Tickets to the World Series at Wrigley are starting at nearly $2,000 just to get into the park. If you want a place to sit down, start talking at $2,500: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2016/10/23/chicago-cubs-win-sets-stage-for-most-expensive-world-series-tickets-in-baseball-history/#3f872de55eab For many, the price is worth it. You can hear from some of them here: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Want-to-see-World-Series-at-Wrigley-It-will-cost-10174338.php If the Cubs win, we may never see …
Who would have thought that Los Angeles Dodger pitcher Clayton Kershaw would show up to Game 6 of the National League Championship Series without his curveball? It didn’t take long for the Chicago Cubs to figure out that he couldn’t throw it for strikes, and they wasted little time in taking advantage, running up a …
For years, Angel Hernández has drawn my score as worst ump in the Majors. I think he may be a rare case where replay has helped the ump. It used to be, any time that a call that he made was questioned and was very close, any argument at all would result in an ejection. …
The ninth inning of last night’s Game 4 of the recently concluded series between the San Francisco Giants and the Chicago Cubs was as brutal a finish to a game as I’ve ever witnessed. Five Giant relief pitchers combined to cough up four runs and render what had been a 5-2 lead into a 6-5 …
It’s a good thing I don’t make my living as a prophet. I expected last night’s Giants/Mets game to go something like this: Madison Bumgarner would give up a run or two early, as he often does when settling into a game, and that would have been the difference as Noah Syndergaard pitched another shutout. …
The San Francisco Giants, as they did in 2014, managed to slip into the very last available postseason spot and earn themselves a road trip for a do-or-die playoff. With five wins out of their last six games, they are looking better of late than for most of the season since the All-Star Break. Even …
Vin Scully, who spent 67 years as the voice of the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers, announced his last game yesterday at AT&T Park. I’m not sure what is more astounding about his career: that he set an unbreakable record for longevity or that he did so with undiminished sharpness at 88 years old. His …
On Sunday, we got a definitive evaluation of Chip Kelly’s San Francisco 49ers, and the news wasn’t good. Their loss to the Seahawks in Seattle wasn’t nearly as close as the final 37-18 score, since the Niners scored their two touchdowns in what was essentially garbage time in the fourth quarter. The Seahawks, who had …
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. –Dylan Thomas The San Francisco Giants’ even-year championship dynasty is coming to an end. It may seem premature to write their epitaph with two weeks left in the season, …
One of my sources tells me that Cub mania is heating up in Chi-town, “I’m seeing a lot more Cub attire these days, just like when the Hawks started their great run of success I saw sooooo many new Hawk fans. This town will explode if the Cubs win the WS. The other day a …
For those who may have missed it, the San Francisco 49ers beat the Los Angeles Rams 28-0 last Monday night. This was good news for their new coach, Chip Kelly, but the general media consensus suggests that the score reflected the putridness of the Rams more than a Niners resurgence. This article on Bill Simmons’s …
Last Sunday, I paid a visit to the new statue at AT&T Park: Gaylord Perry, who spent the first decade of his career in a San Francisco uniform alongside Juan Marichal as a mainstay of the Giants pitching staff during the 1960s. Perry’s most famous pitch was a spitball, which he discussed at length in …
This news may only be important to the truly NBA-obsessive, but for those who haven’t heard, Kevin Durant has left the Oklahoma City Thunder to join the Golden State Warriors. From Durant’s standpoint, the reasons are obvious. He believes that he has gone as far as he could with the Thunder and sees the Warriors …
Much as the Golden State Warriors’ loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA finals has been described as a collapse, Game 7 was anything but. It was biting, scratching and kicking warfare for a full 48 minutes. Such games always come down to someone making a big play at the end, and when Kyrie …
Johnny Cueto, whom the San Francisco Giants acquired last winter, is the hands-down best free-agent signing thus far in 2016. Yesterday, he won his tenth game and reduced his season ERA to 2.10, which would actually be about half that total if you subtracted the five-run innings he suffered on two occasions in April and …
After the United States’ 2-1 Copa America quarterfinal victory over Ecuador Thursday night, the team jogged and sprinted by turns around the pitch. It may have been helpful conditioning, but they looked like they were running for sheer joy, reveling in the cheers from the fans still filling half of CenturyLink Field here in soccer-mad …
As one would expect, Muhammad Ali’s passing on Friday has generated a flood of tributes and commentary over the weekend, far greater than the usual obituaries that stand at the ready at the Times and elsewhere for such occasions. To this, I would add the following comments. First, Ali strikes me as one of the …
The Golden State Warriors ended their playoff series last night with a 125-121 victory over the Portland Trail Blazers. Though the Blazers won only one of the five games, the widespread consensus is that they gave the Warriors all they could handle. Game 5 was no different than most of the other games, with the …
The news that Stephen Curry would play in last night’s Game 4 between the Portland Trail Blazers and the Golden State Warriors seemed a significant but not earth-shaking development, and when I checked the first-half score and saw the Blazers up by ten, I figured the game was over and that Curry would need at …
In Game 3 of the NBA West Semifinals last night between the Portland Trail Blazers and the Golden State Warriors, the Blazers did to the Warriors what the Warriors have done to the NBA for two years. Every time the Warriors made a run at the Blazers in the second half, even closing the lead …
Has the news of the greatest underdog story in all sports reached you? Leicester City have been perennial doormats in the English Premier League, when they haven’t been relegated to the second or even third tiers. This season most predicted them to finish near last and be relegated again. They were 5,000-to-1 odds to win …
For the first three quarters of Game 2 of the NBA Western Semi-Finals, the Portland Trail Blazers did everything they could to defy conventional wisdom. They crashed the boards, made big shots and on defense forced the Golden State Warriors to work for their points, and at the beginning of the fourth quarter the Blazers …
One should never judge a series by its first game, but with their 118-106 victory, the Dubs took care of business with a 20-point lead in the first quarter, never allowing the score to get close after that. Lillard and McCollum shot a combined 30% from the floor—they and the Blazers may have been a …
When I saw the Portland Trail Blazers beat the Los Angeles Clippers back in November, I wrote at the time that the Blazers looked better than expected, while the Clippers seemed to have more than their share of issues. I would have never predicted, though, that the Blazers would not only make the NBA playoffs …
I once heard a fan at AT&T Park say that he liked pitching duels when watching baseball on television, but when he was at the park, he wanted to see runs scored. I understood his perspective; hits and baserunners are a lot more interesting from the upper deck than a continual succession of pitches going …
I was born and raised in Minnesota, “The Land of 10,000 Lakes.” My parents had a cabin during my formative years that allowed me to seek out frogs, swim, and water ski on the weekends. Both of my parents graduated from the University of Minnesota, and my Dad attended the Golden Gopher football games held …
One person much on people’s minds at last Saturday’s San Francisco Giants Fan Fest wasn’t even in the house. For the first time since 2008, the Giants are beginning their season without one of the most iconic players in their history: Tim Lincecum. Questions on his status came up in several of the interview sessions, …
When the NFL comes to town for the Super Bowl, it is not just a visit: it is an occupation. In addition to the game itself, the NFL has taken possession of the Moscone Convention Center for the week for its NFL Experience, a theme park and autograph show that one can attend for the …
This article is an interesting update on the Blazers/Cavs game last December, suggesting that the LeBron and company may have scaled down their level of play on purpose, possibly to persuade ownership to ship Coach Blatt out the door. http://www.blazersedge.com/2016/1/22/10818480/david-blatt-cleveland-cavalaiers-lebron-james-portland-trail-blazers No one will likely confess to the deed, but it would not be the first …