As I embark on my Blogging journey, I wouldn't be a loyal Bay Area sports fan if I didn't use one of my first Blogs to acknowledge the awesome 2010 World Series victory of the San Francisco Giants. Congratulations to all the players, coaches, owners, and fans. Since I have never been much attracted to baseball as an observer, I'm not exactly sure how to blog about it with any enthusiasm. The last time I remember watching an entire game of live baseball, I was sitting in Seals Stadium at 16th and Bryant Street watching the San Francisco Seals, winners of the 1957 PCL Championship. The manager was Lefty O'Doul, and the only player I still remember is Ken Aspermonte, a name that sounds to me like an Italian Village. The next year the Giants arrived and minor league ball came to an end. I did my best to be a fan of the Giants. With players such as Willy Mays and McCovey on your home team, it seemed sacrilegious not to be. How can you not be a fan of the great American pastime? My friend Bill King, the voice of the A's, used to ask. I treated the question as rhetorical since he asked me every time I turned down his offers to give me free tickets. It's not that I don't admire the game of baseball or the talent it takes to play it, or the subtleties of the sport. It's all the down-time that drives me crazy. My personality is far too hyper for baseball. I tried pitching in high school, one of two positions in the game that were constantly in motion, the other being catcher, but I was so wild, the Lowell High baseball coach, worrying about the kind of injuries I might inflict on his players, (not to mention opposing batters), recommended I stick to basketball. I gladly followed his advice. My rejection of baseball continued to befuddle Bill King, at one time the voice of all three major league sports in the Bay Area (in the same year) who insisted that baseball was the most exciting and intellectually stimulating. He always believed me to be an intelligent man, but this was a flaw in my character that made him wonder if he was mistaken about me. (By the way, how come Bill "Holy Toledo" King is not in the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame?). Dear Bill, how I miss him. How he tried to make a baseball fan of me, to his utter frustration. Wherever your spirit now resides, this blog is for you, Bill. But the sports poem of the day is for Tim Lincecum, whom I have to admit, I actually turned on the TV to watch him pitch.
Pitcher by Robert Francis
His art is eccentricity, his aim
How not to hit the mark he seems to aim at.
His passion how to avoid the obvious,
His technique how to vary the avoidance.
The others throw to be comprehended. He
Throws to be a moment misunderstood.
Yet not too much. Not errant, arrant, wild,
But every seeming aberration willed.
Not to, yet still, still to communicate,
Making the batter understand too late.
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