Yeah, I know the way to San Jose and it's f#@king FAR!!

~ I've been finding it hard to root for the 49ers this year.  There have been moments (in the Chiefs and Eagles games) where I found myself hoping the other team would score.

Thinking about this, I've come to the realization that this new ambivalence could be geopolitically based.  I've lived on the peninsula.  That's a red state, brothers and sisters.  Go to a basketball game at Maples sometime and look around in the non-student sections.  You'll see what I mean.

The auslander owners of the Niners abandoning our fair city but still attempting to leverage its visual and cultural cache as their franchise's identity and mystique is a grubby little ruse and adds infuriating insult to the injury.  Obviously, the Dumbarton Bridge is not the Golden Gate, we get it, but that's kind of the point, isn't it?

There is a distinct and unquestionable cultural boost to playing professional sports in San Francisco. We've seen it again and again with both the 49ers and, more recently, with the Giants. Huey Lewis and the News singing the anthem, Robin Williams, RIP, gassing up the crowd, Steve Perry hanging off a railing pantomiming "When the Lights Go Down in the CIty" and Tony Bennett describing precisely what the Niners have done with their heart as an organization are all as intimately "San Francisco", the cultural borders of which, arguably, extend through Marin Country to the north, as Rice-A-Roni and assless chaps.  SF also boasts a fan base that won't flee their seats during a close game to avoid a sunburn.

Remember when Josh Hamilton complained about all the weed he was smelling in the outfield during the Giants march to the title in the 2010 Series? Admit it, we all took that, and the championship, as a cultural victory over all Texans, but especially the followers of those demagogues of ignorance and bad pants the Bushies and Rick Perry and Ted Cruz, right?  Try bustin' out your green at Levi's Stadium sometime. Those South Bay cops don't fool around, trust me.

It's easy to blame Gavin Newsome for losing the Niners by linking the new stadium to his crack-addled scheme to turn Hunter's Point into a yuppie Shangri-La, but the truth of the matter is that the Youngstown mob either didn't have a Larry Baer figure in the mix, or didn't want one.  Had anyone with one tenth of Larry's resolve to keep the franchise in the city had any Yorky ears back then, the team would still be playing in town.

So, in the spirit of the great Mr. Baer, I've been thinking about putting together a kickstarter campaign to raise one million dollars, which would fund a committee of San Francisco civic and business leaders researching,drafting and campaigning for a bond issue to make San Francisco the second U.S. city, after Green Bay Wisconsin to own it's own NFL franchise, the profits from which, would go to making the public schoolchildren of San Francisco the best-fed, best-taught and most supported public students in the world and to guarantee that every graduate of every public high school in the city would have the tuition money she or he needed to attend college.
(see Tangelo Park, Fla.)

The team could play in ATT park or a restored Kezar (how cool would that be?) while a new stadium was built.  The numbers don't lie.  NFL franchises are one of the best investments on earth even with the expense of a stadium factored in.

 San Francisco's children would be reaping the benefits for generations to come, and any left over money could be used to address other civic issues - homelessness, mental health, affordable housing.  You know, blue state stuff.

This committee could also look into whether it's possible for the city to claw back the name and colors from the current Ohio ownership group since their move makes them the NFL franchise playing the farthest, by twenty miles, from their name city, and the only one that actually plays and practices closer to another, larger, metropolitan area.  San Jose Raiders, anyone?  Is there any doubt that Marc Davis and his kin should sell that franchise for the good of all mankind?

The Doobie Brothers, Smashmouth, Asbestos Death and, on special occasions, the fabulous Miss Dionne Warwick should be firing up the South Bay crowd on game days, not Huey and Tony and Steve.

With all due respect to the great Alfred Korzybsky, sometimes the map IS the territory.

It's Not Playing Hooky if the Giants Win

 

It’s nine o’clock on a warm, bright spring Thursday morning in Fairfax, California. The dew has already dried off the shady spots in the yard and two blue jays and a mockingbird are putting up a squawky production of West Side Story on the back patio. I’m getting ready to call my daughter’s elementary school. As she eyeballs me archly over her grapefruit, I'm thinking up an excuse.
   Last night, Lily and I watched the Cincinnati Reds beat the Giants 7-5. We’d had fun. It had been a balmy night. We caught a ball at batting practice. She made her first solo trip to the Coke bottle slide. She’s seven. I know, it sounds crazy, and I was nervous, but she was firm about it, and earlier this year she went to the hot dog stand by herself and she knows each level of the ballpark well, so I told her that if she even thought she was lost to show her ticket to an usher, wrote our sect. and row on her hand, took a deep breath, and watched her go. I thought I saw her roll her eyes as she started up the stairs.
   An inning later, she sidled down our row accepting high fives and sat down next to me with a prideful smirk. “How was it?” I asked her.
   “Fine,” she said, “Can I have a malt now?” 
   I pulled her glove out of the backpack. “In a bit. Watch the game.”
   

Taking Lily to a ballgame had once been mainly an exercise in snack management. That all changed last year during game two of the divisional series with the Mets. Literally as I watched, that October evening, my little girl became a baseball fan. Over the course of those ten innings her conversation evolved from “Where’s the cotton candy guy?” to “Oh my God Dad! How many times does Marvin Benard get to bat?” The drama of that game completely overtook her, and when J.T. Snow homered in the bottom of the ninth to tie the game, like everyone else in the park, she went completely berserk. On the way out of the park that night, she had even given me a small lecture about being too hard on Armando Rios for getting thrown out at third with two out. “He was only trying to win Dad”.
  So it was that when Eric Davis grounded to third Wednesday night to seal the Cincinnati victory, she sat down with an impressive thud and her glove over her face. “That guy is such a slow runner.”  
  We had also been at the ballpark Tuesday night to watch Sean Casey single-handedly dismantle Livan Hernandez and the Giants 9-5. That made three losses in a row for us dating back to the Mets playoff. We were beginning to feel like a jinx.

   I was finishing up my scorecard when they announced that the series ender would be played at twelve thirty-five on Thursday. “Why are they playing so early tomorrow?” Lily asked.
  “It’s getaway day
  “What’s that?”
  “That’s the day the Reds leave town. They
play the game early so they can catch an early flight.”
  “Who’s pitching?” 
  “Ortiz.”
  “Are the Giants going to win?” 
  “I don’t’ know. I hope so.” 
  “Can we go?”
  “What about school?”
  “I wanna see the Giants win.” 
  “Yeah, me too.”
  We drove quietly up Third Street to Kearny, turned left on Broadway and then traffic held us up at Columbus. Lily noticed the girls mincing around outside the Garden of Eden. “Wow dad, look at her shoes.”
  “Oh yeah.” They were eight-inch plexiglas platforms.
  “Who is she?”
  “I don’t know, honey.” 
  “Does she work there?” 
  “I guess, poor kid.” 
  “Why do you say that?” 
  “I don’t know.”
  “She looks happy, dad.”

  I dial the phone. “Brookside School.”
  “Hi Marilyn. It’s Dave Burns, Lily’s dad”

  “Hello.”
  “Lily has a dentist appointment in The City today.” If I tell the truth, the school loses funding on her for the day.
  Thirty-five minutes later we’re parking on Townsend down past the train station. I get our scooters out of the back, strap on the backpack and we’re off. We cruise to the stadium working the scalpers on each corner 'til we arrive in Willie Mays Plaza, still without tickets. There's a guy leaning on a palm tree I recognize as the partner of one of the scalpers we'd passed on the way in.  He's there buying tickets from fans who've made it all the way to the ballpark without selling and are about to go into the park, the absolute bottom of any ticket's theoretical pre-game price curve. “What’ve you got?”, I ask.
  “How many you need?”
  “Two. Good ones.”
  “I got clubs.” He means the AAA Club section. Thirty-eight bucks face value, but he paid way less. This is the second level, below the luxury boxes and broadcast booths. You get a nice perspective on the game from that level, and if you’re on the first base side (sec. 211 and up) you get that great view of the Bay Bridge and the East Bay hills.
  “What section?”
  “Two-ten, Row B.” They’re nice seats, second row right above the Visitors’ on deck circle.
  “How much?”
  “Seventy-five each”
  “I’ll give you forty.” The game Wednesday
night was the first non-sellout ever at Pac Bell. The Reds aren’t exactly tearing up the league this year, and Griffey’s on the DL.
  “Gimme a hundred and they’re yours.” I look at Lily. She looks up at me.
  “Whaddya think?” I ask her. She shrugs and looks at the guy. What a gamer she is. You really can’t coach that. “I think we’ll cruise up the street,” I offer.
  “Look, you got your little girl here and all...gimme ninety.”
  “Thanks, we’ll be back.”  Lily and I roll to the other side of the plaza. I stop and hand her seventy-five bucks. She folds it up, palms it and skates back over to the guy. As they talk, he keeps looking around for me, but I’m hiding behind the program stand. Lily’s just standing there, squinting up at the guy. He laughs and hands her the tickets. She passes him the dough and skates back over with a big smile on her little mug. 

  It’s now ten twenty-five. The gates open two hours before game time. We’ve got ten minutes. We push off for the second street gate. The line’s always shorter there.

  The average fan today thinks ticket prices have, like player salaries, spiraled out of control. In our world, two choice seats for a big league game for less than the cost of a dinner date is a sweet deal.
  The gates open and the herd heads for the ramp. I’m not sure about the design theory behind them but, essentially, the ramps are a way to make thirty thousand people walk a half-mile to go up one floor. At each switchback, you become more incredulous that you haven’t arrived anywhere yet, and there are a lot of switchbacks. Lily and I duck into the stairwell just past the turnstile, climb two flights of stairs, and we’re in the ballpark.  “Dad, where’s my glove?” I fish it out of the backpack and she’s off, running down the stairs toward the left field corner.
  That moment when you’re standing in the shadows of the arcade and first see the field is visual drama of the very best kind. I used to think it was one of those perfect things, and I guess it still is, but, when your small child comes bouncing into frame, glove held high, running down to the field to be the first one on the wall for batting practice, well, it’s even better, trust me.
  A seven-year-old girl in Gigantes swag standing alone behind the short left field sidewall in Pac Bell Park is a serious ball magnet. Our single day record is four balls. We come away from BP today with one from the Giants and one from the Reds. People are generally amazed at how many balls Lily and I get. It’s no big mystery. Anybody following a few simple rules should be able to do almost as well as we do:
1. Get there first. There’s really no substitute for good positioning when it comes to shagging batted balls, and being the first fans on the wall not only means you get the most productive spot, but also gives you a strong chance on any ball given up by a player in your area until it starts to get crowded.

2. Dress for success. Kids, especially girls, wearing team colors get most of the balls handed over by players, especially early on before the wall fills up. Once the home team finishes batting practice, there is no shame in changing into a hat or jacket featuring the visiting team’s colors and logo. A lone Padres hat in a sea of orange and black is a compelling sight for any San Diego player, and there is certainly no dishonor in, after getting a ball from an opposing player, switching your kid back into her Giants hat and giving him a “Hey Giles, PSYCH!!” That is some serious fun for the whole family.  
  Lily got her first ball from Mark Gardner of the Giants before a game when she was about 20 months old because her old man had on a worn out Giants lid at Dodger Stadium.  Gardy placed the horsehide gently in her tiny hands and when he turned back to the field, she threw it back at him.  Like I said, gamer.
3. Don’t beg. There are few things more annoying than the terrible puling racket made by kids begging and pleading for every ball hit to any player within fifty yards of them. “Over HEERE!! PLEEEEASE!! FEEEEELIX!! Hey, it just doesn’t work, ok? Lily has been handed balls by players in the middle of a bunch of screaming kids simply by keeping her mouth shut and smiling at the dude. This rule applies to parents also. I remember a guy who, after showing up well after the wall was crowded, found a place to jam his small kids, and then complained every time somebody else caught a ball around them. “Aw, give the kids a chance”, he would whine. Then, whenever anybody on the wall got a ball, he tried to get his or her spot. “C’mon, you got one, give somebody else a chance”, he’d wail. Finally, a ball came his way. He was standing up the steps a few feet and a soft liner came right at him. He totally flinched, made a short-armed flail at the ball, and one of the guys on the wall reached back and made a nice barehanded catch. “You took it right out of my glove”, the guy says.
  First of all, these kids had no business on the wall by themselves. They were like, six or seven. They had more chance of catching a ball in the eye than making any kind of play on one. Secondly, there is no rule of ballpark etiquette that says you can’t get two (or more) balls at batting practice. If you are in the park early enough to get a great spot, it’s yours. If you’re late, tough beans, better luck next time. Thirdly, make a play, meat, or pipe down.

4. Back your kid(s) up. Stay close to them, and keep your eye on the cage. A good Pac Bell rule of thumb is; if they can reach the dirt inside the wall with their feet on the ground in the stands, they’ve got a shot. Otherwise, stand next to them (preferably inside them) so you can catch or knock down any dangerous balls. Obviously this applies to the sidewalls, not necessarily the bleachers. In the bleachers, athletic ten-year-olds might be cool by themselves, but it’s really a judgement call.
  If there are two adults in your party, bracket the kids in the middle. That way, other ballhawks won’t reach in front of them. I’ve seen balls soft- tossed to little kids intercepted gleefully by reasonably well-balanced middle-agers, and since most everybody’s about six when a major league baseball’s coming at them (look at the faces sometime) it’s tough to complain about it especially if your kid’s the one who lost out. That would be whining.

  When the grounds crew starts dismantling the cage and the Reds run off the field, it’s time to eat. We walk up the aisle into the Second Street corner. Lily prefers the polish dog from Doggie Diner, with ketchup. I go for the Sheboygan Bratwurst across the hall. It comes grilled to a crisp on the same flat grill that caramelizes its kraut and onions. Truly a magnificent dog.  Alternatively, I'll go for a Cha Cha Bowl at Orlando's in the Center Field Arcade and a combination of the six or seven kinds of hot and barbecue sauces they feature, and we usually grab a mid-innings strawberry shortcake from the vendor behind home plate on the club level.
  We occasionally find empty seats close by to occupy while we eat but, usually, we eat standing up, and more often than not, walking. There is something uniquely ballpark about stuffing a huge wiener into your face while you saunter through a crowd. No one looks at you twice, and the debris falls at your feet, not in your lap.
  We walk over to the Coke machines between the kids’ Baseball Park and the slide. There, you can buy for a dollar-fifty, the sodas that cost four- fifty at the concession stands. Batting practice usually ends forty-five minutes to an hour before the game.

  Giants fans are a late-arriving crowd, but to their credit, they are not, for the most part, an early-leaving crowd like their counterparts in Los Angeles. I will never understand the urge to beat the traffic away from a stadium at the cost of missing the end of a close ballgame, especially when just sitting for ten minutes listening to Tony Bennett and watching the place empty out while your kids comb the section for cell phones and folding money accomplishes the same thing.

  But, I digress. Lily hasn’t missed a beat. She has completed her fifth or sixth trip down the slide, and now it’s time to play ball. The little park for the kids (it’s in left field next to the slide) is really cool. It’s fantasy whiffle ball like you always imagined it. After a short wait in line, Lily picks out a bat and strides to the plate. The pitcher is a lanky kid about thirteen. He’s shown good control but a limited repertoire. His only pitch is an underhand fastball, but he gets it over most of the time. Lily looks at me for a sign. I give her the “swing-away” and she steps into the box.
  The first pitch is a belt-high lob on the inside corner. Lily cranks it off the left field wall for a double. She runs through my “hold up” sign, passes the kid on third and scores standing up as there’s nobody catching at the moment. I give her a high-five and her soda, and we head for our seats. “Good job”, I say.
  “Home run”, she counters.  I put my hands on her shoulders and walk her into the stream of fans heading back toward the infield. She moves ahead of me through the thickening crowd back toward the third base sections, half skipping, half dancing, and I feel this goony smile take over my face. The goony thing about it is that I can’t seem to make it go away.
  I follow her into another empty stairway and up to the club level. The crowd seems much less interesting and San Francisco up here, but it could be me. Lily doesn’t seem to notice and as we cut in front of the broadcast booths and into the first base side of the park, I see that same goony smile on each usher she skips past.  The seats are truly great. Lily settles in finishing her dog and checking for dessert vendors and I get my folder out of the backpack and pull out a blank scorecard.

  I never kept score before Lily. She was born in Los Angeles, and before she was a year old, she had been to a dozen games at Chavez Ravine. It’s a great place to see a ballgame. You can almost always scalp very reasonable tickets right outside the park on Sunset Blvd, and the balmy summer night games there are a true treat for the senses. Also, they sing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" twice and everybody really jumps on that second chorus. Major goosebumps time.  
  I always felt like I was behind enemy lines there, but Lily was a true blue Dodger fan. She loved Mike Piazza like a big brother, up until the moment he walked right past her on picture day. Still, when they traded him to the Marlins, she was the most outraged three-year-old in Southern California.
  I never worried about the affiliation because: A.) It’s a free country. She can root for whomever she wants, and B.) A Dodger fan can always turn into a Giant fan, even if no Giant fan has or will ever become a Dodger fan.
  My scorekeeping made its initial awkward evolutions during those years in L.A. Most fans consider scorekeeping an arcane practice. “I don’t know how you do that and keep track of the game” is something I’ve heard more than a few times. Well, actually, the whole point of keeping score is to keep track of the game. Unless you’re keeping score, you probably don’t know what the current batter did last time up, or how many strikeouts the pitcher has, unless you’re wearing a headset, which is cool, I guess, but a real conversation killer.
  “You should try it with a two-year-old”, I usually say with a smirk at Lily. When she was really small, our rule was that we would sit wherever in Dodger Stadium she wanted, but we could only change three times per game, and we would always come back to the lower level by the top of the eighth. Some of my favorite memories of those years are of craning to see a TV as I carried her and our refreshments up or down a Dodger Stadium escalator and marked a scorecard with an (in memory) inexplicably free hand.
  My scoring has by now, of course, evolved to the ridiculous. Using red, blue, green yellow orange, purple and black pens I keep track of every pitch, red dots for strikes, blue for balls, gold for fouls, black lines of varying lengths according to the base thrown to for pick-off attempts. I catalog everything Lily eats, and I color in all runs scored with a the remaining colors sequentially, beginning with orange. Multiple double-switches are never a problem.

  It’s 12:15. Twenty minutes ‘til game time. We have water, sunflower seeds, which we will spend long sections of the game spitting at each other, and an Abba Zabba each. The midday sun has bleached and hardened with equal effect the East Bay hills and the vendors barking up and down the aisles. The grounds crew fastidiously connects the third base line with the batter’s box. I sideways spitrocket a sunflower shell off the brim of Lily’s hat and reach into the backpack for my pens. The fog has burned off the bay.  What a great day for a ballgame. 

Lower Yuba River Fishing Report

      I've been out on the river 6 of the last 10 evenings and it's been dry fly heaven.  The fish have been devouring Pink Lady #16's and then caddis patterns late in the dusk, and I can honestly say it has been the best sustained stretch of dry fly fishing I've ever had. Not even close really. This fish pictured is from earlier in the spring, during the spawn before daylight savings time when I was getting out more midday and swinging nymphs. I've caught bigger fish recently, but none so pretty.  The males pimp up real solid when it's time to get down. I'm out away from the banks fishing now and it's harder to take good pictures of netted fish.  Especially when you're by yourself.
     Although I'm curious, I haven't been inclined lately to get out early and swing any nymphs or soft hackles to see what's working during the day. I'm already feeling guilty about hooking so many fish in the same spot in so few days fishing just the evening hatches.  I'm going to go exploring tomorrow.  Seems like it's the boily slicks where they're spread out to feed at the moment, and that probably won't change through the summer and early fall until the Salmon come in October/November and the trout push up under the riffles to eat eggs - another great time to fish. Damn. It's a embarrassment of slimy riches up here.
    I've recently returned to Sutter County to care for my uncle, Mr. Jack Swift. Jack is a prince of a guy and was a big influence for me coming up.  Hung with The Diggers in the Haight pre-summer of love, and he and his friends were my first inkling that there was another, better, more beautiful and funny way to live than the one I was getting shoved into by my folks.  By the time I was 15, he had turned me onto Freddy King, Albert King, Taj Mahal, Otis Redding, John Coltrane, Albert Collins, Jimi Hendrix, Cream and much much more essential roots groove music while we got BAKED at his spot in Sutter, ca. 1970.
    My dad (who had some Count Basie and Ray Charles, Ella, Louis, Nancy Wilson and Stan Getz records laced in with the Streisand and Walter Wonderly, Andy Wiulliams and Tijuana Brass) thinks the weed is what made me a goofy late teen.  I think it was the 15-20 concussions I gave myself playing football.  We'll never agree, but the science is on my side. Anyway, Jack made me promise that if I came up here to look after him, I'd go fishing every chance I got. Even loaned me his 9' Powell Rod. Like I said, a prince.
   It's ridiculous to me that there is such a top flight fishery so close - 19 miles -  to where I grew up and I'm only getting to know it now, forty years later.  As teenagers, we figured it was too close to town to be any good and we'd drive by it on our way to the high country small streams.  I wouldn't trade my creek decades for anything, especially the last couple with the evil spawn girl (aka the best fishing buddy EVER!), and I've been big river scared a couple times in there, but right now I like it even better than the Pit and the McCloud and the Upper Sac when it's bangin', and those have been my favorite NorCal rivers forever.  Never been a big fan of boat fishing so, although it's unquestionably top western water, the Lower Sac never appealed to me that much.
    My routine is, I see if Lance (Uncle Jack's Aussie Shepard) wants to get in the car around 6 or 6:30, stop by Johnson's bait and tackle over on Garden Highway for leader or flies, if needed, and I'm usually hiking in by 6:30 or 7.  It's a bit of a walk to the spot, but I'm usually in the water by 7 or 7:30 and often have a fish on right away, even before I've seen any rises. By 8:45, I've been through the PED and caddis hatches and there are trout jumping all around me as I fish my way back across to the rockbar where I hit the river.
    I make long casts 45 degrees upstream and do a couple of flip mends to fix the drift until the fly starts throwing a wake and I have as much line out as I want. Then I skate the fly back toward me by raising the rod and pulling in line. I let it dead drift downstream, throwing stack mends as I watch it bounce, fly first, away from me downstream, then I raise the rod, skate it back and drift it down 3 or 4 times through different feeding lanes and then I make another long cast 45 degrees upstream, starting the whole process over.
    Most of the rises happen straight across or downstream, with many coming during the successive skates and dead drifts more or less straight downstream from wherever I'm standing.  It's a pretty simple technique once you get used to handling a as much line as you need.
    It's a big river. Often I'm surprised at how big a fish is when I get it to the net. They don't look that big when they're jumping at the end of a long line hookup in that big water.  If they look like they have any size at all when they're making their runs and jumps, you know they're in the 18 to 22 inch range.  They all fight like crazy though.  I've had 13, 14 inch fish get the really curly line off the bottom of the reel and onto the water two or three times in a couple of minutes. Chrome Dynamite is what they are, no joke, and they're all indigenous, wild fish.
   I haven't caught a hatchery fish yet, although I've heard there are some in there. There's a zero limit on the natives and the wild andronomous (seagoing) fish, so they all go right back in the river, which probably has a lot to do with why it's so good.  The smaller ones look so tasty though, it's hard not to think about eating 'em. There are got plenty of places up higher in the mountains to find pan-sized non-native species (German Browns) for the frying pan.  Hit one last weekend.  It was still high. Probably will be for another month or so. I guess that last snowstorm did more good than I heard. We're still deep in a drought though. We just had our driest winter since 1976-77!
   If the evenings stay this good down here through the summer, I'm going to have to scout out a lot of new spots to keep 'em all fresh. I figure I've hooked 40 or 50 fish in the last 10 days (6 trips) fishing for, on the average, about an hour and a half per evening.  Easily two thirds of those fish have been 14" and above.  Like I said, best dry fly action ever.
   Truth be told, though, that's probably too many. 3 nice fish broke me off tonight. On the first one I kept casting with a knot in my leader. I feel horrible about that one in particular.  The other 2 made long runs and broke off while I was giving them line.  There's a popular myth that hooks rust and fall out in a couple days. Not true. Studies have shown that even barbless hooks left in stripers took a from a week to several months to come out on their own. Sobering.  I'm switching to 4x tomorrow.