The Daily Pitch Count

Signs Of Life In Oakland . . . For Now

2012-02-13T10:07:00.001-08:00

It was looking like another tough off-season for Oakland Athletic fans. That's saying something, because the bar for tough off-seasons in Oakland is pretty high, with the ongoing reports that the A's will soon know the way to San Jose from first-hand experience.

This off-season seemed noteworthy in terms of promising an especially mediocre season; and yes, 'especially mediocre' seems a contradiction in terms, but it isn't a contradiction for A's fans. First, rumors are that the move to San Jose will happen soon. And even if it doesn't, some of the most exciting players the A's had are now gone, either via trade or free agency: Trevor Cahill, Gio Gonzalez, Andrew Bailey, Josh Willingham, to name four. And then you have the rest of the division getting tougher, with Albert Pujols going to the Angels and Texas signing Yu Darvish.

So there didn't seem to be many reasons for Oakland fans to care what is going to happen this season, other than the visceral, emotional reasons that no sports fans can really ignore, no matter how disgusted they get with management.

But there are a few interesting things that have happened.

1) Coco Crisp stayed. The free agent outfielder with one of the best names in baseball, expected to leave for richer pastures, actually signed a new contract, giving Oakland a figure of stability atop the lineup.

2) Jonny Gomes signed. The free agent outfielder is a native of Petaluma, so that adds an element of potential hometown heroics.

3) Unexpectedly, the A's signed one of the most talked about free agents of the off season, Cuban defector Yoenis Cespedes. Given the propensity of Oakland to hold on to money like an oyster holds on to its adductor muscle, this was startling. I expected him to sign with the Miami Marlins, for many obvious reasons, including the Marlins' willingness to splash cash about this off-season.

None of these reasons really give me extra motivation to attend an Oakland game. If I'm going to the Bay Area for a baseball game this year, odds are it will be a Giants game.

But there is this special bonus reason that intrigues me as a writer.

4) Brandon McCarthy is really, really funny. I didn't know much about Brandon, but he recently contributed a guest column to an SI.com blog, and it was awesome. It would be akin to Nick Hornby signing to play soccer for Newcastle United and turning into a 30 goal per season man.

All these moves could well be with an eye for a future San Jose stadium, which ironically I would dislike, much as I would dislike the Niners in Santa Clara, even though that would put them closer to me. But nevertheless, I'm intrigued enough that I will catch a few A's games on TV this season.

Unless, as rumored, they sign Manny Ramirez, as they are rumored to be considering. That would make me give up on them all over again.

Soccer Takes A Furry Turn, And Other Thoughts

2012-02-06T16:01:00.000-08:00

1) I watched the Liverpool-Tottenham game today, which will be memorable not because of anything that happened in terms of actual game play, but because a cat scampered on to the field to halt the proceedings for several minutes. It was bemusing to see Brad Friedel looking so bemused to see a cat scurrying around the goal area--I hope he's not a non-cat person. But it was very cute, and a lot more entertaining than last week when apparently some buffoon ran on to the field and handcuffed himself to a goalpost. It was also way more attractive than any streaker.

Within minutes, there were already at least three Twitter accounts attributed to the cat. That says something about society, but I'm not sure what. I'm going to say it is a good thing.

2) Two more players who once were on my fantasy soccer team who shall never again represent FC Buster Posey: Luis Suarez and Andy Carroll. Luis Suarez just finished an eight game suspension for a racial insult directed against Patrice Evra of Manchester United, and Andy Carroll just spent the entire game whining and calling for penalties where none were merited, and then he wasted a couple of golden chances to score.

I trust they feel the lingering sting of being banished forever from the world of the my fantasy soccer graces.

I know you might think it is dubious to link a player impugned with racism with a player who fails to score, but they are in fact linked: one is offensive, and the other is ironically not offensive enough.

Pro Bowl, Amateur Relevance?

2012-02-06T10:00:00.000-08:00

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell announced that he would consider eliminating the Pro Bowl, the annual all star game that used to cap off the year, following the Super Bowl as a post-season party in Honolulu.

My reaction to this news: "Huh. I don't really care."

If my reaction was not unique--and I suspect it was not--that underlines the problem that Goodell was pointing out. Is the Pro Bowl still relevant and do people enjoy it?

Speaking for myself, it has been some time since I actually cared about the Pro Bowl, and that was even before the NFL moved it to the weekend BEFORE the Super Bowl, which struck me as really weird, and an effort to artificially give it more importance than it actually has. I haven't really watched the Pro Bowl for some time, so I don't know if I can advise the commissioner on how to fix it. I tried to watch it last year, but I got bored after two minutes. Nevertheless, I've been thinking about this question, so I'll put out the thoughts that occurred to me.

I used to love the Pro Bowl. I feel nostalgic for the NFL of the '80s and '90s, when I was growing up. I think those were halcyon days for the NFL, with stars like Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, John Elway, Dan Marino, Randall Cunningham, Barry Sanders, Warren Moon, Phil Simms, etc. I remember enjoying the spectacle of the Pro Bowl, because every sports fan enjoys those "what if?" moments, such as "what if Joe Montana could throw to Art Monk or hand off to Herschel Walker?" Those "what if" moments are the reason why the Pro Bowl--and any All-Star game--would appeal to fans.

Tradition is important, I can tell you that much. Clearly the advertisers understand that football fans like tradition, as the advertisements in the Super Bowl seemed to focus a lot on nostalgia, as highlighted in this article by Peter Hartlaub of the Chronicle--on a side note, the Matthew Broderick/Ferris Bueller ad for Honda was clever and creative enough that I did not consider Broderick a sell-out, which is saying something; I don't feel quite so charitable towards Jerry Seinfeld or Jay Leno, although to be fair, I have disliked Leno since Conangate.

In the spirit of tradition, maybe the Pro Bowl should have been left alone as a post-Super Bowl party. The Pro Bowl should be fun for the fans, and the fans would be more likely to have fun if the players were clearly having fun, and I suspect that players would be more likely to have fun at the Pro Bowl with a longer break between the end of the season and the exhibition in Honolulu, not to mention the fact that then the stars of the teams in the Super Bowl could play.

If you do want to make the Pro Bowl better, you need to do away with the idea of an extra regular season game or two, because that's going to be an extra game or two to exhaust the players, which will make them less likely to enjoy an exhibition.

Maybe the question of relevance is the wrong question. Should the Pro Bowl be forced to mean more than what it is? In Major League Baseball, they recently introduced a competitive element, in that the league that wins the All-Star Game earns home field advantage for the World Series. This wouldn't work for the Super Bowl, not only because the Super Bowl is a one-off game rather than a series, but also because the Super Bowl is at a neutral site that bids large sums of money well in advance for the right to host, so you couldn't really inject an identical post-season stake in the Pro Bowl. Even if you could, the Pro Bowl can't be held in the middle of the season, so the result of the Pro Bowl would have to impact the following year's Super Bowl, which is not an idea I would like. I also can't say that I tend to watch baseball's All-Star Game more now than I did before it was just an exhibition.

In the end, maybe the question Commissioner Goodell needs to ask is, "How do we make the Pro Bowl fun again?" If you can't make it fun, then there is no point to having it. There is enough competition and money and business factors throughout the NFL; return the Pro Bowl to the realm of fantasy and nostalgia and pure entertainment.

When Sports Don't Matter

2012-01-23T19:37:00.000-08:00

1) Does it seem odd to you that San Francisco is in a tizzy over a yacht race? The America's Cup is coming to the city, and I'm not quite sure whether or not this should be classified as a sporting event.

It seems more like an indulgence for the 1%, doesn't it? I have to wonder what the Occupy movement makes of this. It seems likely to be a target, or at least a potential target, if the movement persists until then.

How would the America's Cup transfigure the city? Will it leave a lasting benefit? There are talks of new places to stash yachts, but I think the city has enough of those already. And I don't think the majority of the city--as extrapolated by surveying my own opinions--would really care who can sail a yacht faster than another person.

Will the organizers and sponsors find a creative way to make it relevant to the city? What lasting benefit will they provide? And most importantly, how will they protect the waterways of the Bay, so as not to harm marine life?

As long as they can provide acceptable answers to these, then I don't mind if they have their boat race.

2) I love the Niners. The Niners fans, not so much in the last couple of weeks. First, there were myriad reports of harassment and verbal abuse of Saints fans that just crossed a line. Then there were the reports that police had to kick more than 100 people out of the game the other day.

Even worse, though, was this story.

Threats against our own player? Seriously, just because we lost the game? Yes, Kyle Williams had unfortunate turnovers, and they proved turning points on the game, but that doesn't justify the vitriol he received.

As one might expect, the vitriol was via the Internet, home of the shamelessly rabid and lunatic.

There is no room in sports for that sort of reaction.

I mean, if one must be vitriolic, limit it to REASONABLE targets, like complaining about biased refs and East Coast Bias. The fumble on the Giants' Ahmad Bradshaw that apparently wasn't a fumble? Justified by Mike Pereira, head of NFL officials, based in New York. I mean, that is justifiable irrational vitriol.

What? What are you looking at?

Seriously, though, stories like this make me recoil from rooting for sports. There is no justification for reacting like these fans reacted towards Williams. Maybe they lost a lot of money betting on the game, money they couldn't afford. To them, I would say, "Don't bet money you can't afford to lose on a football game, moron."

Playing With House Money

2012-01-14T12:37:00.000-08:00

The Niners' playoffs begin today, when they host the New Orleans Saints. This game worries me, because I'm not sure the Niners can keep up with the Saints' high-powered offense, but it will be interesting to see how the defense copes with Drew Brees and his multiple weapons.

Even though the Niners are the home team, I would say they have nothing to lose. This whole season has been a success, a surprising turnaround from the recent struggles, especially since this was their first season under new coach Jim Harbaugh, and it was a season that began with a curtailed pre-season due to the lockout, reducing the preparation time.

It's great to see the playoffs back in Candlestick, for perhaps the last time. Either the Niners will move to Santa Clara, or San Francisco--or interested private parties--will come up with a stadium plan to keep them in the city, which looks doubtful.

I obviously want them to win today, but anything they do in the playoffs has to be considered a bonus. Still, the playoffs are the natural home for Frank Gore, Vernon Davis, and Patrick Willis, so let this be the beginning of a dominant run in the NFC.

Of course, I will be upset if they lose. I'll undoubtedly burn Drew Brees in effigy, but I mean, that just goes with the territory of fanaticism. You can't call yourself a true American sports fan until you've burned someone in effigy. I'm just saying, I'll get over it sooner than I would otherwise, and that's really all any of us can ask for in terms of keeping sports in perspective.

Seriously, what is the proper perspective on sports? Is there magic in sports? There seemed to be in 2010 when the Giants won. Some people think that Tim Tebow is magic, but he isn't. I'm sure Tebow's a nice guy, but if there is a God, I would hope it doesn't put a finger on the scales of a football game, because sports, let's face it, are not the most important thing in the world. Sports are at best number two in the world. And that's the way it should be. The magic of sports is entertainment, a diversion, and there is nothing wrong with that. Just don't be confused about the significance of sports compared to economic woes, religious persecution, poverty, etc.

This is ignoring the question of sports as business, the economic benefits a successful sports team can bring to a community, any tangible or pragmatic questions like that, because that's boring. I'm talking just about the playoffs, as in The Playoffs, as in what Jim Mora did not want us to talk about, but Jim Mora's clip has been reduced to advertising for a cheap American beer, which means that his opinion, like the beer, is irrelevant to my life. Newcastle and Fat Tire all the way for me today.

Let the run begin, Niners. If you leave SF, it will be the last time I care, even though Santa Clara is technically closer to me, so let's enjoy this moment while it lasts.

P.S. Dear Fox and all other TV broadcasters--when one of your skits is not funny, don't pretend that it worked. It makes you look silly.

P.P.S. On a related note, but not about sports, Kaley Cuoco, it would have been okay for you not to be excited that Two Broke Girls won an award on the People's Choice Awards. You don't have to pretend that it is a good show just because you work for the same network.

Random Sports Thoughts For The New Year

2012-01-03T11:39:00.000-08:00

1) Everyone-and by everyone, I mean me-has made fun of Ron Artest for pulling a Chad Ochocinco and changing his name to the bizarre Metta World Peace, but the more I think of it, the more I think it is brilliant. It will certainly help his offensive game, because what defender will try to block his shots when that would prompt a television announcer to say, "So-and-so rejects World Peace"?

2) Odds are that David Beckham will sign with the LA Galaxy to play one more season in Major League Soccer instead of moving to Paris Saint-Germain. This is exciting to me, because Marina bought us season tickets for the Earthquakes for next season, so there is a chance I will be at the same soccer field as David Beckham, which will therefore make me glamorous and rich by association.

3) I keep reading about football teams signing random players who were not under contract during the current season to 'future/reserve contracts.' This means that once the next season officially starts in March, these players will THEN be under contract. They aren't technically employed by the team now, but they can't be employed by another team, is my understanding. This seems random and weird. Still, it isn't like the old reserve clause that basically kept players bound to one team, back in the days before free agency. The players who sign these non-contract contracts aren't being conscripted, after all.

Still, this does seem to be splitting hairs. Why not say that the teams have signed these players to contracts? Does anyone really care about the labor-related details as to why things are set up this way? Other than the lawyers who get paid for labor law work, that is.

One more example that sports are WAAAYYY more complex now than a bunch of men and/or women getting together to play a game with a ball. Not sure if that complexity is a good thing or a bad thing.

4) The 49ers scored a touchdown on a fake field goal on Sunday, with kicker David Akers tossing a pass to Michael Crabtree, who was hanging out way out to the left. The Rams completely ignored him or just weren't paying attention, which is why they are 2-14 and looking for a new coach. The touchdown was certainly important because the game was a one-touchdown victory for SF, but more importantly, that's just fun. Totally unconventional, even if it seems a little sneaky.

The Problem With David

2011-12-10T08:56:00.000-08:00

If David and Goliath had fought a series of 16, or 38, or 82, or 162 contests, do you really think David would have won every time?

Here's the problem with sports and the question of parity--the little guys can pull off a Cinderella moment in a one-off encounter or a short run through the NCAA tournaments, but over the course of the season, the big guys tend to win out. Look at soccer, for example. Teams like Manchester City, the nouveau riche of the Premier League, have such depth of talent that they can withstand the rigors of a long season, letting stars rest, and can overcome red card suspensions or injuries more easily than smaller clubs. It isn't that they are inherently better as a club, or at least that is not the only reason; they also have more resources.

The resource question is important. Newcastle United started off the season brilliantly, but are now running into some trouble. They lost to Man City three weeks ago, which was not unexpected, then managed to secure a controversial draw with Man United. Last week, fickle fate attacked. Chelsea's defender David Luiz should have been sent off in the fourth minute for denying a clear goal-scoring opportunity, but escaped with a yellow card. That could have changed the entire match, and Chelsea went on to win 3-0. Even worse, Newcastle's star defender Steven Taylor was lost for the year. The media implied that now Newcastle will have to scramble for points the rest of the way to ensure safety, that being the only realistic option.

Today's match indicated this might be the case. Traveling to Norwich, Newcastle were thumped 4-2, having Dan Gosling sent off for a red card. I'm not too familiar with Norwich, but I would say that if Newcastle had serious ambitions of qualifying for Europe this year, Norwich is exactly the sort of team that Newcastle must beat.

It's funny how quickly results can turn. The small teams, the Cinderella stories, tend to fade away over the course of a long season. I was reading World Soccer the other night, in which articles were raving about the surprising starts of promoted Novara in the Italian Serie A and Real Betis and Levante in Spain's La Liga. I do get the magazine a bit late, as it comes all the way from England. This was the magazine on sale in October that I got in November. After reading the articles, I checked the standings, and all three teams had slipped wayyy down the tables. And look at the story of Blackpool last year in the Premier League: they came racing out of the gates as the darlings of the media, playing attractive soccer and getting some great results. But then, things started to not go their way, and they faded, and they ended up with relegation back to the lower division and lost their star Charlie Adam to Liverpool.

The Cinderella teams in the short tournaments become the Flavor of the Week in a long season. Big teams that start slowly--such as Arsenal this season--do recover. Dust tends to settle and cream rises to the top, which is the problem at the heart of the question of competitive parity: there is too much dust, not enough cream to go around. Any chef will tell you it is crucial to get the dust-to-cream ratio just right.

How do you ensure parity without relying too much on artificial restrictions? That's a problem that none of the major professional sports have really figured out once and for all. Salary caps help, so the NFL is ahead of a lot of the others, I would say. Baseball, for instance. Small-market teams benefit from revenue sharing, but that doesn't mean they can or will spend money, and it isn't entirely clear how legitimate some of the claims of necessary frugality from teams like the Pirates and the Marlins really are, especially in light of the Marlins splashing around cash on free agents this off-season like a kid doing a cannonball into a pool. And then you have the Angels owner, Arte Moreno, attacking the Yankees and Red Sox for doling out massive contracts, only to turn around and spend $250 million to lure Albert Pujols away from St. Louis. And in Spain, it never feels like there is a genuine chance for anyone other than Barcelona or Real Madrid to win the championship. The last team to do so was Valencia in the 2003-2004 season, which in the age of Twitter is so long ago that, realistically, it never happened. Is there a solution?

Michel Platini's Financial Fair Play movement seems a good first step to prevent the biggest clubs from taking on massive, destabilizing debt to outspend all comers and monopolize the best talent. There are loopholes, and we will have to wait to see how this works, but I like it in theory. Of course, just because a team is spending within its' means doesn't ensure parity, as some teams are meaner than others. I mean, they have more means than other teams.

Maybe this is just evolution, survival of the fitter, in terms of competition for resources. Maybe this is just a by-product of free-market capitalism or some other similar economic terms. Is the question of fairness in sports simply a myth? We talk about how there is always hope for any team at the start of the season, but it doesn't seem realistic. Without hope, what's the point of playing the games?

Of course, there would be no point, because, yes, things can happen that are unexpected. The Giants were not expected to win the World Series in 2010, and the Yankees, Phillies and Red Sox all failed to win it last year.

I would hope for more idealism in sports, even in the financial side. I know it is a business, but I would hope that results in sports would be primarily based on more than the bottom line. I think this is why I would much rather the 49ers stayed in SF, built a new stadium in Hunter's Point--which could attract business and jobs to that area--rather than fleeing to the suburban comforts of Santa Clara and a parking lot next to the Great America theme park. Spread the joy and resources, I tell you, even if Santa Clara can offer you more revenue. Santa Clara and Silicon Valley have a lot of resources as it is. But that's not going to happen. The Niners will go to Silicon Valley, and when they do, I'm done with them. Not that they would care.

The reality is that life isn't fair, so maybe sports don't have to be entirely fair either, even if they are supposed to be a sublimation for our frustrations with the unfairness of life. To paraphrase Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes, not John Calvin), the world seems to rarely be unfair in our favor. Still, just because reality is unfair, that is no reason not to try leveling the pitch for all parties. I just have no idea how to do so.

When Business And Sports Collide

2011-12-05T13:48:00.000-08:00

Some days, the news delivers all sorts of sports gold. Yesterday and today were just like that, and fittingly for a blog that starts with a mention of gold, I will write about the intersection of sports and business.

1) One of the latest Twitter scandals comes to us from Ohio University--note this is NOT Ohio State University, but the other one. Apparently the punter for Ohio University got into so much hot water over a derogatory remark about Idaho that he canceled his Twitter account. I'm not going to argue whether that is appropriate or not, given that derogatory remarks about Idaho/North Dakota constituted the basis for an entire system of humor in Montana. The lesson I learned from this story is that there is apparently a Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, which means there is a new champion of the Most Ludicrous Name For A College Bowl Game contest.

I also find it funny, yet all too perfectly appropriate, that this is the bowl game that used to be the Humanitarian Bowl. There is, after all, less profit in humanitarianism than there is in potatoes.

2) The NHL is considering realignment of the league. Realignment is always kind of odd. In baseball, for instance: the Brewers moving to the National League? I'm only now accepting that, and I dread trying to adjust to the Astros playing in the AL West.

For the NHL, certain realignment decisions would make sense. For instance, the Winnipeg Jets are currently playing in the Eastern Conference's Southeast Division, which only makes sense when you recall that this incarnation of the Jets was formerly known as the Atlanta Thrashers until this season. Realignment makes a lot of sense, commercially, in that it can create more logical rivalries if done right. Rivalries equal money.

There are many other factors in deciding what teams go where; teams that have to travel great distances currently will be in favor; other teams will resent the extra travel and extra expense if they must travel further. A lot will also depend on if the Phoenix Coyotes move to Quebec, which would be great! Much as I missed the name Winnipeg Jets--because that is a name that just screams hockey--I also miss the Quebec Nordiques and the Hartford Whalers, for no other reason than that they were teams in the league when I was first paying attention to sports, and I never authorized any changes.

Not that I pay much attention to hockey. It's too hard to follow the puck on TV. Still, I'll be interested to see how this plays out.

The NHL also seems to be heading for a possible collective bargaining showdown, based on a report in Forbes magazine arguing that the NHL needs to find a balance of revenue sharing between players and owners similar to the recent NBA agreement that reduced revenues going to players/employees. You know when Forbes is writing about sports, it's not writing about the sport side of sports.

If there is a protracted discussion on this, I hope the NHL learns the lessons the NBA should also learn; if there is a strike, a lot of us won't care. A good way to proactively prevent an exodus? Restore the Nordiques and the Whalers, and get rid of the Nashville team, the Columbus Blue Jackets, and any of the other bland teams I can never remember because they are newfangled corporate franchises, not rooted in a history dating back at least as far as my childhood.

Because it's all about me, even when I don't watch the NHL regularly.

3) On a more somber note, in discussing the collective bargaining issue, I find it interesting--and sad--that the New York Times featured in the same paper the first in a three part series on an NHL enforcer who died of an overdose recently, apparently the victim of addictions that arose from a career based on fighting. Fighting is a part of the business of hockey. It draws in fans. It's not part of the sport. It's the 'entertainment' side that appeals to a different portion of the mind. And it's another reason I've never been drawn to hockey too much, nor MMA. To make a career out of sacrificing your body, that's a hard thing, though not unknown in the broader society. Look at coal miners.

It's stories like these that transform one's perception of sports from the mythical purity of history to the business side of the game. Is it even possible anymore to really lose one's self in the game any more without being reminded of the other aspects?

Geometry Of Imperfection

2011-12-05T12:44:00.000-08:00

Contrary to the ranting beliefs of certain xenophobes, you don't have to be sick to enjoy watching soccer, but it can help. I'm recovering from a little head cold, which puts me in the mellow, contemplative sort of mood that allows me to thoroughly enjoy the Fulham-Liverpool match, even though there is no score at the half.

The question of geometry suffuses the entire match. John Arne Riise was a star with Liverpool, and now he is back in England with Fulham--symmetry. Give-and-go passes define invisible triangles, and attempted through balls are all about finding the right angle to create an intersection of the pass and the striker.

Knowing where someone is trying to play the ball when pulling it back from the end line is great fun, and even when a ball goes horribly awry, that still elicits a "Woah" of reaction as the ball goes sailing directly into the side advertising boards.

The pace of the Premier League is still so much faster than Major League Soccer. I also compare this to the College Cup, where the Stanford women just beat Duke. I got to see the game on ESPN3.com, and the soccer was just as pleasing to the eye, the same strategy, the same overlapping runs and working to unlock the defense, the same chess match as in Liverpool-Fulham, but at a slower pace.

Do you prefer watching professional or college sports? Do you prefer watching men or women? In soccer, other than goals, what are your favorite elements to see during the match?

The Goal Line

2011-12-04T14:25:00.000-08:00

So, for many years, it has been rumored the 49ers would vacate Candlestick Park, and San Francisco in general, for the more suburban climes of Santa Clara. Sure, Santa Clara is fine for the Niners to use as a corporate headquarters and practice facility, but Santa Clara 49ers is almost as much of an abomination as the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

In other words, I don't want the 49ers to move. The fact that I live in Santa Cruz and the Niners would actually be closer to me doesn't hold water, because I don't actually want to attend a game. I just want them to stay in San Francisco, since I grew up with Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Roger Craig and their companions.

It looks more and more likely that the Niners will leave San Francisco. A ballot initiative, despite controversy, was passed in Santa Clara to allow the use of public funds for constructing a stadium, and the newspapers have reported that new private sources have been secured, completing the amount required. The thing that gives me hope it still won't happen is that a consultant for the project said, "It's like first and goal from the 9 yard line. We think we're going to score from here." I read that right before the Niners had first and goal from the five after a fumble, and had to settle for a field goal. Thus, my hope. The Niners have forgotten how to score touchdowns. Vernon Davis dropped a perfect pass in the end zone.

We are still up 9-0 so far against St. Louis, in a game where a tie or a win would clinch the division for us, but we haven't put the ball in the end zone. It doesn't bode well for us, how many times the offense has not finished in the end zone over the last few weeks.

But sports are full of fickle things, such as fortune. Look at Newcastle United: last week they benefited from a controversial penalty kick; yesterday, the referee failed to red card a Chelsea defender in the fourth minute, and Chelsea went on to win 3-0. Today is a possible clinching win for a first playoff birth for SF since 2002, but it has already seen Patrick Willis leave the game with a possible hamstring injury.

The Niners leaving San Francisco for Santa Clara would be another fickle thing. They would have to change their name, I think, because to say you represent San Francisco, but you actually play in Santa Clara, would be hypocritical, because you would be cashing in on the cachet of the name San Francisco 49ers.

Would this be truly fickle? Does it matter? I think it does, but I could be biased. Do you think that teams that relocate for the purposes of a fancier new stadium are cynically rejecting the emotional ties to a city for the sake of decisions that may be good for business?

I guess the point is the goal. Are the teams legitimately looking for a better facility to improve their chances for a championship? But if in doing so, they are turning their back on the community that has housed them for 50 years, are they selling their soul?

I say yes. What do you say?

Dear NBA: Who Are You Again?

2011-11-22T11:50:00.000-08:00

Oh yeah. There is a professional basketball league above the D-League and the CBA in this country. I had forgotten.

Well, I hadn't really forgotten. It's hard to forget with all the coverage about a lack of progress in negotiations between the NBA players and owners. There are rumors of players playing abroad--and sometimes more than rumors: Deron Williams of the Jazz is playing in Turkey and former St. Mary's star and Portland guard Patty Mills just signed to play in China. Once again, the American consumer and worker--in the form of fans and ticket office employees, concessionaires, etc--are brought face to face with the scourge of outsourcing. At least in this case, the owners of the businesses are not profiting from the outsourcing.

But I have kind of forgotten about the NBA, which I don't think is going to be an uncommon response. Last year, I was saying to Vaughn that I would really like to check out a Golden State Warriors game, since they play right there in Oakland next to a Bart station. This year, until an article in today's paper, I had completely forgotten whom the Warriors drafted in the most recent draft--for the record, they drafted Klay Thompson and Jeremy Tyler. I had forgotten that the new owners fired Keith Smart and hired Mark Jackson.

So many questions that could be answered, but won't be until if and when the players and owners decide that yes, they WOULD like to make a living from a game: did the Warriors make the Smart choice in changing coaches? Will Coach Jackson make his Mark in the Bay Area?

Better hurry up, NBA, before we decide we just don't care anymore. More specifically, take this as a warning that we may soon no longer care enough to offer warnings like this one.

Thoughts? Opinions? Anyone care to guess whether the NBA has a season this year? And if the NBA does have a season and no one cares enough to watch, does it make a sound?

In Search Of More Meaningful Meaningless Sports Cliches

2011-11-20T22:22:00.000-08:00

Have you noticed that sports cliches are just too easy to mock these days? It's now boring to point out the physical impossibility of giving 110%, or the irrelevance of saying "there is no i in team"--although there is an i in win, and me in team if you jumble the letters.

It's time for some new cliches, or at least the recognition of some less-obvious cliches that require a little more creativity to ridicule.

Let's start with the category with more positive lexicographical associations. For a new cliche, I would suggest something along the lines of "it's not over until the last vuvuzela is banned from the stadium and trampled underneath a herd of rampaging elephants." This would be a good choice for a couple reasons: 1) we all found out about vuvuzelas during the 2010 World Cup and could all get behind a policy of trampling the damned things; and 2) it's culturally accurate, as vuvuzelas and elephants can both be found in South Africa.

As for some more subtle, newly discovered cliches, how about this? My friend, in discussing the Green Bay Packers, said that their defense "is designed to play with the lead." As opposed to all the defenses that only feel comfortable after giving up a touchdown or two, I noted. My friend replied with an obfuscatory, octopus-like cloud of analysis that was no doubt accurate, but my response was funnier, so I'm declaring myself the winner of that little debate.

Or then in today's paper, I read about a volleyball player who saved the day "with ice in her veins." Is it just me, or would that be very bad for the circulation? In which case, wouldn't ice in one's veins be detrimental to one's athletic performance?

Thoughts? Comments? Clever dissections of superficially-impressive-but-ultimately-vapid sports metaphors and chestnuts?

A Stadium By Any Other Name

2011-11-09T18:32:00.000-08:00

There is headline news on www.soccernet.com about Newcastle United's decision to drop the historic "St. James' Park" from the name of the stadium, naming it instead the Sports Direct Arena. I know, I know; Sports Direct is a mammoth name steeped in sporting lore and legend, but some people seem to be upset about this.

Okay, so a few years ago, this would make me gnash my teeth and complain about selling out. As it is, it sets my teeth on edge.

However, I do not consider this to be a sign of the apocalypse, for a trio of reasons:

1) Newcastle United is my favorite Premier League team, and therefore, as an extension/reflection of my personality, they can do no wrong;
2) If I were to complain about every element of sell-out in sports, I would never have time to enjoy the games;
3) Who cares what the corporation calls it?

Let's take these in turn:

1) I'm willing to view this as a method of increasing revenue for Newcastle, which could allow them to go from strength to strength and challenge for greater honors. We'll disregard the fact that Sports Direct is the company owned by Newcastle's current owner, Mike Ashley, which means that the current name is just a lure for future sponsors. Sports are expensive; better this than raising ticket prices, right?

2) You could theoretically assume that every sport was riddled with corruption: money, drugs, and the drugs of money and the money of drugs, etc. But that just wouldn't be much fun. "Bread and circuses" still means you get to have a snack and watch a circus act.

3) They can call it Sports Direct Arena all they want; do you think the fans in the pubs will call it anything but St. James' Park? When the 49ers changed the name of Candlestick Park to Monster Park, I don't think I can remember ever hearing anyone other than TV analysts call it Monster Park; all the people who mattered--the fans--called it Candlestick Park.

So all in all, sound and fury signifying nothing; as long as any sponsorship revenue helps Newcastle tear apart Chelsea and win everything in the history of what there is to be won, and then some more winning after that. That's not too much to ask.

Goodbye, Jonathan Sanchez

2011-11-08T12:13:00.000-08:00

The question of "What if?" is endemic to sports. What if Scott Cousins had slid around Buster Posey, rather than through him? What if the Germans had been penalized for a handball on the goal line in the 2002 World Cup Quarterfinal against the United States? What if spokesmen for Frank McCourt, lame duck owner of the Dodgers, had not subtly blamed Brian Stow for being beaten into a coma outside of Dodger Stadium?

What if Jonathan Sanchez had not been hurt this year? What if his control had improved, turning his mercurial flashes of brilliance into a steady glow, as his potential had always promised to produce? Would the Giants have traded him to Kansas City for Melky Cabrera yesterday?

I am sorry to see Jonathan go, because I would have loved to see the core of young talent that came up together stay in SF in perpetuity. Any time a local hero is moved on, you hear the cliche that 'it's a business,' uttered with varying degrees of bitterness. And it's true: baseball, like any business, is about managing one's resources, and diversifying one's strengths. I'm generally opposed to corporate culture, but I'm not going to launch an OccupyAT&TPark movement over this trade, for several reasons:

1) The Giants won the World Series in 2010. That is something to feed on for a while, like a bear feeds on stored fat while hibernating.

2) The Giants desperately need an injection of offense, and you can't get something without giving something in return. Well, you can, but it's called theft, and it is generally frowned upon. Plus, you can't really steal a player from one team and make him play for yours; it's called kidnapping, it would be noticed, and it is not looked on favorably.

3) Bolstering the lineup means the Giants might have a shot at re-signing Carlos Beltran, and I would love to see what he could do over a full year in San Francisco. Swapping the contract of Jonathan Sanchez for the contract of Melky Cabrera means that the Giants didn't have to spend more money to bring in a bat; they just reallocated funds from pitching to offense, and pitching is a source of strength.

4) The Giants won the World Series in 2010. Did I mention that already? We've met the goal, the young core took charge, and that can never be taken away from the players or the fans. Jonathan Sanchez had some wonderful moments; I will never forget turning on SportsCenter from a motel in Volcano, Hawaii, in June of 2009, just in time to see highlights from the first no-hitter for the Giants in more than 30 years. No matter what happens, he has been on top of the world in SF.

Of course, now that we have won the championship once in my life, we need to win it at least one more time so that my team will have won as many times as my best friend Vaughn's favorite team, the Minnesota Twins. It's called equality, and frankly, that's a goal everyone should support. Improving the offense gives us a better shot of making the playoffs next year.

So yes, there are many business reasons for making a trade like this. The better the team, the more money you can make from ticket sales, post-season revenue, merchandise, etc. But a sports team is clearly more complex than just a business. It is not just a question of the economics of exchanging resources to strengthen your team. It is a chess match, a narrative, and for many of us, a source of a sense of identity. And hey, as a source for self-identification, sports have produced fewer crusades than religion.

So good luck, Jonathan. I was so happy that your dad got to see your no-hitter, and I loved your strong pitching that got us where we needed to go. You will be missed.

And welcome, Melky. Show us what you've got.

Just Wait 'Til Last Year

2011-08-15T20:22:00.000-07:00

Repeating as a champion in a professional sports league is difficult, especially in the age of salary caps and parity. The Giants hardly entered the year as favorites, but they have been battling all year, despite meager offensive production. Now, though, things are beginning to fade at the wrong time.

My natural tendency is to be a pessimist, so I will fight that and not yet write off the season. But there are enough factors to make me think it is almost time to say "Just Wait 'Til Last Year"--by which I mean time to watch the souvenir DVD from last season. And then look forward to spring, and spring training, and the chance to start over.

For one thing, come the spring, we won't be as decimated by injuries. Seriously, all the injuries we avoided last year seem to be coming this year on top of the normal allotment. First Buster Posey is lost for the season, and then Freddy Sanchez. Barry Zito and Jonathan Sanchez both struggle with injuries which may have impacted their performances. Pablo Sandoval started off on a tear, and then got hurt for a month. We trade a top prospect for Carlos Beltran, essentially a two month rental, and now he is hurt and may be going on the DL. Sergio Romo, our setup man, also may be headed for the DL. And Pablo left today's game after fouling a ball off his foot.

As a side note, I had my hesitations about trading a top pitching prospect for a rental, especially since we won last year. I didn't feel as desperate a need to win now. But I can see why Brian Sabean made the deal; you do want to take every chance to win and excite the loyal fan base--that's a crucial confluence of the business side and the passion side of baseball. So even though Beltran is injured at perhaps the most critical stage of the pennant race, when we are struggling to keep up with Arizona in the division and Atlanta in the playoff race, I don't blame him for the trade, even though no one expects Beltran to play in SF next season.

The nagging feeling I can't escape, though, is that the reality TV show on Showtime, "The Franchise," was a bit of a mistake. I have to wonder if it is not a distraction for the team. But that could just be a matter of my own bias. I HATE reality TV, which in general I find sleazy and stupid.

It would be one thing if it was talent-based, like So You Think You Can Dance or Project Runway. You know, make it So You Think You Can Pitch or Project Basepath. If only there was something like that for the Giants.

Oh, that's right, there is. It's called Major League Baseball, and what's the Giants are playing every day.

Maybe the injuries and the slumps are karma for being on reality TV.

Oh well. I still love us. And by us, I mean the Giants. We aren't the Yankees. Or the Red Sox. Or the Phillies.

The Art Of Not Being Noticed

2011-08-13T21:48:00.001-07:00

Refereeing soccer is a thankless job. The ideal is not to earn plaudits, but to go essentially unnoticed, managing the game, being in the right position, keeping things flowing. There will always be missed or controversial calls, but the game should roll on. For referee Paul Ward, tonight's match between San Jose and Colorado will be one he won't want to remember.

San Jose was enjoying the best possession and looked dynamic with a 1-0 lead late in the first half when Colorado's Pablo Mastroeni made a run to the end line to cross the ball into the box. San Jose's Sam Cronin was in pursuit and slid to try to get in the path of the ball. Mastroeni's cross was low and angled back behind Cronin, deflecting against Cronin's trailing arm and going out of bounds. Everyone was prepared to line up for a corner kick, but Mastroeni angrily appealed to the Assistant Referee, saying it was a hand ball in the box. After a moment's consultation, Ward pointed to the spot, to the shock of the Earthquakes. Mastroeni was attempting to influence the referee's decision, and it worked. It is a part of the game, but a cynical one. The referee should have been stronger, because that was not a good call, but Mastroeni lost the respect I had for him from his days with the national team.

Technically, the ball did hit Cronin's arm, but it was more like the ball played the arm, not the other way around. It was certainly not intentional. Furthermore, it was not denying a clear goal scoring opportunity, with plenty of defenders in the middle. It was a very harsh decision to award a penalty.

The Earthquakes would feel hard done by again in the second half, when Cronin was sent off with a red card in controversial fashion. A sliding tackle took the ball away from Mastroeni, who went down in a heap over Cronin's legs. The camera angle was not entirely conclusive, but again, it looked like a harsh decision.

This again interrupted a flow of creative, attacking play by San Jose, and when Colorado later scored a goal to go ahead, the wind was out of the Earthquake's sails, as their long streak without a win continued.

To be fair, the referee cannot be blamed for San Jose not scoring when Chris Wondolowski blazed one over the top from 8 yards out, and the referee cannot be blamed for San Jose conceding a silly foul just outside their penalty area which lead to the winning goal. Nevertheless, the referee did not have the best of days, and that is a shame.

Knocking The Ball Around

2011-08-06T20:51:00.000-07:00

There's been a lot of bad news in the world of late. Today, in particular. Which is why I will disregard all of that and talk about soccer.

The Premier League kicks off a week from today, and Major League Soccer is heading towards the final stretch of the season.

Looking at the San Jose Earthquakes, the excitement I felt at the beginning of the year has dissipated. The announcers on Comcast can be slightly biased as much as they want to be--and they want it a lot, encouraging the sideline reporter to taunt the opposing goalie--but the fact remains that no, Portland was not offside on the goal tonight, not even close, and furthermore, this was one more example where the Earthquakes' defense was just not good enough. For all the offensive futility San Jose has experienced this year--about as bad as that of the Giants--their defense has always seemed the shakiest aspect of the team for me.

The Premier League is back, and that will be very exciting. Liverpool seems to possibly re-loaded; Newcastle has signed some intriguing young French players, and will possibly add Gabriel Obertan from Manchester United, and I have seen flashes of quality from him, so that is encouraging. Will Arsenal fade further this year? They have seemed on the downward arc lately, threatening to follow Liverpool out of the elite as Tottenham and Manchester City have surged. Manchester City, though, they just buy players, so I really can't root for them, especially since it looks like Tevez might be on his way out, and he was always a player I loved to watch for them. Tottenham signed Brad Friedel, and one of my friends in the UK is a huge Tottenham fan, so I wish them well; Rafael Van der Vaart is a key man on my fantasy team this year, FC Buster Posey. Still, if Newcastle and Liverpool are not to win it all, I would still pull for Arsenal.

Just like that, Alan Gordon gets a head on a great cross and ties the match for San Jose! Hope blooms like the taste of shiraz and chocolate chip cookies.

A new season, new possibilities. A sign of stability in an unstable world, for now. It's why we love sports.

Soccer: Beautiful Game, Ugly Games

2011-06-19T11:46:00.000-07:00

This week, the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution endorsing rights for gay, lesbian and transgender persons. Russia voted against it. How can you be on the "Human Rights Council" and vote against rights for humans? Obviously, because the Human Rights Council is wrapped up in politics, but that's not my focus today.

Russia voted against these rights. Russia was recently awarded the 2018 World Cup. Anyone else see a problem here?

Sepp Blatter has talked about soccer and the World Cup being separate from the issue of global politics, that it should not be predicated on a country's position on key issues. Diplomacy through sport, connecting countries with blemishes to the rest of the world--and the possibility therein of moderating societies which the rest of us would like to see moderated. This is reasonable, and it is why Saudi Arabia, for instance, with its primitive tradition of not allowing women to drive, will still be allowed to compete for a place in the World Cup. We'll just have to hope for their incompetence as a team to prevent them from World Cup glory. We'll hope for the same for Russia.

So yes, this notion of soccer diplomacy, but it appears more and more that FIFA is not in the business of diplomacy through sport, but solely in the business of . . . business.

Say what you will about the qualifications of Qatar as a host for the World Cup in 2022, the fact that multiple members of the FIFA executive committee appear to have accepted bribes in connection to that election leaves the result in a dubious light.

Then you have the fact that FIFA has the power to investigate ethics claims against itself.

Then you have the fact that Mohammed Bin Hammam, from Qatar, in running against Sepp Blatter for the FIFA presidential election earlier this month, demanded an investigation in ethics violations on the part of Sepp Blatter. (This is nothing new. Corruption charges against Blatter have been around since at least 2002.

Then you have the fact that similar charges were filed against Bin Hammam, forcing him to drop out of the presidential race, leaving Blatter to run uncontested. It turned into quite the sideshow.

It all seems very sketchy, and distracts from the point of soccer, which is the game itself, and not the monetary elements that drive the global presentation. We will see if Blatter lives up to his promises to reform the controversial aspects of FIFA's governance and the World Cup host selection process. In the meantime, I'll watch the US play Jamaica today in the Gold Cup, and let myself believe the point of the game is indeed the game itself.

Small Steps

2011-06-14T22:14:00.000-07:00

It is fascinating how so many small details in baseball become truly pivotal. In tonight's Giants victory over Arizona, with two outs and the Giants leading 4-0, Cody Ross was on third base, Brandon Crawford was on first. The Diamondbacks caught Brandon stealing and had him dead to rights at second base; however, Crawford stopped halfway, forced Arizona to chase him to get the third out of the inning, and Ross alertly ran home for a fifth run of the game.

When the Diamondbacks pulled within one run later on a three run home run off Matt Cain, that bit of smart baserunning by Cody Ross became so much more important, considering we ended up with a 6-5 victory. Not only was it an extra run in a one run victory, it also prevented the Diamondbacks from actually tying the Giants at any point, which meant that Matt Cain earned his sixth victory of the year. Morale is boosted by such statistical means.

On the flip side, consider how much one small miscall might have changed things. In the ninth, when Arizona runners tried to advance on a ball dropped by the catcher, Pablo Sandoval took a strong throw from Eli Whiteside and applied a tag. The umpire called the runner safe, even though Pablo's left foot actually blocked the bag and prevented the Diamondback from tagging the base before Pablo tagged him. Replays showed this clearly. Such a small call, but it could have be disastrous. Fortunately, Brian Wilson remained indomitable and struck out the final batter to win the first game of a three game series in Arizona, against the Diamondbacks who are now 1 1/2 games behind us in the division.

Subtleties like that make baseball fascinating from an intellectual level, I think, even for those who are not particularly fans.

Weekend Of Happiness!

2011-05-08T18:53:00.000-07:00

A good weekend, in honor of Marina's new nephew. The Giants put on some magic, with two walk-off wins--scoring a run in the bottom of the ninth at home to end the game--and a solid 3-0 Sunday victory to sweep the Rockies at AT & T Park, and Newcastle United earned a 2-1 win over Birmingham to clinch survival and another season in the Premier League, armed with the 35 million pounds from the sale of Andy Carroll with which to reinforce their squad.

One of those weekends where the results may not seem momentous in the big picture, but they add up to a satisfying backdrop. Today, for instance, I was driving back from Chico and got stuck in an I-80 quagmire between El Cerrito and the Bay Bridge--it took me an hour to traverse that short distance. But the fact that the Giants were on the radio made it more palatable than it might have been otherwise, and it distracted me from the paucity of driving skills and ethics among my fellow road-prisoners.

There is something soothing about baseball on the radio; the gentle rhythm of the game and the conversation of the announcers, interspersed with the roar of the crowd and the crack of the bat, all add up to a perfect Sunday outing.

Easter Is For Sports

2011-04-24T18:08:00.000-07:00

An uncomfortable loss for the Giants saw them swept at home by Atlanta. Sigh. Fortunately, the only friend I know who lives in Georgia is not a baseball fan particularly, or maybe she doesn't feel the need to trash talk. Then again, I haven't talked to her in about a year or two, so she could very well be trash-talking in Georgia, drinking non-alcoholic mint julips and throwing cotillions, or whatever it is they do there. Anyway, that's my fear.

But oh well. Tuesday is another game, on the road versus Pittsburgh. In the meantime, here are some random sports thoughts, for the purpose of typing more on my new MacBook Air. I'm addicted to typing on this baby.

1) Why would anyone pitch to Albert Pujols? I mean, I'm glad they do, because it would be boring if they didn't, but still. So much for baseball being ruled by statistics and probabilities. Then again, even good hitters only succeed roughly 1/3rd of the time, and pitchers are competitive cranky people, or so I would imagine.

2) I hope Albert Pujols stays in St. Louis. The Giants can't afford him, so let him stay where he is an icon. If he goes to New York or Chicago, that would just seem wrong. The Cubs would be more acceptable than the Yankees, but still.

3) Oh, Arsenal. Once again, they play pretty football, but fall short, can't quite keep up with Manchester United and Chelsea. Not quite enough functioning firepower for Arsenal, ironically. But please, oh please, don't let Barcelona play the big bad wolf again this summer, huffing and puffing and trying to pry Cesc Fabregas away from London. It just looks tacky.

4) A draw with Manchester United and another draw with Blackpool seems to have put Newcastle in solid shape to stay up. They are seven points up on the third-from-bottom team, with four games--and a maximum of twelve points--still on the table. But the draws didn't do much for my fantasy team, with no goals or assists for Shola Ameobi.

5) The NFL Draft is coming up again on Thursday. Again, they are now showing it in "Prime Time", which means the first round opens at 5 p.m. on a Thursday evening on the Pacific Coast. This means that most of the really exciting stuff would be done before people out here could get home to see it. Lame east-coast pandering. I used to love watching day 1 of the draft on Saturday mornings, meeting Vaughn for coffee and/or breakfast beforehand. One more bit of nostalgia and enjoyment for the league now threatening a tacky lockout goes pfft.

When Californians Root For Earthquakes

2011-04-10T18:08:00.000-07:00

The crowd began stamping and shouting, "Earthquakes."

"Where?" I might have asked, turning my head quickly in alarm. You never know with California.

But in this case, they were not announcing seismic activity; they were urging the local Major League Soccer team on to greater action. San Jose stuck by the motif that you should name your sports team after something fearsome, possibly what you fear most: hence "Earthquakes." By this same logic, the Seattle baseball team fears invasion by sailors--Mariners--and the Chicago American football team fears being devoured by bears.

Some of you might argue with this premise, but I would point out that I have a blog, and as far as I know, you do not, so I win.

The point is, on Saturday I went to see a live professional soccer game for the first timein my life, a fact which appalled Marina, considering I spent a semester in Wales. She had seen DC United in action out in Washington, D.C., and took in el classico while studying in Spain--Barcelona versus Real Madrid.

San Jose plays on the campus of Santa Clara University at Buck Shaw Stadium. Wembley Stadium, it is not, but I'll take it:

The atmosphere differed from a baseball game in that it was much more low-key, and yet the crowd was happy and enthusiastic, draped in Earthquakes gear. It had something of a grass-roots festival feel, with little mini-activities for kids before the game, as well as good beer, food carts, and the usual concession suspects: hot dogs, garlic fries, candy, hot chocolate, beer, etc. Marina had a close encounter with the mascot, as well.

At 7:30, the game commenced. San Jose was hosting Toronto FC, who recently traded their star Dwayne De Rosario--a former Earthquake--to New York. It was fascinating compared to watching it on TV. It was at once faster and more compact than I realized from seeing games on the screen.

It was a hard-fought game, with a lot of possession exchanged in the midfield, a lot of fouls, a lot of tempers flaring. Three players stood out for me for San Jose: Bobby Convey, Simon Dawkins, and Ryan Johnson.

Bobby Convey I've watched since he was a teenager playing for D.C. United and the national team. He went to England for a while, and then returned to MLS. He made several deft runs and quick cuts, looing dangerous down the right flank.

Simon Dawkins is a young Tottenham Hotspur player on loan with the Earthquakes, and he looked skilled and strong in the center of play, holding possession and fighting off challenges, distributing the ball well, and driving past two defenders to score San Jose's only goal of the game. I liked the idea that he could well play in the Premier League in a few years, and I would be able to say I saw him play.

Ryan Johnson is a tall and fast forward. He brought the ball under control and burst past the Toronto defense down the left flank on several occasions.

Toronto had several good players as well, including a Swiss midfielder named Alen Stevanovic, who had good speed and good moves, but earned the ire of the home crowd for going down and writhing in pain and then returning quickly to the field, and Alan Gordon, a striker who capitalized on a defensive blunder to give Toronto an early lead.

Some fan behind us must have not been able to say a word this morning, because he was yelling in rage for most of the game. Two highlights, which I couldn't quite interpret:

(to Stevanovic when the Toronto player was on the ground): "This ain't La Liga!"

(to both teams when the Earthquakes were passing the ball around among their back line: "You aren't Fulham and Arsenal!"

I can assume that in the first example, he was implying that players in Spain tend to simulate injury, and that he shouldn't do that here, because the MLS is better than that. As for the second quote, I'm baffled.

In the end, it was a 1-1 draw, which was fair. San Jose looked far more tired than Toronto in the second half, their defense looked fragile at times, and Chris Wondolowski and Khari Stephenson wasted two clear chances to score. It was a disappointing result but an exciting match for my first live MLS game. Plus, we had hot chocolate.

Perspective On Trial: Chronicles of A Recovering Bad Loser

2011-04-05T18:48:00.000-07:00

So, the universe tested my resolve fairly quickly. No sooner did I sit down with a cookie than I saw Buster Posey take a called strike three on a full count, while the Giants trailed the Padres 3-1, a deficit they would not close. The pitch looked, shall we say, just a bit wide, in the same sense that the Pacific Ocean is just a bit damp.

Keep in mind that I was alone in the house. So, I'm pleased with myself that all I said was: "Huh. Interesting." The Giants' play-by-play announcers, who are totally more objective than most other announcers I've seen, were dubious that it crossed the plate, but said it was probably too close to take, so we'll leave it at that.

Oh, well. We'll get the Padres tomorrow, or not.

I've decided, also, that the key to keeping cool is to not read Internet chat rooms. There are plenty of insightful, articulate comments, but there are a lot of people who use the anonymity of the Internet to let fly with vitriol, abuse, smack talk, horrific grammar, and all-around misery. And those are some of the so-called Giants fans. I'm not even talking about the people who spend a lot of time commenting on soccer articles with remarks about how boring and what a waste of time they find soccer.

Tim Lincecum forbid that I act in real life like the trolls do online.

I should watch the Ken Burns documentary again, or re-read Summer Of '49. That's the way to swaddle myself in historical context and the greater poetry of the game, and think about last fall, and dream about tomorrow.

Bread And Circuses

2011-04-03T17:48:00.001-07:00

Enough with the doom and gloom over perspective on sports. Back to the fun, with random sports thoughts and observations while watching the Giants-Dodgers on Sunday night:

1) We're finally going to a Major League Soccer game. Marina kept asking me why we haven't gone to an Earthquakes game, and I realized that I don't have a good answer. I love professional soccer. The Earthquakes are a professional soccer team. Logic dictates that I would love to see them play live. One could say that logic has no place in the emotion-driven world of sports fanaticism, but that wouldn't make sense. And so we bought tickets for next Saturday's match against Toronto FC.

2) I love Pat Burrell and Aubrey Huff. I love the fact that they are both back on the team and in the lineup, and I love the fact that Brandon Belt is here and has already hit his first home run--and stole a base, too. I do not love the fact that our corner outfielders are Pat Burrell and Aubrey Huff. That scares me from a defensive standpoint. The range will be limited. I'm looking forward for Cody Ross' return, although that could create a logjam of bats. Where do you put everybody to keep them in the lineup? This is why the designated hitter is such a luxury for the American League.

3) Barry Zito gave up three runs in the first inning, after recovering from an auto accident--a taxi ran a red light and crashed into him, fortunately leaving him apparently unscathed. After that first inning, the Sunday Night Baseball crew went on and on how he does not have good stuff anymore and how he will just have to try to keep the Giants as close as possible for as long as possible. The announcers have not mentioned that he is pitching much better after three innings. It's like the world has Zitophobia.

4) I'm excited that the Giants extended the contract of Freddy Sanchez through 2012. He was injured for the beginning of last year, but ever since, his defensive prowess has been a joy to watch, and he has been hitting. He knocked in three runs, including a home run, in yesterday's win, by way of giving instant reward for the Giants' investment.

5) Pablo Sandoval could be back to his 2009 form. He lost forty pounds over the summer, looks good, and smoked a home run in his first at-bat tonight.

6) Kuroda is looking good on the mound for the Dodgers. He hit Torres leading off, but Torres was stranded at second--a well-executed sacrifice by Sanchez was wasted when Huff and Posey did not come through. Other than that, Sandoval's home run has been our only hit through four innings. We need to make him work and get more hits.

7) Matt Kemp hit a home run in the first inning. Zito just made him look bad on a swing in the bottom of the fourth, and eventually got him to weakly fly out to center. Just goes to show how every at-bat and every game is different.

8) I think it's awesome that there is so much coverage for the West Coast to start the season. Normally, through the first four games, ESPN and Fox would have shown the Red Sox-Yankees play six times.

9) I used to like the Seattle Sounders in the MLS until I saw their two central defenders tag-team Chris Wondolowski in the box last night, denying him a chance to get to a cross. The referee really should have been in a spot to see it, but he seemed to have a difficult time of it last night. The game got ugly, and a rivalry was born. The West Coast of MLS could become interesting.

Also, Seattle-based Starbucks wants to buy Berkeley-based Peet's. That would be annoying.

10) There is a leisurely pace to baseball games. Not as leisurely as cricket, mind you--few things this side of snails are as leisurely as cricket--but still, if you can get past the need to live or die with every pitch of every single game, watching baseball can be quite relaxing. That's my goal for this year.

11) A friend of mine just got engaged to a sports fan from Ireland. By way of congratulating them, I will once more mention that Thierry Henry should be ashamed of himself, and the French collapse in the World Cup was an argument in favor of the existence of karma.

A Matter Of Perspective

2011-04-02T20:24:00.000-07:00

Two Dodgers fans beat up a Giants fan and put him in a coma.

There is so much wrong with that, I don't know where to start. For the sake of this essay, though, let's start with the fact that that I felt the need to point out that the assailants were Dodgers fans, and the victim a Giants fan. That shouldn't matter; it should be an irrelevant detail in the story of vicious and imperfect humanity. Except that it appears that the victim's allegiance to a baseball team was the motivation for the attack.

It's just a game. It's easy to forget sometimes, but it is just a game.

I'm guilty of, well, being petulant and whiny when the Giants aren't doing well. I shut off the game on Friday night after the seventh inning, when Buster Posey struck out with the bases loaded. I shut it off rather emphatically.

"Don't be a baby!" Marina teased.

"I'm NOT being a baby," I insisted. "Now let's watch Toy Story 3."

Other than that bit of comedy at the end, this followed the formula of previous overreactions whenever things haven't go entirely the Giants' way. Now that they have won the World Series, I can see even more clearly how ungracious this is.

It isn't that this is how I inherently relate to sports. For instance, with Newcastle United's 4-1 win today over Wolves, taking another step towards ensuring safety and a comfortable mid-table finish in the Premier League, I felt a cozy sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. They aren't going to qualify for the Champions League or the Europa League. Nevertheless, I felt good about today's step towards a finish in the middle of the standings, whereas on Thursday, after the Giants lost the season opener to the Dodgers, I was depressed, as if 1/162 of the season would be indicative of expected results for the entire season.

Sports are weird that way. There are pros and cons to the way sports divides us into groups.

Pro: Sports are a sublimation of our instincts for war.

1) Our instincts for dominance can be channeled into games, entertainment, arbitrary challenges for testing our individual skills against those of another without actually trying to kill or be killed.

Con: Sports are a sublimation of our instincts for war.

2) That channeling doesn't always work.

Sports should be first and foremost entertainment, a game. While it's okay to be disappointed with a disappointing result, there are limits to how much it actually means. The Giants' win-loss record doesn't indicate anything about my worth, nor does their status as my favorite team indicate anything other than my great good taste.

It is, of course, easier to be philosophical about this AFTER the Giants beat the Dodgers yesterday 10-0. Which makes it all the more important to keep a sense of perspective about it.

I am able to get such satisfaction from Newcastle's battle for survival because I am less attached to them by geographical roots. I can view it as a story, because the reason why I chose to follow them in the first place was because of the story of Alan Shearer, the first player I enjoyed watching on TV, who went home to Newcastle, carrying goals. With the Giants, I always felt a deeper investment, because I grew up in Santa Rosa until I was nine.

It's all about finding a balance, especially since I have nothing personally at stake, not until I learn to throw a baseball at 100 mph or blossom into an athletic phenomenon at 31. It could totally happen. What? It could! But until then, I will be embarrassed to be invested in sports rivalries to even a fraction of the degree reached by the two men who beat up the fan of a rival team.

Spring In The Ukraine, and A New Season of Soccer Tales

2011-03-15T19:07:00.000-07:00

Quick. Shakhtar Donetsk. What country is the team from? More to the point, which part of the name is the name of the city? How many of you know?

I thought so.

The other night, I watched the Roma--Shakhtar Donetsk Champions League match on DVR from a couple weeks ago. It was not a pretty sight for someone who grew up fascinated by the glamour of Italian soccer names: Serie A, Roberto Baggio, Juventus, Inter Milan, AC Milan, Paolo Maldini. Names are a big thing in soccer. In all sports, really. Sports are about mythology. The Italian mythology was dragged through the mud once more in the game against the Ukrainian champions from Donetsk.

Daniele De Rossi of Roma, who elbowed Brian McBride in the face in the 2006 World Cup, got away with another such elbow against Darijo Srna. De Rossi is now my candidate for dirtiest player in Italian soccer. Then again, Gennaro Gattuso head-butted an assistant coach for Tottenham. So it's a tight race, which is appropriate wording, since Italian fans give us some of the worst problems with racism in the game.

It's a sad thing when one's sports illusions are tarnished. Baseball has felt the brush of steroids mar the legacy of the last two decades. Soccer is not immune to that humanizing touch of corruption.

When I was younger, I would invent soccer tournaments. I would go through World Soccer magazines and pick random teams from leagues around the world, sometimes by blindly opening the magazine and pointing my finger at an article or a list of standings for a country, sometimes with the roll of a die. I had rules, such as no more than three teams from one particular country. I had these teams organized into groups, with different rounds, set up just like the World Cup or the Champions League.

Matches were settled by a roll of a die for each team to determine how many goals were scored. For national teams, I went so far as to assign goals to players, by picking players from the box scores of international matches. Points were earned or lost with wins, losses, draws. There were consequences for poor performances: if a team went through a tournament and earned zero points, falling at the group stage, they were not allowed to be selected for a tournament for two or three iterations.

I took my soccer rather seriously, yes. Also, I lived in a small town.

My point is that I loved the big names of soccer, that seemed mysterious, evocative of powerful story lines, and Italian teams and players were among my favorites. With my quarter-Italian heritage, I've always followed this hierarchy for determining which teams to root for: 1) USA; 2) England; 3) Italy.

A few years after the height of my die-rolling soccer tournament heyday, I read The Miracle of Castel Di Sangro, which was an entertaining book, despite the smarmy self-righteousness of the American author. However, the indications of a lack of integrity in Italian soccer were disturbing, with reports of teams paying other teams for points to ensure safety from relegation or to ensure promotion. Then I read the absolutely outstanding A Season With Verona, which was engaging, but which pointed out some racist incidents with Italian fans, underscoring the rumors and reports I had heard elsewhere. These reports have only increased over the last years.

Then there was the match-fixing scandal of a couple years ago, which saw the might Juventus, the famous "Old Lady" of Italian soccer, relegated to Serie B as a punishment for malfeasance.

Sports are a business. I'm not sure whether I should be grateful or angry at Italian soccer for exposing the corrupt motivations to such a blatant degree.

But enough of the darkness.

Roma are guilty of hubris. When they were paired with Shakhtar Donetsk for this second round tie--a tie is a set of two games, one home game for each team--a Roma executive said that he was not going to lie; Roma were pleased with this draw.

Objectively, one appreciates the honesty, and one wouldn't have been surprised. There were other potential opponents with stronger pedigrees than that of the team from the Ukraine. But still, this is why we have cliches. The Roma team could have said that they had great respect for their opponents, that it would be a tough match. We might not have believed them, but the veneer of humility would have reduced the David versus Goliath factor for impartial fans.

As it was, I think it is great that Shakhtar Donetsk thrashed Roma quite thoroughly over the two legs, and is advancing to the quarterfinals. Underdog stories are the best part of sports, and it comes at a great time: the Ukraine is co-hosting the European Championships next year, and any publicity or momentum would surely be welcome.

I'll be interested to see how they do in the next round.

Speaking of names, the new season of Major League Soccer kicked off tonight, and I'm interested to see if David Beckham can win a title in what is likely to be his last season playing with the LA Galaxy. I think it could be a good year for Major League Soccer, with new teams in Vancouver and Portland, adding weight to the west coast balance. The three teams I'm most interested in this year are the San Jose Earthquakes for obvious reasons--and I will try to get to a live game this year--the Seattle Sounders, and the Galaxy. So many potential storylines. Let's kick it off.

Mexican Football: Crossing The Desert, Or; You Say Futbol, I Say Football. Let's Call The Whole Thing Offsides.

2011-03-12T15:47:00.000-08:00

In the Chronicle, the sports on TV section doesn't even list the Mexican football games, even though there seem to be at least three or four games every weekend. That seems odd, given the Latino influence in San Francisco, but I guess it is at least artistically appropriate, given the difficulties I've had in finding traction as a wannabe fan of Mexican football, which will lend an air of profundity to this blog.

It just makes sense that I should follow Mexican football, aka soccer. I love soccer. Major League Soccer can be okay, but the quality of play in the Mexican games I've seen has always felt a step above in terms of fluidity and overall skill of the games. Plus, Mexico is a heck of a lot closer than Europe, and I've now been to the country.

Still, the challenges are several. For one thing, I have only a rudimentary understanding of Spanish. I can get the gist of some of what the soccer announcers are saying, helped by the fact that I understand the context, knowing soccer as a game. And in my week in Mexico, I managed to follow some of Marina's conversations with Mexicans. But still, the announcers talk so damn fast.

Also, I'm not familiar with where the teams are, so I have no sense for the identity of the clubs, and no sense of connection, even with my recent trip--an Internet search indicates there were no major teams near where we traveled to Baja California Sur, which is not surprising, as remote as it was. So I don't have any club to feel any particular allegiance to, although Chivas de Guadelajara at least is connected with Major League Soccer, serving as a parent club for Chivas USA. But Chivas USA is in Los Angeles. Ick.

But there are some points of possible connections that I can pursue. With so many games being shown, I could watch the same teams over and over, which would give me the chance to cultivate an appreciation for how a certain team plays. And there are some Americans who play in Mexico; Jonathan Bornstein, for instance, recently moved from MLS to a Mexican team. Or there is a team from Monterrey, whose name reminds me of Monterey in Alto California (California for the gringos)--I love Monterey, so maybe I would like Monterrey. Or there are the comments of the staff at a restaurant we ate at in Loreto, who were watching a game and saying that Club America was a good team. Maybe I should take their advice, except that my stumbling efforts to talk to them about soccer were kind of embarrassing. "Chicharito Hernandez!" (thumbs up).

Some teams are sponsored by Corona, which tastes great with fish tacos, although based on my own experience, if there were a team sponsored by Pacifico, I might have to go with them. Pacifico is refreshing. (Back to the Internet: Pacifico and Corona are from the same large brewery.)

In any case, I have finally found a section of soccernet.com, and another website, goal.com, that seem to have more coverage of Mexican football, so I'll start trying to follow it more. Heck, with American football having just gone into a lockout, committing a potential corporate-sports suicide like baseball did in 1994, I need another source of football, it seems. Might as well be the beautiful version from Mexico.

Where Have You Gone, Andy Carroll?

2011-02-06T10:58:00.000-08:00

Today is Super Bowl Sunday. However, I will pointedly not write at length about the NFL. For god's sake, the pre-game coverage on Fox started 4 1/2 hours before kickoff. That doesn't take into account the weeks of hype on all sports channels. Nothing in sports is interesting enough to merit that much coverage, except for the World Cup and the San Francisco Giants.

I say this as a football fan, but I cannot bring myself to be interested in the hours and hours of announcers hyping the game. Today's pre-game coverage is likely to be longer than the actual time of play, and almost as long as the halftime show. The last few years, the Super Bowl pre-game coverage has felt like nothing more than an extended commercial for chips, beer, and other stereotypically American-male pursuits.

So instead, I will write about the other football.

Newcastle United sit mid-table in the Premier League, 5 points above the teams in the relegation zone but with a game in hand--which means they have played one game fewer so far, which means they have an extra chance to earn points to pull further away from danger. That's a decent position to be in, but to ensure safety, they need goals, and they just sold their leading goalscorer, Andy Carroll. Not only is he a Newcastle native--which means that he should have stayed to lead the line for Newcastle, despite some rougher aspects to his personality--but his sale seriously depletes Newcastle's offensive capabilities

True, they sold him for a ridiculous amount: 35 million pounds to Liverpool--although to be fair to Liverpool, they basically used the 50 million pound sale of Fernando Torres to Chelsea to buy Carroll and Luis Suarez, turning one talented striker into two. (By the way, I love the fact that Chelsea just lost to Liverpool, 1-0, at home at Stamford Bridge, in Torres' first start for his new team.)

35 million pounds is a hefty sum of money for reinforcing a team. The problem is, with the sale of Carroll happening on the last day of the January transfer window, Newcastle had no time to buy a replacement player. Yes, they have funds now to make a considered purchase or two in the summer, but now there is a deepening injury crisis. Shola Ameobi, the natural replacement for Carroll, broke his cheekbone in the first game after the sale and is out for months. The young and encouragingly-named Leon Best has scored a few goals, but just picked up a hamstring injury. Since the transfer window is now closed, Newcastle's only options are emergency loans of players from other clubs or signing a player who is currently out of contract. As a general rule, you would have to think there would be a reason why a player would be out of contract at this time.

Where will the goals come from to keep Newcastle in the Premier League? And more importantly, how can I find a good Newcastle player to represent my fantasy team? While Carroll has been out injured, there has been no one. I wanted to change that, but to whom? I want to pick someone who is likely to earn points. It's not just about waving the flag, you know. I ruthlessly changed the captaincy of my team from Andrei Arshavin to Carlos Tevez, who promptly scored a hat trick to earn me 38 points on his own. And that is what sports is really all about, fulfilling my sense of self-worth and cunning.

Yes, even with a depleted arsenal, Newcastle managed to rally for four goals to draw with Arsenal--yes, the pun was intended--but can that continue? I'll be interested to see who they can find to score goals. At this point, I want them to scrape enough points to stay up, and then buy some strong replacement players in the summer. That would feel like a great accomplishment.

And yes, I'm aware of the irony of complaining about boredom over the commercialization of the NFL, only to write about the implications of buying and selling players in soccer. What can I say? I care about Newcastle United. I emphatically don't care about cheap, watery beer and men who care passionately about chips.

Random Observations On Watching Sports; Or, Why Aren't I Being Paid For This?

2011-01-30T11:23:00.000-08:00

--While watching the halftime coverage of the Miami Heat versus the Oklahoma City Thunder, I witnessed the following:

Michael Wilbon, on what he gathers from the fact that the Lakers viewed a tape of one particular game from last year's Finals before today's rematch with the Celtics: "It means Phil Jackson wants to win this game."

As opposed to every other game of the season, which he wants to lose.

--The Oklahoma City Thunder should really still be in Seattle as the Sonics. Nothing about sports should change from when I was a kid without getting my approval. This would not have earned my approval.

--Except for the Giants winning a World Series. That is an example of change in sports from when I was kid that is totally acceptable and needed no prior approval.

--I do like seeing the Thunder give the Heat all they can handle. Russell Westbrook is fun to watch. He stole the ball from James, drove the length of the court, and dished the ball to a teammate on the wing for a three-pointer even while colliding with a Heat defender. That is the sort of elegance that I enjoy in basketball, hard work and a keen pass, intelligent movement away from the ball by Westbrook's teammate, that doesn't rely exclusively on pure athleticism and spectacle.

--Watching Mexican soccer, I can pick up the gist of what the announcers say sometimes, from a smattering of Spanish I've learned, along with the context of the game. But there are certain moments when the announcers start screaming as if the world has come to an end, and I find this bewildering, because there are no goals, no blatant fouls, no alien invasion erupting in the middle of the pitch.

--The NFL's Pro Bowl is on today. It is absolutely pointless. Therefore, as an American sports fan, I am expected to derive some sort of enthusiasm all on my own. The timing of the game is weird, as it is the week before the Super Bowl, which means that the players from the Steelers and the Packers will not be there. The game serves neither as a welcome break partway through the season, a fun little sideshow, nor as a final bit of dessert to cap the season. Yet, somehow, the NFL moved the Pro Bowl to this time as a marketing ploy? It baffles me.

--I'm torn on the Super Bowl. Marina has a friend and a cousin--specifically, a cousin-in-law (shouldn't such a term exist?)--who are Packer fans, but Vaughn is a Steelers fan. Vaughn has a prior claim on borrowing my allegiance for the game, but Ben Roethlisberger, while a remarkable athlete, is apparently pretty sleazy as a human being. Decisions, decisions. Maybe I should auction off my allegiance?

Human Traffic

2011-01-16T20:41:00.000-08:00

There's a rumor that Tottenham offered Newcastle 30 million pounds for striker Andy Carroll. There are two things that should strike that as odd to the American sports fan: one, why would anyone want to leave Newcastle for Tottenham (other than the prospects for Champions League soccer, the London life, more money, a more organized and more dynamic team contending to the top of table: trifling matters, all); two, could you imagine the Yankees, say, buying Cliff Lee from the Rangers in the middle of the season for $45 million dollars?

Actually, it doesn't seem that much different than a mid-season trade between teams, such as when the Rangers acquired Cliff Lee from the Mariners for several players this past season. The difference is the composition of the exchange. In soccer, it is typically a sale, although the occasional exchange of players does occur. In baseball, of course, sales of players have happened, most infamously when the Red Sox owner sold a young pitcher named Babe Ruth to the Yankees for enough money to finance a Broadway play.*

So in either case, teams have the ability to bolster their squads during the season. With soccer, there is the January transfer window, a time of hot gossip and rumors and salacious details about who's moving where and for how much money. In baseball, there are the rumors about which failing teams are prostituting their talented players to which contenders for future prospects. Basically, the same transactions, except on the one hand, it is for money, and on the other, for players.

What's the difference? Both involve money, really, but with soccer it is a more direct involvement, cutting out the representative markers of actual players.

Is there a reason for the difference, be it cultural or economic?

My first thought was that of the salary cap. In football, a salary cap means that trades of players must involve contracts of approximately the same value. In this case, an exchange of players requires a flexibility when it comes to the roster that isn't required in European soccer, where teams can simply buy a boatload of talent--up to a limit, of course, based on rules dictating the number of "homegrown" players that must be included on a 25 man roster--and there we get into all sorts of European labor issues that, while fascinating, are beyond the scope of a random sports blog.

The problem with this comparison is that there is no salary cap in baseball. There is a luxury tax for teams whose payrolls exceed a certain limit each year, which could act as a salary cap, except that the teams that have paid it, the Yankees and the Red Sox, for example, don't care about a salary cap, because they basically print their own money as baseball marketing empires.

Is it cultural? Free agency marked a big change in American sports scene. Prior to the struggles of Curt Flood and his successors, teams could hold on to a player even without a signed contract; players had no leverage, no unions, and could be sold or not sold depending on the desire of the owner. Free agency means that players have a lot more control over their careers by seeing out a contract and being free to go where they wish.

This does not seem like it would preclude players being sold in the middle of their contracts, though, assuming the buying team could reach an agreement with the player, much as a soccer team will generally try to negotiate contractual terms with the player after having a bid accepted by the team and before the transfer is actually complete. Furthermore, soccer does have a form of free agency, ever since the Bosman Ruling.

So what is it about American sports versus soccer that promotes the use of trades in the one and transfers or straight sales on the other? Does it matter? Does it have a root in different labor cultures? I genuinely want to know.

* No, No, Nanette for those trivia buffs among you

Et Tu, NFL?

2011-01-02T13:40:00.000-08:00

Ever since Major League Baseball's 1994 season was cut short due a labor dispute, it has had to work hard to regain a following, and many in the media now say that American football, in the NFL, is now America's Game.

Now it looks like the NFL may follow baseball's shortsighted path, with the owners set to possibly lock out players next year for some or all of the season. In today's paper, I read that ESPN personality and former quarterback Ron Jaworski is guessing that between two and seven weeks of next season will be wiped out.

That seems like very poor timing. When the minimum salary is still several hundred thousand dollars, and when the owners are exceedingly wealthy men, to think of the stadiums sitting empty and desolate on weekend after weekend, when there are fans who need their circus to escape thoughts of their own economic worries, well, that just seems wrong.

I'm all for the rights of labor unions to negotiate for equitable pay and good working conditions. And yes, the owners have the right to close their businesses, in theory, if you want to look at football from a business standpoint, which you have to do. And yes, it is an expensive business for the owners who do have to pay high salaries, and yes, the players deserve to be paid very well for sacrificing their health and their bodies, gladiators except for not being slaves.

But let's just say that the NFL is not hurting in terms of revenue, and if I wasn't sympathetic to the Muni unions who wanted to strike when the drivers make almost three times what I make in a year, I would be hard-pressed to sympathize with people who make at least 30 times what I make in a year.

It is a fascinating thing in a troubled economy to watch all these people with so much money scrapping to make even more. It's why the Republicans got so much support, although how they managed to convince middle-class and lower-class Americans to vote against their own best interest is remarkable.

If I can't afford to go to games now, I'm certainly not going to be able to with the inevitable price increases that will be seen, regardless of how the labor negotiations go. And even if I could afford it, I don't think I would want to anyway. As long as there is baseball and soccer, I'll be just fine, and any such lockout will simply cement football's place as my third favorite sport.

Am I missing anything? Is there any rational justification for the owners to lock out the players? Or rather, any rational justification that does not involve treating the game as a business only and the fans as customers to be served poorly?

The Pendulum Swings

2011-01-01T20:35:00.000-08:00

2010 has left, borne into the glorious past on the shoulders of a World Series victory for the Giants, leaving behind the forgettable details of a 49er football team mired in futility, and whose change of head coach and presumably quarterback will hopefully end this recent reign of error at Candlestick.

Spring Training begins in a matter of months, and no one gives the Giants any shot of repeating. The Phillies have been anointed champs already with the signing of Cliff Lee, so I guess there's no point in playing the games, then.

Alas, Edgar Renteria claims to have been insulted that the Giants offered him "only" $1 million dollars to come play one more season. All the people who attempt to justify his indignation need to adjust their definition of disrespect.

In the meantime, it is time to refocus on the English Premier League. Newcastle is in the thick of a relegation dogfight, with all teams ranked between 11th and 18th in table all within three points of each other. So that will be an ongoing narrative of survival, a question of adjusting life bit by bit, earning enough points to stay up in the Premier League, which is, of course, what most of us are trying to do in the metaphorical Premier League of life.

Without an apparent chance of Newcastle winning the title or qualifying for Europe, and with more anti-management anger after Chris Hughton was abruptly fired, the season becomes, for me, a matter of neutral enjoyment, with a tendency to hope for Arsenal or even Manchester United to beat Chelsea to the title.

And so it was that I watched Manchester travel to play West Bromwich Albion today, in the hope that I would see fine attacking soccer from a high-quality team, thinking that West Brom's injury crisis in defense would allow Manchester to play a free-flowing game and hopefully provide me with lots of fantasy points through Javier "Chicharito" Hernandez and Darren Fletcher.

The game was entertaining, but as always, nothing was simple. West Brom was clearly struggling on defense, conceding within three minutes to a fine header from Wayne Rooney, but for the bulk of the game, the Baggies, playing in front of a home crowd, looked much more enthusiastic on offense, harder-working, more dangerous. In particular, Chris Brunt, James Morrison, Jerome Thomas and Graham Dorrans were out-hustling the more famous names of Patrice Evra, Gabriel Obertan, and Dimitar Berbatov to the 50-50 balls, and Morrison scored the best goal I've seen this year on a long-range volley, and Manchester United was extremely fortunate to avoid being down to ten men when Gary Neville escaped unpunished for a tackle in the box that should have resulted in a penalty kick and a red card.

But the difference in quality in these teams showed through, as it so often does in the other 9 times out of ten encounters between a David and a Goliath. And it showed through in just a couple of details, a few moments that made all the difference. West Brom justly earned a penalty kick in the second half when Jerome Thomas cut past Rio Ferdinand who blatantly tripped him. This should have been the moment of redemption, a moment of justice for the earlier penalty that was not awarded. But Peter Odemwingie, in stepping up to take the penalty, twelve yards away from the goal, rolled the ball woefully wide of the post. And moments later, perhaps distracted by that failure, perhaps suffering from an abrupt withdrawal of momentum, West Brom's defense collapsed on a corner kick, allowing Hernandez to direct an unchallenged header into the goal for the win.

So in this game, as in so much of life, the (Red) Devil was in the details, but there was a lot of joy to be had in the big picture as well, for an entertaining game that could have gone the other way just as easily.

Dream Fallout

2010-11-30T19:48:00.000-08:00

So, there were two things that I felt most strongly about in terms of the Giants' off-season agenda: 1) retaining Aubrey Huff; and 2) retaining Juan Uribe. They seemed at the heart of the magical run. At the very least, let's keep them around for a victory lap, right?

Yes, Edgar Renteria was vital too, but considering his age and fragility, I was okay with letting him ride off into the sunset under the Golden Gate Bridge by way of a richly-deserved yet environmentally-friendly yacht, either into retirement, or a nightcap of a season or two with another team--although capping a career with another World Series-winning hit to go along with his winner in 1997 would be tough to top. And yes, I was thrilled to have Pat Burrell on the team, for the local flavor, the big hits in the season, and the classic baseball nickname of "Pat the Bat", but his lack of mobility meant I would much rather the Giants extend Cody Ross and Andres Torres.

Step 1: Accomplished! We signed Aubrey to a richly deserved contract extension, 2 years with an option for a third, $22 million guaranteed. He can play first base or in the outfield, and he's just a big ball of fun and magic. His versatility will be key, especially if Brandon Belt, ostensibly the next Buster Posey, matriculates to the majors next season.

But, Step 2: Ugh. Um. Huh. Juan Uribe just signed a three year, $21 million deal. With the Dodgers.

What the hell?

Juan, you are related to Jose Uribe. You inherited the OOOOREEEEBAY cheer. How can you wear Dodger Blue?

Well, he has his reasons. Granted, those reasons are in the amount of $21 million, so you can't really blame him. He wanted a multi-year contract, and $7 million a year is, well, $7 million a year. Reports have varied as to what the Giants offered him, so I don't know what to think about that, although the Chronicle reports the Giants offered 3 years for $20 million, which, if true, either means that the Giants were unwilling to pay $1 million more or that Juan ignored the pull of trying to repeat over $1 million. Yes, $1 million seems like an enormous sum, but when you look at it as a percentage of the whole, it doesn't seem so much. Objectively, if he felt that was the best deal for him, then so be it. Baseball is a business, and objectively, there is no reason why a player shouldn't move from the Giants to the Dodgers or vice versa. It's just a matter of one city over another, one business over another. People change jobs all the time.

And it does not negate the magic of this past year in any way. Nor does it mean that Giants fans will have to automatically hate Juan the first time we play Los Angeles.

But there is something about it that just feels wrong. Baseball is not just a business, despite what the cynics say. But such is life; business does play a large role. Although, apparently the Dodgers made an aggressive run at Huff as well, so maybe the rivalry has just been taken to the business side as well.

And then you have the Giants' first response: a one year, $6.5 million contract to Miguel Tejada. Tejada has roots here from the A's and should provide good hitting, but he is older than Uribe by five years, and he was named in the Mitchell Report for steroid-affiliation. This isn't what we need, after Jose Guillen's brief fling with the Giants at the end of the year that was quickly linked to a delivery of HGH, not to mention the looming controversy of Barry Bonds and BALCO.

But the deal seems reasonable in dollars, and there are a few young prospects who could be groomed under Tejada. So we shall see. But it doesn't feel like the perfect coda to a championship symphony of a year.

Let's be sure to extend Cody Ross's contract, okay?

What It Means To Say San Francisco Giants, 2010 World Champion

2010-11-02T18:32:00.000-07:00

The San Francisco Giants are World Series Champions. What does that mean in the grand scheme of things, other than the all-important truth that we have now won a World Series more recently than the Yankees and the Dodgers?

I have spent my life hoping that it would happen. Now that it has, it's hard to find the words to express what it means. The Giants won the World Series? Seriously? All this after being predicted to finish fourth in the division? You would think it was a straightforward question, the meaning of a World Series victory, but no.

The first game I ever attended was with Dad and our landlord in Santa Rosa. The Giants beat the Atlanta Braves at Candlestick Park behind Bob Brenly's three errors and two home runs. That was back in 1986. Rob Schneider, of all people, mentioned that exact game on the televised coverage of the celebratory parade (I am allergic to his comedy, generally, but he turned out to be an articulate and devoted Giants fan), which made me feel a link a larger world.

Obviously the Giants have been close before, in 1989 and 2002. That story has been covered many times. And what the victory means to me is probably not the same as it means to other fans, so all I can write about it is what it means to me. And even then, I'll stick to what I would like it to mean, because I'm still too close to it all.

All the pressure is off! Now that we've won a championship, outlasting all comers, we can sit back and enjoy the beauty of baseball qua baseball. Maybe Barry Zito can relax and just let the ball fly now, without the pressure of living up to his mega-inflated salary. And it will certainly make things easier for Marina, as I'll be able to resist yelling and swearing at the TV for a good long time, at least until April.

You Can't Argue With The Great Pumpkin

2010-10-30T13:56:00.000-07:00

After decades of frustration in which San Francisco Giants fans have waited for a championship like Linus waiting in a pumpkin patch for the Great Pumpkin, it truly seems like this could be the year. No, not because of the statistical patterns concerning teams that take 2-0 leads in the World Series. I'm talking of the real reasons: the supernatural factors, including the intervention of the Great Pumpkin.

I'm sure Texas is an assembly of decent human beings. For one thing, they are no longer owned by George W. Bush. For another thing, they are no longer owned by Tom Hicks.

But Texas does not have Juan Uribe. He is the second cousin of Jose Uribe, starting shortstop for the Giants when I was a kid, and whose name inspired the "Oooo-reee--bayyy" chant that has now been transferred to Juan. It is a second chance after the Giants lost the 1989 World Series after the world literally shook. Sounds like a mystical connection to me.

In addition, there is the Halloween Factor. Obviously, it has been reported in the media how the Giants' team colors, orange and black, are in sync with Halloween. Plus, the Giants have the scary beard motif, which seems extra appropriate. However, there is a more important Halloween connection that has been overlooked up until now. The most popular animated Halloween TV special is almost certainly "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown"; Charles Schulz established a home and an ice rink and a museum in Santa Rosa, the town where I lived until I was nine.

Sure, Charlie Brown is known for getting knocked off the mound on pretty much every single pitch he threw in a baseball game, but before Peanuts came to an end, Charlie Brown hit a home run to win a game. Not even Nolan Ryan can argue with that. Plus, we have Cody Ross, our very own bald hero. Coincidence? I think not.

If you want a more logical rationale, let's look at the numbers. The year is 2010, and 10 is my favorite number. Plus, 20 plus 10 equals 30, which is my age. The Giants are my favorite team, and therefore their fate is clearly linked to attributes of my personality.

Spooky, isn't it?

Game 1

2010-10-27T18:40:00.000-07:00

Sports are as much about potential as anything else. Yes, I know about winning rings, statistics, the Hall of Fame. But if you ask me, the anticipation before Game 1 of the World Series is as fundamental to our enjoyment of sports as is a win-loss record.

Spring Training in baseball epitomizes the mythologized notion of a fresh start, amazing potential. Each team is like Schrodinger's Cat: at the start of the year, such are the possibilities that the team both wins the championship and does not win the championship at the same time. It is only when the results play out that one possibility goes away.

If you win or if you lose, there is always another match, always another season. At least until your team disbands or you retire. This may diminish the value of a victory, but it can also mitigate the sting of a defeat. It all depends on your perspective.

This is why, after the Rangers took a 2-0 lead before I got home, it was still possible for the Giants to tie it 2-2 going into the bottom of the fourth inning. Even against Cliff Lee, who is a great pitcher; I will gnash my teeth when he is a Yankee next year, even though it isn't like the Giants need him. Still, it's not like he would be for the Dodgers, so there's that concept that the enemy of the Dodgers is my friend. See? The beauty of possibility.

(Speaking of possibility, I just read that there is a chance Newcastle United will sign Landon Donovan in the January transfer window. It's like when they signed Michael Owen, only better, because Landon Donovan isn't perpetually injured. The alliance of my favorite soccer team with my favorite American player would be outstanding.)

Both pitchers are settling in and getting quick innings. This is fun! Lee versus Lincecum! Two new teams in the World Series, the Giants versus the Rangers, new blood instead of the battle of the Brobdingnagian squads from Philly and NY that everyone expected.

(By the way, a brief aside to eTrade: you should know that I will never use your services; I will specifically go out of my way to avoid using your services, because of your endlessly lame commercials featuring that damn baby.)

So much for worrying about Andres Torres and his appendectomy! A beautiful double down the left field line with one out in the 5th puts a runner in scoring position for the go-ahead run. Let's go, Freddy Sanchez! I love extra base hits, because that eliminates the threat--mostly--of double plays. And Freddy doubles in Torres!

And now, of course, if I finish writing here, it will forever preserve a moment in time when the Giants were ahead and Pat Burrell draws a two out walk. So I think I will do that, and go cook pasta and chicken sausage, and enjoy the rest of the game away from the computer. Let's go, Giants!

But of course, possibilities aside, what really matters is the result. No one ever really loves the journey or moral victories. Those are platitudes for the rationalizing and the contemplative. When it comes to baseball, I wanna win.

Cue Russ Hodges

2010-10-24T13:56:00.000-07:00

"Ragtag." "Improbable." "Bizarrely bearded." "These 'bleepin' guys."

These are some of the descriptions of the San Francisco Giants in the media from the east coast. I won't say there's an element of condescension, but that scent of fermented grape is not coming from wine I drank to toast the Giants' clinching of a spot in the World Series. For one thing, I didn't drink wine, but Calvadoon apple brandy, much more satisfying on a rainy, foggy night in San Francisco.

There is a certain element of magic to any playoff run, especially when you are considered the underdog, whether you adopt the underdog role as a chip on your shoulder or as house money to burn. On Wednesday night, I was walking home along Valencia Street, through a damp evening, and a crowd outside the Phoenix pub was being lead in a "Let's Go, Giants" rally chant by a man with a trombone. If that's not a bit of magic, I don't know what is.

But magic is in the eye of the beholder. Or in the voice of the announcer, as was the case of Russ Hodges' famous radio call of "The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!" after Bobby Thomson's 'Shot Heard Round The World."

Were the Phillies the better team? Well, the Phillies had the best record in baseball. I won't get into the question of an "on-paper" comparison of the teams, although that too could favor Philadelphia. All notions of the better team are irrelevant in the final analysis. All that matters is who wins the game. And last night in Philadelphia, the Giants won the pennant. The Phillies are going home.

(There is an interesting inverse proportion in San Francisco sports in terms of that reputation-result dichotomy. The Giants were considered rank outsiders to make the playoffs and are now National League champs; the 49ers were considered favorites to win the NFC West and have an abundance of talent, but are 1-6 now, and by measurement of their results, may be the worst football team in the NFL.)

The World Series starts Wednesday in the city by the bay. There is indeed magic in the air; sporting success weaves a new world of distraction and myth, legends and heroic moments, out of something whose stakes are not completely a matter of life and death. Sports stand in for the conflicts that trouble us, and give us comfort for a while.

Let's go, Giants!

The Fickle Size Of Expectation

2010-10-16T13:18:00.001-07:00

Watching Manchester United waltz through West Bromwich Albion--2-0 at the 30 minute mark with a Javier Hernandez goal a highlight for my fantasy team--and knowing that Newcastle United are losing 2-0 at home to Wigan, I am confronted again with the question of expectations in sports.

It's hard to say that there is always a David versus Goliath factor, in the sense that 9 times out of 10 Goliath will win. West Brom recently beat Arsenal, after all. But there is a scale of economics that over the course of the season tends to weight the odds. I had hoped that Newcastle would come back up as a top-of-the-table club, that their relegation was a fluke. But it looks like they really have been on a slide, and that their exile in the Championship, even if they did bounce right back up, left them weakened as a club, not in a position to pay for the players they need to challenge the top teams.

This adds nuance to the season, in the sense that relegation battles and position in the standings become metaphors for adapting to one's station in life, and that winning a championship is not the only hallmark of a successful season.

The flip side of lowered expectations for Newcastle is the season that the Giants have had in Major League Baseball. For all the stress I went through in the final weeks of the pennant race, you would think that I had forgotten that the baseball preview magazine I read in April predicted San Francisco would finish second from last in the division, ahead of only San Diego. In fact, the Giants won the division on the final day of the season in a showdown with the Padres, whose second place finish helped underscore the reason why games are played in the field and not in the minds of journalists, who are kind of like meteorologists in that they are occasionally right, but clearly not prescient.

To look at things objectively, the Giants, in the playoffs for the first time since 2003, having beaten the Braves 3 games to 1 in the Divisional Series to advance to the National League Championship Series against the Phillies, are playing with house money. That may be an unfortunate metaphor in light of the Pete Rose story, but I'll go with it. Nevertheless, when the Giants lost game two against the Braves, I was distraught, convinced that every failure of the Giants was a failure of mine. Somewhere, I thought, a racist white conservative Republican fan of Atlanta was experiencing a moment of validation as a human being, which is utterly ridiculous, of course. Such a person could never be validated as a human being.

As I write this, West Brom knocks in a pinball goal, cutting the lead to 2-1. David is limbering up his slingshot arm.

So, with expectation being the fickle, changing, subjectively emotional beast it is, should I be satisfied with the Giants finishing in the top four teams, even if they can't overcome the Phillies, particularly with the Dodgers having suffered a shambles of a season? Probably. Would I be satisfied? Probably not, but watch this space. And more precisely, read what I write when content fills this space again.

And West Brom just tied Manchester United at Old Trafford. Wow. This is why we watch sports. Expectations are meant to be overturned.

Poisonous Barbs

2010-10-03T14:44:00.000-07:00

Sports bring out the lunatic in me. If on balance I am a mild-mannered and agreeable person, I must be angelic when not watching sports. When I watch sports, I accuse the Atlanta Falcons of being racist for beating the 49ers, and I fear that every time the Padres beat the Giants--especially when it spoils a chance for the Giants to win the division--it could be taken as a sign that neo-conservative religious Republicans from a patriarchal system--or "Padres"--are superior to, you know, decent human beings.

It has been a frustrating couple of days, as the Giants have blown their first two chances to clinch the division, not even coming close to giving the Padres a contest; the 49ers played much better but still lost through some inexcusable mistakes--and yes, I say inexcusable knowing full well I would do no better, but pointing out that I'm not paid millions of dollars to avoid making those mistakes.

What is it about sports that turns me into a profanity-spewing, irrational madman, looking for second gunmen among the officiating crews?

Let's face it; the Giants were not expected to be in a position to challenge for a division title, so I should be happy they are doing so well. Baseball preview magazines picked them to finish fourth in the division, after all--those prognosticators should be trampled in spring training, not that I take these things personally. And yes, the 49ers were expected to play a competent brand of football, but still, why should I act as if their failures reflect upon my character? Why do we act as if athletes are totems whose success or failure has anything to do with us?

I think that we all want a simple measure of success or failure in life. How can we tell is we are doing well if there is no one to keep score? Hence Wall Street and the stock market. I mean, outside of material things, how do we keep track of how we are doing? Paying attention to our feelings? Come on. Only communists pay attention to their feelings. The rest of us need sports.

Or maybe I'm just a lunatic. A friend of mine said it was gutsy of me to watch the Giants' game today. Two things about that: I'm not watching it, just recording it in case we win; and that would be a rather depressing standard of bravery if watching a baseball game was "gutsy" of me.

Sports set their hooks in us. We want myth, we want heroes, but it is easy to forget there is always another day, another season. We can get too high after a win, too low after a loss, and always come back for more. Is there a strange vitality to that, or are we just crazy?

The existence of fantasy sports proves that both possibilities are correct.

Okay, so I'm tuning in to the Giants game now. Might as well face the inevitable. We are up 2-0, top of the 7th, 3-2 count, two on, two out. Bring on the pain. It's better than thinking of the pain and poverty around the world. Right?

And we just might win.

Ramon Ramirez strikes out Miguel Tejada to end the 7th. Go Giants!

Speaking of Weird Standards . . .

2010-08-21T13:17:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I spoke about the weird definition of what can constitute success for smaller market soccer teams abroad. We go from there to the San Jose Earthquakes-LA Galaxy game. The Earthquakes' announcer opens the game by describing Galaxy keeper Donovan Ricketts as one of the best in the league.

Five minutes in, a long cross from the left wing bounces between Ricketts and one of his defenders, loops lazily over them, and falls for Chris Wondolowski to bury it from a tight angle. Sure, there are occasional flukes, but that timing was not very good for Ricketts.

Major League Soccer is getting better, but maybe we need to set higher standards. Too often with MLS, I see defensive lapses that are avoidable, just a bit of sloppiness, a bit more frequently than in the Premiership. For instance, Arturo Alvarez, a talented player for San Jose, got the ball in the penalty area, and took one touch too many, let it get away from him, and a defender cleared it before he got a good shot.

There is an interesting article in the current issue of World Soccer, in which Paul Gardner discusses the relatively low-key arrival of Thierry Henry to New York, and he speculates this is a sign of hope for MLS, that this time it might succeed to a greater extent than David Beckham's Galaxy career has done so far.

I want to see a faster pace, players sharper in possession and in the passing, better camera work from the broadcasters. But it is getting more entertaining every season, so that's good to see.

A Dream Too High

2010-08-21T09:44:00.000-07:00

This morning, I'm watching Arsenal versus Blackpool. Blackpool is just up to the Premier League for the first time, not having played in the top flight for many years, and most predict them to descend right back down to the limbo of the lower leagues. Arsenal, of course, is Arsenal.

Then again, Blackpool crushed Wigan last week 4-0 in their debut.

There was a bemusing discussion before the game in which the studio analyst was speculating on Blackpool's future. They will get an infusion of money through the season, for being in the Premiership, and if, as anticipated, they are relegated again, they will get a 'parachute' of extra money, presumably to help stabilize the club through the pains of going to a lower league with less revenue and the implications that has for the wages they can pay to players. Would or should Blackpool spend that money on one or two big name players to try to come right back up, or should they just seek to improve the club overall and settle back into the second division.

It's one of those odd aspects of the relegation/promotion structure, the question of simply consolidating one's position. It seems bizarre to the mind of the American sports fan who is raised to expect his team to go for glory at every opportunity. At first glance, the discussion seemed a little condescending, a little patronizing, as if Blackpool is a child allowed to eat an appetizer at the adults' table before going back to the younger set.

The question seems a little more academic now that Arsenal has scored twice and Blackpool is down to ten men. Blackpool has made a couple chances for themselves, but Arsenal's pace and passing has unlocked Blackpool frequently, and were it not for a couple missed chances, it could be four or five goals at this point. (The highlight is Andrei Arshavin getting an assist and scoring on a penalty kick for my fantasy team.)

Taking the money and settling for second division status: is that an example of sports as a business, or of setting realistic expectations, or a little of both? If you can't compete at the highest level, is this an example of patience, of trying to rebuild from a lower level to improve, or is it cashing in on a windfall from a chance to play with the likes of Arsenal for a year?

3-0 now, and Walcott scores his second. Blackpool's dream start last week is quickly being deflated, and reality has set in for them on their visit to London. Blackpool are no match for Arsenal, who are now able to pass and run through them on the flanks and right down the middle and it's not even halftime yet.

Is it possible there is more value for fans to see their team playing consistently and competitively in a lower league than to see them routinely outclassed at the highest level? There would be a certain exotic thrill at first to see the most famous teams and players, but if you get drubbed by multiple goals every week, you might get a bit tired of that. And with the extra money you get, you can do better in the lower league next season. For instance, Newcastle United went down two seasons ago, which left me feeling forlorn. Then last season, they cruised to the title of the League Championship, which was fun, even if it felt like winning a free pizza, but with sauerkraut instead of mushrooms and olives.

I don't even want to think about what this discussion implies for the broader world. Besides, as Marina and I discussed this morning, sometimes people get jaded of serious talks about life: they need their bread and circuses, which is why, perhaps, or at least in part why, I get more of a response to my food and sports blogs than I do when I write about religion and politics.

It has to be said there is a certain pleasure to see a team as skilled as Arsenal play with crystal-smooth precision to burst through Blackpool again for a 4-0 lead. At this rate, I would say Blackpool needs more than one or two big names to reach the upper echelons of the Premier League, so maybe that will dictate their future path. I guess Blackpool's position--or the position of any smaller team that does not have a realistic chance of winning the championship in a given year--is a balance of business needs and competitive needs, and, with rare exceptions--such as the Chicago Cubs--if a team does not give the fans what they want in terms of sporting experience, the fans will let them know, and that could have an impact on the business aspect of the club.

Arsenal now leads 5-0, and there is nothing more to say.

United We . . . Rise?

2010-08-16T19:44:00.000-07:00

49 seconds in to the recorded match, Newcastle United versus Manchester United, and I'm worried I've blundered. I'm drinking Anchor Steam instead of Newcastle Brown Ale. Has my thoughtless choice of beer condemned the Toon already????

If so, I should be ashamed.

Andy Carroll for Newcastle has really long hair. He must get follicular advice from Jonas Gutierrez. I didn't picture Andy Carroll with long hair.

There is something about the pristine nature of a soccer pitch that is soothing, the striped pattern of how the grass is cut, thick, alternating bands of light and dark, the white chalk or paint of the lines sharp against the green.

Newcastle is playing Manchester away at Old Trafford, so this is a big match, but it won't be considered a disaster to lose. A loss would be expected, if not the ideal start to the campaign.

I love watching the back and forth flow of soccer, the ball being knocked around, triangle passes leading to the long raking balls down the wings. Manchester look dangerous and nearly break down Newcastle's defense a couple of times here in the first ten minutes.

Andy Carroll so nearly heads it in to the net from a corner, but puts it wide! So close!

Paul Scholes draws a foul from Alan Smith in a dangerous spot by accelerating like the Scholes of old, not the old Scholes of recent vintage. Maybe Smith wasn't expecting that pace. I would be enjoying the skills of United more if it weren't against Newcastle, which is the downside of having a favorite team playing in the game.

I just hope Newcastle doesn't stay bunkered back all game, though that seems a likely strategy in the circumstances.

But there is some nice passing, and Andy Carroll fires in a good solid shot from 25 yards out, forcing a good save from Van Der Sar. I like it. I would have liked it more if it had gone in, of course.

Wayne Rooney's first shot, with a little bit of space, is jerked tamely wide. A bit of an anti-climax, much like his World Cup.

A deserved free kick in the 23rd minute for United, as James Perch picks up Newcastle's second card, but the free kick smacks harmlessly into the wall. There have been a few signs of nerves at the back for Newcastle, as sometimes they have made some mistakes in their own third of the field.

Too many giveaways, and Manchester gets the first goal in the 34th minute from Dimitar Berbatov. Always on the cards. Newcastle has allowed them too much space and too much possession, and made too many mistakes on defense.

Now the game will have to open up, which should be entertaining.

Andy Carroll is tall, but he doesn't seem all that fast, so a counter-attack may not be Newcastle's best weapon.

Gutierrez has shown some speed down the flanks. Newcastle has had a couple chances, but often a careless touch or stumble has let them down. Maybe some nerves is undermining their poise here at Old Trafford in front of goal.

2-0 Manchester United. Sigh. An easy goal to Darren Fletcher.

This could get ugly.

Newcastle lacks the quality of Manchester United. It hurts to admit it, much like it hurts to admit that San Francisco Giants are not as good a team as San Diego this year.

It's very odd, the question of rooting for Newcastle United. I have no connection to the city. The closest I've been was traveling past Newcastle on a train from London en route to Edinburgh. The only reason to cheer for them is because when I first started watching the occasional Premier League match, I idolized Alan Shearer, then playing for Blackburn, and so I affixed my allegiance to Newcastle when Shearer signed for his hometown team.

So there is no rational reason for me to be depressed by their performance against Manchester United in the first half. Not only do sports teams in general have no objective reflection on my worth as a human being--not even the Giants--but Newcastle has no direct connection to me, so they can't be said to represent me.

But when have sports ever been about rationality?

One thought is that I've always wanted to feel like I'm different. Playing and following soccer, instead of American football, that was a way to feel special when I was young. It certainly gave me a little bit of identity, a hint of Anglophilia. It made me think I could impress people in Wales by being an American conversant in football.

Combining that with a genuine fascination with the play of Alan Shearer, and I guess it was inevitable that I would end up like this.

Therefore, I will watch to the end, bitter as it might be, some adherence to an intangible claim of loyalty to a team and a city playing a game that happened nine hours ago, noon Pacific time. It's the sort of melancholy joy one finds in sports, a safe sense of martyrdom, perhaps, balanced on the scales with hope for something amazing.

Of course, for me, I couldn't resist checking the result at halftime, so alas, I know there will be no spark of happiness from this game. It ended 3-0 to Manchester.

It serves me right for buying Anchor Steam instead of Newcastle Brown Ale.

It Begins Again . . .

2010-08-14T17:31:00.000-07:00

Today is a beautiful day. The Giants win on a walk-off single by Juan Uribe to beat the Padres and pull within 2 1/2 games in the division--baseball is a game of inches, every day marking an adjustment in the scheme of things. Little things make such a difference, like Buster Posey's hustle turning a ball trickling slowly into left-center field into a double, and from which Posey came home to score on Uribe's soft single looped into right field.

And also, today is the first day of the Premier League in England. Football's back, and not the soap opera world of American football, where two San Francisco 49ers have basically walked away from football this week.

Twenty minutes in to Tottenham versus Manchester City, and Man City's Joe Hart has already pulled off three of the type of spectacular saves that allow low-scoring games to be much more exciting than the scoreline leads Americans to believe.

And he just pulled off another one. Love this game!

This is an intriguing match to start the season, and you know it was planned this way. These two teams, who for seasons have been just outside of the Big Four--Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool--battled down to the wire last season for the fourth and final European Champions League spot for this season, supplanting Liverpool, who slid into the less-prestigious Europa League. Tottenham just nipped City to the post--to mix a horse-racing metaphor into things--despite Manchester City spending big money on big names, a policy they continued this off-season, which means that these two teams could be shaping up for a rivalry somewhat akin to Barcelona-Real Madrid last year, where Real Madrid spent millions upon millions but could not catch Barcelona. The difference being that these two teams might be rivals for a Champions League spot only, not the championship of the Premier League. I'll be interested to see how that develops.

Here are the other topics I'll be thinking about this year:

Will Newcastle struggle to stay up?

Newcastle has not spent huge sums reinforcing their squad now that they are back in the top flight. Two young talents in James Perch and Dan Gosling, and an old famous name in Sol Campbell. I once had Newcastle sign Sol Campbell, but that was only on FIFA '99 for the computer. We'll see how it works out. I would love to see the Toon challenge for a Champions League spot, of course, but should I be satisfied to see them consolidate their position as a Premiership team? The result will tell a lot as to whether their relegation two years ago was a fluke, or whether they are a club in need of rebuilding. I'll be able to tell right away, as they play on ESPN2 on Monday against Manchester United, which will be a severe test to start the season.

What's up with Liverpool?

It looks like Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres are not leaving, which is good, because that was a possibility with the absence of Champions League football. Their talents will be needed for Liverpool to reassert themselves with a new manager.

How will Javier Hernandez do?

I picked Javier Hernandez for my World Cup fantasy team, a selection that left me feeling quite smug, as he had an excellent tournament. He has already scored for Manchester United, in the FA Community Shield match against Chelsea, so he could be poised to have a dazzling debut season, and he could be a spark to drive United back past Chelsea for the first time in three seasons.

Halftime in the Tottenham-Manchester City game, and the score is level at 0-0, but Tottenham has been by far the dominant team on their home pitch. But the thing is, if they don't get a goal, their dominance is for nothing. Time to fast-forward to the second half, and to continue to enjoy the new season.

Turning Of The Seasons

2010-08-01T16:29:00.000-07:00

So, yes, I stopped writing part way through the World Cup. It was too distracting, but I enjoyed the tournament, though I wish the US had mustered more resistance against Ghana, and that Holland had not played such an ugly game in the final against Spain. The kick to the chest that Nigel De Jong administered to a Spanish player lost the Dutch any sympathy I had for them, and they were deserving losers of the final.

I watched the final in the Civic Center Plaza with 15,000 other soccer fans, and the atmosphere was wonderful. Everyone was in good spirits, but they were there to watch soccer, so the crowd was paying close attention to the large screens, so there were no distracting elements.

The Spanish team was Barcelona at its' heart, in style of play and in the roster, as a majority of the starters were from the team from Catalonia. But word has it--from Marina's cousin who lives in Spain--that Catalans were rooting for the Dutch, presumably for the same anti-Spain reasons that caused the region to recently outlaw bullfighting. Fascinating how sports and politics interweave like that.

The Giants are surging into August, in the playoff hunt, ahead of the Dodgers, behind the Padres, fighting off the Reds and Phillies for the wild card spot. But I'm not going to write about that. I'm going to write about the business of basketball.

So, LeBron James and the move to Miami from his hometown of Cleveland. There was a lot of heavy rhetoric about his signing with the Heat. Cleveland has been portrayed as completely angry and betrayed; the owner was fined for calling LeBron a coward; another story of a homegrown superstar comes to a close with a whimper.

That's not what I have a problem with, LeBron leaving. The truth is that he is a basketball player who wanted to play in Miami; a free agent. He had completed a contract with Cleveland and was free to play anywhere he wanted, just like any worker in our society. Even though the decision by LeBron and ESPN to stage the announcement in a one-hour prime time special called "The Decision" was tacky, silly, cheesy, insensitive to the Cleveland fans, and just plain vain, that's not enough to work up a good hatred for LeBron and Miami.

What is enough to work up hatred for Miami is the fact that they fired 30 people from their ticket sales staff yesterday, after they sold out all the season tickets for the upcoming year. After spending millions upon millions of dollars to assemble a triumvirate of James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh, and after selling out the season already, ensuring a huge revenue stream in a tough economy, they cut loose 30 people who helped get them that sellout.

Granted, if you look at it objectively, if there are no more tickets to be sold, then what would these 30 people do all year? And also granted, the Heat say they have hired a placement service to find jobs for the fired workers. This is the business side of sports. But here's the thing: if each of those 30 people were kept on and paid a $50000 salary, that would come to $1.5 million. That doesn't look like much when you look at what a single player earns in a year.

It just looks callous and New York Yankee-like. And that's why I can now hate the Heat, even though I don't really care about the NBA that much in general.

Now it is time to forget about the NBA and the false drama stirred up by pretending like LeBron James means something in the larger world--outside of Cleveland, a troubled economy where having a homegrown icon was of real value. It's time to get ready for the new English Premier League season, with Newcastle United coming back up, looking to consolidate its position and avoid being relegated again.

Did You Miss Me?

2010-06-21T20:03:00.000-07:00

A brief, idyllic hiatus bloomed in the middle of my World Cup viewing and blogging. Marina and I had our two year anniversary, and we rented a cottage in Santa Cruz, drove south to Monterey Bay, a slice of summer compared to San Francisco. We were literally around the corner from the ocean, a dead-end road leading to a promontory from which I saw five otters and a dolphin. That was only part of the magic of the weekend which will merit a blog of its own, but to make a long story short, I did not miss seeing the games. I've watched some of the recorded games since I've been back, and I've seen the clips of Sloveniagate--more on that in a bit. To catch up, I will do a quick summary of my thoughts on the action between Thursday and tonight.

THURSDAY, JUNE 17TH

FRANCE VERSUS MEXICO (Mexico 2-0)

ORIGINAL PREDICTION: I was perfectly right, Mexico won by two goals, and better yet, one was scored by Javier Hernandez for my fantasy team. I'm hoping he starts tomorrow. He has earned it.

This loss has completely unraveled France. Nicolas Anelka has been sent home; the trainer and another bureaucrat have resigned. To their credit, though, the French represented their country perfectly--perhaps too perfectly--by going on strike from practice. I see no way through to the next round for France.

ARGENTINA VERSUS SOUTH KOREA (Argentina 4-1`)

ORIGINAL PREDICTION (ARGENTINA 3-0)

South Korea's industry, so effective against Greece, did not work against the Argentines. Alas, neither Carlos Tevez nor Park Ji-Sung scored for me.

GREECE VERSUS NIGERIA (GREECE 2-1)

ORIGINAL PREDICTION: NIGERIA 1-0

Greece got their first ever win, and have a chance to go through. More importantly, Nigeria becomes one more African team that has failed to produce and succeed at the first World Cup on the continent. Some people say this is a disappointing thing, which is probably true, subjectively. Objectively, though, there is simply results, with nothing inherent to have indicated that Nigeria should have done better.

FRIDAY, JUNE 18TH

GERMANY VERSUS SERBIA (SERBIA 1-0)

ORIGINAL PREDICTION: 2-2 DRAW

With Miroslav Klose drawing two yellow cards, and thus a red, Serbia managed a surprise 1-0 win. I have heard criticism of the referee in this game, as with many other games; but that is always the case, and generally it is sound and fury signifying an overreaction. The defeat for Germany changes the outlook of the group, for sure.

The question of the quality of the referees leads us to:

US VERSUS SLOVENIA (2-2 DRAW)

ORIGINAL PREDICTION: US 2-1

The two stories of this game: the American's terrific rally to tie the game after a weak first half, and the winning goal that wasn't, a foul that has not been clearly identified that canceled Maurice Edu's goal in the 86th minute. I have not seen the full game yet. The clips I have seen have been inconclusive; I did not see a foul. It does look bad that there was no explanation. However, in the modern game, there is always tugging and grabbing and wrestling in the box on both sides, and as soon as the referee spots an infraction, the play is dead.

However, what matters, as Bob Bradley said, is that we are still alive. We rallied well, Landon Donovan scored a fantasy goal for me, and we can move on with a win over Algeria on Wednesday.

The reason why we control our own destiny is:

ENGLAND VERSUS ALGERIA (0-0 DRAW)

ORIGINAL PREDICTION (ENGLAND 3-1)

Nothing to say about this. At least, not for me. The English fans have plenty to say, I'm sure.

JUNE 19, 2010

GHANA VERSUS AUSTRALIA (1-1)

ORIGINAL PREDICTION (GHANA 1-0)

A bit of a letdown for Ghana, I have to say, especially with Australia reduced to ten men for the second game in a row.

HOLLAND VERSUS JAPAN (1-0)

ORIGINAL PREDICTION (HOLLAND 3-0)

Holland does just enough to secure their passage to the knockout stages. And more importantly, Wesley Sneijder scores for my fantasy team.

DENMARK VERSUS CAMEROON (2-1)

ORIGINAL PREDICTION (DENMARK 1-0)

Cameroon can't get vital points. Nothing else to say from an expected result.

JUNE 20, 2010

ITALY VERSUS NEW ZEALAND (1-1)

ORIGINAL PREDICTION: Are you kidding? Italy 2-0.

Apparently, before the game, the Italian media was highly disdainful of the Kiwis, saying they had no technical ability at all. I would hate to think what that implies about the Italians, who have now earned two draws from their first two games, the same results as New Zealand has earned.

PARAGUAY VERSUS SLOVAKIA (2-0)

ORIGINAL PREDICTION: I was right on, saying Paraguay would be confident after tying Italy, and I called a 2-1 win, so I guess I gave Slovakia just too much credit.

BRAZIL VERSUS IVORY COAST (3-1)

ORIGINAL PREDICTION: BRAZIL 3-2

Luis Fabiano scored two attractive goals, although he was guilty of a handball at least on the second one. The big story is Kaka getting dismissed for two yellow cards at the end of the match, the second one, unfortunately, tied to a shameful, shameless act by Keita of the Ivory Coast who reacted to an elbow to the chest by dropping to the ground and clutching his face. I really hope Keita is disciplined by FIFA. And now I am torn; I had wanted Ivory Coast to beat Portugal, but Keita's act makes him as despicable to me as Cristiano Ronaldo at his petulant, simulating worst.

I'm thinking that Ivory Coast doesn't have to worry about the next round, because Portugal just destroyed North Korea, 7-0. There is no mercy in Portuguese hearts.

The Overlapping Run of World Cup Group Play

2010-06-16T18:01:00.000-07:00

Today the first round of games concludes and leads right into the second round, an unbroken loop. Honduras versus Chile, Spain versus Switzerland, and then Group A returns with South Africa versus Uruguay.

HONDURAS VERSUS CHILE

ORIGINAL PREDICTION: CHILE 2-0

FANTASY PLAYER UPDATE: PABLO CONTRERAS IS NOT STARTING FOR CHILE.

There is something soothing about the sound of British accents discussing the game, but this is the second time the announcer has used the expression "circling the wagons" to refer to the team that is dominant and on the attack. Apparently he didn't quite understand the expression. Oh wait. That might have been John Harkes.

On second thought, I could certainly see how "circling the wagon" could be interpreted to refer to either the besieged or the besieger.

Speaking of attacking, Chile certainly attacked with flair and creativity, and Honduras was pinned back for large stretches of the game, although they did present a stronger threat in the second half.

Beausejour gets the expected first goal for Chile in the 35th minute as the end product of some elegant passing in close spaces that led to a slanted ball for a winger to break around the Honduras defense and center the ball back to the forward. It was excellent to watch, and Chile are more than a match for Honduras. It begins to look like my predicted scoreline might have been too conservative.

Chile has two really good young players, Matias Fernandez and Alexi Sanchez. I will definitely have to look into adding them to my fantasy team. The Honduran keeper, Noel Valladares, made a couple outstanding saves. Speaking of my fantasy team, Pablo Contreras entered the game as a substitute in the 81st minute.

Speaking of soccer fans, wouldn't the World Cup be a perfect chance to combine food and drink in obvious but delicious ways? For instance, I could drink Spanish wine with Swiss cheese for the Spain-Switzerland game, if I had Swiss cheese that is. For tomorrow's France-Mexico game, I could eat a burrito and buy some Guinness in honor of Ireland. For the US-England game, I could have eaten fish and chips with a bottle of Anchor Steam. Maybe I'll try to do this going forward. Not exactly original, but tasty.

Much like Chile's 1-0 win over Honduras. Not exactly original--the 1-0 scoreline, that is--but tasty, and full of attractive soccer.

SPAIN VERSUS SWITZERLAND

ORIGINAL PREDICTION: SPAIN WINS 3-0.

FANTASY NOTE: IKER CASILLAS STARTS IN GOAL FOR SPAIN.

FOOD NOTE: NO SWISS CHEESE. HENCE NO SPANISH WINE--SWISS CHEESE COMBO. INSTEAD, LEFTOVER INDIAN FOOD, PLUS BRANDY FOR DESSERT.

Woah. I just found out that Barcelona signed David Villa. My avoidance of sports news during the day has paid off with a sudden tidbit of soccer gossip during the World Cup watching. But now I want to go read more about the signing, but that would spoil the other two games for me. D'oh!

You would think that in the World Cup, teams would want to take the chance to poke holes in the stereotypes people hold about their country. Switzerland's approach in the first 28 minutes does nothing to make you think of them as other than neutral; they do not attack, but only try to slow down Spain's progress, like the Alps that surround their country. On the other hand, if one were to compare their defense to cheese, one would find few holes in the Swiss.

And speaking of holes, Spain gave up a sloppy goal to fall behind, and even worse, to lose the clean sheet for my fantasy team. And then they lost the game, 1-0. Few could have predicted that. Spain will be less than happy.

START OF THE SECOND ROUND OF GAMES

SOUTH AFRICA VERSUS URUGUAY

ORIGINAL PREDICTION: 1-1 DRAW

FANTASY NOTES: NO PLAYERS PLAYING. NICOLAS LODEIRO'S RED CARD AGAINST FRANCE MEANS HE IS SUSPENDED FOR THIS GAME, SO I TRADED HIM FOR MILAN JOVANOVIC OF SERBIA.

Diego Forlan scored one of the best goals I've seen so far, in terms of being well-struck and dramatic. And then he scored again, in the 80th minute, on the penalty kick incurred by South Africa's keeper when he took down Luis Suarez in the box and was ejected with a red card. That red card and penalty kick probably marks the end of South Africa's hopes for advancing out of the group.

Uruguay helps their own cause no end with a 3-0 win.

And The Pace Picks Up: Driving Through The Group Stages

2010-06-15T18:51:00.000-07:00

You have to give Marina credit: it wasn't until the fifth day of the World Cup that my evening marathon of three soccer games back to back to back drove her out into the streets, seeking shelter and cocktails among her friends. We won't mention the fact that she actually actually fled the country before the start of the Cup and was gone for the first two days.

But she might have a point in that the utter dedication to every detail, boring or not, might have bogged some of my recent blogs--and therefore, some of my evenings--down a bit.

So from today, I'm making a slight modification to my description of the games. My attempts at live blogging were unsatisfying, and were in fact distracting me a little from watching the games with my full attention. So now, I won't try to devote an entire entry to each game, and I will be more relaxed about the content. This is also a result of the fact that I might not get to see every game, having to record them in the morning and then try to watch at night. So far, I have only seen parts of Ghana-Serbia and Italy-Paraguay.

On to the summaries the other two games from yesterday:

CAMEROON VERSUS JAPAN

ORIGINAL PREDICTION: CAMEROON 1-0

This was totally flipped on its head. Japan looked more creative and more enterprising throughout the first half, and deservedly took the lead when Keisuke Honda snuck to the back post and made a great first touch from a strong cross from Matsui before driving it past the keeper.

I had high hopes for Cameroon. Well, not to advance from this group, but to look better than they did. They came out totally flat, without any sort of creative idea for moving the ball through the midfield and up to the strikers. Japan did pack the center of the pitch with five midfielders, but if Cameroon wanted to challenge for the group, they needed this win, and they didn't show the spark needed to do so. Far too often they appeared to be relying on their physical advantages.

In the second half, Cameroon came out with a lot more fire, but it was not enough. They never took advantage of the wings until Geremi came on as a substitute. A well-struck shot by Mbia rattled the crossbar, but they succumbed, and Japan thoroughly earned their first World Cup victory away from home soil (in 2002).

Cameroon will need a couple of shocks against Holland and Denmark in order to advance. They look doomed to disappointment.

ITALY VERSUS PARAGUAY

It was almost midnight by the time I sat down to watch this one, and I just didn't have the interest. No Pirlo--injured for this game--and no Giuseppe Rossi--not selected for the team. For some reason, this made me less interested in Italy. They are still my third favorite team, due to genetics, but I can't say I'm too worried.

I do have to feel proud for picking a draw with Paraguay, even if my original prediction of 0-0 was a little too pessimistic. It finished 1-1 instead, which was a great result for Paraguay.

Also worrisome for Italy is the injury to Buffon, the star goalie. It makes my prediction of Slovakia and Paraguay to advance from the group to seem not as far-fetched.

And now for the summaries from today:

NEW ZEALAND VERSUS SLOVAKIA

New Zealand has been in the World Cup once before, in 1982, but Slovakia is debuting as an independent nation. A battle of minnows, it has been called. I really don't think New Zealand has a shot, but that's why you play the games on the pitch and not on paper, to succumb to a motivational cliche for a moment.

ORIGINAL PREDICTION: SLOVAKIA 2-0

Before the game, there was a brilliant bit on the Daily Show between Jon Stewart and John Oliver regarding the US-England draw.

The first half is interesting, but not much to separate the two teams. New Zealand actually has had the best of the chances. Both teams have been a bit clumsy at times, poor touches on the ball causing problems and killing chances. A 0-0 draw seems accurate for the feel of the first half, that feels more like a friendly.

AND SLOVAKIA FINALLY FINDS THE GO-AHEAD GOAL IN THE 50TH MINUTE, A WELL-TAKEN HEADER BY ROBERT VITTEK AT THE END OF A GRACEFUL CROSS THAT GETS PAST THE NEW ZEALAND BACK END! Replays hint that it might have been offside, but the flag stayed down.

I have to root for Slovakia, if for no other reason than for that of my bracket. I predicted Slovakia to pull off the upset and make it to the round of 16 at the expense of Italy.

The pace of this game has been maybe a third of the pace that Germany maintained in thrashing Australia. This does not bode well for either team; Slovakia should be able to take control. Maybe they are complacent; maybe they play down to the level of their opposition. Either excuse does not exactly stir hot embers of hope.

AND THEN, OUT OF NOWHERE IN STOPPAGE TIME, NEW ZEALAND SNAGS A TYING GOAL OFF A HEADER BY WINSTON REID!

That is an incredible result, and New Zealand has already done much more than they were expected to do. It kind of undercuts the whole upset prediction of mine, with another upset, ironically enough. Their first point in the World Cup, ever! Good job, Kiwis!

This is a great start to the day, and now we are on to:

PORTUGAL VERSUS IVORY COAST.

Didier Drogba is starting on the bench, apparently. It will be tough for Ivory Coast to get the result I picked, a 3-2 win, without him. However, their nickname: the Elephants; my shirt at the moment: depicting an elephant. I'm going to assume that is an omen.

Give Cristiano Ronaldo credit for maturing. It is a full 7 minutes into the game before he blatantly dives to embellish a collision. It was certainly a rash challenge by the defender, but still. It's as if someone decided to do a remake of "John Tucker Must Die" called "Cristiano Ronaldo Must Dive." I never saw the first movie, but you can just tell it is an abomination against nature. So is Ronaldo's diving.

And then, no sooner do I write about that than Ronaldo displays a bit of magic, driving the ball against the post from 35 yards out in what was almost a goal of the tournament for sure. Is it any wonder I feel so conflicted about him?

He picked up a yellow card after an Ivorian defender took exception to what he thought was a dive, and a heated confrontation ensued. I'm not sure that was the right call by the referee, not on that incident. Ronaldo, as you can see, is a lightning rod for my opinions. That's how he earns the big money, I suppose.

Ivory Coast looked more attack-minded in the first half than Portugal, which is a bit surprising to me. And this was without Didier Drogba.

I think Didier Drogba will make an appearance today, ala Willis Reed. The game just seems to be setting itself up for that sort of drama.

Let it be known that I typed that a couple minutes before Drogba began warming up. This is not a case of revisionist insight. Of course, if Drogba scores to win the game, you have to start questioning whether it is paranoid to think that everything in life is scripted a bit. And then you would have to wonder if that would be such a bad thing. Life seemed pretty nice in The Truman Show, for instance.

But life is never really that interesting. 0-0 draw. Not what I predicted, not what I wanted. Oh well. Neither team was consistently dangerous going forward. Maybe it was first game jitters.

BRAZIL VERSUS NORTH KOREA

I'm kind of hoping for a solid Brazilian win, because I want nothing that could be taken as propaganda for the crazy North Korean dictatorship.

ORIGINAL PREDICTION: BRAZIL 4-0.

FANTASY PLAYER UPDATE: LUCIO, BRAZIL'S CAPTAIN, STARTS ON DEFENSE.

Thoughts on the first ten minutes? Brazil looks bigger, faster, stronger than North Korea. Plus, they are Brazil. They made a couple of half-chances, but nothing of the sort of invincible magic that is one's first expectation of the men in yellow.

North Korea is organized. Brazil is not running rampant, and certainly doesn't have the entertaining rhythm that we saw from Germany. It's 11:22 p.m. and I'm tired. That's when I remember that I'm not contractually obliged to watch every single game to the conclusion.

Apparently Brazil only won 2-1. So now that insane lunatic in North Korea is going to feel justified torpedoing more ships and daring the world to punish him for it. Oh, and even worse, Lucio conceded a goal, so only got 1 point for me today. Boo.

Silver Skating Over A Lake Of Danishes

2010-06-14T19:25:00.000-07:00

First game of the day is a match-up of northern Europeans, a world away from home. Neighbors, rivals, and it should be absolutely fun. Holland versus Denmark. I've looked forward to this game. I'm hoping the title I crafted is not what entertains me the most.

ORIGINAL PREDICTION: HOLLAND, 2-1.

FANTASY PLAYER UPDATE: WESLEY SNEIJDER IS STARTING FOR HOLLAND, THE NUMBER 10 ATTACKING MIDFIELDER.

Holland is sporting their classic radioactive orange jerseys. Will this be the year they power their way to glory? The Magic 8-Ball of my mind says no, but they should look good in this group.

Wesley Sneijder takes a free kick and sends it well over the bar. So far there has been back and forth play, with no real chances created yet.

The Danish keeper bobbles a shot from Dirk Kujt and has to scramble to hold on to it. It looks like some of the complaints about the new ball might be justified.

There were reports yesterday that the vuvuzelas might be banned. Alas, it had not yet happened by this game, apparently. Imagine a particularly monotonal--or possibly atonal in a minor key--swarm of robot bees, all buzzing off key, right in your ear.

Holland has been able to string together some nice passes here and there, and look to have a better chance of scoring.

A couple sudden, sharp, shocking passes give Holland a great shot, and a deflection off a defender leads to a corner in the 20th minute, but Denmark clears. Holland is continuing to keep Denmark pinned back on their side of the field. There is not yet a sense of inevitability about a goal, but it certainly seems likely to happen soon.

And just as I say that, Bendtner nearly scores against the run of play.

Holland is coming closer and closer to finding that first goal.

Or maybe not. 39 minutes in, no goals yet, and Denmark has shown some threats on the counter attack.

Nothing in the first half. Here is the second half.

OWN GOAL AGAINST DENMARK! THE DUTCH TAKE A 1-0 LEAD!

I'm kind of losing my thrill with this sort of live blogging. There isn't much point without the sort of twitter effect of posting immediately and then updating, but that seems too much work. Perhaps I have attempted too much detail.

The game continued apace, and Dirk Kuyt finally gets the second goal that was expected. Holland takes command of the group with the 2-0 win.

Beer And The Outback: The Battle Of Germany-Australia

2010-06-13T11:23:00.000-07:00

First of all, my first missed game of the World Cup is Ghana versus Serbia. I didn't have a chance to watch it yesterday, and found out the score, so I am only watching the last twenty minutes of it today before digging in to today's matches. This won't let me get enough of a taste to write about it. All that needs to be said is that I was spot on with my initial prediction, a 1-0 win for Ghana, which sparked all sorts of happiness across Africa, the first win for the continent in the cup; and also, I had no fantasy players in this game, so that took the edge of my need to catch up.

The best game of the day--as defined as the game I most anticipated--is Germany versus Australia. I would love to see an upset here, but I think Germany will be too strong, so I'm sticking with my ORIGINAL PREDICTION: GERMANY 3, AUSTRALIA 1

FANTASY UPDATE: PHILIPP LAHM STARTS ON DEFENSE FOR GERMANY.

Time for an 11:30 beer.

Australia kicks off, works in for a shot right away, but no real danger. No Harry Kewell starting for Australia, as he is recovering from injury.

And oh so nearly, Australia again nearly scores, two chances in the first four minutes. The German defense got lost on a corner kick.

And a lapse on defense nearly puts Miroslav Klose through on goal. Australia recovers to concede a corner kick.

AND PODOLSKI SCORES OFF A FINE PASS FROM THOMAS MUELLER. THE AUSTRALIANS THOUGHT MUELLER WAS OFFSIDES, BUT IT WAS A PERFECTLY TIMED RUN.

And an excellent yellow card on Germany's Oezil for a blatant dive. Good stuff so far from the refs in all games. The British commentator in the Algeria-Slovenia game called them exemplary. I love to hear the refs praised in a British accent with multiple syllables. It just seems so dignified that way.

Germany looks crisp and efficient so far, with lots of clever and well-timed runs. So far, they look a serious contender for the cup. And yes, this is fifteen minutes into the game.

Australia with a run and cross against the run of play, but the header is not on target. Australia needs to hold it together and not concede again too soon.

And another great chance for the Socceroos, nice passing and touches, but the shot is over the bar and wide.

Mueller makes another dangerous cross. They seem to have Australia's defense overmatched.

Podolski breaks past the defense, crosses briliantly, and Klose misses horribly wide with the goal at his mercy. Craig Moore gets a yellow card for dissent. Australia are looking for offsides a lot, and Germany has been flagged for offsides on several occasions, but they really are fast enough and timing their runs well enough that Australia can't count on that flag.

AND THIS TIME, KLOSE BEATS SCHWARZER TO A DANGEROUS CROSS AND HEADS IT INTO THE NET. MORE IMPORTANTLY, THE CROSS WAS FROM LAHM, SO FANTASY POINTS FOR ME.

Australia is in serious trouble now. Their defense is not fast enough to cope with the German forwards.

Lucas Neill saves off the line to prevent it being 3-0. Oezil beats the offside trap again and beats the keeper, but Neill is there to save the day, or at least to delay the inevitable third goal.

So far, Germany has played by far the best soccer of the tournament, ahead of South Korea. I'm a fan.

Mueller again dances past the defense down the right flank, earning a corner kick.

And more elegant interplay, Lahm bursts into the box, crosses well, and Khedira heads over the bar.

And so close to three-nil again: Oezil gets a great pass that sliced past the defense, but his first touch lets him down.

Great first half for Germany. Worst nightmare for Australia. Well, not the worst possible nightmare, as Germany could easily have two or three more goals.

HALFTIME.

Does Australia have help for their defense off the bench? They need faster defenders to keep up with the German wingplay, particularly Mueller.

Australia replaces Grella, a midfielder, with Brett Holman, another midfielder. As Germany kicks off, Lucas Neill picks up a yellow card for a challenge from behind on Klose.

Holman creates space nicely for himself and shoots just wide of the far post. Australia needs more of that. They also need to move more off the ball.

Great play, great dummy by Khedira, but Mueller shoots just high. Beautiful soccer.

Ouch. Tim Cahill gets a red card on a challenge that deserved maybe only a yellow. That ends Australia's challenge in this game, and hurts them going forward.

And now a yellow card on Australia, to Carl Valeri.

And again, Germany comes tantalizingly close to a third goal after some great close-range passing between Klose and Podolski.

AND THERE IT IS, MUELLER GETTING A WELL-DESERVED THIRD GOAL AFTER GREAT PASSING AND RUNNING WITH PODOLSKI.

AND FOUR GOALS. CACAU JUST ON AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR KLOSE SCORES VERY EASILY FROM A GREAT CROSS FROM THE LEFT HAND SIDE BY OEZIL.

Germany looks certain to go through, and the only question will be if Ghana or Serbia can pose more of a challenge than did Australia.

Algeria Versus Slovenia. Now You Know I'm A Fan

2010-06-13T08:29:00.000-07:00

I didn't get up at 4 a.m. today, but I recorded Algeria and Slovenia and have avoided all news of the results, so I will blog as if I saw it live. The game is key for these two other teams from Group C with the US and England, as the draw yesterday opens the door a little bit. But I would imagine it is a door to a Slovenia-only restaurant, which seems kind of discriminatory, doesn't it?

ORIGINAL PREDICTION: SLOVENIA 3, ALGERIA 2.

FANTASY PLAYER UPDATE: ROBERT KOREN STARTS FOR SLOVENIA. I PICKED HIM ONLY BECAUSE WORLD SOCCER SAID HE WAS GOOD. I HOPE THEY ARE RIGHT.

Slovenia is wearing green, Algeria wears white. That's the sort of fascinating detail you can expect today, because I know very little about either of these teams. Nor do I care about them except as obstacles to the US and England.

Algeria earns a free kick in a dangerous spot about 25 yards out. Nadir Belhadj whips in a dangerous shot, but the Slovenian keeper deals with it well.

Yes, the vuvuzelas continue to be annoying. If they are 'cultural', they must be like the Fox News of South Africa's musical culture.

Not much danger yet from either team, through fifteen minutes. Fortunately, I'm about to go get doughnuts, orange juice, bagels, coffee, and the Sunday papers, which will liven things up a bit.

Some nice passing by Slovenia leads to a good cross, but the keeper grabbed it well.

So far, neither side has a clear advantage; they seem to be evenly matched.

Well-deserved yellow card on a Slovenian player who tripped Belhadj as he surged past him down the line.

Belhadj shows some good attacking flair with his runs down that left flank.

The first really dangerous shot from Slovenia, set up by a fine pass by Robert Koren. Nearly a Slovenian goal, and more importantly, almost fantasy points for me.

HALFTIME, with the score nil-nil. The doughnut was particularly good, though. As was the coffee.

A few good chances have been undermined by a poor first touch for both sides. I think the US and England should be able to deal with both countries comfortably, if they don't get complacent.

Slovenia is starting to get a few more shots in the 63rd minute, and look to possibly have the chance to take control.

Red card to Ghezzal of Algeria, for two yellow cards. That was a silly, blatant hand ball to get the second card, and now Algeria is in real trouble. Down a man.

Algeria will now have to hope to hold on for a draw. 15 minutes to go. That would be a good result for them, after the red card.

Wasted chance as a Slovenian defended did not come get a pass from the keeper, and Ziani of Algeria steals the ball away and nearly scores.

Slovenia is not really attacking or taking advantage of being up a man.

ROBERT KOREN MAKES ME A LIAR BY SCORING A GOAL THE KEEPER SHOULD HAVE STOPPED, EARNING SLOVENIA A LEAD AND FANTASY POINTS FOR SAN FRANCISCO BOHEMIAN UNITED!

A victory for Slovenia would make the group very interesting, with Slovenia topping the table with three points, and England and the US level on one point each.

More rough fouls on both sides and the game wound down to a Slovenia victory. Just the one goal, but I was right on the margin of victory!

The Showdown

2010-06-12T11:28:00.000-07:00

England. Versus. United States. Need I say more?

Well, obviously yes, or this blog would already be over.

I'm so excited. Realistic, but excited.

ORIGINAL PREDICTION: ENGLAND 3-1

FANTASY UPDATE: LANDON DONOVAN AND WAYNE ROONEY ARE STARTING. JAMIE CARRAGHER AND CLARENCE GOODSON ARE NOT.

US kicks off, and with some nerves, quickly turns the ball over. Here we go.

Early offsides on Robbie Findley who has lots of speed but little experience. We will see if his selection pans out. We need to hold on for the first fifteen minutes to let our nerves settle.

GERRARD MAKES IT 1-0 IN THE FOURTH MINUTE. MY WORST FEARS ARE REALIZED.

James Milner makes a bad challenge. Should have been a yellow card for the English winger.

We are rattled and making some bad touches. Need to pull it together.

A good passing combination gives a great chance, but Altidore can't quite bury it.

England peppers Tim Howard with a couple tough shots.

And a well-deserved yellow card on James Milner as Steve Cherundolo beats him.

These entries might be sporadic and terse, because I'm nervous. Also, I'm editing out a lot of the cursing.

We must hold on to halftime without conceding again.

Tim Howard is hurt. That's bad. Very bad. But he seems to be back up.

Our defense? Not good. As I feared.

Landon Donovan made a good shot there. We have some signs of danger.

CLINT DEMPSEY MADE TWO BRILLIANT TWISTS AND THEN SCORED WHEN ROBERT GREEN MAKES A TERRIBLE, DAVID SEAMAN-ESQUE HOWLER!

Now we can't concede again in the last five minutes. Hold on until halftime, men.

Vaughn and I just decided there should be a philosophy of Legos: "You must build your life brick by brick." Kind of like the bricks the English probably want to throw at Robert Green right now.

HALFTIME

We must stay steady, and not concede right in the first five minutes -- or at all, ideally. Dangerous time.

Findley's speed just earned us a throw in. Nice.

What a save by Tim Howard! Heskey on a breakaway, and Howard held on to it. Not even a rebound.

Robbie Findley's speed draws a yellow card foul on Carragher. His speed is causing England some problems.

Now Gerrard gets carded by a brutal foul on Dempsey. England has some card issues now.

Altidore made Carragher look old and slow. Which he is, and we almost had the lead.

But all I can say is the final result, England 1, United States 1. What an absolutely outstanding result! I did not expect it, but we looked good. Great poise and calm at the end, and we had chances to win it.

Why We Watch Soccer

2010-06-12T11:21:00.001-07:00

Cross posted to Random Thoughts, Organized Chaotically

There are many reasons to take the United States versus England way too seriously, but I am not taking it WAY too seriously. I'm only taking it TOO seriously. I don't have a soccer jersey, so I'm wearing a Montana State Cup T-shirt from 1998, and my boxers featuring Snoopy and Woodstock, because who or what is more American than Snoopy and Woodstock? I'm also wearing shorts and socks, so don't get the wrong image.

It is possible to push all sorts of nationalistic implications on top of the soccer; for instance, British politicians--Tories, naturally--are criticizing President Obama for going after BP. Never mind that BP, while being so good at extracting oil, apparently never spent any time considering how to prevent oil extraction in the case something went wrong.

Or one could talk about the Revolutionary War, and how no one expected the colonies to win that either. Of course, in those days, we had help from the French, and judging by France's tie with Uruguay yesterday, the French would be no help this time around.

Or one could talk about our national inferiority complex in terms of soccer. We want to belong. I, for instance, have always tried to talk about soccer a lot so that my friends from Britain would think I am pretty cool for a Yank.

All of these options would be stupid. The reason why I write about soccer, the reason why I look forward to these games so much, is to have fun despite the many problems in the world.

(I just saw a brilliant, funny skit on ABC featuring Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, and Russell Brand, talking smack about the game. That's what I'm talking about. Faux-serious rivalry.)

Of course, all of those stupid options? They will be chosen, stupid or not.

Game on. All the pressure is on England to win. We have everything to gain.

Another Fine Mess(i)

2010-06-12T06:53:00.000-07:00

Second game of the day features Argentina versus Nigeria. The question has been whether Lionel Messi will finally duplicate the glory he accumulates playing with Barcelona into his play on the international stage. For whatever reason--and there have been many suggested, most prominently and dramatically being that Diego Maradona, Argentina's coach, is consciously or subconsciously subverting Messi by not making the best use of him, tactically, in order to prevent any player from matching or surpassing Maradona's own stature in the annals of Argentine soccer legend.

Nigeria is always considered a contender, but this is not their strongest side.

ORIGINAL PREDICTION: ARGENTINA 3-1

FANTASY UPDATE: CARLOS TEVEZ starts up top for Argentina.

Argentina is starting Messi, Tevez, and Higuain upfront. Definitely has the potential for many goals. The first attack in the 4th minute features a great surging run by Messi into the heart of the defense, but Higuain misses badly off of a simple layoff pass.

WITHIN 6 MINUTES, ARGENTINA IS UP 1-0. After Messi leads three straight blistering attacks, the last forcing a great save, Gabriel Heinze converts the ensuing corner kick with a diving header. Nigeria is in serious trouble, as Messi has chewed their defense up already.

Nigeria survives further flurries, and earns a corner kick in the 11th minute, which is easily cleared. They are showing life, and enough talent and speed to be able to avoid a rout, but they aren't showing enough yet to make me reconsider my original pick.

Messi makes another brilliant run and nearly gets on the end of a great long ball from Veron. The keeper comes out well to collect. I've liked what I've seen from Messi so far.

Another great shot by Messi draws a strong parry by the Nigerian keeper Enyeama, who will be hoping his defenders stop letting Messi get the ball near the 18.

In the 21st minute, a Tevez-Higuain pass sets up the Madrid man for another shot, and Enyeama comes through again with the save. Nigeria is allowing way too much possession to Argentina in the final third. And it looks like Enyeama is now shaken up.

Nigeria has a great chance to score against the run of play, but the cross is not good enough across the face of goal.

In the 35th minute, Romero, the Argentinian goalie, needs to come off his line strongly to collect a lofted ball. Nigeria has made a couple more chances here and there, and Argentina has lost a little momentum, perhaps.

Messi orchestrates a great give and go off a free kick, rips a great shot that forces a corner kick. He is very entertaining to watch, and you feel that more goals are inevitable.

The longer Nigeria can go without conceding a second goal, the more they will grow in confidence, and Argentina will start to get frustrated. Yellow card to Jonas Gutierrez for a bad challenge.

Another run by Messi draws a free kick at the left corner of the penalty area. He has been everywhere.

HALFTIME arrives with Nigeria having staved off further punishment. Changes to their defending will be needed for the second half.

Messi never seems to stop running. Great give and go almost sees him tuck the ball away, but it just goes wide.

There have been moments, here and there, where Nigeria has snuck into a scoring opportunity. Argentina must not get complacent in looking for a second goal.

Nigeria wastes a free kick in a dangerous spot in the 63rd minute, but they are still only a goal down. They have time to steal a point.

Tevez leads a breakaway, and Messi misses again, and is frustrated, rightly so. That could have killed the game off.

Right after that, Argentina threatens again, and once more, Enyeama makes a big save. So far he is man of the match. Nevertheless, I'm starting to feel that Argentina's finishing is leaving something to be desired. That something, just to be clear, is a handful of additional goals.

Messi almost scores again. That is shaping up to the be the headline of the game: "Messi Almost Scores."

Diego Milito, on as a sub, does not execute well on a breakaway. Argentina seems a little unfocused at this point, and I could see Nigeria finding an equalizing goal. That would be devastating for Argentina, who seem to be tiring, and seem to be telegraphing some passes now.

Argentina was looking dominant in the first ten minutes, but I am not convinced by their performance today. Against weak defending, they have lacked the killer instinct. They have such exciting potential in that starting trio of attackers, but they need sharper finishing.

On this form, Nigeria will have trouble getting past South Korea to advance to the knockout stages.

Argentina holds on for a 1-0 win.

4:30 A.M. Really?

2010-06-12T04:36:00.000-07:00

At 4:37 a.m., while preparing to watch Greece versus South Korea, I realized I had a problem; namely, that I am up at 4:37 a.m. to watch Greece versus South Korea. Then I realized that this isn't a problem, but an opportunity. Granted, it is an opportunity to be cranky about Greece and South Korea in blog form, but an opportunity nonetheless.

All this to say that I might be cranky in this blog until I get some coffee.

ORIGINAL PREDICTION: South Korea win, either 2-1 or 1-0.

FANTASY UPDATE: Park Ji-Sung is in the starting lineup for South Korea.

The red of the Koreans versus the blue of Greece. It's very bright for this early in the morning.

Greece wins an early corner, but do nothing with it. Boo, Greece. Boo.

Some nice passing down the left wing by the South Koreans, who look lively, results in a free kick when a Greek defender knocks down the smaller Korean.

GOAL FOR SOUTH KOREA, LEE JUNG SOO IN THE 7TH MINUTE! He cut in to the back post to bury the cross in the net.

A Korean defender cannons an attempted clearance off the face of a teammate to concede a corner kick to Greece. Not the best tactic, surely.

My first impression is that South Korea is faster and more athletic, and Greece is bigger and stronger and commits more fouls. Go South Korea!

Greece gets away with a foul in the penalty area that should have been a penalty kick for South Korea. Going down 2-0 would surely have left Greece eating humble spanakopita.

My crankiness is quickly dissipating. Partly this is because I am mesmerized by soccer in general; partly it is because I now have coffee.

There looks to be some possible cracks in South Korea's defense, particularly on set pieces or long balls down the middle, but they are countering well and playing some great football. Greece just got lucky again, with Park Ji-Sung whistled for a non-existent foul as he broke into the Greek penalty area with a defender slipping.

South Korea makes another brilliant break on the counter-attack, great passing and running, and Tzorvas has to make a fantastic save! Great football, very attractive stuff so far. Through thirty minutes, South Korea is the better side.

On this form, I would have to like South Korea's chances to advance from the group, but I haven't seen Nigeria play yet. And there is still much time left in this game for things to go wrong for them. I love World Cup Saturdays!

HALFTIME!

Greece has to stay physical with South Korea to disrupt their attacking runs. They also need to figure out a way to keep possession of the ball more and create some chances, because so far, they don't look dangerous. But South Korea needs to remain alert on defense and beware of Greeks bearing the soccer ball in the final third of the field.

Greece to kick off to start the second half, having substituted their main playmaker, Karagounis, who must have some sort of injury or some loss of form.

South Korea's speed and precision of passing on the counter-attack is what I hope to see from the US today against England. Very fun soccer, good rhythm, very creative and positive play. I'm now a fan of South Korea.

PARK JI-SUNG TAKES THE BALL AWAY FROM GREECE AND SCORES A SECOND GOAL FOR SOUTH KOREA! FANTASY POINTS FOR ME, AND THAT SHOULD BURY GREECE!

What a great game. Greece now has to open up and try to attack more, which will expose them even more to the counter-attack.

Vasilis Torosidis picks up the first yellow card for a reckless, frustrated lunge through a Korean player. It's been that way all day; Greece just is not quick enough on the tackles and challenges.

Greece makes another attacking substition, taking off Samaras who plays for Celtic but has been non-existent today.

It is 5:46 a.m., and light is starting to break here in San Francisco, unlike the circumstances for Greece, for whom night is beginning to fall. I'm talking metaphorically, not literally, of course.

And oh so nearly a third goal for South Korea on a fine cross. Korea kept the ball nicely there on a build-up, and Greece looked nowhere on defense. And South Korea is right back on the attack, and earns a corner.

Greece is finally starting to look a little bit alive, in the 74th minute. It is possible they could still make things interesting, but they need to score soon. The Greeks must rush, one might say.

Excellent save by Lee Woon Jae off a strong shot by Gekas. If this score stands, this is such a well-deserved result for South Korea. I love their work rate, creativity, and speed.

Almost a third goal for Korea. Greece's defenders are not helping the keeper today.

You know a team has performed poorly when the announcer on TV says you have to play a hell of a lot better. I love having former players as announcers. Robbie Mustoe, well done.

And that is it. 2-0 South Korea! Apparently I gave Greece too much credit when I thought it would be a one goal game. Great stuff! Up next, Argentina versus Nigeria!

It Begins, Part 2

2010-06-11T11:24:00.000-07:00

France versus Uruguay. Such an interesting game, mostly because of the scandal of the Thierry Henry handball that led to the winning goal for France in the playoff against Ireland. Many people predict France to fail to make it through this group. However, it is always possible that they will exceed expectations. I kind of don't want them to do so, though. I'm rooting for Uruguay today, even though I predicted France would get through the group stages.

MY ORIGINAL PREDICTION

A 1-1 draw.

FANTASY TEAM UPDATE

Nicolas Lodeiro of Uruguay is the only player for either team I have on my fantasy roster, but I do not have him starting today. Nor is he starting in real life.

GAME ON!

France in white will kick off. Uruguay in light blue.

And France just boots the ball down the left flank from the kickoff. I hate that. It leads to a foul and a free kick for Uruguay.

Not much rhythm or consistency yet. Both teams are starting fairly cautiously. A lot of high clearances, ball being sent long down the field. Also, I'm seeing a lot of players slipping and stumbling, which makes me wonder about the condition of the pitch.

And a moment of brilliance by Franck Ribery comes to naught as Sidney Govou fails to turn it into the net.

Uruguay seems to be forming a blockade in front of their goal, keeping five at the back. France is beginning to dominate possession, and they look the stronger side in these first ten minutes.

Patrice Evra picks up the first yellow card of the game for a needless takedown of a Uruguayan winger.

The assistant blows a call where the French keeper, after bungling an attempt to grab the ball, carried the ball over the end line for what should have been a corner kick. The French benefit again from a referee missing something blatant.

Diego Forlan makes a sudden burst and really tests Lloris with a strong shot that is parried away well. The hope for Uruguay seems to lie on the counter-attack.

Gourcuff fools everyone with a free kick from the left flank that curls directly towards goal instead of into the center, and it forces the keeper to scramble into a great save. Shortly after that, Ribery gets a yellow.

France has shown some flair and creativity, and I especially like watching Ribery and Gourcuff.

The problem with Uruguay's counter attack is that it leaves them open. Diaby and Anelka are getting a lot of room to run through the middle of the pitch.

40 minutes in and Uruguay are hanging tough, but one of their defenders, Pereira, was a bit shaken up.

They say that somethings you don't like at first will eventually grow on you. Not the case with the vuvuzelas.

HALFTIME! 0-0 at the break. I love it.

Uruguay kicks off, going from right to left.

I like what I've seen of Diego Forlan. He hasn't scored yet, but he has looked dangerous.

France has occasionally tried one pass too many when they could have taken a shot from the top of the 18. And players are continuing to slip, which means the field could do some crazy things to the ball--but the announcers are not mentioning the slipperiness.

Mauricio Victorino gets a yellow card for Uruguay.

Sagna gives away a free kick in a dangerous spot. Nicolas Lodeiro enters the game, which will earn me fantasy points if another of my midfielders does not play this round. And promptly gets a yellow card, which might lose me points. Damn him for his lack of discipline.

Jeremy Toulalan now gets a yellow card for France. More cards in this game than the last. France is starting to get frustrated.

Thierry Henry replaces Anelka. Will that make a difference?

Lodeiro gets his second yellow card and therefore a red for a nasty tackle. Wow. Ten minutes to go and Uruguay are down a man, trying to hold on for a draw, and my fantasy team is weakened. He owes me an apology.

If France can't get the winner here, they have a lot of thinking to do.

Thierry Henry appealed in vain for a handball in the box, which was very ironic, given that you would think Henry would know exactly what is a handball and what isn't.

A controversial free kick in injury time, very soft foul to give in this situation. France's last chance.

The wall holds.

Uruguay holds on for a 0-0 draw, playing with ten men!! Amazing! I predicted a goal each, but otherwise, I was right!

I picked Lodeiro for my fantasy team because I liked what I read about him in World Soccer. I thought he might be an impact player. I just didn't foresee that the impact would be his cleat on Sagna's ankle.

It Begins . . .

2010-06-11T07:16:00.000-07:00

The sun broke early this morning, and I was up with it. Coffee has been brewed.

Mexico is playing South Africa, and with this, I commence in-game blogging.

Javier Hernandez is not starting up front for Mexico, which disappoints me, as he is on my fantasy team, but it makes sense, as he is young, and the pressure on the opening game would be high-pressure..

First yellow card to Mexico, for delaying a free kick.

Mexico looks the better team, with more of a cutting edge, and they have come closer to scoring, but so far, South Africa is keeping enough defense back that there were no clear cut chances.

Oh, there's a yellow card on South Africa.

31 minutes in, no goal, but South Africa has put together some nice passing sequences.

Guillermo Franco makes a great run, and almost sneaks it past the keeper, but the goalie makes a great save.

In 38 minutes, a narrow offside call cancels a Carlos Vela goal.

Vaughn and I have coined a new phrase: "a snowball's chance in Iceland." Interpret it as you will.

Mexico is starting to collect more dangerous chances. They will score at least one goal today.

Vaughn is very excited. Only two more years until Euro 2012.

Inches away from a goal for South Africa! What a change that would make.

Before the game, Vaughn and I both predicted Mexico as victors, but wanted South Africa to win. Then we heard the vuvuzelas. South Africa must never succeed at anything ever again.

HALFTIME! Time for scrambled eggs and bagels.

Second half starts just as I serve up, and South Africa serves up the best chance they have had so far, a dangerous looking cross.

AND ON THE COUNTER, SOUTH AFRICA TAKES THE LEAD, AND BREAKS OUT INTO AN ORGANIZED CELEBRATION! Amazing pass, quick run, clinical finish!

South Africa seems to be growing in confidence. They are passing well, and staying organized on defense.

A chance to make it 2-0 goes begging, which could have wrapped it up. South Africa is having the better chances now.

Javier Hernandez enters in the 73rd minute. Mexico needs better finishing, as they wasted the chances they had. I need fantasy soccer points, so our needs match nicely here.

On this form, Mexico will not be going through. Blanco makes a bad first touch, sending South Africa off on another run.

A dubious offside call stops a chance for Mexico in the final third.

13 minutes to go, and Mexico must find an equalizer. On this rate, the honking to be heard in the Mission later will not be honks of joy for Mexicans.

AND JUST LIKE THAT, RAFAEL MARQUEZ LEVELS IT!

Will South Africa collapse? Or will they hold on? Will Mexico be energized to find a winner?

Mexico gets a free kick in a dangerous spot with five to go. south Africa clears the danger.

Osorio of Mexico tries a little gamesmanship. Was caught with the ball in an isolated area, had no help, so he fell to ground and grabbed the ball, trying to force the referee to call a foul. A foul was called: hand ball. I love it.

South Africa should have just won it; a breakaway shot bounces off the post.

A 1-1 DRAW! That seems to be the right result. Neither team played quite well enough to win, although they both had chances that should have been taken.

MY ORIGINAL PICK

Mexico with a 2-1 win.

Going For Goal

2010-06-09T18:25:00.000-07:00

Just tomorrow to get through, and then, glory be, the World Cup is here!

Right down to business: time to finish up the last picks of the game, to set the stage.

Last injury notes: Arjen Robben and Andres Iniesta, of Holland and Spain respectively, seem to have picked up knocks and may miss at least some action. Their teams should be able to cope, however.

QUARTERFINALS!

MEXICO VERSUS ENGLAND

This would be a fascinating match, a repeat of a recent friendly where England won, 3-1, but by all accounts were outplayed by the Mexicans. There is a healthy dose of skepticism about the Three Lions among the English media, and there seems to be oceans of confidence on the part of Mexico, so I could see a stunner here.

But I don't think it will happen. England by a duplicate 3-1 scoreline, and a red card will be issued to Marquez.

ARGENTINA VERSUS GHANA

People will be very happy for Ghana. But happiness will be their only consolation prize, as Argentina overwhelms them 4-1.

NETHERLANDS VERSUS BRAZIL

So many times, the Netherlands have promised the world everything, their talent seeming to promise a championship run. It won't happen this time. Brazil will be too organized, and their devastating counter-attack will make the difference, leading to a 2-0 win. Orange crushed again.

DENMARK VERSUS SPAIN

Come on. There's a reason why Barcelona--who provided six of the starting eleven in Spain's friendly versus Poland yesterday--is one of the best teams in the world, and FC Copenhagen is not.

Spain wins 3-1.

SEMIFINALS!!

ENGLAND VERSUS BRAZIL.

Much as in 1950, when the English lost to the US in Belo Horizonte, Fabio Capello's squad will be left with unpleasant associations with the capital of Portuguese language in South America, as they cannot get past Brazil. Brazil wins 2-1.

SPAIN VERSUS ARGENTINA

If England must lose, at least the Hand of God will not intervene on behalf of their Argentinian nemesis, Diego Maradona. It should be one of the best matches of the tournament, but Spain will prevail 3-2. Which will spare the residents of Buenos Aires the sight of Maradona running naked around a city landmark, as he apparently pledged to do if his team were to win the Cup.

THE FINALLLL !!!!!

BRAZIL VERSUS SPAIN

This game would be outstanding. I think, however, that Spain will be too strong, and Brazil will not be able to rely on the devastating counter-attack at their command. Spain takes it, 3-1.

So there it is. I doubt that things will turn out terribly close to my predictions, but that is part of the fun. I'll post live commentary as I watch each game, even the recorded games--which wouldn't really be live, I guess, but we'll just pretend.

Round Of 16, Part Two

2010-06-06T19:53:00.000-07:00

I'm already planning the morning of Friday, June 11th. The first game kicks off around 7 a.m. I will have coffee brewing by the time Vaughn shows up, which will be needed, because I will have the sleepless night little kids used to have when they dreamed of Santa Claus. There may well also be scrambled eggs, and conceivably turkey bacon. If something is worth doing, it is worth doing well. I should get some Irish Whiskey somewhere, to drink a toast to those who should be playing in the Cup, and to get angry at the French who kept them from it.

If you want to join my World Cup bracket or fantasy league, go to www.soccernet.com. The bracket group is under San Fran To Montana, and the password is Hamilton. The fantasy league is called San Francisco Rain, and the password is sanfranfog.

JUNE 28, 2010

WINNER OF GROUP E VERSUS RUNNER-UP OF GROUP F (NETHERLANDS VERSUS SLOVAKIA)

Having just set up a World Cup Fantasy team, and league, on soccernet.com, I hope Wesley Sneijder will be at the center of the offensive flow for the Netherlands. Slovakia, having exceeded expectations by advancing at the expense of Italy, will have nothing to lose and should throw everything forward to play attacking soccer. The Netherlands should be able to cope with it and get past Slovakia, making its World Cup debut. I see a 3-1 win for the men in orange.

WINNER OF GROUP G VERSUS RUNNER-UP OF GROUP H (BRAZIL VERSUS CHILE)

Another South American clash, it should be an entertaining and energetic game. Chile should be capable of making a great fight of it, but I don't foresee the upset. A late goal will make it appear closer than it really was, but Brazil walks away with a 3-2 win.

JUNE 29, 2010

WINNER OF GROUP F VERSUS RUNNER-UP OF GROUP E (PARAGUAY VERSUS DENMARK)

I think that Nicklas Bendtner could have a big tournament for the Danes. With their organization on defense, one or two goals could be enough to put them through, but this game is a bit of a toss-up for me. But I'm saying here that Denmark makes it through to the quarter-finals with a 1-0 squeaker.

WINNER OF GROUP H VERSUS RUNNER-UP OF GROUP G (SPAIN VERSUS IVORY COAST)

Ivory Coast has plenty of talent, but there is still a disparity between Spain and most other teams in the world. This will be evident in this game, particularly if Didier Drogba really is injured for the entire tournament. Spain will overwhelm the opposition with a 2-0 win that has Ivory Coast chasing the ball most of the day.

Tomorrow: on to the quarter-finals!

Countdown To Heaven On Earth

2010-06-05T14:05:00.000-07:00

Six days until I rise at 6 to watch Mexico and South Africa kick off the 2010 World Cup, and I am brimming with excitement, even as some frailties on the part of the US defense make themselves evident, leaving me with a bad case of jitters about Wayne Rooney and the rest of the Three Lions.

Speaking of jitters, injuries to big-name players continue to mount, which has to add jitters to the stomachs of national team coaches. Rio Ferdinand, England captain and defensive anchor, down with an injury. Didier Drogba, for the Ivory Coast, broke his arm, and is most likely done for the tournament, although the federation hasn't yet confirmed. Andrea Pirlo for Italy is resting at home, although reports do not indicate that injury is severe enough to preclude his participation.

I think England will miss Ferdinand, although they should still win the group, much as I would love to see the US stage an upset. The Ivory Coast will surely miss Drogba, but I'm not going to change my picks at this point, and I think that they will find the goals to make up for his absence, but it could be that the loss will be insurmountable against Brazil and Portugal--not so much against North Korea, who lost the use of a striker for the tournament because they listed him as a goalkeeper on the official roster they submitted to FIFA.

And so I have completed my picks for the Group Stages, and it is on to the Round of 16!

ROUND OF 16

JUNE 26, 2010

WINNER OF GROUP A VERSUS RUNNER-UP OF GROUP B (MEXICO VERSUS NIGERIA)

There will be immense expectations on the shoulders of Nigeria to do well, and they should receive tremendous support. I would like to see them win. However, Mexico seems to be in fine form at the moment, with strong results in their recent friendlies (including being rated by many as the better side in their loss to England). Mexico is young and talented, and I think they get a 2-1 victory to advance to the quarterfinals and set off a heck of a lot of honking down the hill from my apartment on Mission Street.

WINNER OF GROUP C VERSUS RUNNER-UP OF GROUP D (ENGLAND VERSUS GERMANY)

Not where these two teams would have expected to meet, and the attention paid to this match will be high. The loss of Rio Ferdinand will be hard, and England will have to play at their sharpest against a German team that is consistently strong. But if the US is not going to win the World Cup, and I don't think it is quite our time yet, then I want England to win, so sentiment will shape this prediction of a 3-2 victory for England.

JUNE 27, 2010

WINNER OF GROUP D VERSUS RUNNER-UP OF GROUP C (GHANA VERSUS UNITED STATES)

The loss of Michael Essien for Ghana will make a difference in their battle with Germany for victory in the group, but Germany lost a corresponding midfielder named Michael (Ballack), so they cancel each other out, and I am sticking with Ghana as the surprise pick. And I see them taking the next step to the quarterfinals, as the US has shown too many flaws on defense. So I am afraid this would be the end of the road for the Americans. 1-0 for Ghana.

WINNER OF GROUP B VERSUS RUNNER-UP OF GROUP A (ARGENTINA VERSUS FRANCE)

Not the team for France to run into if they wanted to make a run to the quarterfinals. Leo Messi serves as an avenging angel for the Irish and puts France to the sword with a hat trick of spectacular goals. 3-0 Argentina.

To be continued tomorrow. . .

How Phil Mickelson Tried To Beat Me, And Lost; And Further World Cup Excitement

2010-05-30T12:10:00.000-07:00

My two year anniversary with Marina is June 20th, and I had a great plan in mind, a two night stay at the Dream Inn, right on the beach in Santa Cruz, a short walk to the pier and the Boardwalk, cocktails on the balcony at night while listening to the waves roll in.

It turns out, though, that Phil Mickelson had other ideas in mind. Or, rather, the entire golf paradigm had other plans in mind. Because the US Open golf tournament is being staged that weekend in Monterey, and because the Dream Inn expects a heavy overflow crowd, a three night minimum stay was required.

That's one more reason why I have no respect for golf as a sport. I have no problem with golf as a game, especially on the Wii, but until they remove their centerpiece event, the Masters, from a club that still bans women, then I have no respect for the PGA and golf in general as an organized sport.

I did, however, find a cottage for rent in Santa Cruz for that weekend, so golf has failed on a epic scale in trying to best me.

****

Soccer notes that could destabilize the safety of my predictions as a form book:

I know you all are reading my posts and taking those predictions straight to Vegas to wager heavily. Here are some possible reasons why you shouldn't have been so impulsive:

Michael Essien, Ghana. The Chelsea star is set to miss the entire World Cup with a leg injury. Losing their engine could greatly diminish Ghana's ability to succeed as wildly as I predicted.

Samuel Eto'o, Cameroon. Bizarrely, Roger Milla, Cameroon's hero from their madcap 1990 dash to the quarterfinals in Italy, has been harshly criticizing Eto'o, saying he has done pretty much nothing worth mentioning for Cameroon. This seems kind of crazy to say in regards to a two-time Champions League winner and three-time African Player Of The Year. Eto'o was none too pleased, talking about quitting the international scene, saying he doesn't need this sort of treatment. This is probably just talk, but any extra pressure, or if he is unhappy, will surely be to the detriment of Cameroon's attack.

US Notes

Landon Donovan is playing as well as I've ever seen him. The US game versus Turkey was kind of bipolar, the first half being a disorganized mess, especially on defense, and the second half an example of the potential the US has to run rampant with quick passing and athleticism. Donovan, however, was strong and threatening throughout, and it was his brilliant touches that created both goals. We will have to make sure that when other countries gear to stop Landon, others step up to punish them for doing so.

FINAL DAY OF THE GROUP STAGES

DAY 15, JUNE 25TH, 2010

GROUP G

NORTH KOREA VERSUS IVORY COAST

China is not willing to blame North Korea in the recent torpedo episode, even after North Korea took responsibility/credit for it and threatened war if they were punished for it. Bad karma for both countries, and with China already not in the World Cup, North Korea racks up enough for both teams in losing 2-0 to the Ivory Coast, bowing out of the Cup meekly.

BRAZIL VERSUS PORTUGAL

Cristiano Ronald is amazing to watch, but I kind of love watching him get frustrated and pouty. Brazil shows Portugal why they won't win the World Cup this year either, 3-1. Ronaldo gets at least one yellow card for dissent.

GROUP H

CHILE VERSUS SPAIN

I really can't wait to watch this game, as many experts are touting this game as potentially one of the most entertaining of the group stages, with both teams playing a fluid, attacking style.

Still, Spain will be too much for Chile, winning comfortably enough, 3-1.

SWITZERLAND VERSUS HONDURAS

In something of a ho-hum match, Honduras pulls a surprise in winning 1-0 by stealing a late goal.

STANDINGS

GROUP G

BRAZIL 3 WINS 0 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 9 POINTS

IVORY COAST 2 WINS 1 LOSS 0 DRAWS 6 POINTS

PORTUGAL 1 WIN 2 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 3 POINTS

NORTH KOREA 0 WINS 3 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 0 POINTS

GROUP H

SPAIN 3 WINS 0 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 9 POINTS

CHILE 2 WINS 1 LOSS 0 DRAWS 6 POINTS

HONDURAS 1 WINS 2 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 3 POINTS

SWITZERLAND 0 WINS 3 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 0 POINTS

A Letter To The San Francisco Giants, And Soccer Picks

2010-05-25T19:12:00.000-07:00

Dear San Francisco Giants,

When you play the Washington Nationals tonight, please start hitting. Or at least scoring runs by any means possible, including getting hit by pitches.

Thanks,

Me.

****

Back to South Africa. Doesn't that sound like it should be a play by some hip playwright?

DAY 14, JUNE 24TH 2010 (HAPPY 24TH BIRTHDAY TO ROSELYN HALLETT!)

GROUP E

CAMEROON VERSUS HOLLAND

I would love to pick an upset here. Really I would, because that would be a great story. Cameroon has a history of pulling upsets, since way back in 1990 in Italy. But I don't think they have the depth to stop Holland.

Holland, but not by as much as you might think. 1-0.

DENMARK VERSUS JAPAN

Danishes versus sushi? That's a tough call. But Japan is a whaling nation, which limits my sympathy for them, even if I didn't think Denmark a better team. Denmark gets the solid 2-0 win.

GROUP F

SLOVAKIA VERSUS ITALY

I wouldn't mind seeing the Slovaks pull off an upset here, despite my Italian roots.

So to heck with it. Slovakia plays a tight match and steals a late winner against the run of play to shock everyone. Except for me, obviously, because I remember that there is always a shock or two in the group stage.

Slovakia 2-1.

PARAGUAY VERSUS NEW ZEALAND

Since the upset of the day just happened, have to follow my head and predict Paraguay to get a 2-1 victory. New Zealand just isn't strong enough against such a well-organized South American side.

STANDINGS, FINAL

GROUP E

HOLLAND 3 WINS 0 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 9 POINTS

DENMARK 2 WINS 1 LOSS 0 DRAWS 6 POINTS

CAMEROON 1 WIN 2 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 3 POINTS

JAPAN 0 WINS 3 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 0 POINTS

GROUP F

PARAGUAY 2 WINS 0 LOSSES 1 DRAW 7 POINTS

SLOVAKIA 2 WINS 1 LOSS 0 DRAWS 6 POINTS

ITALY 1 WIN 1 LOSS 1 DRAW 4 POINT

NEW ZEALAND 0 WINS 3 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 0 POINTS

One By One, They Start To Fall

2010-05-18T19:33:00.000-07:00

So, the injury report, the first pieces of evidence as to why I was foolish to start picking World Cup results so far out.

* Wayne Rooney may not be at full strength, having suffered and then exacerbating a groin injury, which sounds infinitely worse to a male than it could possibly be, and that's saying a lot, because it is pretty bad, medically. Without him, England's attack will definitely lose a bit of its cutting edge.

* Charlie Davies did not recover in time, not to the satisfaction of the medical staff at Sochaux--his French professional team--and Bob Bradley, which leaves the US with a dilemma at striker. Who do you pair with Jozy Altidore? I have to say I like the idea of pushing Clint Dempsey up front; he tends to get too clever in the midfield and gives the ball away in dangerous spots, but he has a knack for finishing. This would let Bradley bring Brian Ching, Edson Buddle, or Herculez Gomez off the bench for attacking reinforcements. I like a midfield of Landon Donovan, Ricardo Clark, Michael Bradley, and maybe Benny Feilhaber, although he may be better coming off the bench, and that may not provide a second strong wing option other than Landon.

* Michael Ballack. This might be the most significant in terms of a loss for his team, and I'm not just saying that because his agent is talking about taking legal action against Kevin-Prince Boateng, the player who injured him in Chelsea's FA Cup Final against Portsmouth. Maybe the agent got confused because of Ballack's eerie resemblance to Matt Damon, and figured that Boateng--who plays for Ghana, one of Germany's group rivals, instead of Germany, the country of his birth--was part of a conspiracy against his client such as what Jason Bourne might deal with. One more reason to root against Germany, because that's just ridiculous.

DAY 13, JUNE 23RD, 2010

GROUP C

ENGLAND VERSUS SLOVENIA

I could see Slovenia pulling an upset here. But I don't. England wins 2-1 to secure the group.

UNITED STATES VERSUS ALGERIA

The United States might not win the whole thing, and we might not be among the very best in the world. Yet. But we have developed as a team enough to win this game to advance. 2-1.

GROUP D

GHANA VERSUS GERMANY

Look at that. You would think I planned that, wouldn't you? An added twist: Kevin Prince-Boateng could play against his brother Jerome who is in the German national team.

Remember that upset I didn't predict for Slovenia? Well, I'm picking it for Ghana. 2-1 in the final moments, Ghana scrambling in a dramatic winner.

AUSTRALIA VERSUS SERBIA

Australia is going to step up to make things interesting, forcing a 2-2 draw.

And now the final standings after the group games for groups C and D:

GROUP C

ENGLAND 3 WINS 0 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 9 POINTS

UNITED STATES 2 WINS 1 LOSS 0 DRAWS 6 POINTS

SLOVENIA 1 WIN 2 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 3 POINTS

ALGERIA 0 WINS 3 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 0 POINTS

GROUP D

GHANA 3 WINS 0 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 9 POINTS

GERMANY 1 WIN 1 LOSS 1 DRAW 4 POINTS

SERBIA 0 WINS 1 LOSS 2 DRAWS 2 POINTS

AUSTRALIA 0 WINS 2 LOSS 1 DRAW 1 POINTS

The World Waits(But Not For Ronaldinho)

2010-05-16T14:35:00.000-07:00

It seems a bit presumptuous for the head of South Africa's World Cup organization, Danny Jordaan, to criticize the team selection for any other country, doesn't it? But here he is, complaining that Dunga should have selected Ronaldinho for Brazil's squad.

I can understand why Jordaan would want Ronaldinho there; he wants the World Cup to make as much money as possible, and Ronaldinho has a more recognizable and thus more marketable name than, say, Luis Fabiano.

But Dunga, on the other hand, probably doesn't give a damn about making Danny Jordaan happy. He probably wants to win, and he feels Ronaldinho does not give Brazil the best chance to win at this point.

Is it possible that coaches sometimes allow bias to influence their decisions on team selection? Probably, but I don't think that is the case here. It is generally acknowledged that Ronaldinho has not been the same player as he once was. Brazil has the depth to not miss him, regardless of how that might affect the revenue that benefits South Africa.

DAY 12, JUNE 22, 2010

GROUP A

MEXICO VERSUS URUGUAY

Mexico will be confident with two wins in their first two games. Uruguay will be fighting hard for points, so it should be a good match. I think Mexico will be better overall, but I don't see them winning all three matches.

1-1 draw.

FRANCE VERSUS SOUTH AFRICA

France's frustrations will find an outlet, as the hosts are overrun, 3-1.

GROUP B

NIGERIA VERSUS SOUTH KOREA

I don't see a whole lot to choose between these two teams. South Korea is gaining in experience, and may be a bit underrated. Nigeria has always been a bit of an anti-climax. In all, a 2-2 draw seems the right pick here.

GREECE VERSUS ARGENTINA

Argentina will take their foot off the gas here, so I predict only a 2-0 victory.

So, here are the final standings for groups A and B after all three group games.

GROUP A

MEXICO 2 WINS 0 LOSSES 1 DRAW 7 POINTS

FRANCE 1 WIN 1 LOSS 1 DRAW 4 POINTS

URUGUAY 0 WINS 0 LOSSES 3 DRAWS 3 POINTS

SOUTH AFRICA 0 WINS 2 LOSSES 1 DRAWS 1 POINT

GROUP B

ARGENTINA 3 WINS 0 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 9 POINTS

NIGERIA 1 WINS 1 LOSS 1 DRAWS 4 POINTS

SOUTH KOREA 1 WIN 1 LOSSES 1 DRAWS 4 POINTS

GREECE 0 WINS 3 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 0 POINTS

Nigeria goes through on goal differential against South Korea.

Final Whistle

2010-05-09T10:55:00.000-07:00

Today marked the end of the Premiership season, the end of Newcastle United's exile from the top flight, and the end of Manchester United's three year reign. As we transition into World Cup season by way of the Champions League final between Bayern Munich and Inter Milan on May 22nd, here are a couple of my final thoughts regarding this season.

* Chelsea loved this one. They clinched the title this year with an 8-0 drubbing over 10-man Wigan. That is about as emphatic a title-deciding victory as you can get. But they will have a lingering bitter aftertaste from once again failing in the Champions League. Rumors have them pursuing Fernando Torres of Liverpool in the off-season, but I don't think they really need him. Still, a strike force of Drogba, Anelka, Torres and Kalou would be intimidating.

* What a weird season for Burnley. Their first season in the top flight in many years ended with instant relegation, but they opened the season with big wins over Manchester United and Everton, and today they beat Tottenham 4-2, Tottenham having just clinched the final spot in next season's Champions League. Definitely gave their fans some value for money.

* A disappointing season for Liverpool ended with a whimper, a 0-0 draw with relegated Hull City. For so many seasons, Liverpool have seemed to be on the verge of overhauling Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal, and they won the Champions League 5 years ago. But the last couple of years, they have slipped back a bit, and now they have big debts and reported a loss in their financial report on the season, and have fallen out of Champions League qualification, which aside from the loss of prestige carries with it a loss of revenue.

* Arsenal had some injury issues this year, but I think they need to spend over the summer, bring in some reinforcements to keep up with Chelsea and Manchester United to avoid risking the fate that befell Liverpool. Arsene Wenger had some temperamental moments at the end of the season that seemed to crack his image of the cool and dignified counterpart to Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United.

With that, on to more World Cup picks!

DAY 10, JUNE 20TH, 2010

GROUP F

SLOVAKIA VERSUS PARAGUAY

Slovakia could well be underrated, considered something of an unknown team but with unquestionable talent. Paraguay, of course, has much more experience, but may be lacking in finishing options after the horrific shooting of the star striker Salvador Cabanas in Mexico City in January.

But assuming that my first game predictions were correct, Paraguay will be confident following a draw with Italy, and will pick up all three points in a 2-1 victory.

ITALY VERSUS NEW ZEALAND

After drawing with Paraguay in the opening match, Italy will be well aware of a firestorm of criticism in the Italian media, full of doomsayers calling for Lippi's head. Andrea Pirlo will play well, and Giuseppe Rossi will take another step into the limelight with two well-taken goals over sacrificial lamb New Zealand in a 2-0 Italian victory.

GROUP G

BRAZIL VERSUS IVORY COAST

This should be one of the most intriguing matches. Two strong teams in what many call the Group of Death. Ivory Coast will be looking to make some noise, and they have the talent to do so, with Didier Drogba, Salomon Kalou, and Kolo Toure leading the line. But Dunga has produced a Brazilian team that combines the expected flair with solid organization. I could/would love to see Ivory Coast pull off the upset, but I think that I have to pick Brazil to win a high-scoring match, 3-2.

THIS IS BONUS DAY, WITH ANOTHER DAY'S WORTH OF PICKS IN ORDER TO ALIGN WITH THE STANDINGS.

DAY 11, JUNE 21ST, 2010

GROUP G

PORTUGAL VERSUS NORTH KOREA

I would love to see the upset here, but let's be serious. You don't really need me to make a prediction on this one. But I'm going to inflict a prediction on you anyway.

Cristiano Ronaldo has been in imperious form in La Liga lately; I've seen Real Madrid a couple times in the last month, and he is capable of such sublime moments that you can understand, kind of, why Real Madrid paid 80 million pounds for him. I see no reason why he couldn't be similarly dominant in the World Cup, and while he can sometimes get in trouble with a me-first attitude, North Korea won't be able to punish him for any such solipsisms, and it will require stout defense and organization on their part to keep it close. Portugal 3-0.

GROUP H

CHILE VERSUS SWITZERLAND

The battle for second place in the group. I think Chile will be just too strong for Switzerland, who lack the attacking flair to break down the South Americans. 2-1 to Chile.

SPAIN VERSUS HONDURAS

Honduras will be willing, but Spain's sheer dominance will tell the story. 3-1 to the Europeans.

STANDINGS

GROUP G

BRAZIL 2 WINS 0 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 6 POINTS

PORTUGAL 1 WIN 1 LOSS 0 DRAWS 3 POINTS

IVORY COAST 1 WIN 1 LOSS 0 DRAWS 3 POINTS

NORTH KOREA 0 WINS 2 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 0 POINTS

GROUP H

SPAIN 2 WINS 0 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 6 POINTS

CHILE 2 WINS 0 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 6 POINTS

HONDURAS 0 WINS 2 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 0 POINTS

SWITZERLAND 0 WINS 2 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 0 POINTS

South Africa Drops The Ball

2010-05-08T22:33:00.000-07:00

How's this bit of news for reassuring those in the media who are concerned about South Africa's infrastructure in terms of hosting a successful and safe World Cup?

The head of South Africa's police is actively wishing for the US to be eliminated in the first round so he doesn't have to deal with the security challenges of protecting President Obama, should the President attend the tournament.

First of all, boo. This offends me as a fan of USA soccer. I had some sympathy for South Africa's team before now, harboring a wish they would do well in front of their home crowd. Now that I know their police commissioner is rooting against us, well, let's just say I have a petty wish for them not to score a single goal.

My second reaction was to think, Um, isn't that your job? It looks bad for him to publicly want his job to be made easier in this way. As Spider-Man's Uncle Ben--or at least the actor playing him in the movie--once said, "With great power, comes great responsibility." South Africa has this tremendous economic opportunity to host the World Cup which brings tourist dollars and international attention to their country; the concomitant responsibility is to maintain order and safety, and, yes, that includes for the head of state of a visiting country. This is General Bheki Cele. A general. This isn't some deputy sheriff in a small town in Nebraska, but the police commissioner of an entire country.

To be fair for a moment--but only for a moment--hosting the President of the United States would certainly present challenges, as rarely will you find so potentially polarizing a figure--not Obama himself, per se, though he certainly can be polarizing, but the more symbolic figure of the President Of The United States. And yes, South Africa certainly has socioeconomic problems and problems with crime as it is. And yes, the general himself probably wasn't the one who decided to submit the bid to host the World Cup, so he didn't really ASK for this job. And yes, he did tell reporters, "Don't print that."

But that last point was either a joke or a bit of naivete, because obviously that statement would be printed. And it doesn't matter if he didn't ask for this job; actually, he kind of did by accepting the position as police commissioner in the first place.

So as I think about it a little more, I'm willing to cut him a little slack, because, yes, pragmatically, this is a difficult assignment. But on the other hand, I'm not comfortable with the man who would be in charge of security preparations complaining that security is really hard. It doesn't exactly foster a flood of confidence that the World Cup will go off without a hitch.

The World Cup, in an ideal world, would be a sporting venue where politics and violence and fears of terrorism could be forgotten. It's a chance for countries to play sports, to compete without resorting to bullets. Unfortunately, this is not an ideal world. Still, don't talk about how great it would be if the US didn't make it past the group stage; only talk about what you will do to make sure things remain peaceful.

And also, I'm now pissed off again that he doesn't want us to make it out of the group stage.

But does he have a point? What do you think? Should President Obama attend the World Cup, however briefly, if the US makes it into the knockout rounds? Is attending a sporting event worth the extra complications?

On to the predictions and the standings, looking at more standings from the first round of games first, as I fell a bit behind on that front:

GROUP E

HOLLAND 1 WIN 0 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 3 POINTS

CAMEROON 1 WIN 0 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 3 POINTS

DENMARK 0 WINS 1 LOSS 0 DRAWS 0 POINTS

JAPAN 0 WINS 1 LOSS 0 DRAWS 0 POINTS

GROUP F

SLOVAKIA 1 WIN 0 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 3 POINTS

ITALY 0 WINS 0 LOSSES 1 DRAW 1 POINT

PARAGUAY 0 WINS 0 LOSSES 1 DRAW 1 POINT

NEW ZEALAND 0 WINS 1 LOSS 0 DRAWS 0 POINTS

DAY 9, JUNE 19TH, 2010

GROUP D

GHANA VERSUS AUSTRALIA

The second game for both of these teams may see Ghana slip a little bit after beating Serbia, and Australia bouncing back from a tough loss to Germany in the first match. Nevertheless, I think Ghana has the talent to pick up the points, if they remained disciplined. I will predict Ghana in a 1-0 victory, but I would not be surprised to see a draw or an Australian win. This is a tough one to pick, certainly the toughest to date. If I was correct in picking Germany to draw with Serbia, then both of these teams will be particularly motivated.

GROUP E

HOLLAND VERSUS JAPAN

Japan may have had some problems this year with some of their exports not stopping properly, but they will have no such complaint today with the national soccer team, as Holland will put the brakes on the Japanese without too much difficulty, winning 3-0. Anything less than a comfortable victory and the Dutch should consider changing their soccer shoes for silver skates, because they will suddenly appear to be on thin ice.

DENMARK VERSUS CAMEROON

Denmark is too organized a team, and Cameroon lacks the attacking depth behind Samuel Eto'o. Denmark secures a 1-0 victory.

More Picks, Less Thought

2010-05-05T21:52:00.000-07:00

It's been a good evening. The Giants claimed another road victory in Florida, as Barry Zito improved to 5-0 on the season. The Rockies and Padres are playing each other, taking victories off each other in the divisional race. And no, it's not too early to talk about a divisional race.

The downside to the evening is it is time to make another day's worth of World Cup predictions, but I am weighted down with pizza, beer, wine, and three hours of TV: Chuck, Castle and V. Which means that my picks tonight are going to be less thoughtful, perhaps, and I'll skip posting standings, because that really is a pain to try to type up a group table, let me tell you.

So here we go.

DAY 8, JUNE 18TH, 2010

GROUP C

SLOVENIA VERSUS UNITED STATES

Clearly, Slovenia must be better than one would think. I mean, Slovenia? Who would expect them to be any good? I mean, really. Slovenia is like a poor man's Slovakia. Some days, I think they must be the same country.

In any case, the United States is also a stronger soccer team than a lot of people think. We do enough for a 2-1 win.

ENGLAND VERSUS ALGERIA

I would be all for predicting an Algerian upset, because I love to see a former colony upset a former colonial power. However, Algeria was not England's colony.

Not, that is, until today, when Wayne Rooney colonizes Algeria's goal twice, and England wins 3-1.

GROUP D

GERMANY VERSUS SERBIA

I could see this being an upset possibility. I could see Serbia sneaking under the radar to clinch at least a draw, if not a win, against Germany.

In fact, I'm drunk enough to say it: Germany is a little sloppy, and Serbia comes away with a 2-2 draw.

Consulting The Crystal (Foot)Ball

2010-05-04T19:31:00.000-07:00

Picking up where I left off yesterday:

DAY 6, JUNE 16, 2010

GROUP A:

SOUTH AFRICA VERSUS URUGUAY

South Africa will be looking for points in this game, because France looms in their third group game. South Africa has the home field advantage, but do they have the talent?

I think they have just enough talent to be aided by the crowd to get at least a draw. Uruguay has been known to lose their composure, according to World Soccer. I say Steven Pienaar helps create a goal for South Africa to counter an early goal by Diego Forlan, and South Africa hangs on for a 1-1 draw.

DAY 7, JUNE 17, 2010

GROUP A

FRANCE VERSUS MEXICO

Perhaps the showpiece game of the group, this one poses an emotional dilemma for me. Which team do I root against more? France, with the Hand Of Henry, or Mexico, the rival, the Hordes of the Azteca?

Frankly, that's a toss-up. So I'll just have to go with my instincts on this one. The time is right for Mexico to do quite well at the World Cup, and France is aging and slipping from the peak of the Zidane years.

Mexico wins more easily than you would expect, 2-0.

GROUP B

ARGENTINA VERSUS SOUTH KOREA

South Korea will work hard, with a game spirit, but a game spirit is not enough to win . . . er . . . a game. They will lack the defensive depth and the finishing precision to cope with the sheer talent of Argentina.

Argentina will have to guard against complacency, but as long as they come to play, they walk away with a 3-0 victory.

GREECE VERSUS NIGERIA

Nigeria has the confidence and the striking. Greece has a nicely colored flag and tasty cuisine. However, Nigeria probably has good food too. Nigeria wins 1-0. That's all I have to say about this one.

STANDINGS, CONTINUED

After the first round of games . . .

GROUP C

ENGLAND 1 WIN 0 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 3 POINTS

SLOVENIA 1 WIN 0 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 3 POINTS

ALGERIA 0 WINS 1 LOSS 0 DRAWS 0 POINTS

UNITED STATES 0 WINS 1 LOSS 0 DRAWS 0 POINTS

GROUP D

GERMANY 1 WIN 0 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 3 POINTS

GHANA 1 WIN 0 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 3 POINTS

SERBIA 0 WINS 1 LOSS 0 DRAWS 0 POINTS

AUSTRALIA 0 WINS 1 LOSS 0 DRAWS 0 POINTS

***** NON-SOCCER POST-SCRIPT

As I wrote this, a marathon ballgame was unfolding in Florida, the Giants starting a road trip with the bullpen blowing a strong performance by Tim Lincecum. With two outs in the bottom of the eighth, Sergio Romo gave up a three home run to Dan Uggla, and the Marlins took a 6-5 lead. Heartache. Every time the Giants win, I feel like my life is better, richer, like I've accomplished something of immeasurable value. A late-game loss would be brutal. Every Giants loss feels like my life is a deflated balloon, my spirits ebbing away with a whimpering pfffllaaat.

But with two outs in the top of the ninth, Aaron Rowand, he who bounces off of outfield fences and grass in pursuit of outs, drove a solo home run over the wall, sending the game to extra innings.

In the 12th inning, Aubrey Huff hit a bases-loaded double, and the Giants tacked on another run after that when Nate Schierholtz was hit in the head with the bases loaded again. He seemed to be okay, so it was not a Pyrrhic victory, and a victory it was. 9-6!

Also, today the San Jose Sharks defeated the Detroit Red Wings to take a three games to none lead in the NHL playoffs, and the San Francisco 49ers signed Patrick Willis to a five year contract extension. A plethora of sporting happiness. It can almost make one forget the world's problems, at least for a night. Which is, of course, the whole point of being a sports fan.

Towards A Spanish Sunrise, and Other World Cup Picks

2010-05-03T19:17:00.000-07:00

The sixth day of the World Cup will feature the kickoff of the final group, and South Africa's second game. For the sake of keeping things broken up in an organized way, I won't write about South Africa until tomorrow. Tonight, the picks for Group H, plus the calculated standings based on my predictions through the opening games.

Why? Because the world is better when it is measured with standings.

DAY 6, JUNE 16, 2010

GROUP H

HONDURAS VERSUS CHILE

This match is very intriguing to me. Both are teams that are kind of under the radar, but that performed quite well in qualifiers, Honduras finishing third in CONCACAF and Chile finishing runners-up to Brazil in South America. I would say that Chile is probably slightly more talented than Honduras, but both are strong teams in a tough group.

Honduras dealt with a coup this year; Chile an earthquake. Sympathy edge to Chile.

Chile is the last remaining home of the carmenere varietal of grape, and I've been drinking and enjoying carmenere over the last couple of months. I don't even know if Honduras produces wine, and I'm too lazy to do research. Edge to Chile.

I could see Honduras springing a surprise, but I can't argue with my logic. Chile 2-0 over Honduras by an earthquake and a bottle of wine.

SPAIN VERSUS SWITZERLAND

Spain's Fernando Torres faces a fitness challenge as he recovers from injury before the World Cup. Switzerland is famous for being neutral and producing hot chocolate--or so I assume. They also are famous for having lots of mountains.

Unfortunately, they won't be able to station those mountains in front of their goal. Spain will start the World Cup on a strong note and win 3-0.

So, after all teams play their first game, here are the standings, starting with Groups A and B tonight. You will see the team, number of wins, number of losses, and number of draws, wrapping up with the number of points.

GROUP A

MEXICO 1 WIN 0 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 3 POINTS

FRANCE 0 WINS 0 LOSSES 1 DRAW 1 POINT

URUGUAY 0 WINS 0 LOSSES 1 DRAW 1 POINT

SOUTH AFRICA O WINS 1 LOSS 0 DRAWS 0 POINTS

GROUP B

ARGENTINA 1 WIN 0 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 3 POINTS

SOUTH KOREA 1 WIN 0 LOSSES 0 DRAWS 3 POINTS

GREECE 0 WINS 1 LOSS 0 DRAWS 0 POINTS

NIGERIA 0 WINS 1 LOSS 0 DRAWS 0 POINTS

Having A Ball

2010-05-02T12:52:00.000-07:00

I ran out of energy last night to pick results for the next World Cup games in order, so to make up for that, and to restore the average--because sports is all about the average--I'll pick two days' worth of games today, with a little bonus of whimsical reasoning.

DAY 4: JUNE 14TH, 2010

GROUP E

HOLLAND VERSUS DENMARK

Holland chronically disappoints and comes up just short of expectations, which sounds just like what people used to say about Spain before Euro 2008. World Soccer magazine reports they may have some flaws on defense, and will need Huntelaar and Van Persie to step up the attacking polish. They swept through qualifying with little stress. Also, I like going dutch on dates.

Denmark seems to be a young team with lots of upside but limited experience. I always like watching Danish teams play, because I think they work hard. They won their qualifying group against teams like Portugal and Spain, which surprised plenty in the media. Also, one of my favorite pastries is a cheese danish.

It should be an entertaining game, but in the end, I think Holland will just have too much firepower, and will secure a 2-1 victory.

JAPAN VERSUS CAMEROON

Japan has shown the ability to play attractive football, but they will have to fight hard to avoid finishing last in this group. Cameroon has lots of experience and a world class striker in Samuel Eto'o, but may be lacking in consistency and depth, especially in offense.

I say Cameroon is just too strong for Japan and musters a 1-0 win, but I could see a draw if Cameroon slips up on defense and concedes a goal. I just lack the yen to certify that feeling as a prediction.

GROUP F

ITALY VERSUS PARAGUAY

The defending world champions against the third placed qualifier from South America. Paraguay has a reputation of being well-organized on defense, but they only scored 24 goals in qualifying, and have only scored 10 goals in 11 games at their last three finals. On paper it looks easy to pick Italy to win.

But Italy is aging. They do have some promising young stars like Giuseppi Rossi, but they may struggle in their first game. They had a very dismal performance in last summer's Confederations Cup (you know, the tournament where the US beat Spain).

Vaughn was telling me yesterday that he thinks I was excessively pessimistic about the score line for the US versus England, and that he thinks that when I hope for a certain result with my heart, my heart also makes my brain overcompensate in the other direction. The same thought could apply to my prediction of a 0-0 draw, but I don't have attachment to Italy's success. Infamous problems with gambling and racism have watered down my taste for the soccer from my mother's birth nation.

DAY 5: JUNE 15TH, 2010

GROUP F

NEW ZEALAND VERSUS SLOVAKIA

Let's face it. If Australia were still qualifying for the World Cup through Oceania rather than the Asian qualifiers, New Zealand wouldn't be here. Nevertheless, this is their best chance to pick up points in a group that also features Italy and Paraguay.

Slovakia is making their World Cup debut, and are considered to lack depth and experience. Nevertheless, they did win their qualifying group, and I see a 2-0 victory in their future.

GROUP G

BRAZIL VERSUS NORTH KOREA

North Korea upset Italy in 1966, but that was then. The country is still very secretive, but in this age of the Internet, there is no way they have a secret superstar that could help them get a result against Brazil.

Brazil thumps North Korea 4-0, a score inflated as much by Brazil's talent as it is by my bewilderment about Kim Jong-Il's hair and, oh, yeah, his oppressive regime.

IVORY COAST VERSUS PORTUGAL

A match that pits two temperamental stars in Didier Drogba and Cristiano Ronaldo. A lot of talent on both sides in an important match to decide who goes through behind Brazil. Because I really, really want Portugal to fail again due to their proclivities for dissent and whining, I say Ivory Coast wins an exciting 3-2 matchup.

Rockie Mountains Not So High

2010-05-01T18:19:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, when you go to a baseball game, you want it soaked in drama, a hard-fought contest that comes down to the bitter end. Other days, you just want your team to casually stroll past the other team like they weren't even there. Today, I was all about the casual stroll, so I'll end the suspense right now by telling you the Giants dominated the Colorado Rockies 6-1, and it wasn't even that close.

A sunny day next to the water, sails scudding by. Vaughn and I met at Justin Herman Plaza, walked along the waterfront to the ballpark. Matt Cain was on the mound, and oh, did he ably deal with the Rockies today. First inning was easy, second inning he survived walks to the first two batters to end the threat.

SECOND BEST PHOTO I'VE EVER TAKEN (MATT CAIN PITCHING)

Vaughn and I had good seats, closer to home plate along the left field line than we usually sit. I experimented with my camera's zoom feature, pushing it way past the red line to where the image seemed to shake and judder. But it provided the best pictures I've ever taken at a game:

THIS WAS ACTUALLY A FOUL BALL, BUT DOESN'T IT LOOK AWESOME?

AND THEN THERE WAS THIS ONE IN THE BOTTOM OF THE SECOND (JUAN URIBE HOME RUN):

3-0 after the home run; by the end of the inning it was 4-0 after a sacrifice fly by John Bowker. After three innings it was 5-0 after a Bengie Molina home run.

It was also a game of firsts: the first Splash Hit I've seen live--Aubrey Huff hit a home run over the right field wall into McCovey Cove; and the first player ejection I've ever seen (Colorado's third baseman Ian Stewart arguing a called third strike). Nothing like a little bad sportsmanship on the part of the other team to help you savor a victory just a little bit more, especially against a division rival, no matter how nice the shade of purple in their uniforms.

We're guaranteed to finish this home stand no worse than 6-3 against three of the best teams in the National League. That's a pretty nice way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

It was also a demonstration of the two extremes of sports fans' vocabulary and intelligence:

Case 1) A bearded fan behind us, after a Rockies batter fouled off two straight pitches on a 1-2 count, desperately trying to avoid an inning-ending strike out: "He's just delaying the inevitable!"

Case 2) A drunk fan, red-faced with beer rage in response to another fan's initiation of the Wave: "Giants fans watch baseball, they don't do the Wave!!!"

But damn, the stand where I bought a pretzel only offered Miller Light, Bud Lite, or Coors. No Anchor Steam, nothing good like that. That's pretty lame, so I stuck with lemonade.

Also, damn, if you are going to be counselors bringing a flock of teenagers to a baseball game, please tell them not to constantly change seats and go in and out of the aisle, especially not in the middle of an inning. And don't bring a girl who in the second inning whines, "This is the longest game EVER." It's just more compelling evidence why teenagers should not be allowed out in public.

Barry Zito: Lazarus Man; And World Cup Predictions, Part III

2010-04-30T23:53:00.000-07:00

The best reason for hope for the Giants this year is not Tim Lincecum's 4-0 record to start the year, because we all knew Tim would be suitably awesome coming off his second Cy Young award. No, the best reason for hope is that Barry Zito is also 4-0, his best April record ever.

Barry Zito signed a Brobdingnagian contract with the Giants a couple years ago, and, perhaps like Gulliver, seemed a bit overwhelmed by his surroundings. But in the second half of last year, he started to come alive. And this year, he has been as indomitable as Lincecum so far, speaking to a new mindset, more relaxed and focused. It's true that money doesn't buy happiness; Giants wins sure help, though.

5-2, the Giants beat the Rockies tonight beneath 8 solid innings from Zito, ensuring a winning home stand. Even if we lose Saturday and Sunday, this home stand will finish 5-4, much more palatable than the first road trip of the year. This is what baseball is all about, measured in series and road versus home trips, small increments along the path of a season. Tomorrow, I go to the Saturday afternoon game with Vaughn to watch Matt Cain take the hill. I'm hoping for a sunny afternoon, sailboats on the bay, and a comfortable Giants win. Vaughn and I are meeting at the Embarcadero Bart Station before the game, and plan to stroll along the waterfront to the ballpark. It will be delightful.

Now, back to the World Cup. I made my first mistake already; the Algeria-Slovenia game should have been predicted today, not yesterday. Oh well; that just further establishes my credentials as someone who knows nothing:

DAY 3: JUNE 13, 2010

GROUP D:

GERMANY VERSUS AUSTRALIA

Germany seems to be a mix of overly old stars and a few young guns. Australia is a hard one to predict, probably because they live all the way around the world. Who pays attention to the antipodes? I have used Tim Cahill on my fantasy team quite extensively, though. Still, Australia will miss a striker of the quality of the retired Mark Viduka. I'm rooting for Australia, but . . .

Germany 3, Australia 1.

SERBIA VERSUS GHANA

It's late and I want to watch an episode of Castle, so I'll cut right to the chase: Ghana handles Serbia 1-0.

Time for a scotch and a shot of Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic.

The Most Important June 12th In The History Of Anything Ever

2010-04-29T22:41:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I began day by day predictions of the matches in this summer's World Cup. So you can't say I didn't warn you.

DAY 2: JUNE 12, 2010

GROUP B:

ARGENTINA VERSUS NIGERIA

Some might say this will be the year of African nations. This would certainly be a poetic--and potentially geopolitically beneficial--result, paired with the first time ever the World Cup has been played on the continent. Nigeria, too, has traditionally been a strong competitor.

People have argued, too, that Argentina are not well-coached, that Diego Maradona, for whatever reason, has shackled the undeniable talents of Lionel Messi and others by playing them out of position. They barely squeaked into the World Cup, just avoiding having to play Costa Rica in a playoff. Again, to speak of karma as I spoke yesterday, Maradona still does not earn my sympathy, what with the "Hand of God" nonsense.

None of that matters. Argentina wins, 3-1. They have too much strength and will peak at the right time, and Nigeria is not consistent enough.

SOUTH KOREA VERSUS GREECE

South Korea advanced to the semi-finals in 2002, but they have never succeeded outside of Asia. Greece won the European Championships in 2004. None of that matters. South Korea has the experience to pull off a mild upset, and Greece will be weighed down with worry over the economic chains that come with an International Monetary Fund loan.

South Korea, led by Manchester United's Park Ji-Sung, takes it, either 1-0 or 2-1.

GROUP C:

ALGERIA VERSUS SLOVENIA

I'll be honest. I don't know a whole lot about either team, except the fact that Algeria doesn't like Egypt much, and Slovenia upset Russia. Any team that upsets Russia and Vladimir Putin is okay in my book, but I hope both teams prove beatable.

I'm pulling for a draw here, but I predict Slovenia pulls off a 3-2 victory, for no other reason than that is the first score that comes to mind.

UNITED STATES VERSUS ENGLAND

Oh, the humanity. This, let's face it, is the real reason for the entire World Cup. The chance for the ghost of Joe Gaetjens to ride again. The chance for a symbolic reenactment of the Boston Tea Party, only one that makes sense.

On the other hand, maybe it is just a soccer game.

Obviously, I would love to see the upset. I would feel much more comfortable thinking it was possible if Oguchi Onyewu hadn't spent this past season injured; who knows how stalwart he will be? The loss of Charlie Davies in that awful car crash is also cause for concern, though he says he will be ready.

My heart wants to say the United States, but I can't. England 3, USA 1.

Just Another Day (# 44, To Be Exact)

2010-04-28T19:24:00.000-07:00

Today the Giants hosted the Phillies in the final game of a three game series by the Bay, having won the first two games. Tim Lincecum was on the mound with a chance to go 5-0, so we had a great shot of sweeping away Philadelphia. In fact, he mowed down the Phillies for 8 1/3 innings, handing a 4-1 lead to closer Brian Wilson in the top of the ninth.

The Barenaked Ladies sing about doing things 'just like Brian Wilson did.' I wouldn't suggest they take today's example as their guide. Just like Brian Wilson did? Usually, yes, but not today. Oh, the sweep was so close, I could practically see the dirt being blown across the sidewalk while parking enforcement officers ticketed cars about to be towed.

To be up 4-1 in the ninth, and to have missed a couple chances to extend rallies and pick up insurance runs, oh, that hurts. Oh, despair. I don't even have to go to www.sfgate.com to know that there will be doomsayers posting dark thoughts on the failure. This is just what happens on Internet message boards.

The short-attention span of the baseball fan, huh? To take 2 of 3 from the defending National League champs, after 2 of 3 from St Louis, is pretty good. If they kept that ratio up for the remaining 141 games, that would be 94 wins on top of the 12 they've earned so far, which would make me ecstatic.

So instead of talking about this pain, let's kick off the World Cup predictions!

There are 43 days until the World Cup kicks off in South Africa, so it is time to start picking the results. Everyone picks results of tournaments, for sure, but what makes me stand out from the pack is that I make absolutely no effort to pretend that my picks aren't subjective, full of bias and emotional whim. It's more fun that way, even if it is the sort of chaotic behavior that makes people hate me as a judge at Apples 2 Apples.

Every day, game by game, I'll predict the winners, and by the end, you'll have a map of who (not) to bet on. Although I will make this bold prediction right now: North Korea will not win the World Cup.* (CLICK HERE FOR THE COMPLETE WORLD CUP DRAW AND SCHEDULE)

DAY 1: JUNE 11, 2010

GROUP A:

SOUTH AFRICA VERSUS MEXICO

The host nation has never failed to advance out of the first round of the World Cup. I'm thinking that South Africa could be on course to make history they don't want to make.

Mexico is talented, more than talented enough to beat South Africa, although the home fans will be energetic for the first match. I say Mexico scores two goals, one by Javier Hernandez,and one by Carlos Vela, but concedes one own goal (I have to say this; they're Mexico, and they always earn red card fouls against the US, so I have to wish them a little bit of misfortune).

URUGUAY VERSUS FRANCE

This is a tough one. I think France would tend to be favored, but I like Uruguay's chances. Plus, I would like to think that karma would pay France back for Thierry Henry's blatant handball that facilitated their qualification at the expense of Ireland. Karma, of course, is how we atheists like to express our desire for poetic justice without acknowledging the desire for a theistic figure to establish a framework for cosmic justice.

France scores late in the first half, but Nicolas Lodeiro and Uruguay find an equalizer out of nowhere in the second half. A 1-1 draw, which like a good compromise, leaves everybody unhappy except for Mexico.

To be continued. Tomorrow, I'll consider the U.S. versus England. Ooo, you can feel the electricity in the air already. Let's hope the electricity doesn't turn out to be metric. To hell with the metric system, I say.

*Yes, North Korea is playing in the World Cup. I'm not that conservative a gambler.

John Lennon Had It Right

2010-04-22T22:37:00.001-07:00

He sang once, "Feels like starting over." Every day is a John Lennon song in baseball; Instant Karma, where celebrating a homer excessively can earn you a brushback pitch, is just one example. (Just Like) Starting Over is another, because every day really is like starting over.

That's the trick for baseball fans. On the one hand, it is a blessing, because if you get in a slump, there is always a next day to try to recover, the next inning, the next at-bat, the next pitch. On the other hand, you do sometimes have to start over, and that's not always a good thing. The Giants started brilliantly this season, jumping out to a 7-2 record, although all but the first three games were in the cozy confines of their waterfront ballpark. Their bats were alive, and they were fighting every game. It felt like they weren't automatically doomed if they fell behind by a couple of runs.

Then came a pinch-hit home run from Manny Ramirez, and the bats died. For goodness sake, Jonathan Sanchez pitched a one-hitter against the Padres, and the Giants lost. That's dismal. All of a sudden, they are down to 8-7, still with a winning record and coming back home, but facing a tough stretch against St. Louis, Philadelphia and Colorado. It would have been nice to have a bit of momentum going into this gauntlet.

All of a sudden, they are stranding runners they were driving in before. Leadoff triples are followed by three weak outs. And the thing that really bugs me is the fact that the Giants aren't even making the opposing pitchers work. There are far too many one-two-three innings composed of three or four pitches, the batters swinging too hurriedly at bad pitches. Their weak collapse against the Padres in San Diego felt like one big hangover from losing two of three to the Dodgers. Road trips are always hard, but it isn't a good thing to fare so poorly against division rivals early in the season.

(Keep in mind that I'm aware of the expression "Those who can't do, teach. And those who can't teach, teach gym." Similarly, in baseball, "Those who can't play, coach. And those who can't coach, write blogs.")

A couple things, though, are grounds for optimism--there's that starting over theme again:

1) The pitching has remained stellar, especially the four core starters: Tim Lincecum, Barry Zito, Matt Cain, and Jonathan Sanchez--the latter is the number four starter, but I would say he has been out-pitching Cain. Todd Wellemeyer, though, needs to step it up.

2) Supposedly, early in the season tends to belong to the pitchers, and batters tend to pick it up as the season goes along. At least this is what I'm choosing to tell myself, ignoring the inverse implication that the Giants pitchers might not be as dominant all year as they are now.

3) Aaron Rowand and Mark DeRosa were both injured during the last four losses. Those veterans were surely missed, as much as fans complain about Rowand's hitting sometimes--and I think those fans are crazy, because he sure seems to hit well when needed, from what I've seen.

Every day is a new story, a chance for new players to be a focus of attention, for better or for worse. I'll just be sitting here, watching the wheels go round and round over the course of the season, trying to keep the larger picture in mind. That's hard to do with sports sometimes, because we invest so much into it. But it is a great story; let's see what happens tomorrow.

When Yankees Attack

2010-04-17T20:36:00.000-07:00

For those of you with the good fortune to have seen Mad Men, you will remember the story arc where a British advertising agency bought out Sterling Cooper. You will have undoubtedly been as appalled as I was to see the oppressive and out of touch hand of a foreigner come down upon that organization we had grown to support. The men and women of Sterling Cooper may have been a herd of misogynistic, hard-drinking, anti-gay, materialistic, adulterous proponents of the white picket fence version of American free enterprise on Madison Avenue, but they were OUR herd of misogynistic, hard-drinking, anti-gay, materialistic, adulterous proponents of the white picket fence version of American free enterprise on Madison Avenue.

Imagine, then, how the fans of Liverpool Football Club must feel. Three years ago, American businessmen Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr bought the club, as part of a surge of interest among the Stateside moneymen in investing in Premier League clubs. After purchasing Fernando Torres--a terrific buy--there has been little to no further investment, and Liverpool's standards have slipped from challenger for the title to Champions League entrant (where they failed to qualify for the knockout rounds this year and dropped into the Europa League) to unlikely to qualify for next season's Champions League. They have debts, though not as severe as the debts at Manchester United--whose American owners, the Glazers, as I understand it, saddled the club with the very debt they accrued to purchase the club in the first place--small wonder the Manchester fans are up in arms against the American invaders.

The stratospheric debts accumulated by clubs such as Manchester United and Real Madrid certainly lend attraction to Michel Platini's plan to require all clubs to spend no more on players than they earn through soccer-related revenues. For the most part, this is not the point I am trying to make, though it is relevant in how it reveals that for many owners, including Hicks and Gillett, sports are a business.

Of course, we have all known this is true for some time, considering the obscene salaries and profits to be made, but fans never like to be reminded of this, especially not when it is about their own team.

There never seemed to be any evidence that Hicks or Gillett were buying Liverpool because they wanted see Steven Gerrard and company overtake Chelsea and Manchester United and bring home a trophy. In fact, you can see their priorities in this article about the sale.

Gillett wants to consolidate his finances to shore up the stability of . . . a NASCAR team. NASCAR is not a sport; it is at best a business, at worst environmental destruction with spectators, pollution at high speeds. But it makes money, selling advertisements to people who want to watch cars crash, which, to be fair, is rooted in human history--that is presumably why chariot races were so popular in Rome. But that is spectacle, not sport, the willingness of the masses to spend money to see disasters. Obviously the priority of Gillett was business and making money. He saw the market in the Premier League and tried to colonize it, with unsatisfying results, to say the least.

It is a businessman's right to spend his money as he sees fit, I suppose, as long as he doesn't do anything unethical or illegal. But it leaves a bad taste in the mouths of fans when people come in, looking to make money off of a life-and-death cause, i.e., the sports team in question, fail to bring in the improvements they promised, and leave the club in worse shape than when they found it. It creates the perception that these owners neither care about nor understand the stakes involved, that they don't actually care about soccer.

To be fair, Gillett and Hicks purchased Liverpool just before a global economic crisis, which would impact the amount they could invest in the club. But to choose NASCAR over soccer? How Ugly American can you get? Driving around in circles accomplishing nothing but the expenditure of gas and the selling of advertising.

When you look at the unpopularity of Gillett and Hicks, and the Glazers at Manchester United, it makes you think that we should stick to exporting players, not owners. Everton fans loved Landon Donovan during his loan spell. Brad Freidel has had a long and distinguished career with Blackburn and now Aston Villa. There's some profound lesson here about the difference between workers and capitalists in the American culture, I'm sure of it.

In any case, hopefully the new owners, whoever they are, will right the ship at Liverpool and re-strengthen the squad, properly prioritizing the soccer over the bottom line.

Three Pitches

2010-04-15T18:30:00.000-07:00

STRIKE ONE: The Giants signed Aubrey Huff in the off-season for power hitting, not necessarily for speed. Ironically, his first home run for the Giants, yesterday against the Pirates, was an inside-the-park home run.

STRIKE TWO: Here's me watching Arsenal-Tottenham in the North London derby yesterday, with Vaughn and after a couple beers:

"Watch the crowd, Vaughn. Let's see if we can see Neil."

Vaughn, who has poor vision and wasn't wearing his glasses: "I think you'll have better luck that I will on that for two reasons. One, you actually have vision. Two, you know what Neil looks like."

Me, bringing in the Star Wars references: "Your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them."

In any case, we didn't see Neil, but we did see Arsenal lose to Tottenham for the first time in 11 years. When you start losing the big games more and more, that's when you know your dynasty has slipped back a bit. Poor Nick Hornby.

It's interesting, because this year, you can sense a changing of the guard. Liverpool fell out of the Champions League, and probably won't win a Champions League spot next year. There is a battle between Manchester City and Tottenham for England's fourth and final spot. There's either more parity, or--in the case of Manchester City--a lot more money invested in players for teams outside of Chelsea and Manchester United, who are still ahead of the pack.

STRIKE THREE: June 11th is the first day of the World Cup. It's a Friday. Why isn't that a national holiday? If Obama is going to be a jerk about still announcing a National Day of Prayer, then he should at least give us this.

The Gods Must Be Giants Fans

2010-04-11T23:20:00.000-07:00

Today, it became clear. Not literally, as there were always clouds, either threatening to rain, or actually raining. But it became clear to me that the gods are indeed baseball fans. These are the sort of gods you would meet in a Neil Gaiman novel, perhaps, elemental with a love of fun.

When I wrote earlier today, I was 67% convinced there would be no baseball today. But somehow, a small window of less-intense rainfall opened up, and they were able to bring the field into a playable condition. We had spent the afternoon at home, with our gear packed in a backpack in case the weather permitted, like an earthquake kit we learned about in a NERT seminar (Neighborhood Emergency Response Team). We had the TV and radio on, both tuned to the Giants, and Marina was following reports on Twitter.

Then we heard a report they were planning on playing at 4 p.m. It was just after three, and we were out the door, driving furiously over to Third Street to pick up the Muni Metro T Line, running to the stop just ahead of the train, timing it perfectly.

The tarp was still on the field when we got there, and the first pitch didn't take place until 5:10, but yes, we did have a baseball game today. A brief sign of spring coming forward out of the gray of winter, renewal, hot chocolate, pretzels and garlic fries, oh, ye gods, it was brilliant. Cold and rainy, but brilliant.

Also, it was cold and wet. And as so often inexplicably happens, we found ourselves surrounded by Atlanta Braves fans. Nevertheless, these were the best seats I've been in, as Marina got us tickets in the lower box, out in left field near the foul pole. We were close enough that the players looked as large as life, real people, not ants put out there for our entertainment.

The Braves have stumbled of late from their glory years of the 90s, but I think they are going to be back in a strong way this year to challenge the Phillies for the NL East. Once again, they have strong pitching and good young talent.

This good young talent includes catcher Brian McCann, who hit a two run home run off Tim Lincecum in the first inning, that seemed to cast the day in gloom, like a post-industrial wasteland where all hope was for naught.

But while the rain continued to threaten, and occasionally come down in steady sheets or light drizzles, there was never an utter downpour. In the bottom of the fourth, with two outs, Pablo Sandoval, our young star third baseman smashed a triple to center field, and then Aubrey Huff, one of our key free agent signings over the winter, singled him home to cut the deficit.

Lincecum, meanwhile, after the first inning, and after a couple hits in the second and third inning, had found his form and was dominating, on his way to a 10 strikeout night.

In the bottom of the 6th, Sandoval hit a two out single, and after Huff came back from an 0-2 count to draw a walk, Mark DeRosa, the other key new free agent signing, singled to right field, scoring Pablo, and when Braves touted rookie Jason Heyward threw wildly to the plate, Huff scored as well, and the Giants were in the lead.

In his early days, Pablo Sandoval could drive you crazy by swinging at pitches above his head. Now, while he still can go for bad pitches, he has become much more patient. When he came up in the bottom of the 8th, with the score still 3-2 and Eugenio Velez on first base, Marina predicted that he was going to hit a home run.

First pitch, and there was no doubt. Pablo crushed it to right-center field. Everyone in the ballpark knew it was gone, including the Braves outfielders who only turned and watched it fly. That was the blow that killed the Braves' spirits. At this point, the particularly obnoxious Braves fan was sitting down, noticeably more quiet now that he was surrounded by more drunk and more obnoxious Giants fans.

With the final pitch, as Matt Diaz swung and missed for strike three, ending the game, all of a sudden there was water pouring down. At first, I thought it was spray from the water cannons which fire in the air after every Giant home run and victory, but no. The rain which had been held in check long enough for the 2 hours and 30 minutes needed to play the game had burst forth from the clouds even before the crowds had started for the exit, as the pitch settled into Bengie Molina's glove.

I tell you, it was truly as if the gods themselves wanted to watch baseball today, damn the rain.

It was a great way to start a season.

Rain Delays

2010-04-11T13:20:00.000-07:00

Last year, I attended at least one baseball game each month. This year, I'm thinking it won't happen, especially because today, the first game for which we have tickets, is threatening to be a rain-out. I've never had to deal with a rain-out before, or even a rain delay. I've never before had reason to check out weather.com or the Weather Channel before, so I guess that's a bonus, learning something new.

That's the problem with not having your team play in a dome. For all the talk of how domes are an abomination, you can't deny that being able to play inside has some advantages, and we will see how well Minnesota's new outdoor field deals with weather issues, compared to the Metrodome where they won their two World Series titles.

Who calls domes an abomination, you ask? I do, and I stand by it.

So, I wanted to be able to post about the Giants today. They've started well this year, 4-1 so far after their meek surrender to Atlanta last night. I was hoping to see Tim Lincecum shut down the Braves today, but it doesn't look good for that happening.

Should I be there at the park, in the rain, on the off-chance that the game might still happen, instead of watching on TV until they decide if the game will happen or not? Perhaps. But that's just crazy. Maybe I'm literally a fair-weather fan, but the silver lining to literally being a fair-weather fan is that at least you stay dry.

Yes, I know that fair-weather fan is an expression referring to bandwagon jumpers. My point remains the same. I'm not a fan of poor weather as opposed to fair weather when it comes to standing around outside.

So, instead of an analysis of the game, some other random notes on sports.

1) Newcastle is coming straight back up to the Premiership next year, having owned the Championship all year. Order has been restored, though there are troubling rumors that a couple of their star players, Joey Barton and Andy Carroll, are kind of thugs. Joey Barton has served jail time for assault, and Andy Carroll reportedly broke a teammate's jaw. Oh well. The last person who said an athlete has to be a role model was Billy Payne, CEO of Augusta National, discussing how Tiger Woods disappointed the privileged members of that gated community. Billy Payne is allowed to talk about role models and morality once Augusta National lifts its no women allowed policy.

Marina made an excellent point about Tiger Woods. Since his bad behavior was offensive to his wife specifically and women in general, what he could have done to make amends would have been to not come back to the Masters until they allowed women as members. He could have used his fame and power for good. But no, he simply came back as if life could just go on as normal.

I'm not excusing it, either Tiger's behavior or the bad behavior of Joey Barton and Andy Carroll. I'm just saying, athletes behaving badly is a fact of life. Money, opportunity, the rush of success and fame to the head. For every John Terry--star defender of Chelsea and England--who gets caught being unfaithful to his wife--and in this case, cheating with the girlfriend of a former teammate, there have to be many more who have the chances and who succumb to temptation, even though the fishbowl they live in does not allow absolute immunity from discovery.

So if you are to enjoy sports, you have to ignore a certain amount of bad behavior, although there are limits. I think this can be done without compromising one's integrity, but it can be a slippery slope, because sports are just a game. Sports are a fundamental way of testing our individual skills at obtaining some random objective, some measure of physical ability, so there are echoes of questions of survival, but in this day and age, when you don't have to be the biggest and the strongest to survive, there are certain values that can't be disregarded for the sake of success on the playing field.

But my point is that Newcastle is coming back next year, and that makes me happy.

2) Speaking of the question of integrity, Barry Bonds gave a press conference on TV as part of the airtime filler during the rain delay. He looks much more relaxed than he has appeared in the media over the last few years of his career, when he has been under the shadow of steroids. He has lost weight, and seems happy.

And the part that caught my attention was how he spoke about having traveled to Europe over the summer for the first time in his life. He spoke with the open enthusiasm and wonder of a normal person getting to travel. It felt very humanizing to hear him talking about Spain, Paris, Italy, London, and wanting to travel more, more, more.

Marina thought it was strange that someone with the salary Bonds commanded should only now be traveling, but then, if you think about it, baseball is a year-round business, especially for those who want to be the best. The regular season goes from April - October, with the playoffs to follow. Spring Training begins in February, and you have to stay in shape over the winter. Even if you get millions of dollars, you don't have more time in a day. Not that he was hardly deprived, and not that we should feel sorry for him, but it just wasn't something I had considered before, the question as to whether Barry Bonds could or wanted to travel on vacation like any other person.

Common Goals, Different Language

2010-04-03T20:36:00.000-07:00

Ah, spring, when a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of baseball preview magazines, and, this year, with surprising intensity, Major League Soccer. It's been a few years since I've really cared about Major League Soccer. I've generally outsourced my soccer fanaticism, primarily to the English Premier League.

Major League Soccer has always been viewed with a certain condescension from parties around the world and within the United States, and not without cause. There have been times when the level of play looked sloppy, and it isn't exactly the Primera Liga yet.

Consider two plays and two strikers I saw on TV recently:

1) Lionel Messi, Argentinian wunderkind for Barcelona in Spain's Primera Liga, widely considered the world's best player on the world's best team in what might be the world's best league (though I still rate the Premiership as #1). I saw Barcelona play Valencia in a La Liga game, and I have to agree with their reputation as the best; leaving aside the fact they won six out of six trophies they contested last year, their style of play has been the most fluid, exciting, and creative I have seen in quite some time.

The play in question: an crossed ball from the left barely clears the head of a leaping defender and falls to Messi at the edge of the penalty area. The defender must have obscured the ball for him for a moment; he only had a split-second to adjust. His first touch was the picture of precision, playing it with the perfect weight to let him run on to it as he approached the goal; one final move to beat a desperate last defender, and he finished off the run with a well-taken goal.

Less than a minute later, ESPN finished showing the replay of the goal just in time to see Messi score AGAIN.

2) Juan Pablo Angel, Columbian striker for the New York Red Bulls, their talisman, one of the leading goalscorers in Major League Soccer, receives a similar cross in a similar area. He brings it down, hesitates to bring the ball from his left to his right foot, and unleashes a shot, but his moment of hesitation allowed Chicago Fire defender Wilman Conde to hurl his body in front of the shot.

And that right there has long been the frustrating thing with Major League Soccer and US national team soccer in general. It isn't that there is a lack of effort or athleticism, but it has so often felt like the timing is off, like our players wait just a few moments too long or telegraph their passes or don't take shots at the first chance. It feels like the world could pat us on the head and tell us "good game" and then send us on our way. It used to be that when a star player from abroad signed with Major League Soccer, it was considered that he was sailing into the sunset on a golden sailboat (as opposed to a golden parachute, to maintain the sailing metaphor).

But it isn't that there is never a moment of invention, or a moment of perfect execution. The one goal in New York's victory over Chicago was a perfect volley from Estonian midfielder Joel Lindpere, plucking the ball out of the air with his right foot, hitting it squarely and driving it past the keeper.

Things are changing. Last year, Seattle joined Major League Soccer and played attractive soccer, featuring Freddi Ljungberg, and cultivating a big fan following. More and more teams are opening soccer-specific stadiums. And on the national front, the US, with players who got their start in MLS, upset Spain in the Confederations Cup. Granted, they were probably overlooking us, but before now, they could have overlooked us and still won.

In other words, it's getting more and more okay to follow Major League Soccer. I actually feel like I'm following something with a purpose. Maybe that's the blind nationalism talking, because the first game for the US at the World Cup in June is against England. But that's okay. For whatever the reason, I'm ready to actually care about Major League Soccer.

I'm sure they'll be thrilled.

Turning Of The Seasons

2009-10-30T20:01:00.001-07:00

I. BASEBALL

October, and the moon is hanging in the twilight sky, a faded object that looks like a scuffed baseball. Autumn, Halloween, the time of year when the white of the baseball gives way to the brown of footballs and the orange of basketballs.

Given that the Yankees are in the World Series, and given that I have decided to ignore any World Series in which the Yankees might win--on the theory that it would only encourage them--I've decided to skip right over the World Series and talk about the Giants' off-season.

Okay, so I will watch the World Series. It is what I do. But I won't be happy if the Yankees win.

In any case, I read today the Giants signed Freddy Sanchez to a two year contract. This pleases me.

To acquire Sanchez, the Giants traded a prospect, Tim Alderson, to the Pirates at the trade deadline this year, looking for a spark of momentum to qualify for the playoffs. Sanchez was injured for much of the final months, and the other acquisition, Ryan Garko, did not set the league on fire. Many people on the message boards at sfgate.com second-guessed the trade. But I liked it, and I like the contract extension, and here is why:

1) when he played, I enjoyed watching his defensive work around second base. Smooth and nimble, with a few nifty grabs. When you score few runs and rely on your pitchers, you should back up those pitchers with as strong a defense as possible;

2) he has shown the ability to use the bat to good effect, with a good average. We need all the hitters we can get;

3) and he is a veteran. Specifically, he is a young veteran, which beats our frequent predilection for the end-of-career veteran.

Here's a toast to the burgeoning hopes of the off-season, with all the possibilities that might unfurl.

II. SOCCER

I watched the first leg of the Houston Dynamo--Seattle Sounders Western Conference semifinals last night. It was a good game, but ended up 0-0. It turns out that the anti-soccer zealots are right when they say that soccer needs more scoring. However, they aren't right about why that is.

For one thing, soccer isn't that much different from football in terms of scoring, just in how much each score is worth. Consider a football game that finishes with a score of 21-7; many games like that would be considered very exciting. But consider how to translate that score into the number of times each team scores: the winner scores three times, the loser scores once. Is that much different from a 3-1 result in soccer?

Okay, so Seattle and Houston failed to score goals. But that isn't to say there were no close calls, no great chances. The two keepers, Pat Onstad and the ever elegant Kasey Keller, had strong games. But there were a few glaring chances that should have found the back of the net. And that is the problem that has haunted US soccer for years, both with the national team and in Major League Soccer: a lack of cold-blooded finishing.

There was quite a bit of clever and exciting build up from either team, especially from Stewart Holden and Freddi Ljungberg on Houston and Seattle respectively. But the teams did not finish. And at times, near the end, the passing degenerated into long, telegraphed kicks that were easily intercepted by the defense.

But the atmosphere itself was outstanding. A crowd of 30000-plus in Seattle, standing and cheering, an electric atmosphere that might have been from out of Europe--not that we necessarily need to emulate Europe, mind you, but still, it's a sign of progress, I suppose.

There is a tradition in Seattle among the core fans, a three block march to the Stadium while holding scarves and banners aloft, that is just fantastic. The Sounders are a very exciting franchise in this, their debut season in Major League Soccer. Honestly, if the current incarnation of the San Jose Earthquakes continues to be blandly mediocre, I could see myself adopting the Sounders, especially with a local rivalry soon to arise when the Portland franchise begins play. I've cleverly arranged to have my friends Peter and Roni move to Seattle, thereby giving me a beachhead in terms of developing a local affiliation with the team, and while living in Montana, Seattle was the closest town for professional sports.

The quality of the soccer, and the quality of the broadcast on ESPN, could be considered a hopeful sign of progress for the MLS. Now if only someone could have scored a damn goal to go with the dramatic saves produced on a couple fine efforts.

Playoff Predictions, Non-Expert Version

2009-10-06T15:52:00.000-07:00

One benefit of staying home sick from work, other than the obvious benefit, i.e., not working, is the chance to listen to the Detroit Tigers-Minnesota Twins one game playoff for the American League Central Title. I have no direct allegiance to either team, other than the fact that Vaughn is a Twins fan--which means I am torn between wanting them to do well and not wanting them to do better than the Giants and the A's--so I am able to enjoy the game from a neutral fan's perspective.

There is something nostalgic about listening to this game. It reminds me of the drama of David Halberstam's great book, Summer Of '49, which recounted the excitement of a pennant race between the Yankees and the Red Sox. I feel like I should be sitting on a screened front porch somewhere, a pitcher of lemonade perspiring on a table to my left, reading the newspaper. Of course, I don't have a screened porch, nor do I have a lemonade pitcher, let alone a lemonade pitcher that can read the newspaper.

This is appropriate, of course, because nostalgia is a desire for something that we never had in the first place. I certainly didn't live through the 1949 pennant race firsthand.

Still, baseball playoffs! Huzzah!

In this spirit of huzzah, I present my predictions for the 2009 baseball playoffs. Oh, sure, there are innumerable articles from experts and journalists giving their two cents; what makes my predictions unique is that I make absolutely no attempt to rationalize them. Pure intuition, you see, tapping in to the emotional spirit of sports.

So I have predicted the Twins to beat the Tigers today, which may or may not happen. We're in the late innings, and Detroit leads 3-2. But this is no matter, because the winner faces the Yankees, starting tomorrow.

Without further ado:

American League Divisional Round--Yankees beat Twins/Tigers; Angels beat Red Sox.

National League Divisional Round--Cardinals beat Dodgers; Phillies beat Rockies.

American League Championship Series--Angels beat Yankees.

National League Championship Series--Cardinals beat Phillies.

World Series--Angels beat Cardinals.

Thoughts? Agreement? Disputes? Let me know!

A War Of Words: Sports Fans On The Internet

2009-10-06T15:15:00.000-07:00

I'm home sick today, which might have colored my perception of things, but honestly, the world of the comment boards at www.sfgate.com is so weird. And this is just in reference to the comments about the sports articles.

There are a number of insightful comments, valid arguments articulately made, and reasonable discussions. It's just sometimes hard to find them behind the elements of the lunatic fringe. It is strange to see even some opinions that I might agree with couched in extreme terms that make me jump back as if scalded by cooking oil.

There are a few people out there who respond via non sequitur to whatever a particular sports columnist writes, criticizing the author's skills, integrity, personal appearance and eating habits. Strange, and needlessly vicious. A lot of what the readers write is not even based on what is actually in the article to which they are responding; they are finding what they want to find, inventing it if necessary.

Some fans of the Oakland Raiders are a classic example, responding to any criticism of their team with ad hominem attacks. Heaven forbid anyone write anything mildly critical of this dysfunctional, dismal franchise which has produced very little in the way of positive results this year: one win, three losses; a franchise quarterback completing less than half of his passes; star running back injured for 2-4 weeks; a front office which tried to ban former Raider and current TV analyst, Rich Gannon, from a preproduction meeting before a televised game simply because he was a former player who criticized them; and a head coach who may well be prosecuted for assaulting an assistant before the season. Nothing (negative) to see here folks. Shut up.

The us versus them attitude is often a good motivation for a sports franchise, and has actually worked well for the Raiders. It just doesn't work when your team isn't good enough to pull it off with panache and when your owner, a much respected figure, appears to be descending into King Lear-like madness.

Not that sports fans have a monopoly on ridiculous comments. There are a lot of hateful comments from all sorts of perspectives, frustrated people taking advantage of the anonymity of the Internet to scatter vitriol and insults like dandelion seeds. This is one more illustration of why sports are a microcosm of society as a whole.

I'm glad that all these people are paying attention to the news--I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt on this point, that they are paying attention to news beyond the box scores. I just wish they weren't so stupid and used better grammar. It's very depressing. I love sports, but sports do not merit name-calling and anonymous hatred.

Keeping A Toon

2009-09-16T22:29:00.000-07:00

So, you all--by whom I mean one or two people--followed my personal dilemma as to which football--read 'soccer'--team to follow this year. I stayed true to Newcastle United. How are they doing in the Championship?

Let's look, starting at the cast of characters: Damien Duff, gone. Mark Viduka, gone. Michael Owen, gone. Obafemi Martins, gone (that is a lot of striking potential gone, let's face it). Shay Given, gone.

But Steven Taylor, the young star defender, the local boy, is still there, as is Shola Ameobi, also local. Alan Smith and Nicky Butt are still there. Steve Harper is still there.

And despite the ownership question still not being resolved--how hard is it to sell a team when the fans hate you?--and despite Chris Hughton still being just an interim manager with the specter of Alan Shearer hovering over him, Newcastle sits third in the Championship with five wins, one draw, and one loss, and they won their first match in the Carling Cup.

Oh, and they have a young striker named Nile Ranger. That's just a really cool name, in my opinion, so they must be doing something right.

Baseball '09, Volume XIV: Viewing For The Cycle

2009-09-16T20:54:00.000-07:00

TUESDAY, September 8th:

One more pair of free tickets, garnered from work. We lost, a disappointment, losing 4-3 to the weak San Diego Padres to fall further behind in a wild card race, but the tickets are a metaphor for the season: free tickets, a free playoff race. No one expected the Giants to do this well this year, to still be contending, so we should be thrilled that we were even to the point of being disappointed at the loss.

I was going to write a bitter diatribe about the end of the cycle of live games coinciding with the end of the Giants' hopes, but since then, all of a sudden, we flip from weak bats and failed pitching to suddenly drawing within 2 1/2 games of the Rockies' going into tonight's game (which is not going so well, but that is besides the point).

Hope looked dead; now hope is flourishing again, although I still think we lack the bats and the middle bullpen to stay in the race.

But this is baseball, or maybe sports in general, as a metaphor for life. It is such a long season that it weeds out both unreasonable optimism and premature despair. Although with the Dodgers securely in first place, there are certainly grounds for all people of good moral conscience to despair.

So yeah, that Tuesday night, the Giants lost. But I'm going to write about what I liked from the night. That's what matters with sports: there is always another day, so focus on the positive.

Elements of the game that I liked:

1) I did it! I have seen at least one live baseball game every month of the season between April and September. October doesn't count, as the season only stretches a few days into that month, unless the post-season is appended, and I can't count on that, nor could I afford playoff tickets.

In April, A's-Red Sox and Giants-Diamondbacks. 1 win for the good guys, one loss. One ticket paid for, one ticket free from work. In May, Giants-Braves, free from work, victory for the good guys. June, Giants-Rangers, ticket paid for, Giants win, 1 Father's Day tie acquired for free; also, A's-Twins, ticket courtesy of Vaughn, but the wrong team won. July, Giants-Pirates, ticket paid for, I think, and the good guys won. August, Giants-Diamondbacks, free ticket, bad guys won. September, Giants-Padres, free ticket, bad guys won. I think that collection of results is a good snapshot of life's twists. Or at least I hope it is, because otherwise, this blog is far less profound than I hope it is.

2) Aaron Rowand. Hit a home run to dead center to restore a 2-1 lead and later scored from second on a hard infield single from Velez.

3) The defense of Freddy Sanchez. He turned a couple of double plays and made a spectacular leaping snag of a line drive late in the game that was fun to see.

4) The roasted chicken sandwich. It went really well with the (overpriced) Anchor Steam.

5) Clutch hits from Pablo Sandoval and Bengie Molina. It's what we want to see.

All in all, it was a good night for baseball, a fun way to spend an evening with Marina, and--did I mention this yet?--the tickets were free.

Baseball '09, Volume XIII: The Thursdays of August

2009-08-31T22:54:00.000-07:00

Thursday, August 27th.

BALL ONE: A warm night by the bay, clear skies, green grass beneath the lights, good beer, good garlic fries. There is nothing like a good game of baseball on such a night.

STRIKE ONE: And that was nothing like a good game of baseball. At least not for the Giants.

STRIKE TWO: To put it another way, as I commented to Vaughn, I sure do love watching baseball. It would have been nifty if the Giants had felt like playing some.

So, I'm just going to draw a curtain over the (in)action on the field in the Giants' 11-0 burst of generosity to the visiting Arizona Diamondbacks. We'll pretend Fred Lewis never slid down to make a catch, only for the ball to sail over his head, to name one instance of Murphy's Law in action that shall be ignored here.

Instead, there's this:

FOUL BALL: The garlic fries at the club level concourse seemed to be much less soggy than the garlic fries up on the view reserved level. This must irk the people up above, which explains the constant, gentle snowfall of peanut- and sunflower seed shells.

BALL TWO: The hot chocolate was really quite delightful.

BALL THREE: After the game, we walked from AT & T Park along the waterfront to the Embarcadero BART Station, watching the moon hang in the sky behind the skyline of the Financial District, watching the lights of the Bay Bridge arc over the Bay, enjoying the mild summer air at 11 p.m.

STRIKE THREE: The first Giants game of the year was a loss to the Diamondbacks. One of the last games of the year is a loss to the same Arizona Diamondbacks by a much worse margin. There is a pessimistic metaphor for life to be found in that, I think.

But then, just to keep me guessing, just when I figured the Giants didn't have the depth to compete for the playoffs after all, when I thought their frailties had finally been exposed, they turn around and sweep the Rockies, simultaneously tying them in the wild card race.

Baseball is a funny thing that way.

Following The Money

2009-08-16T15:26:00.000-07:00

The International Olympic Committee has rejected a bid to reinstate softball into the Summer Olympics in time for the 2016 Games. Instead, it is considering rugby, which I can support, and . . . golf.

Now, I've never played golf other than the mini- or computerized version, but it seems to me that golf would not really be in keeping with the Olympic spirit, at least not in terms of equal opportunity for athletes.

This is not even taking into the account that golf is really, really boring to watch, and softball isn't.

Golf is money and privilege. Softball isn't. The Olympics are supposedly a celebration of amateur athletics, even if that distinction has definitely been blurred with the inclusion of NHL, MLB and NBA players. Golf is decidedly not amateur.

Yes, golf does offer chances for women, as well as men. But look at the list of top money winners. For the men, Tiger Woods has earned more than $6 million. Tiger is obviously an exceptionally dominant player, but even the second placed earner is earning over $4 million. The leading earner on the LPGA has earned $1.3 million. Nothing to sneeze at, but proportionally, come on.

When you consider the fact that golf's 'hallowed ground' at Augusta, Georgia, is a club that is closed to women, I think there is not much more that needs to be said. Golf is a country club sport for wealthy men. I think even aesthetically speaking, it has no place in the Olympics.

Softball, on the other hand, does not get the professional rewards or sponsorship deals that the golf tours offer. Doesn't softball make more sense for inclusion in the Olympics than does golf?

Of course, there might be more money to be made from including golf, but I would require proof of that. And even if that were the case, it wouldn't make me happy.

Baseball '09, Volume XII: Because It's What Men Do

2009-08-16T12:21:00.000-07:00

The Giants' playoff hopes, if not necessarily diminished, recently encountered new obstacles after a weak home stand in which the Giants barely staved off sweeps from the lowly Reds and the morally-repugnant Dodgers, matched with another late-season surge from the Rockies.

It's tough to say at this point if they will keep up the challenge. But they have at least provided the drama of hit-by-pitch vendettas with the Dodgers and Mets.

Against the Dodgers last Wednesday, it appears that James McDonald threw at Pablo Sandoval, presumably for the purposes of intimidation. And then yesterday, after Matt Cain hit David Wright of the Mets in the head (on an 0-2 count, when logic dictates he would be going for an out), Johan Santana threw behind Pablo Sandoval, clearly in retaliation, and then, after both benches were warned, hit Bengie Molina, ostensibly unintentionally and without punishment.

Pablo and Bengie both hit key home runs in the Giants' extra-innings victory.

Here's my question about these sorts of tactics and retaliations: why?

The first instance, that of intimidation, if it is done for that reason, that's just bad sportsmanship. And in the question of retaliation, eye-for-an-eye justice, the argument is that pitchers have to protect their teammates, both psychologically and physically, as part of a code.

It's just stupid. You're playing a game. What part of playing a game should involve attempting to hit the other team's best players, with the obvious exceptions of football and hockey? This isn't exactly dodgeball or kickball in the playground when you play with big red foam-rubber balls.

Furthermore, the idea of baseball is to get the other side out. Hitting a batter gives them a free base runner, and, because baseball officially frowns on retaliation, it can lead to ejections of a manager and/or pitcher. Call me crazy, but that seems like it would be at best a Pyrrhic victory to hit the other team's batter, give them a baserunner, and get yourself ejected from a game.

People will argue that it is part of the game; that it is part of being a man and sticking up for your team; that it is an intangible element that can truly impact the course of a game and a season, and therefore must be utilized for the Machiavellian pursuit of success.

This is stupid. True, probably, but still stupid.

It's an outmoded notion that speaks to the visceral hatred of the other side, regardless of all the talk about codes and honor. Codes and honor, by the way, are often predicated on stupid premises themselves.

I think the people who regard this code of manly behavior as being the right thing to do are the same people who consider Born In The USA to be a completely patriotic, uncomplicated 4th of July Bar-B-Que-and-beach anthem.

The argument will be that sports are passion, that this aspect of baseball will never go away, that I'm being overly idealistic and naive to argue against it. Yes, and? Just because there is an evil in the game, that doesn't mean I have to accept it as necessary.

A Tale Of Two Contract Disputes

2009-08-14T19:03:00.000-07:00

Ah, Labor: the virtue of the working class; the sufferings of a mother bringing another future worker into the world to compete for resources; the source of hundreds of thousands of sports fanatics around the world. And typically, the side I would choose in any dispute.

A Bay Area Rapid Transit Union is calling a strike as of the end of service on Sunday night, which would shut down the central spine of the local public transit hub, overloading the other transit agencies and leaving thousands of workers free to worry less about whether their own jobs are secure, because they will be worrying about just how they will get to those jobs in the first place.

Keep in mind, we are also approaching the Labor Day weekend, when the Bay Bridge will be shut down for construction efforts. That could be interesting.

Why am I talking about a labor strike in a sports blog? Well, every story of a dispute needs a good cop/bad cop angle, and in this case, the BART union is the good cop. Even though the average BART worker salary is more than twice what I make.

The bad cop, sadly, comes from the world of sports.

The bad cop is San Francisco 49ers top draft pick, Michael Crabtree, who is threatening to hold out for an entire season. He wants to be paid 'top 5' money, commensurate with what someone drafted among the top five selections would earn, even though he was drafted at number 10.

A few disclaimers on this before people doubt my sympathy for the 'laborer': yes, as far as the BART union goes, it would be a hard job; they deserve to be well paid; and historically, management has been known to use economic downturns to stick it to the worker. As far as an athlete goes, yes, they can be considered labor, and have had legitimate labor issues over the decades--watch certain episodes of Ken Burns' excellent Baseball documentary; and yes, sports are physically demanding, with many consequences for the athlete in later years, so they do need to be well paid to take care of themselves and their family in later years.

But Michael Crabtree, regardless of wanting top five money without the rationale of, you know, actually being in the top five, seriously, can you really not live with whatever you are certain to earn as a top draft pick in the NFL? Every year the trend has been for players and agents to ask for more and more money. This is not a cost-of-living sort of trend; this is nothing to do with inflation. If Crabtree gets the sort of money he is looking for, according to SI.com's John Lopez, he would earn $3 million more per season than Jerry Rice ever made. Michael Crabtree is not yet Jerry Rice.

Michael, if you think you're going to struggle to make it in this admittedly expensive city, I can tell you where the cheap sushi and the good happy hour deals can be found.

Here's the thing: Crabtree's holdout may be a negotiating ploy, but it sure seems tactless, to say the least. Assuming you want to be a success at the game, and assuming you want fans to love you, don't you think you should avoid pissing everyone off as to how much money you think you deserve?

Sports are simply sports. This is a country where socialism is considered a dirty word--it's considered this mostly by people who don't pay attention to what socialism really is and whether it might be beneficial to them, instead relying on the advice of people with a vested interest in capitalistic trends. Nevertheless, until our currency becomes useless for anything except kindling, I don't think athletes should take our 'free market' spirit for granted, because it isn't like they are short of cash.

How much do you really need to live well?

Lights, Camera, Action!

2009-08-03T15:54:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I watched two Mexican soccer games, Cruz Azul-Pumas and Morelia-America, sandwiched around a Major League Soccer game between San Jose and Seattle. I found them all entertaining, even though I understood very little of what the announcers were saying. I had difficulty following the announcers in the Mexican games, too.

Kidding. Mostly. American sportscasters tend to make me sneeze with their inevitably inane comments, especially when they aren't precisely unbiased and feel the need to proclaim that Seattle came to town to get rough with San Jose, speaking in the contemptuous tones that indicate just what they think of the Pacific Northwest and its fog-drenched immorality.

On the other hand, I sometimes find this less annoying than the atmospheric-and-passionate-yet-persistently-clanging cries of "Goooll, goooooool, goooool" from the Mexican announcers, trying to be a verbal version of the goal-siren in hockey games. They do the same thing with awarded penalty kicks: "Penaaal, penaaaal, penaaal." I don't mind that as much as the goals themselves. Yes, we can see it is a goal, thank you very much.

To be fair to the American announcers, there were a lot of cards in the Seattle-San Jose game, including a deserved red card for James Riley of Seattle. It was a choppy, bad tempered match-up, livened up by some nice individual efforts and some well-taken goals for San Jose's 4-0 victory.

Artistically speaking, though, the Mexican games were much more pleasing to the eye. Maybe it was because I wasn't distracted by listening to the sportscasters--though I was proud to pick out a few words here and there, like "of course", "Torado", and "goal"--but I managed to focus on the play, and the quality of the play on the field seemed much more dynamic, more fluid. It looked like they were playing on a much larger pitch; the local broadcast of the Earthquakes made it look like they were playing on a rough, narrower field, kind of like comparing a high school field with the Estadio Azteca, which, coincidentally, is where the Club America-Morelia game was played. In fact, when I was working out the premise for this blog, I was going to write that US soccer needs larger fields to work with, to improve the quality of play, or at least the presentation of the game. Then I did some pesky fact-checking, and if Wikipedia is correct, Buck Shaw Stadium's pitch actually has more generous dimensions than does Mexico's national stadium.

Which means Major League Soccer doesn't have that excuse for not matching the same fluidity of play.

I think there are two possible factors at play: technical skill, and the quality of the television broadcast. Both are key to the development and advancement of the MLS in the public's eye.

As a general rule, I think it is accepted that the level of technical skill for the individual player is better in the Mexican League than in Major League Soccer. This is also a problem with the US national team, which relies on organization and athletic ability, which are indeed strengths, but which are not enough. However, I would say this gap is closing, both with the young American players coming up and with the trend in Major League Soccer to recruit more and more young players from Latin America.

The camera work, though, that could stand some improvement. A lot of the time, I felt that the camera work made the field look cramped, and it was too focused on the ball, with none of the broader views of the geometry of the runs players make when they don't have the ball, the broader views that I love so much in the Mexican telecasts, and in ESPN's coverage of the UEFA Champions League.

Image is important in this country; let's polish up the broadcast of Major League Soccer matches, and maybe you will see even more interest from the public.

Kicking Off The Season

2009-08-02T15:19:00.000-07:00

I have picked a team. Sort of.

The poll results were small, but useful. Three votes for Arsenal, two for Manchester United, one for Everton, one for Liverpool, one for Aston Villa.

When I registered for a fantasy soccer league, it asked for my favorite team, and I selected Newcastle United. They are going through chaos, an unpopular owner unable to sell the team, the new season a week away and no decision made on a manager, some players have left, and poor results in exhibition matches.

But I picked them in my younger days, so I will stay with them now, for better or for worse. For some people, after all, a relationship with a sports team is like a marriage, only it is harder to divorce your favorite sports team.

This comparison is an exaggeration, perhaps, but there is a real significance to your allegiance to a sports team, because we all, deep down, think that it makes a difference in the world that we root for a certain team, a certain organization, that we can will success. For some reason, it just feels right to me to continue to root for Newcastle.

Also, this will give me incentive to follow EVEN MORE soccer, as I will want to see Newcastle win promotion back to the Premiership.

It also makes me feel better, because I was leaning towards rooting for Manchester United, which would be like rooting for AC Milan in Italy, simply because they signed American defender Oguchi Onyewu, disregarding the taint of their affiliation with Silvio Berlusconi.

I will, however, root for Michael Owen to hit a ton of goals, because I picked him for my fantasy team. And I will root for Manchester United to win the Champions League, because they have the best shot, I think.

As for the Premier League, I will root for Liverpool, even though a recent scandal involving Steven Gerrard and a brawl in a pub has tarnished my affection; therefore, Arsenal will be my co-favorites in the Premiership.

Who says you can't have your cake and eat it to?

Balls And Strikes

2009-07-29T22:42:00.000-07:00

An experiment with a motif: random sports thoughts, labeled as elements of a 'pitch count.' Too obvious, perhaps, but then, maybe that's a good theory for life: write like no one's reading.

BALL ONE: Here's an excerpt from an article in World Soccer, concerning the original Ronaldo--not the newer model from Portugal--and his successful return to Brazilian League soccer:

"But almost a decade and a half in Europe has reduced his tolerance for some of the more informal aspects of Brazilian organisation. In May he was critical as the podium caught fire when his club received the Sao Paulo state championship trophy."

What a prima donna.

STRIKE ONE: Michael Phelps' coach, Bob Bowman, reacted sternly after Phelps lost a race--and a world record--to a German wearing a polyurethane bodysuit that swimming's international governing body has voted to outlaw sometime next year. Bowman talked about encouraging Michael to boycott international events until this swimsuit is banned, implying that such technological elements ruin everything.

Losing Phelps would cost organizers lots of money, so it is an effective threat, whatever your position on Swimsuitgate might be.

Nevertheless, I can't help but picturing Bowman as a spoiled kid announcing he's going to 'take my swimmer and go home.'

It's also an ironic development when you consider the controversy over the Nike-designed LZR suit Phelps wore in Beijing--and which he is contractually obligated (there's that money motif again) to keep wearing, which prevents him from trying these other suits.

BALL TWO: Considering the potential effects of Brett Favre's summer-long flirtation with and eventual rejection of former rivals, the Vikings, one is tempted to think it was all orchestrated by Green Bay and Favre to rattle and destabilize Minnesota. All that talk by the Packers last year of not letting Favre un-retire to sign with Minnesota, the mediocre season with the Jets, it was all a prelude to keeping Minnesota on tenterhooks right up to training camp, telling quarterbacks Tavaris Jackson and Sage Rosenfels that they weren't necessarily first- and second-choice for the position. And now there are even rumors that the Vikings might turn to just-released ex-con Michael Vick in the wake of being spurned by Favre, which would pretty much slam the door on Brad Childress's talk of building a team without character issues.

It proves how loyal a Green Bay son Favre really is, that he let his name be dragged in the mud for being wishy-washy all these months, just to screw over the Vikings one last time. Clearly those snow-bound, apple-cheeked Wisconsin natives have read their Machiavelli.

Baseball '09, Volume XI: Night Baseball

2009-07-29T20:29:00.000-07:00

Night baseball deserves a quiet night. Or, barring that, a good beer or two, clear skies, a minimum of chilly breezes, and a portion of irony.

So last night was successful.

The Giants were playing the nondescript Pirates of Pittsburgh. Nondescript is not really fair, perhaps, except that their starting pitcher was Charlie Morton, whom I believe they got in a trade with Atlanta for their last remaining star outfielder, so I knew nothing about him, and let's face it: Charlie Morton is a fairly nondescript name. The Pirates have traded several of their stars this year, and two remaining stars, Jack Wilson and Freddy Sanchez, did not play last night--both were traded today, Wilson to Seattle and Sanchez all the way down the hall to the Giants' clubhouse, which ties in to the irony which will be discussed later. The upshot was that I really didn't know much about any of the Pirates, except that they are youthful and have collected some promising young batters.

Maybe it was the quality of light, or maybe it was the relatively sparse attendance, but there was something kind of tired about the atmosphere in the early stages of the game. Even the grass seemed a little faded; I suppose that could be a good metaphor for the progress of a baseball season through the heat of July and the mid-season stages, if I were so inclined as to look for elaborately picturesque metaphors. I am so inclined, of course.

Or maybe it was a sense of resignation from the crowd after Barry Zito's first pitch was lashed for a double, and the Pirates quickly had a 1-0 lead.

But if there is one thing distinctive I've noticed in the games I've seen Zito pitch this year, other than the fact that his pant legs are tucked into his high black socks, which is very distinctive during the high leg kick of his windup, it is that Zito will keep you on the edge of your seat and worried, even when he is pitching quite solidly. This is barring the few games in which he has been hammered; nevertheless, he is better than his 6-10 record indicates, even if he hasn't exactly been worth the $126 million we paid him.

And for today's delicious bit of irony, consider the case of Eugenio Velez, who has been up and down between the majors and minors for the last couple of years, and was up from the minors to fill in at second base, presumably while the Giants worked a trade for more offense from that position, a trade that would result in Freddy Sanchez. In the meantime, last night was Ryan Garko's debut with the Giants, and he went 0-4, which is not unexpected for his first night in a new league. However, what was unexpected was for Velez to provide 66.6% of the Giants' offense on the night, whacking a solo homer in the second and driving in Fred Lewis in the 6th inning--Velez also scored the only run of the Giants' extra-inning win this afternoon, being driven in by the once-again-so-aptly-named Randy Winn.

The Giants did annoy me again by stranding so many runners, as they so often do, as we all so often do to the ones who love us, akin to a ship passing stranded swimmers while still having plenty of life-preservers to go around, but they executed perfectly in a couple key moments: Fred Lewis singling, stealing second, and coming around to score on Velez' double; Randy Winn playing a perfect sacrifice bunt to move Andres Torres to third base for Pablo Sandoval to drive in with the winning run in the 7th; and Sandoval taking off from first on the pitch to facilitate a perfect hit-and-run with Bengie Molina lacing a single to center field--they didn't score on this play, but it was unexpected, because Sandoval is nicknamed Kung Fu Panda in part, I think, because he doesn't look like a speed demon on the bases.

All in all, a satisfying 3-2 victory at home, even if $8 dollars for a bottle of Anchor Steam and $7.50 for a softball-sized chicken sandwich seems to be approaching airport-level pricing for food.

Baseball '09, Volume X: The Trade

2009-07-27T22:17:00.000-07:00

Trades. The shifting of a reality. One day, a player is not playing for you; the next day, he is, and the narrative is changed.

It isn't to say that the future is changed; once a trade is made, a potential future without the player no longer matters, no longer exists, alternative history novelists and quantum mechanics be damned.

I can't say that with a straight-face; of course the other futures still matter. Sci-fi alt-histories are sweet.

There is a little shock of excitement to see the trade rumors begin to fly, to see which ones come true and which do not pan out. I can't possibly explain why this appeals, except to refer to the larger scope of the appeal of baseball, the strategies of team-building or the quest for instant success, the allocation and expenditure of resources, depending on whether your goals are short- or long-term. Economists might find much to love in this.

And on a more visceral level, when your team makes a big change, you can't help but think happy thoughts and that surely the new guy will be the next coming of Will Clark, Willie Mays, and Christy Mathewson all rolled into one. Unless your team is Oakland, and then you think Well, there goes Matt Holliday. Here come three more prospects. Guess we'll wait until 2011 again.

The Giants needed some sort of momentum shift today. Coming off the All-Star break, we went 3-7 and fell two games behind the Rockies in the wild card race, losing 2 of 3 in Colorado over the weekend.

Today it was announced the Giants traded minor league pitcher Scott Barnes for Ryan Garko, a power-hitting first baseman from the Indians who played his college ball in Stanford. He will play his first game for the Giants tomorrow night, and it just so happens I have club level tickets, so stay tuned for a report.

I don't know much about Garko, but I like what I hear. Young, good hitter, the possibility of signing him to a longer term contract--I would hate for him to be a half-year rental, because I don't think we are quite close enough to World Series caliber to make a deal for a hired gun, as it were. Besides, look at how Holliday the hired gun worked out for Oakland; he failed to clean up that town so was shipped out into the sunset.

The interesting thing is that we have a prospect, Jesus Guzman, tearing up the minor leagues with his bat. Apparently we decided a guy named Jesus was not our savior for this season. Garko is older, more polished, apparently better defensively.

Plus, everyone knows Buster Posey is going to be our savior next year, and it would be selfish to expect more than two saviors on one team, Tim Lincecum being another messianic figure.

In any case, this trade either gives us the time to develop Travis Ishikawa or Jesus Guzman further in the protective shadow of Ryan Garko--assuming he proves capable of casting said shadow--or possibly using Guzman as trade bait for further help, possibly in the pitching rotation that has shown vulnerability behind Lincecum and Matt Cain, our two all-conquering All-Stars. Ishikawa would not be trade bait; I could see Guzman being attractive to teams looking for hitting.

But more importantly, we are buyers, not sellers, before the July 31st trade deadline. That in itself is exciting, because the Giants are trying to improve. That feels like personal validation.

This is the time to decide which way the team and the season go. Seriously, at this point, things could go either way; we could challenge for a playoff spot, or we could fade. There have been great memories so far, and more hope and expectation than I predicted before the season.

I'm looking forward to watching the rest of the narrative.

Baseball '09, Installment 2

2009-07-27T22:01:00.000-07:00

The next set of installments from my chronicle of the baseball season, brought here to consolidate my sports writings. You're welcome.

Volume IV: MEMORIAL DAY

Volume 5: Radio Edition Mark ii

Volume VI: Noah's Ark

Intermission

Volume VII

Volume VIIb

Volume VIII

Volume IX