Middle relief pitching is perhaps the least glamorous position in all of sports. Those who make a career of it rarely win lucrative contracts, at least by major league standards, but they can be as crucial to success as anyone else on a baseball team, particularly in October. No one has demonstrated this more effectively …
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Today is a travel day, and after two games the teams look as evenly matched as I had anticipated. This seems a good time to don my manager’s hat and make some observations. Madison Bumgarner is the most dominant pitcher still throwing in October. Especially if he faces Royals pitcher James Shields again, you can …
It has been fashionable among San Francisco Giants fans, myself included, to talk about the magic of even-numbered years, as if deep playoff runs were somehow ordained by the ones digit of the annual Christian calendar. Up to now, I had not taken the idea seriously even while repeating it, but with the Giants now …
When I grew up, the prospect of seeing the San Francisco Giants play in October seemed outside the scope of reality. In 1971, at the tail end of the Mays-McCovey era, they lost the National League Championship Series to the Pittsburgh Pirates in four games. I was eight years old at the time, and the …
When I tell people that I visited the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, NC, they often say, “I didn’t know you were a fan.” Sometimes, they ask why I went there at all. Part of their skepticism, perhaps, comes from knowing that I don’t follow NASCAR, and I usually care little about cars other …
If you like HGTV or just can’t get enough of seeing how other people live, the Biltmore Estate is an essential place to include in your lifetime travels. Completed in 1895 by George Washington Vanderbilt II near Asheville NC, it has 250 rooms and 178,926 square feet of floor space. It was the largest private …
Charlotte, NC has the triple-A baseball farm team for the Chicago White Sox, the Charlotte Knights. This year they opened BB&T Ballpark, and it was one of the priority items on my list to visit on my tour of the East Coast. Rather than explain too much, I will let my pictures speak for themselves. …
This summer, my brother Roger and I spent six hours in Charleston, SC as part of a two-week vacation on the East Coast. Having scheduled visits to the Civil War battlefields of Gettysburg and Antietam, it seemed right to squeeze in a tour of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor where the conflict began. Unfortunately, our …
A few weeks ago I happened to be in Palm Springs, CA with a couple of spare hours, so I paid Frank Sinatra a visit. For those unfamiliar with his life, he made Palm Springs his permanent home in the 1950s, so far as it was possible for someone whose career required a nomadic life. …
For those of you who don’t follow baseball, I am happy to report that San Francisco Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum pitched his second career no-hitter against the San Diego Padres on Wednesday. At 112 pitches and only one base-runner allowed, this no-hitter was a model of decorum compared to the one he pitched last year, …
Just over a week ago was Heroes and Comics Night at AT&T Park. The highlight of the evening’s pregame festivities was the appearance of Stan Lee, creator of Spiderman and most of the rest of the superheroes of Marvel Comics. Ninety-one years young, he came out to the field without even a hint of physical …
My daughter Jillian turned 16 just over a week ago. The day coincided with the San Francisco Giants’ first Orange Friday game of 2014, complete with a fireworks show afterward, so we naturally decided to go to AT&T Park to celebrate. The Giants had started the season reasonably well, winning six of their first ten …
At the 2013 San Francisco Giants Fan Fest at AT&T Park, I waited the entire day on the field for an autograph, left empty-handed and resolved never to do that again. This year, I had my daughter Jillian with me and didn’t want her to endure such a frustrating and exhausting experience, so we planned …
Despite their second-round series loss to the San Antonio Spurs, the 2013 NBA playoffs were truly a coming-out party for Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors. Since 1994—basically a generation—the Warriors had been one of the least relevant franchises in all of sports, with the exception of an upset against the Dallas Mavericks in …
To anyone who saw the Seattle Seahawks beat down the San Francisco 49ers in the second half of the recently concluded NFC Championship Game, the surprise was not that the 49ers lost, but that they came so close to sending the 12th Man home to an off-season of wailing and gnashing of teeth. Instead, with …
The online magazine Grantland featured a farewell essay to Candlestick Park, where the San Francisco 49ers played their final game on Week 16 before winning three more games on the road to earn themselves their third straight trip to the NFC Championship Game. The essay, titled “Closing the Cave of the Winds,” is notable not …
Watched the whole game yesterday. A few observations: 1. The cold didn’t impact the game as much as people thought it might. Not a lot of slipping or sliding going on, and both teams were able to throw and catch the ball. The kicking game was affected, though. Kickoffs were noticeably shorter even on good …
As the title suggests, I am about to disparage Peter Jackson’s latest installment of his Hobbit trilogy, The Desolation of Smaug. Before I do so, however, I should point out a few things. I am as familiar with the Tolkien literature as anyone could be without being totally obsessive, having read most of it multiple …
If there never was a reason before to eliminate divisions in the NFL conferences and go to a playoff structure seeding teams strictly by their regular season record, there is now. There is something unjust about a team tied for the second-best record in the NFC being rewarded by a first-round playoff game in the …
When you go to baseball games, what you see at the park can be totally at odds with what happens over the rest of the season. Last October, I watched the Cincinnati Reds beat the Giants nearly to death 9-0 in the second game of the playoffs, which everyone in attendance assumed would be their …
A few months ago, San Francisco Giants announcer Mike Krukow said that baseball players generally do not sign new contracts with their old teams when they include a pay cut. Worse than a loss of income, he suggested, a cut brings a loss of status that players prefer not to endure in their former clubhouses. …
A week before the All-Star Break, I took my daughter Jillian to AT&T Park to see the Giants play the Dodgers. On the way down she asked if an outfielder had ever caught a fly ball with his bare hand. “Yes,” I said. “Kevin Mitchell did it in ’89 when he was with the Giants.” …
Last Sunday I caught the last few holes of the Open Championship, which were the only ones that really mattered. Those who don’t live in a cave know that Phil Mickelson played the best six holes of his life to break out of the pack and win the fifth major championship of his career. During …
Last week, I was in Sacramento and saw Before Midnight at the one theater in the city where it played. Those who have seen Before Sunrise and Before Sunset will find the format familiar. The setting is gorgeous–this time in the south of Greece–and the conversation is engaging and intense, with a few more participants …
Before Sunrise, Directed by Richard Linklater, Columbia Pictures, 1995. Before Sunset, Directed by Richard Linklater, Warner Independent Pictures, 2004. Those of you who listen to NPR or read the New York Times probably know already that a third movie in director Richard Linklater’s “Before” Series has been released recently: Before Midnight. In this installment Linklater …
When worlds collide, we often get comedy. A story on National Public Radio this morning showed how this can happen even in the most traumatic situations. Apparently, kidnapping is a booming business in Latin America. The Morning Edition host, Steve Inskeep, interviewed a woman in Venezuela whose adult daughter had been kidnapped. While negotiating with …
As of this writing, the Golden State Warriors are tied at two wins apiece with the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Western Conference semifinals. This is their best showing in the playoffs since the 1970s, when Rick Barry was setting records for free throws with his trademark granny shot. Fans of NBA basketball north …
After the San Francisco Giants won their championship in 2010, I wish that I had attended Opening Day the next season. Until then, I had thought of Opening Day as one game out of one hundred and sixty-two, and having just paid more than I wanted to go to the National League Championship Series, I …
At nine in the morning on Friday, my wife called me at my office. “It’s Metallica Night at AT&T Park,” she said. “I think you should go.” That sounded a lot better than working, so after lunch I took off and drove down to Concord, where I took a BART train into San Francisco. It …
Baseball writers currently use a lot of sabermetrics to judge a team’s prospects for an upcoming season, carefully calibrating the odds of individual players either regressing in their performance or breaking out to their full potential. Sophisticated as they may be in their analysis, however, their predictions still center on two factors: past performance and …