The Monster of the Great Northwest

“I am not a role model.  I’m not paid to be a role model.  I am paid to wreak havoc on the basketball court. Parents should be role models.  Just because I dunk a basketball, doesn’t mean I should raise your kids”  ~  Charles Barkley

A monster is prowling the great Pacific Northwest.  A creature that has terrified the populace; making women faint, grown men cry and forcing parents to lock their children indoors.  Have they found Sasquatch?  Is it a crazed serial killing mountain man lurking in the dark forests preying on unsuspecting campers?  Is it a rogue grizzly bear or a rabid wolf tearing apart hikers?  No it’s none of those.  It’s much worse.  It’s a football player; Seattle Seahawks’ cornerback Richard Sherman. 

A Football Fan's Dilemma

Leigh Steinberg’s recollection of a conversation with a concussed Troy Aikman.

 “Leigh, where am I?” And I said, “Well, you’re in the hospital.” And he said, “Well, why am I here?” And I said, “Because you suffered a concussion today.” And he said, “Well, who did we play?” And I said, “The 49ers.” And he said, “Did we win?” “Yes, you won.” “Did I play well?” “Yes, you played well.” “Did— what does that— and so what’s that mean?” “It means you’re going to the Super Bowl.”

Five minutes later Aikman asked the same questions again. 

The VHS tape, NFL Crunch Course still occupies a space on a shelf near our TV.  We haven’t watched it in years.  It used to be an unofficial tradition to bust it out and watch it on Super Bowl Weekend to get us ready for the spectacle. 

Produced by NFL films, it’s a compilation of vicious hits, frightening in their violence and intensity.  Football fans know what I’m talking about.  It’s when the wide receiver, almost foolhardy in his bravery, goes across the middle and doesn't see the safety about to unload on him; or when the 285 pound linebacker blindsides a quarterback at full speed, jolting the unsuspecting player, sending the ball skyward, causing the player’s head to whiplash as if attached to his body with a spring.  My son, my nephew and I would lean forward in anticipation of each de-cleating.  They would watch, mouths agape, while I told them, in old geezer fashion, that this was real football; the way I remember it when I was their age.  Not this namby pamby, wussy stuff they call football these days.  

Warning: It's Almost Fall

Summer's almost gone       

Summer's almost gone

We had some good times

But they're gone

The winter's comin' on

Summer's almost gone

~ The Doors

“If cross country were easy it would be called football.” ~ Slogan on the backs of many cross country team shirts.

Am I ready for some football?  Well - no.   America is all a twitter, sports talk show hosts are ecstatic and television network and National Football League execs are just beginning a 5 month long fiscal orgasm (For those readers outside of the USA, I’m speaking of American football as opposed to futbol/soccer). 

American football is an absolute dollarific orgy.  On average the 32 NFL teams are worth $1.17 billion dollars each.  The average revenue per team last year was $286 million dollars.  Broadcast revenue from the networks for the current contract, now in its final year, averages $1.9 billion per year.  The new contract starting in 2014 will average $3.1 billion per year.  These are just a few of the bank account boggling figures.  And this doesn't even count the gambling money exchanged – both legal and not. 

Black Thanksgiving: A Real Turkey - 2012 Edition

“CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.” ~ Ambrose Bierce.

“The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.” ~ Confucius

“There is one day that is ours. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.”  ~ O Henry

Inching through Berkeley in rush hour traffic (Why in the hell do they call it rush hour when it takes that hour to go 5 miles? Where exactly is the rush part?) NPR brought the impending holiday season into stark blinding reality.  It reported that this year Wal-Mart will be kicking off the holiday shopping season by opening its doors at 8 PM on Thanksgiving night. 

Last year, in this very space I published a post titled Black Thanksgiving: A Real Turkey in which I criticized the marginalizing of our great American holiday, Thanksgiving, in favor of a new ritual; that of bundling up and leaving the holiday festivities for a round of bargain hunting hysteria.  I protested, vehemently I might add, the decision by Wal-Mart to open at 10 PM on Thanksgiving night.  In its audacity, Wal-Mart not only didn’t take my beef with them seriously, it upped the ante and decided to open its doors two hours earlier than last year.  The very effrontery of it all.  Obviously Walmart doesn’t know who it’s dealing with.  No, really, they don’t.  They don’t have the foggiest idea who I am and even if they did they wouldn’t care.  I’m that gnat on the ass of an elephant (or more properly the ass of an ass). Nonetheless I feel compelled to play David to Sam’s Goliath. 

Many Thanks Steve

65 toss power trap; 65 toss power trap.  That might pop right open.” ~ Hank Stram

The Autumn wind is a pirate
Blustering in from sea
With a rollicking song he sweeps along
Swaggering boisterously.
His face is weatherbeaten
He wears a hooded sash
With a silver hat about his head
And a bristling black mustache
He growls as he storms the country
A villain big and bold
And the trees all shake and quiver and quake
As he robs them of their gold.
The Autumn wind is a Raider
Pillaging just for fun
He'll knock you 'round and upside down
And laugh when he's conquered and won ~ Steve Sabol

Ameri-Football-Cana

Americana:  materials concerning or characteristic of America, its civilization, or its culture; broadly: things typical of America.              Merriam-Webster

Baseball is what we were.  Football is what we have become.    Mary McGrory

I’m on my way to the NFC Divisional Playoff Game between the San Francisco 49ers and the New Orleans Saints.  The game starts at 1:30 but we’re on the road and planning to be at the stadium parking lot by 8:30.  I’m riding in with my daughter Jess and son in law Kyle in their new pickup truck. We’ll be meeting up with my son Matt on the way and caravan in.

I attended my first football game sometime in the sixties (I suppose I was only 9 or 10) at Kezar Stadium, a little bowl by today’s standards tucked away in the eastern corner of Golden Gate Park.  My dad got the tickets and it was obviously for a father-son day because his interest in sports wasn’t even passing.  I hardly knew anything about football at that age but I could easily reel off the starting lineup and pitching rotation of the Los Angeles Dodgers.  By the time we parked the car somewhere seemingly miles from the stadium the game was about to start.  We arrived somewhere around halftime and watched the second half on Kezar's hard, cramped bench seats.  Years later the 49ers would move to larger Candlestick Park and Kezar would be all but forgotten until it got a bit part in Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry, where Eastwood’s Harry Callahan would confront the Scorpio murderer.  Years after attending that game with my dad I would return to Kezar to watch a Day on the Green concert starring the unlikely paring of Waylon Jennings and The Grateful Dead in a haze of cheap white wine and weed. Over the years I occasionally went to games at Candlestick until 1982, when I got season tickets.

By the time we get to the outskirts of the stadium, the main lots are closed off to all but those with prepaid parking passes.  We’re relegated to the hard packed dirt lots further out.  Once parked we unpack the truck for our tailgate barbeque.  The local air quality control board has declared today a spare the air day; no burning of wood.  The air in the square miles surrounding Candlestick is not only not being spared, it’s being abused.  It’s thick with the smoke of barbecues, cooking flesh of various species and weed.  A group of old boys to our right unpack and set up their temporary campsite.  “Let’s get drunk” says one.  It's always good to have a plan and they're well prepared to follow through with that plan.  Plenty of beer, a bottle of Skyy vodka and a personal favorite, Maker's Mark bourbon.  They have chicken, hot dogs, beans and looking out of place and forgotten, two green bananas.  What in the hell are the bananas  doing there?  There are four girls on our other side who are going basic; beer, chips and dip.

Football isn’t just a sport in America.  It’s an event; one that incorporates multiple American traditions.  Besides the game itself there is the prerequisite pregame tailgate which includes America’s love affair with the car -- the larger the better if not a truck or a recreational vehicle -- with barbeque and of course alcohol.

Jess and Kyle are ramrodding this tailgate.  They've marinated some meat for carne asada and my son has some spicy shrimp skewers.  We have shrimp and cocktail sauce, various chips and dip and beverages. This is the first tailgate they’ve organized and there have been some rookie mistakes.  There was a plan to make margaritas until it was discovered that they forgot the tequila.  Kyle and Jess go for a walk and come back 45 minutes or so later with a bottle of Jose Cuervo Gold.  They ventured out into the sketchy local neighborhood and found a bottle shop that gouged them for bad tequila. The small blender works well and drinks are served.  Thanks to my doctor’s directive I’m alcohol free and drinking Pelegrino mineral water “spiked” with margarita mix.  It isn’t bad actually but it just isn’t the same.  Can't the football gods grant me a one day imbibing pass?

I didn’t start tailgating until I had my season tickets and they ranged from the simple to the outdoor feast.  There was the seasonal snack one Sunday during Christmas season when we roasted some chestnuts over the barbeque.  We took some ribbing for that one.  Speaking of which, ribs was on the menu more than a few times.  The tailgating menu is often rich with regional fare.  In Green Bay bratwurst is a favorite while Buffalo Bills fans opt for chicken wings.  What would a tailgate party in New Orleans be with without gumbo?  Here in San Francisco, local Dungeness crab often accompanied a grilled fillet with a side of baked potato and all washed down with Napa Valley wine.  My friend Rick had a side job as a deckhand on a salmon boat and he often supplied fresh salmon steaks.  Caesar salad, sausages, chili and roasted potatoes all have graced our tailgate table. 

Tailgating isn’t just eating and drinking.  Its board games, music, TV and for some a chance to make some money by selling something.  There are of course games of catch.  In the cramped community of tailgating there’s always the chance that an errant throw will land on a car or in the middle of someone’s plate of food.  During the heady dynastic days of the 49ers there was often a band and dancing in some corner of the parking lot.  We would bring a small television so that we could watch the broadcast of the morning game.  This was before you could get TV on your smart phone – because this was before smart phones.

Some entrepreneurs make their rounds through the parking lots selling team logoed t-shirts and souvenirs, all of it cheap, of bad quality and counterfeit.  There are plenty of takers though, including undercover cops who slap on the cuffs as the transaction is completed.  One enterprising couple is selling vodka laced Jell-O shooters to raise money for Team in Training.  Is it just me or is there something contradictory about selling shooters to benefit a cancer charity?  Matt and I play catch for awhile and he warns me away from a parked BMW; just in the event he makes an errant throw or I muff a catch. 

Meal’s done and it’s time to clean up and head into the stadium walking past ongoing parties and the corpses of former parties.  The ground is littered with bottles, cans, uneaten food and mounds of hot charcoal. 

It is amazing that someone would be either so drunk or so stupid that he would stash the hot coals from his barbeque under his car (usually the gas tank).  Is he afraid that someone with larcenous charcoal intent might come by, furtively look both ways, grab them and sneak them under his coat?  This is where the excitement would build, walking towards the stadium and hearing the cheers and boos coming from inside as those fans already in their seats react to players from both teams warming up.  Its during this walk that fans get in the last drink; knock it down before the security check or do the unthinkable and toss it.  In my early days of going to games security checks were non-existent.  In fact in the very early AFC days people actually brought small barbeques INTO the stadium.  Flasks and bottles the most common contraband made their way in even with the advent of the first security checks.  Any backpacks got a cursory pat down and sometimes a quick peak inside.  Were we more tolerant in those bygone days or was there simply less bad behavior?

We get to security and have to empty our pockets and hold our arms up so that the security guy can pass the metal detector over our bodies.  He notices my binocular case and peeks inside.  Into the concourse and through the crowded aisles we make it to our seats. The stadium is nearly full and the crowd in what I think we’ll be full throat (I’ll be proven wrong later on).  I don't know anybody here.  Don't know if my neighbors are season ticket holders or, like us, bought tickets for this one game. 

"The audience as participants is indispensable to most games.  The greatest contest in the world in which only the players are present would have no game character whatever."  Marshal McLuhan, War and Peace in the Global Village.

Getting to my season ticket seats was always a time to say hi to the usual fans.  The stadium was sold out to season ticket holders and so everybody knew everybody in the area unless an owner had given away seats to a single game.  The fellow behind me was a Grateful Dead fan with a booming voice that never wore out even in the game’s waning moments; we called him “leather lungs.”  When the game starts the crowd gets involved, cheering as loudly as possible to disrupt the communication and concentration of the other team’s offense, becoming what is called the 12^th man. 

Its kickoff and the crowd is alive.  Its 63000 individual red clad cells that have merged to form one huge crimson organism; a wild red beast.  And the organism is screaming and roaring and it’s louder than at any time I can recall.  The stadium is almost literally shaking.  This isn’t just the 12^th man, it’s the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th man (waking up the next morning my ears would still be ringing, reminding me of my days of standing in the front row at a rock concert). 

8:57 left in the first quarter: The Saints open the game with the ball and nearly score but their main running threat Pierre Thomas takes a vicious hit and loses the ball to the 49ers.  Thomas is concussed and will miss the remainder of the game.  The red beast in the stands is roaring.

Football is a violent game.  A reflection of a violent American tradition?

 “Let’s face it; most of the people in our society enjoy watching one guy knock down another one.”  John Niland, former tackle with the Dallas Cowboys

“You see a tremendous block from the blind side and you can hear 50,000 “ooohs” all at once.  So they must like it."  Elroy Hirsh, Hall of Fame flanker.
"Anybody who says this game is beastly, brutal and nasty, he's right.  You are out there to inflict punishment, but not to take it."  Wayne Walker, former linebacker with the Detroit Lions. 

Going into the game my idea is to sit and watch but the emotion of the beast sucks me in.  Saints quarterback Drew Brees takes the ball and rolls to his right and the crowd wants a hit. “Stick him,” I yell. “Kill him,” screams my son.  We don’t want a hit we want a de-cleating; a hit so hard he’ll fly out of his shoes. 

2:17 left in the first quarter:  Alex Smith throws a pass to the left to Vernon Davis for a 49 yard touchdown.  With :44 seconds left Smith finds Michael Crabtree for a 4 yard scoring pass. It’s the end of the first quarter and the 49ers are ahead 14-0.  All around us the organism is in a wild frenzy.  The fellow in front of us, stewed to the gills, has been high fiving everyone around him after nearly every play.  He wants to hug and I manage to keep him at high five distance.  He turns to us and screams, “We beat the Saints.  We beat the Saints.”  I turn to Matt and tell him that since we’ve won we might as well just go home now and beat the traffic.

Alcohol has fueled a few memories some foggy, some not so flattering.  One Monday we showed up in the parking lot to begin tailgating early (Noon) for a 6:00 kickoff.  The Jack Daniels flowed early and often and my conduct in the stands was less than distinguished.  After the game, well, days after the game I realized it and decided it was time to take it down a notch. My friend Rick figured out how to solve the closure of beer sales at the end of the third quarter.  During that third frame he would visit the concession and buy two beers, drinking one and storing the other under his seat.  After a few trips he would have beers lined up under his seat like foamy little soldiers.  After one such game, leaving the stadium he was reveling in victory skipping happily until he lost his balance, staggered forward and was stopped in his wobbly tracks by a parked Buick.  It was smashing; his face smashed into the car's grill.  The car was undamaged but I imagine Rick felt it the next day. 

4:16 left in the second quarter:  The Saints have scored their second touchdown and the score is 17-14 in favor of the 49ers.  The animal is quiet. The fellow in front of us is sitting quietly with his head in his hands.  Is he trying to hold in his lunch or is he fearing that the victory he proclaimed a few minutes earlier has slipped away?

In 1994 I brought my son to watch the 49ers roll to a 44-15 divisional playoff victory against the Chicago Bears.  We had decided to take the bus from downtown to the game after having a nice breakfast at Sears' Fine Foods in the City (no not that Sears).  The wait for a bus to return was interminable and Rick decided to hire a limo.  My 11 year old son had just watched the game of his life and was leaving it in a limo, standing on the seat with his head out of the sun roof.

11:42 left in the game and the 49ers are holding on to a 3 point lead:  The 49ers Kyle Williams drops a pass over the middle and the animal groans.  The air is being sucked out of the animal as it senses impending disaster.  A fan yells out in the silence, “It hit him in the fucking hands.”

Football is played in rain or shine.  One memorable Monday night I took a friend to watch the 49ers play the Dolphins in a driving rainstorm.  He was from Chicago and had spent many a cold Sunday at Chicago’s Soldier field watching games in the snow.  We left that game early as Derek, soaked to the skin, could no longer stand the cold.  He later told me that it was the coldest he had ever been at a game.

4:11 left in the game:  The Saints score a touchdown to go ahead 24-23 and you could hear a pin drop; or the sounds of a few cheering Saints fans. Less than two minutes later Alex Smith runs off the left side for 28 yards, a touchdown and the lead.  Pandemonium. Thirty seconds later the Saints score a touchdown to go ahead 32-29.  The animal in the stands is quiet, forlorn and desperate.  The couple on my left, longtime 49er fans and season ticket holders bolt for the exit with 1:48 remaining.  I keep remembering that five days ago was the 30th anniversary of “the catch.”

Thirty years ago the 49ers reached the NFC Championship game against the Cowboys and were expected to do nothing against their longtime rival.  In 1982 you didn’t get tickets on the internet; there was no internet.  If you wanted tickets, you went to the box office and fell in line, like my friend Scott did.  And you stayed overnight in line; like Scott did.  He got a pair of seats to the game and gave me one.  We sat through one of the best games in my memory.  Trailing 27-21 the 49ers got the ball on their 11 yard line with 4:54 left and began their final drive of the game. 

1:37 left in the game and the 49ers have the ball on their own 15 yard line trailing by 3 and begin their final drive of the game.  

"We're going to call a sprint option. It's going to break up and break into the corner, you got it? Dwight will clear. If you don't get what you want simply throw the ball away."  Bill Walsh to Joe Montana.  

There were 58 seconds left and the 49ers were facing third down at the Dallas six yard line.  Joe Montana took the ball and drifted to his right chased by Cowboy defenders.  He lofted a ball that looked as if it would sail out of the end zone until Dwight Clark snagged the ball between his fingertips.  Victory, a trip to the Super Bowl and pandemonium.  On the way home I was driving down the freeway with Scott hanging out of the passenger side window from the waste up screaming in a worn out gravelly voice, “We’re going to the bowl.  We’re going to the bowl. We’re going to the fucking bowl.” 

14 seconds left in the game and the 49ers are facing third down at the New Orleans 14 yard line.  Alex Smith drops straight back to pass and throws a laser down the middle to Vernon Davis who catches it in the end zone for a touchdown. Victory and pandemonium.

Until something else comes along to grab the nation's fancy, football will remain the quintessential American sport.  It's a billion dollar industry that grabs the national attention from training camp in July through the season and the Super Bowl in February and on into the draft in the spring.  People have called for a national holiday on the Monday after the Super Bowl ostensibly to come down from the high of the game, clean up the house and clear the cobwebs from an alcohol addled brain.

I have to admit that if I had a sports bucket list a football game would be on it.  Not the Super Bowl and not the college national championship.  It would be to a place where football is the life blood of the region.  It would be an autumn game in South Bend, Indiana to watch Notre Dame or in Ann Arbor to watch the Michigan Wolverines.   

In 1982 I enjoyed one of the greatest games in 49er history with my best friend, the best man at my wedding and 30 years later still a dear friend.  Thirty years after that game I enjoyed one of the greatest games in 49er history with my son, my daughter and my son in law.  At heart and in my sentiments I'm a baseball guy, but football has brought me two of my most cherished memories with friends and family. 

  

Claim Jumping

Almost thirty years ago to the day that the San Francisco 49ers became an honest to goodness powerhouse, when Dwight Clark came out of nowhere to catch a pass that looked for all the world like it would sail out of the end zone but instead carried them to the Super Bowl, the team apparently wants to resurrect a tactic that some original 49ers – those Gold Rush fellows – used over 160 years ago.  It was called claim jumping and it involved a lowdown blackguard taking over a mining site that had been claimed previously.

The 49ers announced that they will be instituting something called a stadium builder’s license (SBL) for season tickets at their new Santa Clara stadium.  No this isn’t the state license that those fellows pouring concrete and running electrical wire are required to hold in order to erect the stadium.  This is a shakedown that football teams have been employing for years that requires fans wanting to buy season tickets to pay a fee for the rights to buy tickets.  So before you even shell out a single penny for your tickets you have to buy the rights to get to buy the tickets and the rights are wrong, financially speaking.

In the case of the 49ers if you want some of the better seats in their house you’ll need to take out a second on your own house because the SBLs will run between 20,000 and 80,000 dollars – per seat.  So a couple wanting to buy a pair of tickets will have to pony up essentially the down payment on a home just so that they can buy 10 tickets per year to watch live football; and two of those games are exhibition games which as a former season ticket holder I hated having to buy. 

Some current season ticket holders were invited by the 49ers to put down a deposit on seats at the new stadium that would be comparable to the good seats that they now have at Candlestick Park.  They probably knew going in that they would be hit with a usury license fee but in their worst nightmares did they expect tens of thousands of dollars?  The local news showed some forlorn fans leaving the 49er office shrugging their shoulders and saying essentially, “It was nice while it lasted.”  And for some fans it lasted a long, long time, going back to the 60s when the 49ers were still at Kezar Stadium.  These are the fans who earned the nickname Forty Niner Faithful, the ones who stuck with the team through years of misery, then reveled in the glory years and continued to hold on during the last decade when the team plumbed the depths.  These are the fans that loyally went to a leaky, crumbling dump called Candlestick and supported their team only to have their good seats pulled out from under them because they won’t be able to afford the SBL.  Their claims were jumped and those seats will likely go to some corporation who will give them out as perks to empty suits who don’t know a gridiron from a waffle iron. 

And the team is proud of this.  A fellow named Al Guido, the Vice President of New Stadium Sales and Services, crowed, “You have the ability to transfer it down to your family, you have the ability to transfer it down to friends, colleagues; you have the ability to sell it on the open market. I think that's just a huge benefit."  I don’t know where you’ve been Al but that’s the way it’s always worked.  I got my first season tickets 30 years ago when a colleague transferred me the rights to a pair of seats he owned (I gave up my tickets years ago when my son’s college tuition took precedence over football tickets).  Guido did mention that the 80,000 dollar seats apparently come with perks like food and drink.  I should hope so.  If I paid that kind of money for a football ticket I’d be doing one hell of a lot of drinking.  At those prices it should be a full blown orgiastic bacchanal complete with wine, women (or the gender of your choice), banned, controlled substances and song.  In fact the only way I would pay a fee of any price just for the right to buy tickets would be in the midst of a purple haze (with apologies to Jimi) of heavy drinking and drug use.  There is a thing called principle after all.   

In all fairness, and this is the only fair aspect to this story, the team is only charging those amounts on the best seats in the stadium (but every seat will carry an SBL).  And they aren’t the first team to charge license fees.  When the Raiders returned to Oakland from Los Angeles in 1989 the team charged license fees and incurred the wrath of season ticket holders when the stadium didn’t sell out and fans could walk up to the ticket booth and buy an individual game seat and avoid the fee.  I despised Al Davis for doing that to loyal Raider fans.  The Cowboys, the Giants and the Jets all have brand new digs and they charge license fees.

But just because there’s precedent doesn’t make it right.  Even the worst end zone seat will likely carry an SBL of thousands of dollars.  This essentially prices out the family.  Assuming the lowest SBL is 3000 dollars it would cost a family of four, 12,000 dollars just to buy the seats; “Say Junior if you’re planning on going to college I suggest you get a paper route."  But look at the bright side.  This bit of extortion will probably keep out the riffraff making it a family friendly environment that you won't see any families at. 

Football was once the blue collar sport, playing second fiddle to baseball.  It was a rough and tumble sport that attracted hardy fans who would sit in the cold, the rain, the wind and the snow, who would keep dry with a rain suit and warm with a flask of whiskey to fortify some watery hot chocolate in a Styrofoam cup.  Football has become, as I’ve said before on this blog, a glitzy, overdone, extravaganza catering to rich guys and corporations.  And now the 49ers, like the more disreputable of their namesake of 160 years ago, are jumping the claims of their most loyal supporters.   

Fan Violence

My days of attending professional football games might have just come to an end this past weekend.  No I haven’t been priced out.  Well not yet anyway.  Once the 49ers get their new stadium they’ll likely do what other teams have done and that is to raise ticket prices to a level that only CEOs can afford along with levying a usury personal seat license which will allow me to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege to pay thousands of dollars.  And no I haven’t given up on the local club despite the fact that they’ve been horrible over the past decade.

I’m looking at bailing because the 49ers haven’t made a public offer of awarding hazard pay nor are they going to offer supplemental life insurance in the event that I don’t come home alive.  Last Saturday it became apparent that football is becoming more dangerous for the fans than for the players.  To paraphrase the old joke, last weekend the 49ers and Raiders staged a fight and a football game broke out.

Sad to say this was no joke.  During the game numerous fights broke out in the stadium (Google 49er-Raider fight for the blow by blow).  One man was beaten unconscious in a restroom and was hospitalized in serious condition.  One You Tube video shows a parking lot brawl lasting several minutes that sort of meandered around a section of the lot like a scrum gone insane.  Apparently is was ladies night in the lot as many of the brawlers there were women.  To their boyfriends and husbands I can only say, “You boys sure know how to pick ‘em.”  Those who escaped physically unscathed apparently had to deal with verbal abuse.  According to an L.A. Times article, “Callers to a Bay Area radio show Sunday described navigating a gauntlet of drunk and abusive fans in order to reach the restroom.”  And if you managed to escape the physical and verbal abuse there was just that feeling.  You know the feeling you get when you find yourself driving through the very worst part of town and the engine starts missing and sputtering?  Yeah that feeling.  The Chronicle’s Gwen Knapp described it perfectly, “When I drove in to the main lot, I headed way toward the back to avoid a group of people in 49ers gear who were blocking some open rows, yelling and striking intimidating poses. This was not the typical football rowdiness. In 16 years of covering games at Candlestick, I have never felt unnerved by a crowd, whether I've driven in, taken the game-day bus or ridden on Muni's T line. (Whether in a car or on BART, I've never felt the same level of hostility at the Coliseum, either.) Saturday was different.

But these were just the prelims.  The main event occurred in the parking lot after the game where there was not one, but two shootings.  Apparently both victims will survive, one after being shot several times in the stomach and the other having received relatively minor wounds.  I know that when I’m getting ready to go to the game I go through my checklist; Niner jacket, check; binoculars, check; seat cushion, check; ticket, check; gun, check and double check, lock and load.  Am I missing something here?  Was I out of the office for awhile and not get the memo about going to a sporting event strapped?

In the early eighties I got season tickets to the Forty Niners.  They were a successful team and tickets were impossible to come by if you didn’t hold a season ticket or know someone who did.  During those glory years the stands were peaceable places.  The joke around the league was that Niner fans were white wine sippers and quiche eaters.  Oh there were fights now and then but they were pretty rare occurrences.  There was some heckling that went on between fans of the 49ers and the visitors but for the most part we just dipped our quiche in a nice Chardonnay and enjoyed the games.  You see if you, your guest or someone using your ticket got overly unruly you ran the risk of losing your season ticket; for good.  By the late nineties I was taking my son to games and those were great times.  I had no qualms whatsoever about bringing him.  Yeah he was going to hear some rough language and “F” bombs but nothing that would physically endanger him or scare him.  I should add here that this was still a far cry from when I was a kid.  When I went to a game with my parents, baseball or football, if some fellow’s language went south of salty he was often shushed by those nearby, “Hey knucklehead there’s a kid there, watch the language.”

Some years back the tickets were sacrificed to the axe of the domestic budget.  A few years later the 49ers went from good to worse and tickets became available to the riffraff at best and the bullies and thugs at worse.  There was no waiting list of tens of thousands for season tickets and in a business decision the team apparently abandoned the behave badly and lose your ticket policy.  About three years ago I went to a game against the Cincinnati Bengals and was shocked by the experience.  In that one night there were probably more fights and near fights than I had seen in all of my years of being a season ticket holder.  As we left the game a fiftyish Bengal fan and his wife talked about the verbal abuse they took during the course of the game.  She had apparently been the target of personal insults.  Like Ms. Knapp, I came away feeling that something about the so called fan base had horribly mutated. 

That was the last game that I’ve been to and it might be the last game I go to in some time, if ever again.  When my son was still a child I looked forward to the day when he would be old enough to come to a game and appreciate it and I cherish the good times we had; great tailgate barbecues, memorable games and a ride home in a limo after the 49ers beat the Cowboys in a championship game.  But as things stand now I have no desire to run gauntlets let alone expose my wife or grandkids to louts, thugs, jerks and knot heads who think that a Glock is part of the game ensemble.   

This is where I can go on the tirade of we’re just a violent, rude; me first, in your face society and it’s just exacerbated by being an out of control gun crazed society.  And I believe all of that to be true.  But we’re also a money talks society and the NFL and the teams have shirked their responsibilities because they’re afraid of turning off loyal if “boisterous” fans who spend money.  Hopefully last Saturday’s violence orgy is the last wake-up call the league needs (they’ve been ignoring years of fan violence alarms).  But hell would I be surprised if the league just dropped all pretense, went all in and decided to start marketing body armor in team colors?  Not one whit.  After all I do keep hearing that "it's just a business."

Here’s the proverbial bottom line.  Team loyalty and fan exuberance notwithstanding, going to a sporting event is supposed to be a fun, family friendly activity like going to the movies, the aquarium or the amusement park.  We shouldn’t have to consider personal safety as a major factor when deciding on an outing.  Traditionally a dad looks forward to that first pro sports game with his son and he shouldn’t have to get in a moral wrestling match with himself over whether he’s exposing his boy to a dangerous situation.  What is wrong with us? 

My Old Baseball Friend

     Welcome back baseball.  Welcome back to the friend I knew and loved.  For a while there you were going through a rough patch. You fell in with a bad crowd, started messing with substance abuse and got addicted to some really bad stuff. Your personality changed, you lost your charm and became a big, brutish lout. You lost the respect that you had for your rich and storied ancestry, forsook your forefathers and got infatuated with a fake, fleeting here and now. When you lost your self-respect you got pretty sleazy and slept around with a bunch of self-absorbed phonies. You stopped being the baseball that I knew, that we all knew, a subtle, strategic game with all those nuances like double switches, the hit and run and the suicide squeeze. You started resembling a “D” level, beer league softball game.  And what about your caretakers, those guys who were supposed to look out for you? They just became a bunch of greedy enablers turning a blind eye, letting your addiction run rampant while they raked in their ill-gotten gains.

     The home nine is in first place and playing some exciting ball. No bombastic displays of tape measure home runs with footballesque final scores. The Giants are winning low scoring, one run affairs. They're doing it with pitching; a solid rotation and a stalwart bullpen. The offense is pure punch and judy, with an occasional long ball and some sort of smoke and mirrors magic woven by manager Bruce Bochy.  Last year we christened the season "torture" and the one run, walk off torment is back for a delicious second course. 

     In recent years I sat out that bastardization of baseball called “the steroid era.” I walked out on the freakish thing it had become, figuring I wouldn't return.  Sometime during the 2009 season my interest started piquing again.  Barry Bonds, the man who had so arrogantly soiled one of sport’s most hallowed records was not invited back for 2008 and when I was satisfied that his stink had left the yard I was ready to come back. While a recession driven belt tightening kept me away from the stadium last year, I watched on TV with renewed joy the game being played as it should.  And listening to the radio broadcast while working in the yard or tending the barbecue has brought back baseball memories of my childhood.

     Yes, I love baseball and I’m not ashamed to say that I love it in a naïve way; in the tradition rich, storybook, peanuts and Cracker Jack, smell of the green, green grass, baseball cards, hotdogs and beer, all-American way.  I love it because unlike professional basketball and football, baseball unabashedly honors its past. It’s a game that’s spanned decades has gone through little change to the game itself yet continues to captivate its fans.

      Professional basketball has gone from a patient team game to an up and down the court race punctuated by in your face slam dunks tossed down by petulant, chest thumping, preening players who’ve physically outgrown their field of play.  For the most part I find NBA players to be dislikable. There is no reverence for the past in the NBA. Today’s players wouldn’t know Jerry West or Oscar Robertson if they smacked into them at the foul line and most fans probably don’t know of an NBA past that goes beyond MJ.

     And what can you say about the NFL? It’s the consummate sport become business. And while it keeps some tenuous ties to its past it has become something unrecognizable from what it was a mere 10 years ago. Never satisfied to be what it is, the NFL seems to be in an insatiable quest to get bigger, brasher and glitzier. There is no charm to its championship game. The Super Bowl is an event which every year has to outdo its predecessor.  It’s an uncharismatic happening of a game that falls victim every year to its own hype; a hype which it inevitably fails to live up to. With its ostentatious overpriced arenas and personal seat licenses it has become a Romanesque orgy for gamblers, rich guys and corporations that’s thrown the common fan to the curb. Unlike professional basketball and football, baseball has maintained some affordability.

How many of these did I lose?

     Baseball has always had an intimate connection with the fans.  The Brooklyn Dodgers not only played in that borough but lived there and mingled with their neighbors and fans, shopping in the local stores, going to the local barbershop, and playing with local kids.  In his book Bums, Peter Golenbock writes about the memory of a Brooklyn fan who said of Duke Snyder, “We would be playing stick ball and he would come home….and the kids knew who he was. ‘Hey Duke, want to take a few cuts?  It was like he was one of the boys. He’d take a few cuts."  When I was a kid, after games we would go to the player’s entrance and wait for our heroes to emerge, offering a glove, ball, baseball cards, or scraps of paper for them to autograph.  Most would graciously sign, while admonishing the kids to be patient and polite.  I recall Sandy Koufax taking my ball as he stepped onto the team bus.  I thought for a moment that he had stolen my baseball until he dropped it out a window to me with his autograph and those of some of his teammates.  I lost that ball.  In fact I must have got the great left hander’s autograph a half dozen times, losing all but the one I still treasure.  While the player’s entrance is now off limits, a ball player will still stop and sign some autographs before and during BP (batting practice).  I recall Dave Stewart kindly signing autographs for my son and his friend before a playoff game against Toronto.

     I can’t remember the first game that I went to. I know it was at windy, frigid, Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Probably in 1961 or 1962 (I would have been 8 or 9 years old), the details escape me , might have been against the Cards, but I clearly remember walking out of the concourse and into the seating area to stare in awe at that field; so vast and so green.  It seemed bigger than anything I’d ever seen.

Maury Wills steals third

      A rabid Giants booster, my mom was the head fan of the family.  I was, and for the life of me I don’t know why, a Los Angeles Dodgers fan.   I think that maybe I was just attracted to that Dodger blue color.   Now you have to understand that a Giants fan and a Dodgers fan under the same roof do not make for a peaceful household between the months of April and October.  There was plenty of yelling and screaming during the many great games that we watched and listened to while “hating” each other and each other’s teams.  Those Giants-Dodgers games of the sixties defined the game that I grew up with and love to this day.  The Dodgers were a punchless team with plenty of speed.  Maury Wills would bunt himself to first and then the drama began.  No secret he would steal.  In the first act of the drama he would take his lead, the pitcher would throw to first and Willie McCovey would smack a leaden glove onto the diving Wills.  Time and again this scene repeated itself with Wills extending that lead by mere inches each time.   Wills wore out the pitcher and McCovey’s heavy paw wore out Wills.  The first act would usually end with the Dodger shortstop dusting himself off, standing on a freshly robbed second base.  Act two had Wills, dancing off second, racking the pitcher’s nerves until he pilfered third.  Act three ended with Wills either crossing the plate or being stranded at third.  Mom hated Wills, I hated Willie Mac but we both reveled in the rivalry.

Russ Hodges, Lon Simmons, Bill Thompson

     The sounds of spring, summer and fall were the voices of Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons calling the games while my mom worked in the garden or did her housework.   It seemed that everywhere you went there was a radio tuned to KSFO; “And there’s the pitch. Mays swings. And you can tell it BYE, BYE, BABY!”   Radio was king and baseball was the game of great voices; Hodges, Simmons, Vin Scully, Mel Allen, Jack Buck, Ernie Harwell and Harry Caray.   For a kid a transistor radio was an indispensible piece of equipment.   It was the only way you could you catch the last few innings of a night game, under the covers with the radio just loud enough to hear the game and just low enough that mom and dad wouldn’t hear.  How else could you catch bits of a weekday World Series game, trying to tune out the teacher yet keep an eye and half an ear on her so as not to get caught.   And every now and then there was that rare, cool teacher who would let us watch some of the game on TV.

     Baseball was the game that we could always play even if we didn’t have a team.  Any kid with a tennis ball and the side of house could play a ball game all by himself.   I was that kid and many were the afternoons when I would throw a tennis ball at the house and as shortstop field the grounders coming off the wall, throw it back against the wall and as first baseman field the rebound always just nipping the phantom runner.  On warm evenings dads in the neighborhood would go out with us kids to a local field and hit us some flies.  Even into my twenties and thirties I would go out to a local ball field with my friend Scott and we would take turns hitting and shagging grounders.  Now nearing 60, I do miss hearing that crack, ranging over and snagging a backhander right in the sweet spot.  I even miss that sting of the ball when it smacks into the palm.

     Baseball is a game for the senses. It’s the green of the field, the blue of the sky, chatter of the players, crack of the bat, ball skittering on grass and the pop of the glove.  It’s the smell of a dog and a beer, oil on a leather glove and a sweaty old cap.

     Baseball is nicknames on the back of a card (does anybody really collect football and basketball cards?).  It’s The Mick, Jocko, The Say Hey Kid, The  Baby Bull, Big D, Slick, Biscuit Pants, Willie Mac, Rube, Smokey, The Splendid Splinter, Buck, The Kid, Killer and Stan the Man.  Baseball is kids tearing open the wrapper on a pack of cards, shoving a stick of stale bubble gum in the mouth, thumbing through the cards and negotiating multiple “humpties” for a star.  

     Baseball is a colorful language of its own.  Its a can o’ corn, hard cheese, gopher ball, around the horn, chin music, tools of ignorance, bases juiced, fungo, heater, hot corner, on deck, on the screws, seeing eye single, skip, southpaw, small ball, scroogie, slider, slurve and of course, the Mendoza line.  C'mon, who needs the Romance Languages when you have baseball lingo.

      So welcome back baseball.  You’ve gone through some changes over the years and I haven’t been a fan of many of them.  I like interleague play about as much as I like eating liver.  And do you really need another level of playoffs, as if a 162 game season can’t decide the best teams?  I can’t say that I like the uniform changes.  How come you got rid of the stirrups and long socks and started sporting those pajama bottoms?  You know, I didn’t like the DH when you first introduced him to me and I don’t like him now.  If he’s fat, slow, out of shape and not able to play in the field anymore maybe he should just retire to the coach’s box or the broadcast booth.   And did you really have to silence the chin music? I miss those days when some of the game’s toughest hitters would come nervously to the plate to face an angry Bob Gibson.  Some Drysdale heat to the ribs kept that batter out of the pitcher's office.  And where did the jawboning between managers and umpires go?  It was always great fun to see two paunchy guys go nose to nose and belly to belly screaming whatever it was they were screaming with the crowd in full boo, ending with the umpire heaving his fist in the air and the manager out of the game.   

     But, you do have a problem.  How are you going to deal with the guys who cheated you; who cheated us and who stole from the greats of the past?  Those guys who arrogantly thought they were bigger than the game.  They screwed up all of your record books and they did it with no regard to the forefathers they disrespected.   Barry Bonds says that when it comes to the record books and the hall of fame there are no asterisks.   Well that’s fine with me; just keep him and his injected ass-terisk out of both the books and the hall.  And while you’re at it keep the sniveler McGwire and the arrogant Clemens out too.

     There are some fans who aren’t thrilled that you’ve gone back to your old self. They liked the barrage of long range shells, travelling implausible distances, launched by chiseled fakes.  They’re bored by the bunt, the butcher boy, a drawn in outfield and the sac. fly.  My feeling is you should tell those fans that if they’re looking for an exhibition generated by muscle bound fakery there is a “sport” just for them. It’s called the WWE.  

Baseball is a game of memories. I hope those who read this will share some of their memories, either as players or as fans.