montana and calling Burrow “Joe Cool” especially because Montana was in attendance. 

Oh yeah, Christian McCaffrey tied the NFL record by scoring a touchdown (actually two touchdowns) in 17 consecutive games. That pleased Shanahan.

Very little else did.

“We missed a lot of tackles in the first half. “ the coach said. “The bottom line is we have to get better in every aspect.

In other words, they have to execute.

Unexpected: Melvin new Giants manager

The Warriors lost their first game, which was unexpected. The 49ers lost their last game, which was unexpected. And, oh yeah somewhere among Steph Curry and Brock Purdy, the Giants named Bob Melvin their manager. 

Which was unexpected until a few days ago when it was disclosed that Melvin was unhappy in his role as manager of the San Diego Padres.

Then things became what they are in baseball, an activity that one of its practitioners, the late, great Yogi Berra, once told us “You don’t know nothing.” Melvin was expected to be available, if not necessarily in that order.

A manager can’t get hits or throw shutouts, but he can be a hit, and that’s what the Giants, searching for their place in the Bay Area’s crowded sporting landscape, very much need.

If not as much as a home run hitter.

Bo Mel, as he’s called, knows the territory, and growing up on the Peninsula while also playing ball at Cal and no less managing Oakland Athletics to the playoffs (if never the World Series), we know him.

What we don’t know is what sort of roster he’ll have. But you presume he wouldn’t have taken the job, even for a former colleague of Giants president of baseball operations, Farhan Zaidi, with whom Mevin worked at the A’s unless changes would occur.

The Giants’ wish to sign Aaron Judge (yet another Northern Californian)  disappeared last spring, but there are other sluggers around, several on the Padres.

Maybe Melvin could help pry loose one of those high-priced players from the Padres, not that the Giants should expect help from the team that Melvin just extricated himself after a rumored strained relationship with A.J. Preller, head of baseball operations in San Diego.

Still, as everyone knows—and was verified in the two league championships that elevated the Texas Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks to the World Series—pitching wins.

The Giants have some pitching. They just need more.  

Apropos of nothing, but perhaps pertinent to everything, is the man who preceded Melvin as Padres manager in Bruce Bochy, who moved on to win three World Series for the Giants and now is in another with Texas.

San Francisco, the season of 2023 was rolling along until it mattered in September, then it tumbled from leading the wild card race to nowhere. How much that had to do with their very disciplined and analytics-based manager, Gabe Kapler being fired, is debatable.

Unless you’re Zaidi, who if only to prove he and the organization were intent on both keeping the Giants competitive and in a tough market, relevant.

Bob Melvin seems to be both the fortunate choice and the perfect one. No question he will get attention. Will he be able to get wins?

What happened to the 49ers’ defense?

There wasn’t any doubt in this one. Oh, the final score was close, but in truth, the game wasn’t. 

That 49ers team, which only two weekends ago crushed the Dallas Cowboys and had the Faithful talking Super Bowl, has gone missing.

And worse, has gone losing in two consecutive games.

It was the very mediocre Minnesota Vikings that beat San Francisco, 22-17, Monday night at US Bank Stadium. It was a very unstoppable Vikings team that destroyed what we mistakenly believed was one of the best defenses in the NFL.

A Vikings team with apparently no running game.  A Vikings team that ran and passed the Niners to oblivion.  A Vikings team that came into the game with a 2-4 record and when it constructed a lead it surprised ESPN announcer Joe Buck to the point that he said in so many words, “What’s going on here?”  

A national audience, which had been following the Niners’ 5-0 start and reading about the magic of young quarterback Brock Purdy, $170 million pass rusher Nick Bosa and scoring machine Christian McCaffrey, surely wondered the same thing.

Or maybe wondered if all the praise and expectations that surrounded the Niners was just a lot of journalistic nonsense.  

Nobody expects the Niners to go unbeaten. This isn’t 1972, and now the schedule is 17 games and there’s too much talent on every franchise. So, getting beat by the Cleveland Browns, 19-17, eight days earlier was acceptable.

This one against the Vikings wasn’t if you’re thinking about the championship.

What Niners head coach Kyle Shanahan was thinking we never might know, but what he said was, “They had one turnover, we had three turnovers. It was a five-point game, so it's almost as simple as that."

A game decided perhaps by the Vikings constantly blitzing Purdy, whose passing was 21 of 30 for 272 yards. He also threw two interceptions and was sacked once. He was under pressure from the start.

The 49ers couldn’t match that pressure. They didn’t have a chance.

What the Niners did have at one point in the second half was their largest deficit of the season, 19-7. And what they never had for the first time in any game was a lead.  

The Vikings, with the often-maligned Kirk Cousins at quarterback, had a brilliant game on offense as well as defense. Minnesota gained 452 yards, San Francisco 325.

McCaffrey, who was questionable because of an oblique injury, played and got into the end zone twice, extending his team-record touchdown streak to 16 consecutive games. But he fumbled on an early drive, and perhaps that changed the momentum of the entire game. 

Purdy made some key completions as the Niners tried to catch up, but hounded he lofted a ball that was intercepted, ending any chance for a comeback. 

“It was a tough day,” said Purdy. “The Vikings played a very smart game, and we couldn’t quite do it.”

“We can’t sit here and worry about what happened,” said Shanahan. “We have got to find a way to beat the Bengals (the Niners’ next opponent). And then we go into our bye week. We’ve got to take this like men.”

What they took was a figurative punch in the gut. Now there are questions about Purdy, and even worse, questions about the supposedly impregnable San Francisco defense.

A few days ago Shanahan told the media, referring to the defeat in Cleveland, “We haven’t had that for a while. I forgot how it felt after a loss.”

There will be no forgetting now.

Steph Curry now linked with Charlie Sifford

The great Jim Murray wrote of the barrier-breaking Charlie Sifford. “He stands as a social pioneer not because he could play politics, but because he could play golf.”

Steph Curry, as we know, can play basketball. And golf. 

And with his contributions to society and politics, if only in the most positive of ways. That Curry was given the Charlie Sifford Award by Southern Company for “Advancing Diversity in Golf,” surely would have pleased Sifford as much as it delighted Curry.

Yes, Steph still is on court, when needed. He was needed in a preseason game at Chase Center Wednesday night, hitting the game-winning 3-pointer as time expired to give the Warriors a 116-115 win over Sacramento.

The beauty of sport is that skill and talent—and hard work—transcend ethnic backgrounds. Or is supposed to. But it wasn’t that way in golf, historically a game as white as the dimpled balls placed on the tee.

Sifford grew up in a still segregated Charlotte, N.C., learning golf as a caddy. He had a short backswing but fortunately not a short fuse, patiently accepting the insults, death threats and sometimes the terrible materials hurled at him.

Sifford, who died at 92 in 2015, survived long enough to win two PGA Tour events and to be chosen for the World Golf Hall of Fame. As does Jackie Robinson, he has a place in the heart of every African American athlete. No Charlie Sifford, perhaps no Tiger Woods.

Curry, who like Sifford grew up in North Carolina, was particularly moved to be the Sifford Award winner, “to be recognized in this sport I am so passionate about.” 

His success in golf—he not only won this year’s American Century event at Lake Tahoe but also had a hole-in-one the previous round—is hardly a surprise.

Basketball players, along with hockey players, have the hand-eye coordination demanded. Michael Jordan was so good he tried to go on tour, although as he discovered there’s a gap between a low-handicap amateur and a pro.

Individuals who after a high profile celebrity event which might get them stories on the internet, usually along with advice to keep their day job. Curry certainly will, so that, although his day job is at night, in the company of Draymond Green and Klay Thompson.

Off the course and the court, Curry launched Underrated Golf in 2021, a purpose-driven endeavor with the “overarching commitment to provide equity access and opportunity to student-athletes from every community.”

At 37, Curry, his golf mostly confined until early summer next year, is astonished by the opportunity of one more NBA championship, adding to the four he has won since the season of 2015.

Not that his finances can’t be put to use at the same time, Curry is going to join the ownership group of the San Francisco team of the TGL, the virtual golf league developed by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy

Curry and Klay Thompson will join billionaire businessman Marc Lasry, a former owner of the Milwaukee Bucks as investors. There will be six teams that will hold a competition on a virtual course in a custom-built arena in Florida. The league describes itself as “fusing advanced tech and live action.”

Charlie Sifford never would have believed it.

Simple explanation for Niners loss: They were outplayed

The coach said it. The score confirmed it. The 49ers were outplayed

That’s no sin in the NFL, where the words “on any given Sunday” remain more than just a persistent slogan.  

No sin, if it doesn’t happen too frequently.

And for the San Francisco 49ers, it hadn’t happened in any game in the season of 2023 until on this given Sunday when they were defeated, 19-17, on the road by the Cleveland Browns.

That left the Niners with a 5-1 record and reminders that what happened a week earlier, a resounding win over the haughty Dallas Cowboys, becomes inconsequential within days. 

It also for the first time in his Cinderella career left questions about the kid quarterback, Brock Purdy, who admittedly while at a disadvantage, a botched-up running game, looked — awful is probably too violent a word.

He threw the first interception of his year-and-a-half career, was sacked three times and completed 12 of 27 passes for a mere 125 yards. Those numbers in part were attributable to the Niners’ lack of a ground game.  

Christian McCaffrey missed much of the second half because of an injury (he did score, however, to extend his team-record touchdown streak to 15 games) and Deebo Samuel, also injured, barely played at all.

Thus the Browns, with the league’s best defense, could concentrate on getting to Purdy, physically and mentally. And they got to him.

Purdy’s slip into imperfection was matched by the rookie place kicker Jake Moody, who missed two field goals, including one from 41 yards with a few seconds left to play. Yes, that could have been the game-winner. But we don’t deal here in could haves.

Somehow those football gods had decided on this afternoon the way the Browns performed and the 49ers couldn’t perform that no way Cleveland would lose.

It didn’t.

“It was a grinding game,” said Kyle Shanahan, the 49ers coach. “We made way too many mistakes.”

It was a weird day overall. Before kickoff, the two teams got involved in a pushing match that involved an occasional sort of event that has been known to take place at college games where the players are hyped up from bellicose coaching advice but rarely if ever in the pros where energy and anger are saved until the line of scrimmage.

It’s hard to call the Browns-49ers a rivalry because of the current divisional league setup, but they began playing in 1946—as noted by the patch on the Browns uniforms when they were part of the old All-America Football Conference. 

Cleveland had Otto Graham, Marion Motley and Lou Groza and invariably outplayed the Niners. Just as they did Sunday.

Dodgers tumble: How humiliating, how delightful

That annual playoff collapse by the Los Angeles Dodgers? Up here north of Fresno (meaning Giants Land) one can only think of the comments by Henry Higgins near the end of “My Fair Lady.”

“How humiliating,” says Higgins, “how delightful.”

Finding joy in the misery of others (the Germans call it schadenfreude) may not be the most sportsmanlike of options, but the teams have been (is rivals too kind a word?) for more than a century.

And nothing quite matches the bitterness from San Francisco fans or the jealousy and paranoia.

What happened to the Dodgers in the best-of-five National League Division Series was the stuff that makes sport fascinating and baseball enthralling.

Unless you were rooting for those Dodgers.

It wasn’t just that after winning 100 games during the regular season (seemingly most at the expense of the Giants) LA couldn’t win any in the playoffs against the Arizona Diamondbacks.

The Dodgers were simply awful. Their pitching was terrible—future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw couldn’t throw an inning of the first game and the Dodgers ended up getting pounded 11-2.

Their hitting was worse. Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, LA’s two top batters, were a combined 1-for-21.

In the last 15 years or so, the Dodgers have won far more games than the Giants, but the Giants have won three World Series, the Dodgers one.

That makes no sense, but it doesn’t have to. As has been pointed out, in baseball the line drives are caught and the bloopers fall in for singles.

In the last 15 years or so, the Dodgers have won a lot of games, earned a lot of praise and since they’re in the so-called Entertainment Capital of the Universe, drawn a lot of attention.

But they’ve won only one World Series, while the woe-be-gone Giants have won three.  

Would you rather have a team that keeps you hopeful until almost the very end, then breaks your heart like the Dodgers or one that plods along its merry way and other than a tease and offers no expectations—the Giants at least kept it interesting in 2023 until it really mattered.

Sort of funny. The Giants, perhaps more than any team in the majors, were infamous for coming unglued with their historic “June Swoon,” but that isn’t a sudden tumble as performed by the Dodgers  

“This is hellacious,” wrote columnist Bill Plaschke in the Los Angeles Times. “From first to worst, from 100 to zero, from great to godawful, again and again.”

Wonder the viewpoint of Farhan Zaidi, who before becoming the man in charge of the Giants, was duly employed by the Dodgers.

There’s no question how Giants partisans feel. If there’s anything almost as good as a San Francisco victory it’s an L.A. Dodgers loss. Ain’t sports fun?

Niners move on after what they did to America’s Team

It gets down to a two-word description: America’s Team.

So arrogant. So irritating. Unless you’re the designated franchise, the Dallas Cowboys.

To which we now may add, so overrated.

The label was created in 1979 by a self-indulgent team public relations man for a highlight film and was used continually on national TV, when the Cowboys were winning championships, which they might not do lately but still win the attention of ESPN.

That game Sunday, the mismatch at Levi’s Stadium, final score, 42-10, was treated by many across the NFL landscape as not so much a 49ers victory as a Cowboys defeat.

What it was for Niners coach Kyle Shanahan was an opportunity to gloat, at least in a subtle manner.

So much on the tube and in the dailies on the Cowboys. So much from Dallas owner Jerry Jones.  All right, already.

As Shanahan may not have said directly in his post-game comments yet certainly implied that the Niners coach knew what he had, a potential champion. And an all-encompassing audience, prime weekend time.

“This was our biggest game this year,” he said. 

No warnings about what’s in the future. No giving credit to the opponent.

Just an embrace of the obvious domination (421 yards total offense to 197) that verified the Niners’ defense is every bit as good as it needs to be and the offense may be better than believed.

San Francisco both shut down the Cowboys and shut up their all-too-boisterous supporters.

“Our guys were ready,” said Shanahan. Asked to comment on quarterback Brock Purdy, who threw four touchdown passes, Shanahan offered not a scintilla of doubt. “All our guys were good,” he conceded.

Tight end George Kittle caught three touchdown passes for the first time in his career as if to balance the three touchdowns scored a week earlier against Arizona by Christian McCaffrey, who Sunday had one to extend his team record streak of consecutive games with TDs to 14.

“We’re pretty good!” said one of the Niners offensive lineman.

How good still is to be determined (12 games remain for the Niners in the regular season). Only the 1972 Miami Dolphins completed a schedule unbeaten.

Who knows what might transpire?

What we do know is the 49ers are far superior to the Cowboys, whose America’s Team nickname is sadly out of date.

Still, reputations linger in certain cases, notably that of Dallas, which is always in the news for no other reason than history, even undeserved.

The Niners, in contrast, might not attract the attention of the Cowboys, or didn’t until the thrashing, so they’ll simply have to win games under the radar.

Besides, you don’t have to be America’s Team to win the Super Bowl, just the best team in America.

Time is right for WNBA—and to remember Franklin Mieuli

This was good work from almost everyone concerned, especially the WNBA for inevitably awarding an expansion franchise to a community where both pro basketball and women’s sports are wildly popular.

Warriors’ owner Joe Lacob (and others involved) for assigning the name Golden State, readily identifiable now, although the nickname has yet to be decided.

One imagines that it will have some connection to “Warriors.” But that came with the formation of the team in Philadelphia in 1946, a time when we were unaware of political correctness. The reference was to native Americans—subsequently replaced by a character called Thunder now with the guys in Oklahoma City.

Philly became the San Francisco Warriors in 1962, and despite having the great Wilt Chamberlain, there were more empty seats than full ones.  Warriors owner Franklin Mieuli, who ran a proverbial mom-and-pop operation, was struggling financially.

When in 1971 the San Diego Rockets moved to Houston, Mieuli arranged to play a part of the Warriors’ home schedule in San Diego. He needed a change to a more inclusive name. “I could have used California Warriors,” he would say, “but to me, California was the school in Berkeley.”

So Golden State became a mythical place, and now after all those championships, Golden State will remain.

The WNBA team will begin playing in 2025, after the Paris Olympics, perfect placement. As hoops fans know the WNBA schedule begins when the NBA schedule ends. And vice versa.

Tara VanDervrer obliquely deserves credit in all this. Her Stanford teams gave women’s basketball a place in Northern California’s overly busy sporting calendar among the Niners and Giants—and Warriors.

But so much is attributable to that electronic device that seems to control our lives, the television.

It was two years ago when ESPN (curse them, bless them) signed a contract to show us the WNBA. And if there’s one thing ESPN can do it’s promote its own products. Not more than a figurative minute has gone by the last few weeks without a mention of the WNBA and its stars.

Somebody must have been watching, and for good reason. Those girls can play.  

After the announcement at Chase Center, Warriors all-star Klay Thompson said now he would have something to occupy his summer, sailing his boat across the Bay from Marin to WNBA games in San Francisco.

The shame is one one-time Warriors owner Franklin Mieuli, who died at 89 ln 2010, couldn’t be around with others like WNBA Commissioner Cathy Englebert, to announce that the league is coming to San Francisco—really to the Bay Area since the team will practice at the Warriors former facility in Oakland.   

It was back in 1969 before anyone even thought of women playing pro basketball, Mieuli and the Warriors used the 13th pick in that year’s NBA draft on an Iowa schoolgirl with a great shot, Denise Long Rife.

Now Denise is 72 and while she never got a chance to play in the league, she has earned the recognition and it has kept her in the news.

A few years later, in the early 1980s, the Women's Professional Basketball League arrived briefly. There was a San Francisco team, the appropriately named Pioneers, and they played at Civic Auditorium, as on occasion did the Warriors.

We’re told that in life and love, timing is everything. You can add interest in the WNBA. Just look at Klay Thompson.

McCaffrey trade that worked for Niners

SANTA CLARA — This is the trade that worked. This is the trade that might get the 49ers to the Super Bowl. This is the trade that brought them Christian McCaffrey. 

All spring we kept being reminded about the bad deal that brought quarterback Trey Lance, who turned out not to be the man the Niners hoped he would be.

Well, McCaffrey, the Stanford guy (as is his dad), is exactly what the 49ers hoped he would be. And more.  

So, let’s hear about the good deal — the great deal — the one that brought them the marvelous runner and receiver. And what a game he had Sunday, picking up yards, picking up records and helping San Francisco pick up another win, this one 35-16 over the Arizona Cardinals. 

McCaffrey scored four touchdowns, with three of those coming in the first half. In the process, McCaffrey extended his team streak of games scoring a touchdown to 13, one more than the record of 12 set by Jerry Rice in 1987.

It was a year ago, October 2022, when Niners coach Kyle Shanahan was able to acquire the running back he knew the Niners needed to balance their defense.

And that McCaffrey, looking to expand his horizons and his performance, sought a change.

He mentioned, while still with the Carolina Panthers, the team that drafted him, that he would like to play with the Big City Guys as if there was much difference between where an NFL franchise is located. It’s the people who run the team and play for the team who count.

Small town or Gotham, you want great players and winners. McCaffrey, who rushed 20 times for 106 yards and caught seven passes for 71 yards, unquestionably is one of those.

“It’s a normal thing for him to score a touchdown in 13 consecutive games,”  said Kyle Juszczyk, the Niners fullback who blocks for McCaffrey. “That’s insane. It’s just come to be expected. He executes everything so well.”

Juszczyk is a prime blocker for McCaffrey, and as you know a Harvard grad. Maybe he’s the only one who would use “insane” in a football context.  

What McCaffrey said about what certainly was a historic afternoon at Levi’s Stadium was very little. He preferred to talk about teammates, especially quarterback Brock Purdy. 

“I think you can go down the list of what makes a quarterback good and he checks every box. Then he has all the intangibles that would be phenomenal. He brings a kind of swagger and energy every day that is fun to be around.  He’s quiet but very confident and he expresses that in the way he plays. It’s just awesome to have him in the huddle.”

The same is true for McCaffrey, out of the huddle and into the end zone.

For U.S., a Cup of Ryder road woes

This was a while ago, and Davis Love III was in the process of returning to his South Carolina home from a tournament when a neighbor offered a greeting and a question.

”He asked me what the Ryder Cup was,” recalled Love, “And how did we lose it.”

The years pass, and if the event, the biennial golf competition between the United States and Europe, can easily be explained with four-ball, foursomes, and singles. The results of many recent matches are less so.

Even to the-called experts. Perhaps most of all to so-called experts.

America has had the best players, right? Other than, previously Seve Ballesteros and currently, say, Jon Rahm. But that’s only two.

So why does Europe keep thumping the Americans? Particularly when America is the visiting team, as it will be when the 44th Cup is held in the suburbs of Rome Friday through Sunday. America has lost the last six matches when passports are a requirement. They — we, if you choose — have been beaten in England, France, Wales, Spain, Scotland and Ireland. If not in that particular order. Of course, they’ve also been drubbed back in the U.S., although they have won the last two in America.

As a yardstick, it is how ineffective various groups of Americans have been. Consider the 2004 matches that were held in Detroit, the U.S. team included Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson and was an embarrassment.

What’s wrong with America? Or right with Europe? Theories are as numerous as shots at the practice tee.

We’re told U.S. golfers are too individualistic to care about team play. We’re told the Euros come from more humble backgrounds and that winning the Cup means more to them — and their countries.

For sure they celebrate the success loudly and boisterously, the musical lyrics, “Ole, ole ole,” resounding from their team rooms and from their fans.

It isn’t the 49ers vs. the Cowboys or the Yankees against the Red Sox. It’s them against us — or more specifically against the U.S.

And fans are incorrigible. Yes, the Olympics involve more nations in more sports. But in the Ryder Cup, the fans are pinching in close.

“It’s one-sided,” Fred Couples, a former Ryder Cupper, told Golf Channel. “You can feel them breathing down the back of your necks. They‘re waiting for you to screw up.”

Lanny Wadkins played his college golf at Wake Forest, which despite numerous stars never won a team championship. “I guess we didn’t pass the ball around enough,” he said with more than a bit of sarcasm.

In the Ryder Cup, what the American team needs to pass is the test. It has to start quickly — the first-day leader is the inevitable champion — and start well.   

And finally, stop losing a Ryder Cup match in Europe.

Niners up against expectations — theirs and ours

Sure it could have been better. But that shows what the 49ers are up against, their own expectations as well as ours. And, oh yes, the opposing team.

Which Thursday evening in the haze and mirth of Levi’s Stadium was the New York Giants, who were, dare we say, resilient and for a few moments effective.

But they never really had a chance of winning, meaning the Niners, now 3-0 and getting things together if perhaps a trifle slow, never had a chance of losing.

In the end, it was San Francisco, 30-12, and a Sunday after a breather they’ll be 4-0 because next on the list is the semi-hopeless Arizona Cardinals, who several days ago couldn’t even hold a large lead over the Giants.

True, there are upsets in the NFL — that  “any given Sunday concept” —  but no way were the Cardinals going to win at Levi’s. So there you have it, Niners against the Cowboys for the autumn version of the annual NFC title game.

Getting ahead of ourselves? Why not, in the NFC, and maybe the entire NFL the Cowboys, who overwhelmed the very same Giants 40-0 two weeks ago, and the Niners, are both the class and power of pro football. 

Niner quarterback Brock Purdy wasn’t perfect in the game. 

“He missed on a few throws early,” conceded head coach Kyle Shanahan. 

However, Purdy is perfect in regular season games as a starter, 13-0.

Defense won the game for San Francisco, as it usually does. The Niners had the ball 39 minutes out of the allotted 60. Small wonder then the Niners outgained New York, 441 yards to 150.

That’s not competition, that’s a joke.

Yes, D is what makes the Niners go, or more correctly keep the other team from going. But Thursday San Francisco offered plenty of offense. Deebo Samuel was running and catching along with Christian McCaffrey

On the telecast Al Michaels, recalling the line probably first used by the late John Madden about the Team of the ‘80s, Niners champions, told us “Too many weapons.”

Not that the weapons couldn’t be silenced. Three times San Francisco had a drive finish with a field goal by Jake Moody.

Thursday NFL football is on the NFL Network, and with Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit doing their best to keep us attentive there was a prehistoric video of Madden using the Telestrator for the first time.

Electronics have become a massive part of pro football. However, they can’t compete with winning.  Ask the 49ers.

Fortinet: The win Theegala won’t forget

NAPA — It wasn’t going to get away this time from Sahith Theegala. No bad bounce into the water. No story on how he had delighted the fans — not that he hadn’t.

This time, Theegala would start with a hug from his girlfriend. This time he would grab his first victory as a PGA Tour pro, winning in the sunshine amid vineyards of the Napa Valley. Cheers.

Theegala shot a final-round 68 at Silverado Resort’s north course, coming in with a 21-under total and a two-shot advantage over S.H. Kim. Cam Davis was another two back in the third.

Theegala was born and raised in Southern California and was a graduate of Pepperdine. He’s of Indian descent, which matters to the residents of India, but has nothing to do with his game.

Two years ago, a rookie, Theegala missed a playoff for the WM Phoenix Open, when a ball bounced into the water on the 17th hole. That tournament turned out to be the first victory for Scottie Scheffler. Now, Thegalla gets his first.

It seemed inevitable, certainly. The gala already had been in the Masters where this past April he made the cut. At this Fortinet, it was an issue of making sure.

“It’s funny you mention that,” he said about coming so close to Phoenix. “I vividly remember making birdie at Waste Management (Phoenix) thinking I’ve got a couple of holes coming up and I’ve just got to hold in there and stay around the lead. It was nice to be able to draw back on that. I was so much calmer today. At Waste I was kind of thrown in with all the top guys in the world. This week was a  much calmer and chiller atmosphere, and I think that helped.’”

Theegala, as you might imagine, is wildly popular among the large California population of those of Indian descent. His fans were plentiful and boisterous at the Fortinet.

“To be able to share such a, I don’t want to say once-in-a-lifetime moment, but it really is a once-in-a-lifetime moment, you only win once and you never even know if you’re going to win, right? So to be able to share this moment with all of them is really special and something that I’ll never forget.”

At Fortinet, age is no problem for Kuchar

NAPA — No, as we’re told when unexpectedly some veteran pro shows up on a tournament leaderboard, the golf ball doesn’t know how old you are.

But we know how old Matt Kuchar is, 45, figuratively ancient in sport. On the other hand, the second-round leader of the Fortinet Championship, Sahith Theegala, is 27.

Theegala was born in 1997, the year Kuchar won the U.S. Amateur.

Now it’s 2023, and with only one scheduled round remaining in the Fortinet Championship, the first event of the season, Theegala, following a 5-under par 67, on Saturday, is in front at 17-under.

Cam Davis who is 28 (and won the 2022 British Open), Justin Thomas who is 30 (and won two PGA Championships), and S.H. Kim who is 25, are all tied for second two behind.

Next, another stroke back, is Kuchar, reveling in the moment. “I love playing,” said Kuchar. “I love having a chance to compete. Being out here at Silverado, a fantastic resort, a fantastic golf course; this is one that regardless of where it is on the schedule, I’m likely to find myself here.”

And so he is and we have found him here. Older golfers don’t retire. They just keep replacing their divots. No linebacker is going to knock them down. If they can stand up to what is on the scorecard, they seem very content.

Obviously, Kuchar is. He missed winning a major a couple of times, finishing in a tie for third in the 2012 Masters. He also made a great run in the 2017 British Open, stumbling when he got into a dispute about whether playing partner Jordan Spieth got a surprisingly favorable ruling after a tee shot into the rough.

Kuchar is perhaps best recalled as the man whose compensation for his caddie after Matt winning the 2018 Mayakoba Classic, was a cause for controversy.

The relatively low amount Kuchar paid, although agreed upon before the tournament, was so mocked on social media that Kuchar finally had to up the payment.

Kuchar has overcome what he said was a misunderstanding. Whether he can overcome a deficit of several strokes in the Fortinet is now the issue.

Theegala, starting his third year on tour after winning college honors at Pepperdine, is seeking his first win on Tour.

He began and closed Saturday with a lead, which is not unimpressive with people such as Davis and Thomas, major champions, chasing him.

“The big key for me is just try to keep it in the fairway, which I haven’t done a great job the last three days and I feel like I’m just scrambling my butt off a little bit, which feels like a good thing because I feel like if I’m in the fairway, it almost feels like a bonus.”

“My main thing that I’m kind of focusing on was just making progress and I felt like I made progress again throughout the year,” Theegala said. “Yeah, I think I learned just as much from not being in contention as being in contention.”

He is very much in contention at the Fortinet, as is Matt Kuchar.

For Theegala, strange question but great golf

NAPA — The question wasn’t what, say, Tiger Woods or Rory McIlroy would’ve been asked. It also seemed to have Sahith Theegala, the third-year PGA Tour pro, as distressed as it did perplexed.

Here was Theegala Friday after moving into a share of the halfway lead in the season’s opening event, the Fortinet, and one reporter asks, “Why are you playing this week?”

Yes, you read that correctly. After a headshake, Theegala responded diplomatically.

“Yeah,” said Theegala, “I actually don’t think that’s a great question.”

Especially after a great round, an 8-under 64 at Silverado which put Theegala at 12-under for 36 holes and tied for the lead with S.H. Kim. 

Sheepishly, the reporter restructured his previous query and wondered: “Is it a decent question?”

Theegala, now accepting the repartee, said, “I’d put it in the lower tier.”

As opposed to the golfer who has been in the upper tier basically since his prep days in Southern California. An All-America at Pepperdine, Theegala has been competitive from the start as a pro and was a hot shot out of the playoffs in the Waste Management Phoenix Open in 2022, his rookie season.

But he’s yet to finish first, and failed to qualify for the most recent Tour Championship, giving him unwanted time off and probably the reason he was unable to laugh away the question of why he was entered in the Fortinet. 

He was entered because as a golfer he wants to play golf. He definitely played it Friday with an eagle, seven birdies, and only one bogey. 

“It was a really good round,” was his understatement.

As reminded, Silverado isn’t a course for major championships. It was created with 18 holes by Johnny Dawson in the 1950s, then expanded and improved to two 18s by Robert Trent Jones II in the 1960s. Still, it’s where there’s enough water and out-of-bounds holes to cause trouble if a golfer is botching shots.

Set amongst vineyards in the Napa Valley, Silverado can be rewarding if a golfer keeps the ball online and off the tee and Theegala did exactly that on Friday.

“I was off to a good start,” he said. “Birdied all the par-fives. I started on the back nine. You kind of ease into the round versus starting on a couple of hard holes out of the gate.”

“I really like the course, it’s just good vibes. I think I’ve said a lot in the last couple of years. If I could get my tee shots in play and get my tee shots under control, I feel good about the rest of my game and I did that today.”

With two rounds remaining, and people such as Kim, Justin Thomas, and back-to-back Fortinet winner Max Homa very much in the picture, the only question to be asked now of Theegala is whether he can win.

Away from golf, Herbert found himself — and maybe his game

NAPA — So you’re a broker or a butcher or whatever and feel you need a break, maybe a day on the links to refresh. But how do you escape if you earn your pay as a touring professional golfer?

If you’re Lucas Herbert, instead of throwing caution to the winds you figuratively throw your clubs in the closet, put away your pitching wedge, and pick up a guitar.

And in the process pick up your spirits.

“Yeah, golf’s been getting me down,” said Herbert. “I missed the cut in the (British) Open Championship and then I didn’t want to think about golf, talk about golf. It was a tough stretch. I had a lot going on, in my life and on the course.”

What went on Thursday at the Fortinet Championship at Silverado when both Herbert and the PGA Tour returned after their respective breaks, Herbert’s a couple of months and the Tour a couple of weeks, was exciting. Particularly for Herbert, the 27-year-old from Australia.

He took the first-round lead, a 9-under par 63, which was two shots lower than S.H Kim. Max Homa, the Cal guy who’s won the Fortinet the past two years, was at 70.

If some of those scores seem fanciful, well Silverado where there have been Tour events since the 1960s, while a fine country club layout, isn’t Augusta National or Royal Liverpool. The latter, also known as Hoylake, is where a frustrated Herbert played his last round prior to Thursday.

He actually was doing decently there in the first 16 holes. But on the remodeled par-3, the 17th, Herbert couldn’t get out of a bunker. He lost a ton of strokes, taking a triple-bogey, and his cool. Right then, his shoes in the sand, Herbert knew enough was enough.

“I went and spent some time around people where I wasn't the main focus of everyone's life for the day,” Herbert explained. “I was able to go and be a part of other people's lives, which is something we don't get to do as golfers. I feel like coming here this week I was ready to play again.”

His game reflected that idea. He had six birdies in succession, 12 through 17 which enabled him to shoot 33-30. He came in with 10 birdies and a bogey, that on the par-4 sixth.

Herbert said he wasn’t thinking about a score, just trying to build momentum, going for the pin, knocking in the putt, and recalling how enjoyable golf can be when everything is going well. Which it wasn’t in July.

“I didn’t think it was much when I came back, very low. The break was a chance for me to reset. I think I’d become a bitter and spiteful person. I didn’t like that version of myself, I look back at the Open Championship. I was wound up pretty tight and lashed out at people. I feel now I can be a better person.”

After a 9-under par return, he must believe he could similarly be a better golfer.

At Fortinet, Justin Thomas seeking what he had

NAPA — Such a simple game, golf. A ball sitting there on the tee or the fairway that you keep hitting in the right direction. Until inexplicably it goes in the wrong direction. 

Like the career of Justin Thomas.

It isn’t baseball, where a pitcher keeps you off balance. Or football where an opponent may knock you off balance. 

But golf certainly can throw you off balance. Even if you’ve twice finished first in the PGA Championship, one of the majors, as Thomas has.

Now as the PGA Tour has its annual restart with the Fortinet Championship at Silverado, Thomas is looking for a personal restart. He had, well, a very bad year.

For a while, he was 71st on the money list. He missed the cut in three of the four majors. He had to sweat out being chosen as a captain’s pick — “like trying to call an ex-girlfriend” — for the Ryder Cup (He was selected).

You’re trying to figure out yourself while at the same time, others are trying to figure you out. And maybe at the same time they are worried it could happen to them.

But at age 29, Thomas, the son and grandson of golf pros, appears to have conquered his demons, if not specifically the cures to what ails him.

When the great Ben Hogan was asked by other players how to improve he had a terse answer: “It’s in the dirt.”

Meaning, just hit practice shot after practice shot, until there were divots from the repetitive digging into the grass and get turf. Thomas plans to continue his digging, literally and as a byproduct, emotionally until he’s content with signs of progress.

”Anytime you’re going forward,” said Thomas, “or moving forward — I don’t want to say moving on — but grow and get better I’m excited. I definitely am hard on myself but I kind of reminded some of the stuff Max Homa said.”

Homa, who’s going for a third consecutive Fortinet title pointed out he and the other golfers knew well Thomas was far too superior to languish so far down in the Tour rankings, even briefly.

Thomas has been both defending and explaining himself on social media, the outlet of choice for the 20 and 30 somethings. He has split with former putting coach John Graham. 

“Everything, fundamentally or mechanically, or on the putting green was as good as it could get. Basically what I told (Graham) is you can’t go out and make the putts for me. That’s something only I can do.” 

Whether he accomplishes the task might be evident at the Fortinet. Silverado’s greens can be difficult. 

“I’ve been practicing getting the ball in the hole,” said Thomas. “I don’t care how it looked. All that mattered was getting the ball in the hole.”  

And along with that getting his game out of the hole. As we’ve been told forever, in golf “it ain’t how it’s how many.”

At Silverado, the Tour starts 'twenty-fore'

NAPA — It never ends, does it? So many games. So many tournaments. So many championships. So little time to turn off the TV set, to put down the sports pages, to look back instead of always looking forward.

Sunday they held the finals of the U.S. Tennis Open. Monday there was a women’s tournament in San Diego. And now once more after a break just long enough for the players to get their spikes replaced, golf has returned.

To Silverado Country Club in the Napa Valley, where the Fortinet Championship begins Thursday. It’s the first event on the 2024 PGA Tour schedule, but compared to golf the Gregorian calendar doesn’t have a chance.

No, the field doesn’t exactly match that of the Masters, but as you’ve heard virtually everybody can make birdies.  

Besides, this is a Ryder Cup year, the international competition in a short time in Rome. Two men entered here, Justin Thomas and back-to-back Silverado winner Max Homa are competing for the American team — while two others playing here, Zach Johnson and Stewart Cink, are coaches of the American team.

Golf and tennis, true, are a bit different than some of the other sports. Brad Gilbert is a tennis commentator for ESPN — and then doubles as a coach of Coco Gauff, who won the Tennis Open.

Zach Johnson will be out here at the Fortinet trying to outscore the guys he’ll then choose for the Ryder lineup.

Maybe if U.S. coach Steve Kerr had been allowed to get on the floor as well as behind the bench as a coach then U.S. team might have ended up better than fourth in the FIBA basketball tournament.

For sure, Steph Curry, who said he wants to play on the 2024 U.S. Olympic basketball team in Paris, can play golf. Not too long ago he teamed with Phil Mickelson to win the pro-am at Silverado.

The men and women in charge of US teams love competitors no matter the game or the event.

What Johnson and Cink, one of the assistant captains, hope to learn by mixing it up with Thomas and Johnson in something more than a practice round is whether the preparations are at a high level for the Cup.

The U.S. won two years ago in Wisconsin, which was huge, but it hasn’t won in Europe in 30 years.

Asked if there is a value in preparing like this, Johnson said “I don’t think it is ever bad to go compete. That’s what we are designed to do, that’s where we’re wired.”

“I’m not going to put a ton of merit into — I guess I’m just thinking about myself — on how I play. Granted, I’m not playing in two weeks, but for me, it’s just kind of a fun week to go see what I’m at and get ready for October, November.”

Right now it is September, and there is a new start. The long year is underway.