Front Runner, C'est Moi

I thought I was a sports fan, but it's become clear that I'm a front runner, aka bandwagon-jumper (on when my teams are winning, off when they're losing).

I followed the 49ers and Raiders through the 1980's and mid-90's, after which both became perennial losers (the Raiders somehow made it to the 2002 Super Bowl but were blown out 49-21 by the Buccaneers). I didn't regularly watch football again until Jim Harbaugh coached the Niners to three straight Conference championships and one Super Bowl in 2010-2014.

Klay Thompson and fan in 2014

I first went to see the Giants in the Oughts to see Barry Bonds hit home runs in the new AT&T Park. I continued to attend games during the championship runs in 2010, 2012, and 2014 but gave up on the Giants after 2016.

As the football and baseball teams faded, the Golden State Warriors picked up the slack by winning an NBA title in 2015. After losing in the 2016 finals, the Warriors astounded the basketball world by signing Kevin Durant, one of the top-three players in the NBA.

The Warriors were champions in 2017 and 2018 but this year seem to have found another gear. Their two superstars and shoo-in Hall-of-Famers, Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant, have regained their MVP-level form.

Tonight the team's third- or fourth-best player, Klay Thompson, set the record for three-point shots by making 14 in a game against the Chicago Bulls. Sports Illustrated: Klay Thompson Scores 52, and Now the Warriors’ Death Star is Fully Operational

Thompson’s 52 shows what the Warriors can do when they are singularly focused on maximizing their talent on a night-to-night basis, and not taking a long-term view about saving it for the postseason. We aren’t even two full weeks into the NBA season, and we’ve already seen top-level performances from Curry, Durant and Thompson.

The Warriors appear to be fully living up to the hype placed on them in 2016, and at a more sustained level than we’ve seen in the past, at least during the regular season, and certainly never this early. We don’t even need to discuss what that means for the rest of the league. It’s the same as what they feared the moment this team was put together.

Experience has shown that I can't be a fan the entire year; work and family (sigh) have their own demands. Thank you, Warriors,--and 49ers, Raiders, and Giants, too-- for allowing this front-runner to strike the right balance.

A Cheap Date

We attended our first game of the season on April 22nd with no enthusiasm. The Giants had suffered their fifth straight loss Thursday night and were performing poorly in all phases of the game.

Happy times often result, however, when expectations are low.

The Giants beat the Marlins, 8-1.

We joined the crowd's rousing ovation to Barry Bonds, Florida batting coach.

The predicted rain did not materialize. The night was clear and cool, perfect for baseball.

The tickets for our group cost $16 each. The low price rationalized buying $12 beer (pictured).
Yes, we're definitely a cheap date, multiple meanings intended.

Barry Bonds Day

Vaillancourt Fountain in July. The water's off in August.

On Friday the balconies were closed. It was Barry Bonds Day at Justin Herman Plaza, and building security blocked access to the stairs leading to the best vantage points. So life goes in the 9/11 world.

I joined the crowd on the square. We watched some of the most famous names in sports—Joe Montana, Michael Jordan, Willie Mays, Wayne Gretzky, and Hank Aaron—congratulate Barry Bonds on the big screen. We listened to Mayor Gavin Newsome, broadcaster Mike Krukow, and Giants players and owners pay tribute to the all-time home run leader.

When Barry Bonds rose to speak, everyone applauded warmly; his home town is one place where he is heckler-free. Gracious and funny, he seemed less guarded than usual. (See video below--sorry for the jitters, but I was zooming from a distance with the camera held over my head.)

There’s no question that Barry Bonds took anabolic steroids. ("Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”) He was the best player in baseball before other players started to use performance enhancers. They surpassed him, were not criticized but lauded, and he needed to keep up. It was not the choice that many of us would have made or would advise a young person to make, but it was understandable.

Some say that the steroid era in baseball was a sad chapter that’s now over. That belief is a delusion. We are at the dawn of the age of human enhancement, and our ethical thinking can't keep pace with developments. Doping with our own blood is frowned upon, but taking a whiff of oxygen in Denver is okay. Coffee is fine, but caffeine pills are not. Whether a son gets his baseball genes from a father or from a syringe makes a difference. Someday we will inject microscopic robots to eradicate harmful germs and even cancer cells; but what if they’re used to make us bigger, faster, stronger, and smarter? There are many questions, but few answers.

Meanwhile, in the present, a great player became Superman, and he was amazing to watch. (He was such a dangerous hitter that he was intentionally walked with the bases loaded.) His time will pass soon enough, and Friday was a time for celebration. © 2007 Stephen Yuen

An Appreciation

As Barry Bonds marches through the Boeing product line (737, 747, 757, etc.), as oceans of ink and exabytes of electrons are devoted to his achievements and controversies, as most of us form judgments about this man whom we don’t know personally, permit me to add a tiny observation. I have first-hand knowledge of a time when he quietly helped a stranger. There was no possible advantage, such as good publicity, to Barry Bonds for helping this person.

One of the most reliable indicators of a man’s character is how he behaves in situations where he believes that no one--at least no one of consequence--is watching. I wasn’t a huge fan before, but now I am. Go Barry! © 2007 Stephen Yuen

All-Star Buildup

The All-Star game is a largely meaningless event—even in the world of baseball--but this year’s confluence of past and future Hall of Famers, Barry Bonds’ pursuit of Hank Aaron’s lifetime homerun record, and the scenic showcase that is AT&T Park makes San Francisco the center of the sports universe at least for a day. (The insatiable media maw needs something to cover between Wimbledon and the British Open.)

Where there are eyeballs there are corporate sponsors, so one may as well accept the hoopla, walk around, and collect lots of free stuff. Justin Herman Plaza was taken over by AT&T on Friday. Booths advertising wireless broadband were interspersed among batting cages, speed guns, and hot dogs. Strangely, there were no iPhones (have you heard about this new product?). I snagged some free chocolate candy and health drinks. It doesn’t get any better.

No booth babes here, just leotard-clad yoga practitioners.

Too Easy

On Wednesday we closed the office at noon. Garbed in caps and T-shirts and slathered with lotion, we ambled to AT&T Park to watch the Giants take on the Toronto Blue Jays.


Office workers heaped plates with hotdogs and salad, and, in the spirit of the old ballgame, peanuts and cracker jacks. One of my lunch companions, a Vice President of Marketing, handed me her crackerjack prize, a colorful sticker: “Here, something to put on your pencil.” She was trying to goad me into saying something untoward, and in my less disciplined youth I might have responded. But I had to maintain my dignity in the presence of younger ears, so I just smiled blankly.


The temperature had climbed to 90 degrees when Giants rookie Tim Lincecum threw the first pitch. We vacated our seats and moved to the top rows where the awnings furnished cover. Beers and bottled water cooled us temporarily, but misery reasserted itself when Lincecum was bombed for seven runs and didn’t make it past the fifth inning. Most of my co-workers gave up and left early, chased away by the heat and the Giants’ desultory performance. Only six stalwarts (out of over 100) remained to witness the last out.

I stuck it out to the end because a) I hadn’t talked to the other five much this year and enjoyed the opportunity to chat; b) I always feel guilty when leaving early from "work"; c) the game is not over till the last out, and one never knows (the Giants scratched their way back to respectability and finally fell 7-4); and d) I had no plans to see any more games this year and decided to enjoy the ballpark’s ambience.

No joy: mighty Barry strikes out to end the game.

It was another day in the beautiful city and too easy to take for granted:

Because we don't know when we will die,
we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well.
Yet everything happens only
a certain number of times,
and a very small number really.
How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood,
some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive
of your life without it.
Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that.
How many more times will you watch the full moon rise?
Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.

--Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

© 2007 Stephen Yuen

The 700 Club

After a busy week in the office I headed to SBC Park last night to watch the Giants beat the Padres. But the big event was Barry Bonds' 700th career home run. This one, unlike one of his typical blasts to right field into the water, narrowly cleared the fence in left field. The crowd hesitated briefly, then rose to its feet as realization of his deed crystallized. We applauded as the fireworks exploded.

I was there when it happened---another story with which to bore the boys at the nursing home a few years from now.

Giant Hesitation

A statue of Willie Mays greets the fans at the entrance to SBC Park.

The local preacher likes to organize outings to Giants baseball games, and so it was that I found myself in the left-field bleachers of SBC (formerly Pac Bell) park last Friday night. Despite the poor vantage from the cheap seats ($21), we did get a good look at Barry Bonds, who is by consensus one of the three or four greatest players who ever lived. Although number 25 didn’t do anything notable that night, at least someday I’ll be able to tell my grandchildren and the other guys at the rest home that I saw him play.


Number 25 did not get a hit today, though the Giants scored 12 runs.

The Giants were hosting the World Champion Florida Marlins and started the game in a fashion that reminded me of the Giants in the 70’s and early 80’s. The Marlins had the bases loaded with two out in the top of the first inning. A high fly ball was launched to right-center field, but the outfielders miscommunicated, and the ball was dropped. Because everyone was running on two outs, three runs scored easily. Somehow the scorer perceived a windblown double while everyone else in the Park saw an error, but in any case the damage was done. Hope flickered as the Giants rallied in the bottom of the first and trailed only 4 – 2.

The youngster and I got up to buy hot dogs. As we stood in line, we watched on the monitors as the Marlins used the Giants pitchers for batting practice. It was 9 – 2 as we returned to our seats $28 poorer (two hot dogs, sodas, and fried calamari for a certain high-maintenance individual seated next to me and the kid), but who’s counting when we’re having so much fun. Incredibly, the Giants rallied to tie the score 9 – 9 at the bottom of the second, the big blow was a grand slam home run by Brian Dallimore, the rookie third baseman. The grandslam was Dallimore’s first major league hit, a feat matched by only four other players, including Barry Bonds’ father, the late Bobby Bonds.


The score is 9 - 9 at the bottom of the 2nd inning.

The game settled down, and the Giants came away with a 12 – 9 victory. During the course of the evening, and despite the game’s excitement, I soured on the SBC experience: 1) the wind blew right through my light jacket, and the sub-50 temperatures seemed to double the pressure on my bladder—memories of frigid Candlestick Park arose involuntarily; 2) the lines to the men’s restroom were at least 30-deep before one even got to the entrance (I can’t imagine how women endure their circumstances); 3) the price of food and drink is beyond outrageous.

The preacher is talking about seeing a couple of more games this year. The youngster’s pleading eyes light up. I’ll get back to them when it’s warmer. © 2004 Stephen Yuen