Tag Archives: Giants

Growing up watching a legend – Say Hey & The Freak

22 Tuesday Jun 2010

Posted by in Route 53 - Celebrity Sightings, San Francisco - Leaving your heart

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Baseball in San Francisco enjoys a rich history although not one of success with no World Series victories to call its own. 52 years of baseball in San Francisco and while there have been many faces of the franchise, there is no doubt that Mays, Bonds and now Lincecum for the forseeable future will be the legacy names depending upon the generation you call yours.  

Mays and Lincecum

I think the Barry Bonds era is officially over.  He’s pretty much forgotten as Tim (“The Freak”)  Lincecum has captured the imagination and how holds the torch for the San Francisco baseball community.  And while many not have lived long enough to know it, while Barry was so long the face of the community, he really didn’t capture the imagination of San Francisco as much as Willie (“The Say Hey Kid”) Mays and Tim Lincecum have done.  He stood on a pedastal while Willie and Tim have personalities that reflect the San Francisco of their times.  Although I was only 5 years old when Willie Mays handed me his autographed baseball while I handed him some steaks as we stood in the freezer of my grandfather’s butcher shop, I remember it like it was yesterday.

Willie moved to San Francisco and the City was electrified by this young “African-American” who had enthusisam and personality that transcended racial barriers.  Willie Mays, along  with my  grandfather, a Chinese butcher, who through some luck had come into some money were still in a racially divided society despite the liberalness of San Francisco in the early ’60s.  My grandfather, was unable to purchase a home outside of the Chinatown community.   My grandfather had earned some money from the sale of his butcher shop to the City of San Francisco so they could build what would eventually become the current Moscone Convention Center. 

At the same time Willie Mays was refuted the ability to purchase a home and later chased out of his neighborhood.  Then mayor, George Christopher, a  Greek man who embraced civil rights, took both men in at separate times and they became friends.   My grandfather was eventually introduced by the mayor to another Greek man, John Vrahos, who helped my grandfather to become one of the first Asian homeowners in the ritzy suburb of Menlo Park which ironically today is heavily populated by the Asian community despite small print on most land deeds which still state that the property should not be sold to a person of color.  

Although my grandfather died almost a decade ago, when I see Willie Mays today, he still greets me and calls me “Phil’s grandson”.  I never got to ask my grandfather but in many ways I feel like Willie might have been his first black acquaintance and the for Willie, my grandfather might have been his first Asian acquaintance.

Tonight I watched my son sit mesmerized in front of the television as he watched Tim Lincecum mow down the Houston Astros.  Lincecum’s long hair is being copied by children all over San Francisco’s Little League fields such that you can barely tell the boys from the girls.  More importantly he is relating to a new generation of fans.  Walking his dog around the city with his girlfriend, Lincecum looks like any 20-something on the street.  His dimunitive size for a baseball player allows him to mesh in with the tourists and not call much attention to himself.

What is happening in San Francisco with Lincecum is truly unique.  Mays is undoubtedly the best player that ever played the game and those who grewup watching him were lucky.  With 2 Cy Youngs in his first 3 years, Lincecum is definitely one of the brightest stars in the game and I hope my child will some day look back and see how lucky he was to have grown up a Giants fan idolizing a future Hall of Famer.

Making the Most of Second Chances

11 Saturday Jul 2009

Posted by in Breast Cancer - A Loving Fight, Route 53 - Life is A Highway

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“When you get a second chance you never look back” – Sigfredo Sanchez, the father of San Francisco Giants pitcher, Jonathan Sanchez moments after his son pitched a no hitter

Giants pitcher Jonathan Sanchez hugs his father after pitching a no-hitter

Giants pitcher Jonathan Sanchez hugs his father after pitching a no-hitter

  …..this isn’t about a basebll no-hitter tonight.  It is about a man, a pitcher, his father, and second chances.  It is about taking a step back to take a giant leap forward.

  We all hear of stories of second chances.  Right now, for example, Lance Armstrong is coming back from his second retirement to race in the grueling Tour de France to help bring awareness to cancer.   We see how adversity has made him stronger not only physcially, but mentally.

  Tonight history was made for the San Francisco Giants as Jonathan Sanchez pitched a no-hitter.  As any sports fan can attest when something happens for the team or teams they root for, they will always remember what they were doing.  In fact tonight was the first time a Giants pitcher had pitched a no hitter in San Francisco in 34 years.  On that day my father took me and some friends to a double header where I saw Ed “Ho-Ho” Halicki pitch a no-hitter against the Mets at Candlestick Park.  As I watched tonight’s game, I started thinking about that day with my dad. 

  It was an incredible twist of fate for Sanchez.  He was out of the Giants rotation and was in the doghouse.  The newspapers were talking about him being traded.  In fact things got so bad that no other teams were willing to trade for him.  Now after this evening he is untradeable.    How unpredictable was this?  Only the fact that former Cy Young winner, Randy Johnson, got injured was Sanchez pitching tonight.  The accomplishment was even more surprising given that the Giant’s starting pitching rotation consists of 3 Cy Young winners (Lincecum, Johnson and Zito) and a 4th pitcher who some argue has pitched better than them all (Matt Cain).  Sanchez was the forgotten one.  He was down on himself, kicked out of the rotation and replaced by a 28 year old rookie.  So down was he that his father flew in from Puerto Rico just to give his son some support.  It was the first time he had ever seen his son start a Major League Game in his 5 big league seasons.  The personal story of Jonathan and his dad played out perfectly.  His father fought back his tears as the embraced in the dugout and he told his son the words at the top of this entry.  Fate also brought him together with his rookie catcher for the evening, Eli Whiteside, also a great story.  The Giants regular catcher was at the hospital with his wife who is expecting, and was told only hours before the game that he would be catching.  So it was by chance that this unlikely duo were thrust upon the scene and they will forever be linked.  Jonathan Sanchez’s name will go up on a wall in Cooperstown, as the 262nd no-hitter in history.

  His father is right, second chances are something we all don’t get much of, but when we do, we need to take advantage of them.  Listening to the announcers, Sanchez had consulted for many days with anyone who would listen and worked countless hours on his own to fix his delivery and most of all learn to keep his head in the game.  He had some good help.  Randy Johnson, pitching coaches, Dave Righetti and assistant pitching coach Mark Gardner had all pitched no-hitters before and given him the mental knowledge.  Not only had Sanchez never pitched a major league no hitter before, he had never pitched a complete game or a shutout, never having completed eight innings in a big league game.  He got to uncharted waters and finished it. 

  Back in our daily lives my wife and I sat there and watched the story unfold and talked about how special this evening was for this young man and how his perseverance was something to learn from.  When my mother-in-law called the other day, we thought she was calling to wish us a Happy 15th anniversary, she was calling  to tell us my father in law is in the hospital fighting an infection with a 102 degree fever.   Along with a couple of parents around us dying of cancer, it served a reminder that we are in our second chance right now with recovery from my wife’s cancer.    In fact we need to come out better than before.  Those with adversity like Jonathan Sanchez and Lance Armstrong seemed stronger because of the level of “fight” they needed in ther bodies.  So this week we will be celebrating our second chance with a delayed anniversary celebration.

  They say that true sports fans root for the laundry and not for the players themselves.  I truly do root for the players.  I root for their stories of how they came to be.  I root for the human spirit within us all and the events which make that spirit in each one of us burn brighter than before.  Jonathan Sanchez represents all that is right.  Their individual stories are inspiring in themselves.  As my wife saw the events unfold and heard the announcers provide color to the story she started rooting for “Johnny” Sanchez.  She wanted his second chance to be successful and I saw she was also rooting for the human spirit.    Sanchez , as you might hear Randy Johnson tell you, has just as much talent as anyone on the team which says a lot.   

  Congratulations to Johnny Sanchez and all the people out there who have had a second chance.  They say no-hitters are great timing, great talent, and a little good luck.  Well, I think sometimes you have to make your own luck and you have to put yourself in the situation to have good luck.   It reminds me of the quote from one of my favorite actors, Gene Hackman, from the movie, “The Replacements” : ” I look at you and I see two men: the man you are and the man you oughtta be. Someday those two men will meet”.  Tonight, they met for Jonathan Sanchez.

Opening Day – A Field of Memories

08 Wednesday Apr 2009

Posted by in Breast Cancer - A Loving Fight, Route 53 - Life is A Highway

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I love Opening Day. …It’s just a special day in our American culture. It’s weaved into the fabric of what we are, and I think it’s a great day. – Padres manager Bud Black

Opening Day 2009

Opening Day 2009

I’m not a poet so maybe I never understood TS Eliot’s poem, The Wasteland, when he says that April is the cruelest month.  It has always been one of the liveliest months for me.

Yesterday was Opening Day in San Francisco.  San Francisco is not a sports crazy town and I didn’t grow up in a family where baseball and professional sports were considered anything but one of the many choices of entertainment.  That said, I cherished those days when I got to go see a baseball game, a football game, etc.  Moreso, I really enjoyed sharing the time and history with those I love.  I remember the many games I saw at Candlestick Park with my dad (mostly football games during the 49er dynasty).  In fact I remember having to look through binoculars to see everything and that is how my dad noticed I needed glasses.

They say Football is America’s Passion and Baseball is America’s Pasttime.  I don’t know if my dad knew that those moments he spent with me on those cold windy nights (at the ‘Stick) were making such an impression on me.  They were times where I sat there with my dad and talked between pitches and your dad casually passed on his knowledge of baseball and life in general (along with the hot dog, peanuts, popcorn and watered down hot chocolate).  I don’t remember what we talked about, but it was about laughing and cheering for a cause and just sitting next to each other shelling peanuts for 3 hours.  Going to those games with my dad stopped in my teens as my dad spent more time working to pay for our education and to enjoy his time on the golf course.  Maybe he didn’t enjoy it as a dad, or life did get that busy.

When I got older and San Francisco opened what is now called “AT&T Park” (formerly Pac Bell and SBC and more affectionately, “the Phone Booth”) , I bought a couple tickets and was able to share “Opening Day”.  I think it was the 2 years I spent in Chicago where the nostalgia really started coming to me and made me not just love the game on the field but everything that surrounds it.  As I mentioned in a previous entry, I had the chance to take my dad to Wrigley Field to watch the Cubs on a warm Summer day, share in a Giants victory, and help the Cubs fans drown their sorrow at Murphy’s Bleachers in a plastic cup of Old Style before showing my dad some of the better watering holes and blues clubs that Chicago had to offer.  Although by this time I was well into my 20s, it was the first time I felt like I was able to relate to my dad on an adult to adult relationship.  I was well free of his financial backing, we talked about my pending marriage, my future, our family, and of course baseball.  It was the beginning of a new course in our relationship , the adult-adult rather than the parent-child relationship, and from there I knew that baseball was more than just a game for me.

I have to give credit to the minister who did my pre-marital testing with the recommendations for the adult-adult relationship suggestion.  He was very adamant that my wife start establishing that relationship with her parents as he could see that it would be a harder struggle for them to “let go”. Truth is, that it is harder to gain that respect of a parent.  15 years later, my wife still goes through that struggle.  Ironically, yesterday my wife was handed a book by a family friend who heard about my wife’s illness.  It is amazing how the “sisterhood” finds each other.  The book is called “The Middle Place”.  more appropriately it talks about the sandwich generation we are in where we are now adults looking after our sick parents, our children and ourselves and the author comes to realize she is no longer her dad’s little girl as she deals with her diagnosis of breast cancer.  My wife read the cover and said she wasn’t sure if she could read it and I offered to read it for her, but told her it is something she will have to read because she needs this example.  Another example of an adult-adult relationship – and defintiely very relevant.  I know my wife doesn’t want to listen to me about this subject so I’ll sit tight.

Back to the subject of Opening Day, since the park had opened in 2000 I have been able to share the festivities with some of  the more important people in my life on a one-on one basis (My dad, my mom, my brother, my wife, my best friend, my daughter, and my son).  There is nothing like it.  The pomp and circumstance, the hopes, the memories, the patriotism can be quite overwhelming. So on this Opening Day, it was a little different as I missed it for the first time in 9 years, as I listened in my office. My office though is located only blocks from the ballpark so at lunch I wandered over, grabbed a hot dog and a soda and watched through the “Archways” in right field.  A great feature of the park is that for FREE you can watch the game from behind the righfielder.  It is the best way to catch a Big League Opening Day in this economy.  I stared across the way between  innings to where I shared so many memories with my dad and others I’ve attended games with.  Its not just the Opening Days but the hundreds of other games and conversations.

The walk back to my office was one of solitude.  I had gotten my fill (yes the Giants won), but more importantly I had taken the people I cared for ( not physically) to the game with me and I shared those conversations again.  It hadn’t been my intention to reminisce, but it just happened in the moment.  Perhaps it was the text I got on the way to the game  from my mom about her friend, “Mrs. E”, who had passed.   “Mrs. E” had her own connection to me with baseball.  Back in high school she picked me, this gawky geeky kid to entertain her granddaughter who was visiting from Kansas.  She told me not to do anything “romantic” and that the girl’s dad was the police chief in their small town.  Well 9 innings later we were dating and I was scared sh–less about the midwestern Sheriff who was going to kill me for corrupting his daughter.  Truth be told I think she corrupted me but I can’t remember.  What I do remember though is telling her about the art of hitting a baseball and showing her the smooth swing of Will Clark as she grabbed and held my hand.  Amazingly she got what I was saying, or at least she pretended to. From there I knew I had to marry a girl who could hang with me at a baseball game.

Yes baseball and life have a fabric that is woven tightly in the American hearts of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, and friends.  I grew up on baseball and baseball grew up in me.  While a full-blown adult, I can still go to the game like a kid and imagine I’m there with my dad or sit with my son next to me and my daughter on my lap and teach them about how to appreciate the game of baseball (because it is about appreciating life as well).

Hope Springs Eternal

27 Friday Feb 2009

Posted by in Route 53 - Life is A Highway

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I love the mornings! I clap my hands every morning and say, ‘This is gonna be a great day!’  – Dicky Fox from the movie, “Jerry Maguire”

I don’t know what it is about Spring.  Maybe it’s the first glorious sunny day after day after day of rain a nd cold nights.  Sometimes it isn’t even the sun.  For me, I turned on my radio and hurt the soft and velvety voice of Jon Miller, the voice of the San Francisco Giants.  Yes, Spring Training Baseball!  When I hear his voice I can feel the armth of Phoenix coming from the radio and just hearing the simle crack of the bat and oohs and ahhs from the crowd put me in a whole different world.  Growing up in San Francisco it used to be the grand fatherly tenor voice of Lon Simmons but Jon Miller has effectively taken over.

I listened to a casual baseball game on the internet as I worked yesterday.  The score didn’t matter, but the chatter amongst the announcers about the weather, what they did in the off season somehow entertained me as I flew through my work and long after the game was over I found myself smiling as I completed task after task.  It is a funny thing what the mind does when things seem bright and cheery!  Every Spring people want to throw things out, put things behind them and just bloom like a new flower.  I can’t say that I’m any different this year.

Baseball is America’s Past-time and many say it mirrors life more than any other sport.  Everyone shows up in Arizona and Florida in the Spring with high expectations and hopes, but come Winter, only a few really stand tall.  And then again each Spring it starts all over again.  There has been history and pageantry and many children remember sitting there ata game with their parent in the warmer summer sun eating hot dogs and drinking soda while watching their heroes (Giants) battle their enemies (Dodgers).  If you are lucky like me, you get to live your life near great men such as Willie Mays who as a black man in the 50s became friends with my Asian grandfather  and the two of them would talk about being minorities in San Francisco.  I still have my Willie Mays autographed baseball that he signed for me in the freezer of my granfather’s butcher shop and remember my grandfather with his hand on my shoulder saying how I just met a man with a strong internal fortitude that you will never see because of his pleasant exterior. 

My grandfather was a tough man and not very nurturing (hard to do with 7 children, my mom being his only daughter).  My own father tried his best to give his children all that he didn’t have.  And he did.  Baseball games, Foot ball games, Basketball games and just walks around the golf course to hit balls at the driving range are such vivid and pleasant memories.  I cherish them and try to live them with my own children so that they will feel that same passion about those times when they are my age.  I can remember every great sporting event I’ve been to and mostly remember those times with my father.  I only wish he were still here today to enjoy them with me and my son.

My good friend, Dave, and I both talk about how we miss doing things with our dads and have told each other about those things we just “have to do” with our children some day.  One of those things is to take our kids to Wrigley Field and watch a baseball game from the bleachers (that is where the sun is).  We promised each other that if anything were to happen to us before we had the chance, we’d take the other person’s kids to Wrigley Field for a baseball game. 

When I attended business school in Chicago, I took many night classes so I could attend games during the days.  The friendly people and history around that park is great and a reflection of how baseball meets life.  I love the Chicago Cubs and more importantly I love their fans.  They are a group of people who follow their team despite 100s of years of despair.   In a tough way, I hope they never win.  They are truly “Loveable Losers” , but that is their mystique.  You don’t have to win to be loved.  You don’t always have to be the best.  You just have to be real and people will feel for you.

One year I invited my dad out to watch a game with me.  The Giants were in town to play the Cubs.  It was Randy Myers poster day and we had the pleasure of sitting a few rows in front of Ronnie Woo Woo.  If you don’t know who he is, you need to get to Wrigley while he is alive.  no experience is complete for any baseball fan unless you’ve heard Ronnie.  My dad was totally amused by Ronnie and the whole “Left Field, Right Field” chants.  The Giants were losing 1-0 all day and in the 9th inning Randy Myers came in to save the game, which he promptly blew.  Instantaneoudly 20,000 posters went flying onto the field from frustrated fans only they weren’t booing but laughing.  I only wish I had had a camera that day to show the laughter on my dad’s face as he threw his poster at the right fielder.  The table had turned, I was taking my dad to a game and giving him great memories.

My wife is giving me a kiss right now as she sends me off for a weekend of memories.  Tonight I will be heading out for my annual weekend of golf and Spring Training in Arizona.  Little sleep will be had, much red meat will be eaten, but most importanly hope will be renewed and smiles will be abundant.