But the national sport of New Zealand is rugby, and the Super Bowl is not an event that many locals make bowls of guacamole and invite friends over for. It sounds like football fans in Kiwi land could be hard-pressed to find venues showing the match. In the seaside town of Kaikoura, one bartender told me he didn’t air the game and said I probably was the only person in town looking to watch the Super Bowl. The bar manager at Strawberry Tree, a worn and salty old watering hole on Kaikoura’s main and only drag, said that American football is too slow-paced to watch on TV.

“Rugby is 80 minutes nonstop,” said Stephen Horton, who also plays lock and open-side on Kaikoura’s regional team. “And in football, you have two lines of players that switch at every play, right?”

Right — defense and offense. So, what are you saying, I asked Stephen — that football players are padded, coddled softies? Do you think they’re less durable than rugby players?

“Oh, yeah!” he laughed. “Those guys wouldn’t last 80 minutes in a rugby match!”

Andrew and I raised our beers to that, noting to Stephen that the big-bellied beasts called linemen who may, by some stroke of chance, find the ball in their hands and run it in for an 80-yard touchdown can require oxygen masks in order to recover. This got Stephen and another Kiwi at the bar laughing — and certainly didn’t win toughness points for American footballers.

And so our conversation quickly took the form of one of the endless topics in sports talk: Are rugby players as tough as football players? Consider this quote I found recently on an online discussion: “NFL players are bigger, stonger (sic), faster. Almost all of them have college educations. The average NFL player could pick up the average Super 14 player, turn him upside down, and shake him like a piggy bank.”

But Stephen, like many New Zealanders, feels otherwise. “I definitely think rugby is harder,” he said, “but football looks more fun. You wear all that padding and can hit each other as hard as you want. You get hurt in rugby. I’ve had three broken collar bones and been knocked out three times.”

Rugby players are trained gentlemen, too. In New Zealand, they start playing at as young as four years of age, and even in adult leagues, swearing is forbidden during practice and “joking around,” Stephen explained, is curtailed by the coaches. Nor do players perform sometimes classless celebrations after scores or victories, as we see in the NFL.

Later in the week, in Blenheim, I stopped at the Moa Brewing Company for a beer — and to egg on more conversation. Here I met Michael Miller, an American living in New Zealand and working with the brewery. In eight months here Michael has picked up on the subtleties of rugby that American football lacks. “I don’t mean to be derogatory toward anyone, but rugby is more intellectual,” he said, explaining that, since they lack protective gear, the players must combat each other with exceptional technique. He likens the sport to “guerrilla warfare,” whereas the face-off-and-charge approach of the NFL is more “like Civil War” battle style. “Rugby can also be quite brutal,” Michael said, “but it’s also more beautiful and elegant.” He noted that rugby players must be skilled in tackling, running and handling the ball — all aspects of the game — whereas football players are specialized to certain techniques, making them less rounded as tactical athletes.

Having seen both games up close, Michael also feels that American football, much more than rugby, “has been evolved for commercialization and television.” Which explains the three-hour games, endless breaks and timeouts and the huge advertising campaigns that climax on Super Bowl day.

Congratulations to Coach John Toohey and his team. They finished second in the league standings by a heartbeat to a fine Point Arena team. The highest awards went to the champs, the fog eaters. MVP Defense: linebacker Dylan Johnson; MVP Offense: running back Harlan Bailey.

Coach Toohey’s Panther team had the best passing attack I have seen in the league in a long time. Mezzanatto was an excellent passer and all ‘round quarterback, but the top players are all “saying goodbye” senior players.

But, Pop Warner Coach Tony Pardini is doing a fine job coaching the local Pop Warner kids. He not only teaches his new players the basics of playing football, but also to enjoy the game, so it will be fun to see the Panthers in the 2012 Season.

NFL 49ers & MVP Awards. 

SF 49er’s Head Coach Jim Harbaugh won the Coach of the Year in his first season in the NFL. Quarterback Alex Smith accepted the award for him February 4th in Indianapolis and said in part, “Coach would say he doesn’t deserve this award. But, I have had one or two of them (coaches) and I can tell you he does deserve it” — to applause and knowing laughter in the audience.

Harbaugh clearly deserved the award. He turned a dispirited team that lacked confidence into the fastest all ‘round team in the NFL with the best defense and the finest special teams in pro football. Plus, they are young and will become younger still in the upcoming draft of college players. I hope they draft a top wide receiver and also bring in a wide receiver as a free agent.

The NFL is no longer loaded with super teams. They are all flawed. Witness the Sunday Super Bowl game won by the New York Giants over the New England Patriots 21-17.

It was a good game, but, both teams were very vulnerable in the defensive backfield and in tackling.

Aaron Rogers, quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, won the MVP of the NFL. Rogers is from Chico, California, and went to the NFL after playing quarterback at Cal Berkeley.

Added note: I am old enough to recall when the late Al Davis of the Oakland Raiders was great. Now, I believe that his son Mark Davis will give Raider fans hope because he hired Reggie Mackenzie from the Packers to run the on-field play and player acquisitions for the Raiders.

Kyle Williams and Michael Crabtree of the 49ers were horrid in the win over the New Orleans Saints in the first playoff win. The 49ers won despite their bad play when those receivers were the focal point of the play. Kyle Williams fumbled a surprise end around play behind the line of scrimmage because he was looking for a place to run rather than catching the lateral from Smith and then finding a gap to run through, while Michael Crabtree dropped the first three balls when the football was passed to him for easy receptions. Clearly, the moment was too big for them to be competent. Yet, both of them blocked well in the game.

In the NFC Championship game Michael Crabtree had one reception on a third down and five yards to go for a first down. Crabtree went three yards and turned for the reception and was tackled two yards short of the first down marker. Crabtree was given a big cushion by his defender so he could have gone the full five yards before he turned for the reception to make the first down.

Kyle Williams, of course, muffed a punt in which the football bounced into his knee. Rather than trying to recover the muffed punt, he pretended not to realize the football touched his knee. And, later in overtime, Williams was stripped of a punt reception deep into Giant’s territory. The Giants kicked an easy 31 yard field goal to win the game 20-17.

The 49ers were better than the Giants in every aspect of a football team except wide receiver and quarterback. If Smith were throwing to Giant wide-outs Hakeem Nicks and Victor Cruz, and Manning was throwing to Williams and Crabtree, the team with Nicks and Hernandez would have won.

The 49ers’ spirit, camaraderie and effort was beautiful this season. Defensive end Justin Smith, at 34, had an engine that never stopped. Ray McDonald at the other defensive end got stronger as the season went on. At nose guard, Isaac Sopoaga made us forget about the release of Aubrayo Franklin.

At linebacker, Patrick Willis and second year linebacker Navarro Bowman helped to form the fastest and toughest linebacking crew in the NFL.

Strong Safety Whitner teamed with Free Safety Dashon Goldson to form a tough. sure tackling duo. Carlos Rogers was a good cornerback during the regular season. But they could use more depth at cornerback.

The Offensive line was beautiful all season. Frank Gore started slow but picked up steam in the last half of the season. Gore is a quiet, strong leader on the team. And, over the years, Alex Smith has gotten some “gravel in his gizzard” and is a leader too.

Smith’s quarterback rating when throwing to Vernon Davis is a huge l51%. Vernon’s talent is undeniable but his personality is too erratic to be a true leader.

The 49er coaching staff led by Jim Harbaugh was excellent.

I could nitpick about their play selection in overtime when they got the ball on the 49ers’ end of the gridiron. I thought they would work their way down the field and use a pass at an unexpected time. But, they threw long bombs to Vernon Davis and the Giants were all over him.

Still, this season’s surge deep into the playoffs was a success for this team. They now need to get a fast, sure-handed receiver in the draft or via a trade and add depth at key positions.

And, remember Ted Guinn is always going to be injured. They should use first-year running back Michael Hunter (a real talent) as the punt returner.

I am looking forward to the NFL draft of college players this April. Remember that next year’s USC Trojans will be the #1 college team in the football rankings at the end of next season’s bowl games.

Still, what sweet redemption for the 49ers and particularly Alex Smith, the beleaguered 49er quarterback. Jim Harbaugh, a 15-year NFL quarterback who played for four NFL teams, then won two championships coaching San Diego State and moved on to Stanford propelling that fine University’s football program to national recognition.

Now, Coach Harbaugh and his staff have made the 49ers into a fine team with playoff expectations in future years, always in the Superbowl hunt.

The 49ers needed a head coach with compassion and emotional intelligence to get rid of the smell of coaches Mike Nolan and Mike Singletary who always deflected blame for their own failures onto the team or QB Smith.

I was really happy that Alex Smith stayed with the 49ers so he could play for coaches who would give him intelligent offensive schemes and treat him fairly. Coach Harbaugh gave Smith a fair shot at winning NFL football games and didn’t massacre him publicly if the team lost. To me, in prior years, it was like Alex Smith was a rookie rather than a six year pro. He will only be 28 years old next season, so he has at least five or six prime years left in his body. But he has to learn when to get out of the pocket and run for yardage rather than allowing himself to drown beneath the up-the-middle pass rush.

Smith threw the football well in the first game against the Giants in the tenth week of the season in a 27-20 win in San Francisco last year. And he threw freely with a pronated wrist and a flick to spiral that pigskin where he wanted it to go.

In the playoff game against the New Orleans Saints the 49er coaches and Smith were at the top of their games. The team was at third down and eight years to go for a must have drive. Offensive coordinator Greg Roman believed that Smith should run the ball on a naked roll-out. Harbaugh was unsure but Smith talked him into the important call. Harbaugh listened to his quarterback and okayed the play call. Smith ran for 28 yards and a touchdown behind beautiful cut blocks by slot receiver Kyle Williams and left tackle Joe Staley.

Soon after that running touchdown by Smith he threw a long and spot-on touchdown pass to Vernon Davis, taking the team to last Sunday’s NFC championship game with the winning New York Giants.

Aldon Smith, the 49ers extraordinary pass rusher, was a great pick out of the 2011 draft. Donte Whitner was also a great acquisition. Justin Smith and Navarro Bowman were great all year, as were Patrick Willis and Frank Gore who have been great players for years.

To have a Superbowl team next year, the 49ers need an excellent wide receiver who is fast and has good hands with acute moves to get clear of defenders for long yardage gains. Their current wide receiver Crabtree is a position receiver who has disappointed in the playoffs.

But like San Francisco’s baseball Giants of two seasons ago, the 49ers made me wish the next season would hurry up and start. This year’s 49ers made me hope that the 2012 regular season would start quickly because the team and their audience know their coaching staff will give them a real opportunity to win.

A cold rain had begun to fall when Boonville won the toss and elected to receive to begin the 2pm game. The many vehicles of Boonville fans lined the east side of the field, outnumbering by maybe ten pick-ups an almost equally sizable turnout of vehicle-clad Point Arenans. Interest in the game was considerable. It was for the league championship, and the Point Arena-Boonville is a sports rivalry that goes way back.

Point Arena’s kickoff sailed deep to Boonville’s speedy Salvador Gutierrez who ran it back ten yards until his struggling form disappeared beneath a host of Point Arena tacklers. Garrett Mezzanatto, Boonville’s all-everything quarterback, valiant all afternoon, went 6 yards on a keeper, and the fight was on.

The rain and the mud translated as lots of Mezzanatto keepers. Ordinarily, Boonville’s a passing team, but despite the stellar efforts of a small boy on the Point Arena side of the field to keep the footballs reasonably dry, the ball slipped and slid every which way, and Boonville opted for the safety of Mezzanatto simply running the ball himself. When he did pass, the ball was mostly dropped or slithered through the gloved hands of the receivers — maybe because the gloved hands of the receivers made the ball even slippier, but that’s only speculation.

A tall, rangy, strong kid, Mezzanatto kept on keeping the ball on the ground until Boonville was on the Point Arena ten-yard line. A tough run by Marcos Espinoza took Boonville to the Point Arena goal line and, on the next play, the inevitable Mezzanatto bulled in for 6. The point after failed.

Boonville 6, Point Arena 0.

Point Arena’s determined Harlan Bailey, along with Dylan Johnson, Point Arena’s nifty quarterback Brendan Radtkey, and the Sundstrom brothers, would prove difficult for Boonville all afternoon. A beautiful shoestring tackle by Boonville’s Scott Johnstone stopped the galloping Bailey from going all the way on Point Arena’s first possession of the game. But the undeterred Bailey, helped along by a 15-yard personal foul call against Boonville, then ran 35 yards for a touchdown. And he ran in the point after, too.

Point Arena 8, Boonville 6.

All that happened in the first 7 minutes of the first quarter, the rest of which, 8 minutes worth, were uneventful except for a couple of Boonville dropped passes and some great defense by Boonville’s Keven Kisling, his jersey number already completely obscured by mud.

With the rain coming down harder and harder, Point Arena, on a very nice catch by Marco Davila, found themselves five yards out from the Boonville end zone when Omar Benevides intercepted a Point Arena pass and ran the ball back to the Point Arena ten, from where Mezzanatto, two plays later, on yet another keeper, plunged over the goal line for a touchdown. Omar Benevides ran in the point after.

Boonville 14, Point Arena 8.

Keven Kisling and Sam Arab proceeded to thwart three successive Point Arena runs, and the Pirates were forced to kick. With Boonville back in possession of what amounted to a greased piglet, Mezzanatto was unable to penetrate the stout Point Arena defense on foot so he dropped back to pass. The ball wobbled up into the rain and when it came down Point Arena was in possession. Harlan Bailey then ran forty yards down the sideline for his and Point Arena’s second touchdown, but the point after was stuffed by Kisling and the Boonville up-front linemen, and that was the end of the first half.

Boonville 14, Point Arena 14.

As the half ended, an exuberant Point Arena cheerleader turned a cartwheel in the mud in front of the sparsely populated Point Arena grandstand, a Point Arena fan applauded her and the two teams and the four referees ran for shelter.

With the rain now pounding down, the third quarter saw Point Arena stopped twice by Kisling, once when he slammed into the ball carrier, the second time when he full-face smacked Point Arena quarterback Radtkey into the mud for a spectacular sack.

With time running out in the third quarter, and the Boonville defense playing like maniacs to stop Point Arena cold, Mezzanatto connected by air with Salvador Gutierrez for a short-pass touchdown. The Boonville point after failed, but Boonville was ahead, and the Boonville defense seemed to be getting stronger and stronger.

Boonville 20, Point Arena 14.

Early in the 4th quarter Point Arena went to the air, scoring on a long pass up the middle, and the game was tied at 20-20.

With 5:30 to play, Boonville’s ubiquitous Omar Benevides intercepted a dying duck of a Point Arena pass and Boonville had the ball on the Point Arena 35. Mezzanatto went up the middle for 5m, and Mezzanatto went up the middle for a first down. Mezzanatto ran for another 7 yards and Boonville was on the Point Arena 10 with a first down. Tension mounted. Point Arena refused to yield and then Mezzanatto, running around end for what would have been the clincher for Boonville, was hit by what seemed like the entire Point Arena defense and went down.And didn’t get up. The engine was out of the Boonville car, the big kid was lost to a disabling injury to his knee.

A leisurely Point Arena Ambulance crew ambled over from the Point Arena side of the field, conferred, and ambled back to the Point Arena side of the field as Mezzanatto was carried to the ambulance by his teammates. Later in the evening, after a stay at Coast Hospital in Fort Bragg, Mezzanatto was on crutches, his knee badly swollen but unbroken.

But Boonville’s quarterback was out of the game, and Point Arena had the ball with two minutes left to play. A furious Boonville defense stopped Point Arena at the line of scrimmage until their Dylan Johnson ran for a first down with 22 seconds left to play. All Boonville had to do was hang on and they come away with the championship. Point Arena was at mid-field. The rain had stopped.

The clock running, Brendan Radtkey, the Point Arena quarterback, takes the snap and fades back to pass. He throws a perfect spiraling fastball and hits Justin Sundstrom on a bomb up the middle that Boonville’s diving Omar Benevides almost got a hand on. But Point Arena had iced it, 26-20.

There was horn-honking jubilation as Pirate fans celebrated, perhaps prematurely. After all, there was still time on the clock, 15 seconds in fact, and in the wide world of sports 15 seconds can be an eternity. Which is what Boonville fans hoped because Point Arena had to kick off to Boonville one last time.

But the fired up Point Arena defense stuffed Boonville’s final two plays, the game was over and the trip back over the hill never seemed longer.

Point Arena 26, Boonville 20.

The champs at Kezar

Boonville made history simply by showing up at Kezar Stadium last Saturday night. Stuart Hall made half that history but they may have wished they hadn’t shown up.

The history?

The first 8-man football game ever played at Kezar pitted Anderson Valley’s country boys versus Stuart Hall’s city sophisticates, with the city boys coming out on the short end of the bombs-away 64-39 final score.

The history-making contest was played under the lights on a perfect late fall evening at the ‘New’ Kezar, as Kezar Two is known in the city. Until it was torn down in 1989 and became the far more user-friendly, open-all-night track and field it is today, the mammoth, Roman Coliseum-like Kezar One was probably best known as the pre-Candlestick home field of the San Francisco 49ers.

The Anderson Valley Panthers probably didn’t know that their demolition of Stuart Hall occurred on the same oval that saw the best-attended high school football game ever played in the United States, the 1928 city championship game between Polytechnic and Lowell high schools. More than 50,000 people packed into Old Kezar for that one, won by Poly, whose ghostly remnant of a gym still looms up across the street from New Kezar.

Salvador “Chava” Gutierrez kicked off for the Panthers Saturday night, booting the ball deep into Stuart Hall’s end zone, as he would do all night. The Panthers stuffed Stuart Hall’s speedy running backs and, two plays after the Panthers got the ball, Marcos Espinoza ran right over two Stuart Hall defenders and was in for the score. Thirty seconds into the game we had them 6-0 as our point after attempt failed.

Chava Gutierrez again booted the ball deep into the Stuart Hall end zone with Scott Johnston making a great tackle on the return man. Garret Mezzanatto, after some tough runs by Marcos Espinoza to put the Panthers mid-field, completed a long and perfect pass to the ubiquitous Omar Benevides who was just barely brought down at the Stuart Hall 4 yard line. Stuart Hall’s defense, lead by a kid identified as “The Tank,” managed to hold the Panthers at the four.

At the end of the first quarter the game was tied at a sedate 6-6, and well into the second quarter Stuart Hall was up 12-6. But with 4.46 left in the first half, on another perfect pass from Mezzanatto, this one to sure-handed Jason Sanchez for the point after, it was 14-12 Panthers. Omar Benevides, with three futile defenders trying vainly to bring him down, bulled into the Stuart Hall end zone for the score.

The game was tied at 20-20 when Mezzanatto, and this kid can really air it out, threw the ball in a perfect spiral fifty yards down field to the inevitable Chava Gutierrez who’d left the defender holding his jock some twenty yards upfield.

At the half, Boonville was ahead, 26-20. Stuart Hall was clearly feeling the pain from the unremitting punishment they were taking from the Boonville boys.

Stuart Hall is a well-coached team. They were bigger than most of the Boonville boys, and their two running backs were just as fast as our running backs, both of whom are fast by any standard. The difference in the game was the pure ferocity of Boonville’s eight. By the beginning of the 4th quarter the Stuart Hall defenders were slow to get up. They’d been pounded hard for three quarters, especially by Gutierrez and Omar Benevides, who play both ways. When Gutierrez and Benevides weren’t putting fearsome hits on Stuart Hall’s ball carriers, they were running for touchdowns or catching touchdown passes from their strong-armed quarterback, Garrett Mezzanatto. There were also numbers of outstanding plays by Jason Sanchez, Scott Johnston, Keven Kisling, Eduardo Torales, and Sam Arab.

Anderson Valley 64-39.

Notes: Considering that Kezar is two-and-a-half hours south of Boonville, an impressive number of Valley fans made the trek, including the Toraleses; the Gutierrezes; Raul and Quince Malfavon; Jennifer Espinoza; Renee Wyant; Palma Toohey and her husband Dennis, dad Bill Holcomb and son John Toohey had Boonville coach; Ben Anderson; Kent Rogers and Neva Dyer; Joe DeFrenne; Itsel Perez and Monica Alvarez.

It’s fair to say of a game that ends 64-39 that it was action-packed. This one certainly was. Both teams marched up and down the field all night while beyond the Stanyan Street goal post men dressed as giant Little Bo Peeps and her sheep made their way into the Halloween festivities at the nearby Kezar Pavilion. Several people from Boonville’s fan contingent remarked on their visit to perhaps the most exciting McDonald’s franchise in the world at Haight and Stanyan. The street visuals aren’t those seen much in Boonville.

Old Kezar Stadium appears in the movie, Dirty Harry. The psycho killer that Harry is after works as a custodian at the stadium.

Saturday night’s game represented Stuart Hall’s homecoming festivities, although Stuart Hall is an all-male school, a fact noted by the absence of cheerleaders on their side of the field. They turned out quite a crowd. Their breezy program contained descriptions of the student body as “our guys,” as in “Our guys master the great subjects….” and so on. The program didn’t say what the cost of tuition is, but it’s at least $30,000 a year, the San Francisco private school average. There are 160 guys enrolled at Stuart Hall taught by 30 teachers, three-quarters of whom “have advanced degrees.”

The eight valiant Boonville cheerleaders were much admired, we noticed, by the younger late-night joggers. Us older folks admired them too for their youth, beauty and energy.

Assistant coach Jesse Slotte, the heavily decorated soldier badly wounded in Iraq, now lives in Elk Grove (near Sacramento) in a house a veteran’s group deeded over to him.

Mezzanatto threw two of the most perfect long passes I’ve seen from a Boonville quarterback since, since, since…. Tony Pardini back in the early 1970s. Coach John Toohey, ably assisted by Todd Capuzelo and Jesse Slotte, has put together a fine team. Capuzelo, incidentally, once coached the young Tom Brady when Brady was in his early high school days. The Panther team these three coaches have put together is enormously entertaining. Stuart Hall was no push over. They played hard, but our team played harder the whole way, meaning they’re game-ready. Which is coaching. The Panthers play another tough team this Saturday afternoon in Point Arena. Point Arena beat us earlier in the year. The winner goes to the playoffs. It will be a good one. Kickoff at 2pm.

I think it was the 49ers game against the Dallas Cowboys and the 49ers mercurial tight end Vernon Davis was running a deep streak pass pattern that didn’t fool the Cowboys. Their cornerback was behind him on Smith’s inside shoulder and a safety was running towards Smith for the collision if necessary. But QB Alex Smith had to throw a perfect pass to beat the double coverage — and he did.

He threw a pass that went high above Davis’ right shoulder. But, the football was catchable if Vernon Davis went up to get the ball. Vernon Davis glanced at the Cowboy safety coming fast with menace in his heart. He let the football sail by for an incompletion.

The TV commentator at first said essentially that Vernon Davis was covered and the pass was too high. Then the play was replayed on TV in slow motion. And the TV color man said something like, “The pass by Alex Smith was perfect but the big tight end saw the safety coming and didn’t go up to get the ball.”

This happened when Harbaugh was trying to give Alex Smith confidence because his previous time in the NFL had been confidence-shattering. Harbaugh wrote Vernon Davis out of the game plan for a couple of games. Finally, Davis went to Harbaugh’s office and asked what he had to do to get involved with the offense. I’m guessing Harbaugh said, “When the football’s in the air, it’s your ball. Go get it and take the hit.”

This would ba a “Walshian” way of coaching.

The Handshake was when the passionate Harbaugh’s rejuvenated 49ers beat Jim Schwartz’ Detroit Lions in a close and very tough game at Detroit. Harbaugh gave the dispirited Coach Schwartz a long, swinging handshake and a strong pat on the back with a gleeful look on his face and jogged on his merry way.

Schwartz, who is also doing a terrific coaching job the Lions, had just lost his first game of the season. He was making a name for himself by throwing punches at an imaginary foe like Sugar Ray Leonard in training for a title fight after every win. To go from throwing punches after winning a football game to having a rookie coach in the league not only beat your team but treat you like a male cheerleader was too much for Schwartz to take. So, he chased down the joyous Harbaugh and bumped him. Others intervened and it was over.

I thought the small incident occurred because Schwartz punching the air after games was irritating to other coaches and was probably a preface to Harbaugh’s mood. But the direct reason was that Harbaugh threw a flag for an endzone TD, giving away one of his referee call challenges because TDs are automatically reviewed, if necessary, by the game officials. So, Schwartz yelled across the field to Harbaugh, according to TV Commentator Trent Dilfer, “That’s dumb. You can’t challenge that play in the endzone. Learn the rules.”

Harbaugh didn’t hear that, but his players told him that Schwartz had dissed him. If that had happened to me while coaching I, too, would have skipped merrily and given a long, swinging handshake.

Niners QB Alex Smith does throw fine when he rolls to his right side of the field. But, when he is running forward he seems to throw a (too high) sailing pass because he throws just as his right foot is about to land. Smith is right-handed so he has to throw as the left foot is landing on the turf. Or, if the right foot is about to land, you have to land on the right foot, then skip with the right foot and land the right foot again and throw as the left foot is about to land or has landed. It just takes practice.

I’m surprised that Ted Guinn has developed soft hands. I’m surprised at how fast Patrick Willis is in pass coverage. I’m surprised that W.R. Crabtree has become a team guy. I’m surprised at how good the 49er defensive backs are and how fast the 49ers young, offensive line has jelled. But, I’m not surprised that the 49ers are winning the West Division of the NFC.

Though I’m a 49er fan, I did like the John Madden, Kenny Stabler era of Raider football. In NFL history, the game lost a giant when Al Davis died.

In terms of expense a ticket to see the Liverpool Football Club at home at Anfield last Saturday against hated rival Manchester United, just 30 miles to the East, is as dear as those for the exalted venues of the classical music world. There is a big difference in scale: Bayreuth has nearly 2,000 seats, La Scala has almost 3,000 seats, and Anfield more than 40,000, still only about half the size of the biggest English football stadium, Wembley.

LFC boasts perhaps the largest worldwide fan base of any professional sports franchise, estimates varying from between 50 and 80 million supporters. That international appeal and its massive marketing potential help explain why the franchise was bought a year ago by a group of American investors known as the Fenway group. Lesser stakeholders in this bunch include basketball star Lebron James, who flew in and out of Liverpool for the game, his expensive Italian suit topped to the north by a flaming red LFC scarf. The New York Times is number two in the mix, and it’s no surprise that the paper has accordingly ramped up its coverage of European soccer in general and of Liverpool FC in particular. Where once princes and potentates conquered duchies and erected opera houses, they now buy up sports franchises and build stadiums. Or better yet, have them built on their behalf.

That a ticket to Saturday’s match played on a fabulously clear Merseyside day would come into the hands of an American with only the faintest knowledge of European football — its history, its present personalities, and its tribal affiliations — had to do merely with knowing the right people. My college roommate had just completed a film entitled Will, an expertly crafted and compelling story that centers on a English schoolboy who is a fanatical LFC supporter and (spoiler alert!) escapes from his boarding school to make his way across Europe to the 2005 Champions League final played in Istanbul. There his team celebrates the most unlikely victory, coming from three goals to nil behind in the second half to beat powerhouse ACMilano. LFC won the match on penalty kicks in one of the greatest comebacks in football history (more on this film next week). The movie included a cast of supporting Liverpudlians, among them Paul McGrattan, a boyhood friend of the Liverpool captain, Steve Gerard (who makes an oracular cameo in the movie) and is himself a Scouse — a native of the city.

My position only two or three degrees removed from the mighty Gerrard yielded me a ticket at the face-value of £48, which I could have turned around and sold for five times that amount — as could Gerrard’s friend, McGrattan. But this excellent fellow, who brilliantly plays a scalper in front of Atatürk stadium in Istanbul in the movie — was kind enough to throw this pearl before the Yankee swine, and welcome me as one of the lads. To be sure, indulging in the profit motive was continually discouraged by loudspeaker announcements outside the stadium trying to dissuade anyone from buying a scalped ticket. On the walk to the ground down the narrow street through the 19th-century terraced estates of worker housing — many of them boarded up and apparently ready for demolition, perhaps for a parking lot, or some such nefarious American-style scheme — we encountered a ticket tout being lead away in handcuffs. I was later informed he was probably selling counterfeit tickets.

Needless to say I felt a tad guilty getting a ticket that should rightly have gone to someone far more deserving. Or perhaps it wasn’t guilt, but rather fear of being discovered by those around me in the packed benches as an interloper with little real appreciation for the world’s game. But I know enough about football to know that a chance to see Liverpool versus Manchester United at Anfield should not be turned down.

I also convinced myself that ethnomusicological interest was enough to outweigh the selfish snatching of a ticket from the hungry mouths of local babes. Among the countervailing arguments against this bit of self-rationalization was the fact that I am about as equipped to relate and analyze the waves of resounding affection, musical epithet and improvised crudity that careen around the stadium as a Vienna choirboy washed up in the South Pacific is to make sense of the musical rituals of the Trobriand Islands.

Undaunted, this fearless expatriate made his way through portals so small that one has to turn sideways to get through them and into the glorious din of the stadium.

I was one of the later ticketholders to enter. A football match is short by the standards of American sport, beholden as it is to advertising breaks. European football gives you two 40-minute halves with a 20-minute pause in between. The whole affair clocks in at under two hours. The supporters get to the ground early and begin their rites long in advance of kick-off: stretching banners as big as a basketball court over large sections of the stands and passing these vast sheets hand to hand so they travel above the heads of the fans in a seemingly magical motion generated by the delivery of a held edge from one person’s grasp to the next.

As colorful as all this might be, the first that strikes you is the singing.

As I made my way up to my seat crammed in among the bellowing fans, I could hear that beyond the nearby sources of song, the deeper origins of an anthem apparently hymning the heroics of some former LFC player curled around towards my section from the stand to my right running behind the nearest goal. This area is known as the Kop, apparently in reference to a similarly slanted hillside in the South Africa Veld known as Spion Kop where British soldiers fought, and, one assumes sang in full-voice — if not into the teeth of Boer bullets, than on the march there and back.

Indeed, real musicological research might reveal that the poor of the British infantry were working class men who had unwavering allegiances to Victorian football clubs in the then-new English league. Singing would have been not only a form of cementing esprit de corps, but also of finding humor and resolve before and after the battle was joined, as one LFC song puts it in inevitable reference to the German menace and the nationalistic succor of soccer:

In a battle that started next morning

/ Under a Libyan sun

/ I remember that poor Scouser Tommy

/ Who was shot by an old Nazi gun

As he lay on the battle field dying

/ With the blood gushing out of his head

/As he lay on the battle field dying

/ These were the last words he said…

Oh… I am a Liverpudlian

/ I come from the Spion Kop

/ I like to sing, I like to shout

/ I get thrown out quite a lot.

The Kop in particular, and the other three stands that enclose the pitch, are overwhelmingly white and male. But some diversity comes with the international reach of the LFC brand. Many Scandinavians sat in my section, and singing along with them at full voice just behind me was a Sikh in his orange dastar and bright red LFC jersey letting fly in a rousing baritone. Also to be heard at close range were some Japanese men who were likewise giving it their all. Circumstances didn’t allow me to find out if these international brigades learned this repertoire by attending matches, by means of instructional CDs, through the pedagogical offerings of YouTube, from the numerous LFC song websites, or from some combination of all of these.

Querying the man next to me, a youth soccer coach in the city, I learned that alongside classics of Liverpool song such as the above-cited “Poor Tommy Scouse,” the repertoire continuously incorporates new additions, mostly contrafacta — new words fitted to preexistent tunes, from the theme to the Addams Family to “Those were the Days.” This unwritten hymnal also includes local masterworks of the greatest Scouse songsters, the Beetles, as in an ode to Steve Gerrard based on “Let It Be.”

The singing emanates from the Kop where the crowd remains standing for the duration of the match, in spite of an early announcement that the spectators should remain seated on account of children who might not otherwise be able to see the action. Standing up in the Kop expresses intense interest in the game, but also promotes earsplitting vocalization, still robust by the time the songs reach around the corner of the stand and down the stadium.

The building has low angled roofs that run to the very edge of the field, shielding the spectators from northern English rains. Such protection was unnecessary on such a fair Saturday. From high up in the stands some ten rows from the closed roof above, one looked longingly at the square patch of brilliant sunlight as it slowly tracked across the northern end of the field over the course of the match.

This low roof not only blocks out both the sun and the rain, but also creates a giant sounding chamber for the communal voices of the fans. It’s like putting a several thousand-voice male chorus inside the body of a giant guitar.

These Liverpool hymns, pitched low and manly and raising up in swells of gravelly rapture, are interspersed with pithier chants of a sometimes less imaginative contour: “Shit! Shit! Shit!” expressed several times the Kop’s ardent displeasure with the officiating.

When Steve Gerrard scored the first goal of the match in front of the Kop — not only against hated archrival Manchester United, but also in his first game since coming back from an injury that has sidelined him since last Spring — they erupted and soon broke into “Steve Gerard, Gerard” sung to the tune of “Que sera, sera” It was not a version Doris Day would have recognized — and certainly not one she would have much appreciated.

The club’s central hymn and motto is “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from Rodger and Hammerstein’s 1945 musical Carousel. It’s the kind of song that Barbara Streisand can — and has — squeezed every breathy bit of quavering sentiment out of. With its yearning harmonies, it’s a tearjerker of a ballad that at Anfield froths and foams in the caldron of the Kop, and then, as the melody reaches for ill-advised heights, shoots geyser-like out through the opening in the band box towards the Merseyside heavens. The circling seagulls, and the ghosts of the mythical Liver birds, flee through the air. Even the Goodyear blimp above seems to register the shock waves of song with a perceptible shudder.

Anfield boasts of its status as the last 19th-century football venue — classic, pre-corporate, and uncompromising. The place remains for the time being a militantly unimproved stadium, though the capacity was wisely reduced in the 1990s when the benches were converted to seats. There are no modern luxury boxes, no big screen replays (or indeed replays of any kind) or the hammering interference of pre-recorded advertisements and cheers, tiresome rock anthems, and all the other acoustic torture that makes going to many a sports event in the US virtually unbearable. In terms of total decibels per hour, Anfield might possibly exceed the output of even the most overpowered American sports palaces. But the difference in the ethical effect of Anfield is obvious, even to the uninitiated: the authenticity, imagination, and restorative powers of spontaneous singing shame the corporate manipulations of American audio oppression. Long may Anfield remain a citadel of elemental song!

DAVID YEARSLEY teaches at Cornell University. He is author of Bach and the Meanings of Counterpoint. His latest CD, “All Your Cares Beguile: Songs and Sonatas from Baroque London,” has just been released by Musica Omnia. He can be reached at dgy2@cornell.edu

Both the 49ers and the Lions are 5-1 in this season’s record. Both teams are rebounding from years in the wastelands with terrible losing records. Fortunately for both teams, losing records place them high for the NFL’s draft of college players. Now both teams have good player personnel combined with good coaching that should carry them into the post-season playoffs.

I think the Lions’ N. Suh is the best all-around defensive lineman to come into the NFL in many years, perhaps, since the great Reggie Smith, the all-time sack leader, who finished his career with the GB Packers. So, it was especially good to see Anthony Davis tussling with Suh during the 49er-Lion game.

Even though Alex Smith threw an accurate pass for the winning touchdown in the game, it was Smith’s poorest game of the year. On the first play of the game, Smith dropped back to pass and dropped his hand holding the football down to knee level where it was stripped for a heartbreaking turnover. Unfortunately, he doesn’t feel the approaching defender. The football sails too high for his receivers when Smith scrambles forward and throws a pass. Smith is reasonably accurate when he has time to set up in a classic QB stance and throw comfortably.

Former coach Mike Nolan, who drafted Smith #1 in the entire draft after interviewing both Smith and Aaron Rodgers, essentially said that he chose Smith because he was more athletic. It seemed clear that Nolan meant that Smith could outrun Rodgers.

Paradoxically, Rodgers runs much more often and much more effectively than Smith. It seems that Smith, who ran a veer offense in college, has made a point of refusing to run in the pros. Very often in 49er games when Smith is running the offense, one can see that if he faked a handoff to running back Frank Gore rushing into the line, but then pulled the ball back and looped around his left side, he could gain l5 years before stepping out of bounds. Or he would have the time to stop, set up properly, and throw long to a wide receiver. If Smith did this, it would open up the 49er offense immensely. For the Niners, Gore, Patrick Willis, and Justin Smith are all-pro players in 2011.

The bond between the 49er players and their coaches this season is a wonderful thing to behold. It is the camaraderie on the 49er team that makes them do their best on every play and never give up. It was the 12th man on their team who allowed them to defeat the Philadelphia Eagles and the Detroit Lions over the last two Sundays.

I believe in Karma. So, it was a pleasure to me when the incoming new head coach Jim Harbaugh came to the 49ers after having spectacular success at the college level at Stanford. Harbaugh had been an NFL quarterback for about 15 years and seemed to be an excellent coach who cared for his players. So he could bring both intelligent schemes to unfold on offense and to attack on defense and the compassion and skill to return confidence to his players.

Harbaugh made sure Smith had his play book in the off-season during the lockout of players from the NFL facilities so he could teach the other players his system. When the NFL business dealings were completed and regular football practice began, it was refreshing to see Harbaugh treat Smith like he was a good man and an important player on his 49ers teach-in 2011. It was a joy to see the quarterback and the coach smile together affectionately.

Alex Smith will never be an Aaron Rodgers in football ability — few quarterbacks ever will be as good as the Green Bay Packers Super Bowl quarterback. But, the four wins and one loss record of this year’s 49er team so far does mean he is an adequate field manager of the game and can be successful in the NFL.

Harbaugh came to the 49ers in a low key way because his sterling record as a college coach preceded him. He said the staff of 49er coaches needed to criticize the players’ mistakes in practice in person so the players don’t need to also see the criticism in newspapers. Harbaugh doesn’t have to be loud or act arrogant because he is so good at his job; his football record speaks for him.

The 49ers don’t have a true #1 receiver. But, they have several good receivers. And, their talented young offensive line is beginning to gel. And, Frank Gore is special at running back, plus new small running back Kendall Hunter is a fine change of pace behind the powerful Gore.

The 49ers don’t have a shutdown cornerback on defense. But, overall, they have a respectable defensive backfield because the front seven of the 49er defense is so good. The front seven of the 49ers are the best front seven in the NFL (led by lienbacker Patrick Willis) — except for the Baltimore Ravens.

And, only the Green Bay Packers are clearly a better team in the NFC. I began to love the SF Giants again in 2010. In now in 2011 I am falling for the 49ers all over again.

Coach Mike Nolan a few years ago insinuated that Alex Smith was a coward because he complained of shoulder pain when he threw a pass. Smith’s teammates were so intimidated by Nolan, they never spoke up for their quarterback. Rather, an ex-49er playing for the Seattle Seahawks said, “What’s Alex Smith playing for? The guy is injured,” before he was allowed to heal. With a 4-1 record after a lopsided 48-3 win over a flat Tampa Buccaneer team, Smith has been treated fairly. Their Karma is fine.

I pointed out that Davis also sued the city for hundreds of millions of dollars for mismanaging the property and was awarded another $34 million. Lastly, I raised the way Davis really wrote the blueprint for other owners in how to play one city off against another when he moved the Oakland Raiders to Los Angeles and then back to Oakland, in a search for public cash. After I made the joke on The Rachel Maddow Show, I received the following email:

“As a teen, I spent several years at Al’s house, as his son Mark and I have been close friends for 30 plus years. [Al's] door was always open to us kids, and no matter how rowdy or obnoxious, he kept a watchful eye on us. Look, I know the guy is controversial to those who don’t know him, but I have seen first hand how much he can be just a dad, and a good guy… not the monster the press always portrays. I’d appreciate it if you kept your comments to his actions, and didn’t mock his personal appearance (due to obviously ailing health) to make a point. He seems fair game, but I can tell you this sort of thing can get to people, even when they are Al Davis the icon.”

Needless to say, I felt awful and apologized to the person that I used a cheap joke at the expense of an ailing man to make my point. I also had to admit that my accounting of Davis wasn’t by any means a fair and full portrait. As has been written extensively in every obituary since Davis’s death last week, the man was undoubtedly a trailblazer. He was the first owner in the NFL to hire an African American head coach, Art Shell, and the first owner to hire a Latino coach in Tom Flores. He also hired a woman, Amy Trask as the first-ever female CEO of an NFL team. Davis hounded the suits at NFL Inc. earning all the right enemies among his ownership peers.

In addition, Davis took chances on players demonized in the press and ostracized from the league. It was the team of last resort for people like Lyle Alzado, Lester Hayes, Jim Plunkett, and many more. All of these players resurrected their careers in the silver and black. Clearly the emotion on the Raiders sideline last weekend, as they beat the Houston Texans 25-20, is also testament to Davis’s connection with his wayward team and coaching staff. It takes a hard soul to not quiver as Coach Hue Jackson bent over and sobbed as safety Michael Huff’s interception in the end zone secured the team’s victory. Fittingly many of the players Davis was maligned for choosing, like wide receiver Darius Heyward-Bey, kicker Sebastian Janikowski (who tied an NFL record with three field goals of over 50 yards) and the much-maligned Huff, were the stars of the day.

Yet the tributes to Davis can’t leave out the aforementioned damage done to Alameda County, as he constantly looked to take more money for a franchise that has not come close to returning on its investment. In 2005, when Davis signed a five-year lease extension with Alameda County, he darkly threatened to leave town, saying, “There are a lot of cities out there who are just waiting, just waiting to raise their hand and say, ‘We’re interested [in an NFL team] … And the numbers that they’ll pay are very great. You saw it happen in Houston. They built a brand new stadium. You saw it happen in Cleveland when they lost the Browns to Baltimore. Brand new stadium. Big, modern edifices… I realize [the price to taxpayers] can’t be too high, but whatever it is, you’ve got to think of the quality of life that we bring to the community, that baseball brings to the community, that basketball brings to the community.”

These words are being said today by the Spanos family that owns the San Diego Chargers and Zygi Wilf who owns the Minnesota Vikings, as they play cities against each other in a play for public cash. Even a modest look at urban poverty shows what a disaster these stadiums are, leaving little but a scant collection of low-pay, no benefit jobs in their wake.

Davis may not have been the “Crypt-Keeper” caricature. But he also wasn’t the saint in the city sportswriters are portraying him as in the aftermath of his passing. Behind the dark shades and leather jackets, he was the NFL owner who was as much urban raider as Oakland Raider. In 2008, I tried to interview Davis and emailed him one question and one question alone: “Since you’re getting so much taxpayer money, does the public perhaps have a right to partial public ownership of the team?” I never received an answer.

Any honest look as the legacy of this NFL titan needs to reckon with the way Al Davis magically turned public money into private wealth, and laid a blueprint for other far less charismatic owners to follow.

Dave Zirin is the author of “The John Carlos Story” (Haymarket) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.”   Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.

There are three adult soccer teams here in the Valley, playing every Sunday through the spring and summer. They feature players who are themselves from Michoacan or whose forebears were, and they play in the Northern California Adult Soccer League. One of them, Léon, is currently in the second division, the other two – La Lagunetta and Valladolid are in the top flight. These two teams have solid reputations as the teams to beat in Mendocino County and they have a long-standing and often ‘unfriendly’ rivalry when it comes to the futbol field, even though many of them work together and, more often than not, went to school together at AV High School, as their kids continue to do. For the second time this season, they faced each other last Sunday at Tom Smith Field in Boonville.

La Lagunetta is the small town in Michoacan from which perhaps 75% of the Valley’s Hispanic population originally came. They have had a team here for 30 years, when the Mexican community first settled in the Valley — coinciding with the arrival of the wineries and the need for workers. This team, playing under the name of the town, has won several titles over the years and their fans are well known for being very excitable and for enjoying a few pre-/during/and post-game beverages, although in recent times they have relatively little to celebrate as success on the field in the post-season has been in short supply. They are long overdue a post-season title.

The other team is Valladolid, organized by the Ferreyra family that resides in Anderson Valley too, although they are originally from Michoacan’s largest city — Morelia. Their team has been in existence for about 20 years and the team’s name is that of the old name for Morelia (and before that, a region in Spain). Many of the family have played for the team and several still do as they have generally dominated the league in recent seasons — in the past six years they have won the play-off title four times.

I have a bond with both teams, having coached about 80% of the players who played last Sunday when they were student athletes at Anderson Valley High School. Some players graduated in the past year or so, including two of the best players ever to put on the brown and gold of the AV High Panthers — Valladolid’s Omar Ferreyra and Sergio Gutierrez, who is playing for La Lagunetta after two seasons with Valladolid. Two even younger players who appeared on Sunday will be playing on the upcoming season’s high school team — Valladolid goalkeeper Christian Mendoza and their defender Hector Cruz.

Other teams in the 16-team league are from the region stretching about 50 miles from here, north, east, and down to Santa Rosa. Occasionally a team has challenged our two pre-eminent teams but overall the two Anderson Valley clubs have dominated the league championships for 15 years. Futbol is in their blood and this also explains the success of the local high school team over that time, given that we have one of the smaller schools in the region. This upcoming season will see me coaching a squad of 24 Mexican lads and once again hopes are high for a successful campaign.

Fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, cousins, neighbors etc, etc, all show up for El Classico which is a very festive occasion and often an exciting exhibition of futbol. I always stand on the side of the field with Valladolid’s bench players and fans. I like the Ferreyra family, they play excellent futbol, and I am always welcomed to the post-game fiesta at their house in Boonville after every home game, at which I am fed delicious food and get to share a few beers as the ‘world’s game’ is discussed at great length. I know many La Lagunetta players too, and their families. They are friendly and welcoming also, but I suppose I have made my choice and there is no going back. That is football where I come from — you don’t change sides, whatever the circumstances may be.

Anyway, with five weeks to go in the season, La Lagunetta is atop the league and Valladolid is third. They played earlier this year and Valladolid won convincingly, 5-2 — one of only two losses for La Lagunetta so far. They have not beaten Valladolid for three seasons. However, Valladolid has had a poor season by their own lofty standards. They have lost games because they have a number of players who “enjoy their Saturday nights out” and therefore for some road games played on a Sunday morning they have had to play with the bare eleven players, or less sometimes. They have lost four games as a result.

As is often the case, the earlier match-up was a frantic affair played with great emotion and at a very high tempo. Tempers flared repeatedly and a couple of scuffles broke out on the field, with a heated “discussion” between fans afterwards. Somewhere amongst the “excitement,” a futbol match took place, dominated by Valladolid and so no doubt La Lagunetta was hoping to keep their emotions in check this past weekend and get the win that could well seal them a regular season championship.

I arrived at the field in the heart of Boonville alongside the high school about 15 minutes before kick-off. It had been a cool, crisp morning but now it was a perfect blue sky and temperatures were on the rise. As the game kicked off there were only about 50 people in attendance but by half-time this number had swollen to over 200.

The game was a disjointed affair although for long periods in the first half Valladolid dominated with their possession-style futbol. They had several chances to open the scoring but their finishing was poor and the game remained scoreless, the main feature being the several yellow cards issued by an overly officious referee. Finally, in the 28th minute, the breakthrough was made when, following a scramble in the Lagunetta penalty box, the ball ran loose to Omar Ferreyra who was brought crashing to the ground by the impetuous challenge of Carlos Mendoza in the Lagunetta goal. A clear foul just inside the box and Vidal Ferreyra made no mistake from the penalty spot. 1-0 to Valladolid.

The lead could have been increased but chances continued to be missed and, as so often happens in sports when chances are not taken, those misses proved costly. This was once again evident when Lagunetta equalized in the 43rd minute, just before half-time. Cesar Maldonado sent a free-kick deep into the Valladolid box where the usually sure-handed Christian Mendoza in goal fumbled the ball and from the rebound Ivan Jimenez forced the ball over the line despite the efforts of defender Rudy Perez. Against the run of play, it was suddenly 1-1 and the majority of the crowd was celebrating in style on the opposite touchline. As the players went off for the break, the momentum was suddenly with Lagunetta.

A disappointed group of Valladolid players sat down to listen to a team talk by captain Vidal Ferreyra after which they went out for the second half determined to stand firm in the opening minutes, knowing that Lagunetta would come out strong. Vidal’s words clearly had an effect — and he had a huge hand in ensuring that they did… In just the 3rd minute of the half, substitute Domingo Ferreyra cleverly evaded a challenge by a Lagunetta defender before sending in a pin-point cross to the far post area which was met by his cousin Vidal Ferreyra who headed the ball powerfully down and past the helpless Lagunetta ‘keeper. It was 2-1 to Valladolid.

However, despite this setback, La Lagunetta did not fold. They played a strong second half and if not for their own profligacy in front of goal they would have managed an equalizing goal. More yellow cards followed, including the dismissal from the field of La Lagunetta coach Mocho Guerrero for verbal abuse directed at the referee. Yet tempers never really got out of hand and the official kept a tight reign on events, although his persnickety decision-making often prevented any real flow developing in the game for either team. As a result, the game was not a good spectacle in the second 45, with both teams resorting to big kicks up-field that were generally dealt with easily by the defenders at both ends. Despite a couple of good chances for La Lagunetta, for most of the half Valladolid was solid in defense and they held on fairly comfortably for the 2-1 win. A deserved victory overall, given Valladolid’s fine first half display, and the three points moved them into second place just a point behind their rivals with four games left in the regular season.

Following the game, I was once again very pleased to be invited back to the Ferreyra home in Boonville for a wonderful feast and the enjoyment of several Modelo and Pacifico beers. It was a great afternoon, culminating in a bashing of a piñata by many of the guests in celebration of the birthday of one of the younger Ferreyra nephews. Things could really not have been more joyful. However, in other parts of the Valley, the majority of our Mexican community — those hailing from La Lagunetta — were not in celebratory mood, no doubt drowning their sorrows with a few beers of their own and already thinking of revenge in what could be a wonderful post season finale, well-worthy of the name El Classico. I’ll keep you posted.

Let me back up.  I had a 92 year old client.  I have mentioned her in my blogposts before.  She is a huge sports fan.  Nearly blind, she has a huge screen TV.  She also cranks the volume to the point where it’s impossible to hear the people you’re sitting next to.  First she insists I watch tennis with her.  I sigh, resigned.  Slowly, I got into it.  In a few days, I was actively rooting for the young Spaniard.  Man, can that kid play tennis.

Before long, I was on a shift with her when the Giants were playing.  I was reticent.  Having decided many years ago that watching sports was a huge waste  time, hand crafted by the man to keep the masses entertained, fat and lazy.  I considered it a bit below me, in all honesty.  My dad tried to influence me, to convince me it was worth appreciating.  Try as I might, I just thought it was the most boring game I had ever seen.  As a kid and until a year ago, I never understood what the announcers were talking about.  The game always seemed to be happening but no one was ever moving.  And the innings would drag on and on.

My 92 year old friend is both classy and patient.  She said, “Just watch.”  So I did.  I got to know the players and the rules of the game.  I shook my fist at a bad call by the umpire and cheered out loud when they won.  I started to see Baseball as something more than a sport, but a tradition of respect and yes, the great American game.

Cue the National Anthem.

We went to a game last week at AT&T.  Giants vs. Dodgers.  The Giants didn’t win.  However, the park was beautiful and despite the sweaty human-body overload when waltzing through the park, fleeing the blinding heat of that day, it was epic.  I got to see Timmy pitch!

I was bummed I did not get to see Wilson.  Nor Posey.  Guess we’ll just have to make another trip to the park.  This next time, though- they need to win.  Got that guys?

But give me a bicycle and a mountain, and I’ll break that law or die trying. Whether by blessing or curse, I am drawn unstoppably to hills and the roads that go up them. I scorn horizontal distances, always looking to optimize my rise over run. I try to climb 3000 feet a day on the local slopes, and doing so with as little forward motion as possible is ideal. To meet this floor minimum, I have my favorite routes. Mount Tamalpais will do it — except the roundtrip is 40 miles. That just won’t do.

But in the Marin Headlands, the popular McCullough-Conzelman grade climbs 700 feet in just 1.5 miles. And in Sonoma County, Cavedale Road offers excellent bang for buck — 2100 vertical feet over seven miles horizontal. Far away, in Turkey, where I recently toured alone, I pedaled one afternoon from a sea level valley of banana orchards 6000 feet up over 20 miles forward, into a landscape of goatherds, brown bears, and wind-scraped crags. I ran out of water a mile from the top and camped in a grimy gravel quarry, but I slept on a bed of satisfaction. And one of the best climbs on Earth, which I’m yet to experience, may be the paved road up Haleakala Volcano on Maui; it climbs 10,000 feet in 36 miles.

It’s a steep road that I ride, but in this life I’m not alone. On my daily outings, I have come to know by face several dozen others who plainly bear the familiar burden of the hill hunter. These cyclists come in different molds. There is the competitive sort, blinded by the sweat in his eyes and bent on annihilating distances. For example, while pedaling the McCullough-Conzelman climb in November, a man composed of Lycra, Gu and carbon pulled alongside me.

“Hey, man, you’re really moving!” he shouted fiercely, seemingly doped on blood. “You race?!”

I couldn’t resist: “No. I just kick ass.”

“You ever hear of the Everest Challenge?!”

“No, but have you heard of this ten-mile climb in Hawa-”

“No, no!” he bellowed. “FIFTEEN THOUSAND FEET!! The hardest ride in the WORLD!!” He let that sink in a moment, his eyes burning, sweat streaming off his nose, smoke billowing from his ears, then whispered gravely, “I’ve done it.”

I kicked into high gear and ditched him.

There are, after all, likeable hill-hunters, cool-headed, calm men and women who are as glad to slow down and chat as they would be to say “On your left” to a peloton of racers. One of these riders is a soft-spoken man who takes long, steady climbs as medicine and therapy. Years ago, he told me, he found himself uncharacteristically winded while riding a routine slope. He suspected the worst, went to the doctor, and found he’d been right: Cancer. Today, he credits cycling as a factor in his ongoing recovery. Another time, I fell in beside a middle-aged man working toward the top of Conzelman. He said he cycled here almost every day in place of antidepressants prescribed by his doctor after a brain operation. “As long I hit a heart rate of 170 for an hour every other day, I’m good,” he said.

But hills can hurt, too, and I confess that some days I recoil from the mere thought of fighting gravity up a mountain. It’s then that I rediscover the pleasure of passing an afternoon like most people might prefer — without sweating a drop. But always the urge returns to pounce on the nearest road that goes up, to get high once more on the burn of muscle, the stretch of the lungs, and the pounding of my heart. I can remember the pre-hill era of my life, when I didn’t require such exercise to keep me sane. Somehow, within the past six years, daily physical rigor has become a chemical requirement. I’m addicted.

Occasionally, for kicks, I watch the clock between bottom and top. My best time up Old La Honda Road, in San Mateo County — 1300 feet in about three miles — is just over 19 minutes. My best time up Conzelman is 10 minutes. My best time up the Trinity Grade near Sonoma was just a hair over 20, which the pros can spank in about 13 minutes. For a while I kept a protractor and plum bob fixed to my frame, cataloguing the steepest hills. Locally, Broderick Street in San Francisco’s Marina District ranks first — a 38- percent grade. Without a granny gear up front, I can just barely manage Broderick without puking.

But I’m more interested in arcane, incidental records — like the time a friend and I shared a barrel-aged imperial stout called The Abyss atop Mount Diablo after cycling to the 3800-foot summit. That, I dare proclaim, was a first. Another time I pedaled a durian fruit fresh from Thailand to the top of Mount Tamalpais and devoured the thing, an event I suspect had not happened before in the history of the universe — but now I’m bragging.

While hills today might measure my rise, someday they will only trace my fall. As I grow older, the grades that I ride regularly will seem to grow steeper, and one by one I will have to cast them off as feats beyond my abilities. Broderick Street will probably be the first one to go, thereby announcing that I have begun on life’s long descent. With time and age, more routine climbs will join the ranks of the unclimbables, and the hour will come when I summit my last peak. I may not know it then, but I know this now: I will arrive at the top, inhale the view, perhaps even see a sunset, then take my descent, and, for whatever reason it may be, never go up again.

Because gravity wins in the end, and every hill hunter must come down.

His baseball IQ was very high and as a rookie catcher, he won the confidence of the SF Giants’ great pitching staff. He was the 2010 Rookie of the Year and was a big part of the impetus that led his team to the World Series Championship of major league baseball.

In the 2011 baseball season, many of us were concerned by all of the foul ball tips caused by the wizardry of his great pitching staff that kept hitting him in his small customized hockey mask. He seemed to be drawn tight and losing weight and being a bit woozy for a few moments after another foul ball tip would plunk him in his facemask. I thought they should change his position on defense to give him a break from the tough and rugged job of major league catching occasionally. He could play every everyday position and did in college. I thought they should be teaching Brandon Belt how to play the outfield so Posey could be at first base part of the time.

It wasn’t just the fans who ‘luved de guy,’ but Giants Manager Bruce Bochy and General Manager Brian Sabean ‘luved de guy.’ Manager Bochy looks like a sunburned, taciturn farmer out of the l930s and as tough as nails, but he ‘luved’ Posey.

The respected baseball pro Sabean ‘luved de guy’ too. He may have said too much on KNBR radio that was negative about the Florida Marlins’ pinch runner Scott Cousins, a Bay Area product, only because we are seeing third world violence in the US now, so to say anything that is inflammatory even if you believe what you say can set people off.

The collision between Buster Posey and Scott Cousins on May 25 injured Posey badly. He had a broken ankle and three torn ligaments in his foot which put him on the shelf for the rest of the season.

My take on the collision was as follows:

Cousins could see everything unfold. Nothing was an accident.

Cousins was on third base when a fly ball was lofted easily to Nate Scheirholtz for an out to the Giants rightfielder. Cousins tagged up at third base and Scheirholtz, with his fine arm, rapidly threw to home plate attempting to throw out Cousins.

But, the throw was slightly off line. The throw was too far to the first base side of the plate, Posey was forced to twist and turn his left ankle and elongate himself in a long reach to catch the baseball from Scheirholtz’s throw and then try to turn quickly to tag Cousins before he touched home plate.

Cousins had been inserted into the game to use his speed to score. Posey knew it would be a close play at the plate. Therefore, he left a lane on the third base side of the plate for Cousins to use if he beat the throw from Scheirholtz. There was no chance of Posey tagging out Cousins if he slid in head first on the third base side, outside the plate, reaching to the plate with his left hand to score.

This would be an intelligent and hard-nosed way to score and brilliant because no one would be hurt. The score would be clean and purpose-driven and no apologies necessary from Cousins.

Cousins could see that open lane because he could view everything from the third base side of the field up-close and personal. He knew that lane was open and with his speed on an off line throw, the catcher had no chance to catch the ball and twist his body all of the way from outside the first base side to outside the third base side.

I don’t think Cousins intended to injure Posey. I do think he chose to bowl over Posey to impress his manager and teammates instead of doing the classy thing which was to score hard-nosed but clean.

In the long run, that would have been impressive without pangs of conscience. If Posey had blocked the entire plate, Cousins wouldn’t have had a choice but to blast into Posey. But, Posey squatted behind the plate and was in a position not to be able to guard the lane on the third base side.

Still we have Pablo Sandoval, “Panda,” getting ready in the minor leagues, and Brandon Belt may come on strong. The weather will warm up someday. But, as I said earlier, this team misses the tough masculine presence of Juan Uribe. ¥¥

Well! It was the middle of winter and I had nothing better to do, so I bought the book, sat down and wrote letters to some of my favorite old ball players.

Willie Stargell. Carlton Fisk. Lou Piniella. Tom Seaver. Jerry Koosman. I wrote a couple of dozen players about my favorite memories of their playing career.

My motives weren’t all pure. I was sort of hoping they would be so touched by my stories that they would plop an autographed picture in the mail. But I didn’t ask.

I didn’t realize that, because the autographs of these ball players had become worth good money, they were pestered all the time by innocent-sounding people who really wanted to sell their autograph for profit.

Because these older players didn’t share in the wealth of baseball players of later years, they made sure only to give out mementoes at events where they were paid to do so. A lot of them needed the money, and their notoriety was all they had to sell.

I received exactly one piece of mail in return.

It was a crinkled envelope which contained a handwritten note on lined paper thanking me for my kind comments.

It was from Harmon Killebrew.

Only later did I find out that at the time he sent me the note, Killebrew was broke, recently-divorced and besieged by a collapsed lung which nearly killed him.

The handwriting on the note was immaculate, a boxy cursive script that clearly was etched with great care and effort.

The signature was as neat as the rest of the letter. No big flourishes. No egotistical scribbles. Just an unpretentious and readable “Harmon Killebrew.”

I still have the letter, but I don’t know where it is. Like several other items I treasure, I hid it so well that I can’t find it.

I suspect it is folded in the Q volume of the encyclopedia back at Mom and Dad’s. Or in some classic book by Jane Austen.

It may turn up someday, or it may not.

When Harmon Killebrew passed away last week, accolades poured in for the humble man who hit the ball farther than anybody since Babe Ruth.

Humble Harmon was loved by all who met him, they said. The contrast between his gentle, self-effacing personality and his violent presence in the batter’s box was noted by all.

But what warmed my heart was the testimony of several young ballplayers who had signed autographs alongside Killebrew.

Minnesota Twin Michael Cuddyer said Killebrew was so offended by Cuddyer’s flippant, sloppy signature that he said, “if you sign one more thing with that scrawl, I am leaving and the only one they’ll be mad at is you.”

Killebrew told Torii Hunter to neaten his signature so people can actually read it.

“If the kids can’t read it,” Killebrew told Hunter, “that ball will soon be covered with mud like the rest of them.”

Behind Killebrew’s careful signature was the philosophy he carried to his grave:

Always be grateful for being able to play baseball for a living. Always respect those who fill the seats. Always be humble. Do everything with great care, even the small tasks.

Handwriting is a dying art. One wonders if they’ll teach it in 20 years.

But Harmon Killebrew has made an argument for keeping cursive in the curriculum.

When I received Harmon’s handwritten note, I was stunned, humbled by the obvious effort that went into producing it.

For ten minutes, at least, Hall of Famer Harmon had concentrated upon showing appreciation to a fan who wrote him a letter for reasons which might have been shady.

Harmon’s handwritten letter shamed me: I realized it is inappropriate for anybody over trick-or-treating age to pester baseball stars for an autograph. Grow up, people.

I learned that lesson only because Killebrew’s note was hand-written. His humble, careful and gentlemanly personality came through.

Killebrew’s philosophy was powerfully expressed with his careful signature, custom-etched for a fan he never met.

No email, text message or copied-off script will ever carry as much weight.

So, the next time we sign a check, letter or tax document, let’s buckle down, take pride in the task, and make it legible.

And remember the lessons taught by the handwriting of the mighty but humble Harmon Killebrew.

When he took Human Growth Hormones he felt younger and stronger and recovered faster physically from hard races and hard practice sessions.

He had to be careful because — he was keeping his ‘roid use a secret from his racing competitors — he didn’t want to defeat racers he shouldn’t be able to beat. He even competed in Open Division bicycle races that anybody of any age could compete in as long as they were amateurs.

He amazingly discovered that he could have actually won Open races had he tried to win. He felt great. Then he went a step further to the muscle building stuff that gives a person’s body the vein-popping Popeye forearms and balloon biceps if he is also training with heavy weights.

He felt bloated and sluggish for three weeks after taking the anabolic steroids. But, soon his legs became much more muscular and powerful. But, he didn’t like the way he felt with anabolic steroids and quit all steroids for good and wrote the article.

But, the key thing to the article to me and, I think, to Bruce Anderson, was when he wrote, in essence, that the HGH allowed him to remove his prescription glasses and soon he could see better than he ever had as a youngster, even better than he thought it was possible to see.

I can still remember Bruce saying, “In baseball if you can see it, you can hit it.” I agreed.

Bruce Anderson knows baseball, especially pitching. Bruce has the Bay Area high school record at Tamalpais High of striking out 14 batters in a high school championship game. Bruce Anderson also threw a 13-inning shutout as a high school pitcher — a record that still stands and is likely to stand indefinitely because the little dears, these days, are only allowed to pitch a maximum of maybe ten innings a week. He went to Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, on an athletic scholarship because of his baseball skill. He was a good college pitcher and the major leagues showed an interest in him. But, Bruce was curious about the intellectual life found in reading and writing and seeing parts of the world. He couldn’t devote all of his energies toward making it to the “Bigs.”

I once asked an old coach from Ukiah what he had heard in baseball terms about Bruce Anderson. He told me that he knew that Bruce had a very strong arm but you had to time him going to first base with a sundial. I replied that Bruce could fast-walk faster than Gaylord Perry could run to first base. The old coach laughed and said, “That’s probably true.” (Perry was a terrific pitcher for the Giants who was always being accused of throwing spitballs, but he was never actually caught throwing a spitter. He pitched when Juan Marichal pitched, with Willy Mays in centerfield, Willie McCovey at first base, and Orlando Cepeda roamed the field — back in the day.)

When I was coaching Men’s and Women’s varsity tennis in Central California, I also gave some private tennis lessons, and that is how I had my first and only experience with HGH. A prominent man in academics in Central California asked me to request that his son take HGH and for me to give him tennis lessons. The father said that natural genetics had been unkind to his son by stunting his natural growth. The father was 5’8”; his wife was 5’4” but his son was 4’10” at 16 years of age. The son’s younger sister was taller than her brother.

So, I talked to the teenager — already a good high school player. But, in sanctioned NCTA Junior Tennis he would be drawn toward the net with short slices, then passed or lobbed over by his opponents. Plus, because of his limited reach, he was relatively easy to ace.

I asked him about his reluctance to take Human Growth Hormone. He said he didn’t want to be a big-necked, big-muscled, pimply guy. I told him HGH was discovered by scientists to help someone like him who was sort-changed by nature — that he wouldn’t change in any way except hopefully he would get a little taller.

So, he agreed to try HGH. His appearance didn’t change at all except that over the next two years he grew taller. His final height was 5’4” and he only took the HGH for six weeks from a medical doctor. He won an athletic scholarship to a fine college.

Over the years I would see him at tournaments like the prestigious Ojai, California Tournament where his most prominent strength seemed to be his return of serve. I asked him once at Ojai — ”you are returning serve great, kid. How did you get so consistently aggressive and accurate in your service returns?”

He said, “I only took that HGH for six weeks but I have been able to see the tennis balls so much better ever since then. I can see the racquet strike the ball and pick up the rotation of the ball. So I can track its direction. I get a jump on the ball.”

So, what’s with the A’s Mark McGuire, Jose Canseco and the Giant’s Barry Bonds putting on so much muscle that they seem ponderous — the preposterous opposite of graceful athleticism. If they had taken HGH and had proper weight training, they’d have still been stars in the game because of great vision. In baseball, if you can see it, you can hit it. And, no one would have known. Timing and vision equal power in baseball.

Ted Williams perhaps the greatest hitter ever had natural spectacular vision. In the Air Force in WWII, he was so important to his squadron because he could see the enemy planes before anyone else could see them. And Williams often said he could see the ball leave the hand of the pitcher and pick up the rotation of the ball.

Barry Bonds had so much discipline when he was at bat that he wouldn’t swing at a bad pitch no matter how much he was walked. I think his vision was enhanced.

I saw Hank Aaron play two times when the Giants played at Candlestick Park. He was the thinnest man on the field. Eddie Mathews and Aaron both played for the Atlantic Braves and third baseman Mathews looked like the power hitter rather than Aaron.

But, the greatest player was Willie Mays. He hit a baseball hard every time I watched him play at Candlestick. Frequently it appeared to be a gorgeous home run only to be caught by the strong blocking winds defending the left field and the center field walls at Candlestick Park. If Mays had played in Atlanta as Aaron did, Mays would have been the home run champ. Still, Hank Aaron, a wonderful and natural man, owns the home run record to me.

Jon Miller, my favorite bard of baseball, recently used the words egregious, preposterous, cerulean, prodigious, and greensward whilst painting verbal pictures of our San Francisco Giants sweeping the Rockies and the Snakes, and making history as they did so. John revealed today during a lopsided loss to the Cubs, that no team in the long history of baseball had ever won six home games in a row in which they scored less than four runs in any of those six games. I agree that isn’t nearly as important as the ongoing meltdowns of the Fukushima nuclear power plants, but it does prove we have some mighty impressive pitching.

Sometimes John will quote the Bard (Shakespeare) himself. “Fair is foul, and foul is fair:

Hover through the fog…” might have been written expressly for baseball in San Francisco in July, except those prescient lines were written in England 500 years ago. Yes, a baseball game announced by a gifted raconteur is an entirely different game than the same game seen on television. How can this be? Because television leaves nothing to the imagination, whereas visualizing a game while listening to an artfully improvised run of words is a prodigious imaginative feat; and every listener’s imagining of the game is unique.

Another wonderful thing about listening to intelligent, witty, insightful people (with great swaths of time to fill when nothing much is actually going on) is that they often say amazing and thought provoking things. Case in point: did you know that though the average major league baseball game takes roughly three hours to play, the action of the game — everything that actually happens other than the pitcher pitching and batters swinging or not swinging — takes only about six minutes of those three hours?

Here’s something else amazing that John recently imparted to us in his mellifluous voice. (Yes, I’ve heard John use the word mellifluous, too.) “From the time the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand, it only takes the ball a quarter of a second to reach home plate. A quarter of a second. That’s how much time a batter has to decide whether to swing at the pitch or not.” Heck, I can’t snap my fingers in a quarter of a second, let alone swing a big old bat accurately enough to strike a nearly invisible little orb hurtling toward me at 95 miles an hour. Hence the famous quotation from Ted Williams, the last player to hit over .400 in a season (1941): “Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer.”

So a few days ago I was listening to the Giants battle the Arizona Diamondbacks (the Snakes) when my phone rang and it was my neighbor Cindy calling to say there was a bear in their front yard finishing up some leftovers in the garbage can they hadn’t gotten back inside the bear-proof shed quite soon enough. This news interested me more than the game (that particular game at that particular moment) because I’ve lived in this house on this land adjoining a remote part of Big River State Park for six years and had yet to encounter one of our local bears. I had frequently seen the aftermaths of their visits — bear scat, flattened deer fences, broken boughs in apple trees where bruins had climbed in pursuit of apples — but I had yet to actually see a bear.

“How big is he, or she?” I asked, thinking I might tiptoe through the huckleberries to get a peek at the bear.

“He’s sitting down,” said Cindy, “and his head and shoulders are visible over the front end of the overturned garbage can. One of those very big cans. What’s that? About three feet?”

Three feet to the shoulders while sitting down? Hmm. I decided not to go have a look, recalling a frightening documentary about bears in which it was said they can outrun humans, no problem. Or what if this was a sow with cubs lurking in the huckleberries? So I turned the game back on just as Cody Ross smacked a double — nice to have Cody getting his stroke back — and the phone rang again, Cindy telling me the bear was now heading my way on the footpath through the rhododendrons.

I went to the window at the west end of our living room and looked down the gravel driveway toward our woodpile, but my pickup truck was blocking the view of where the aforementioned footpath meets our driveway. I was certainly hoping to see a bear, but I wasn’t expecting to see such a big bear. This guy (I have good reason to believe the bear was male) was huge. And when he came around the nose of the pickup truck and went up onto his hind legs and looked in the passenger window of the truck, I gasped, because this bear was much taller than my truck. Indeed, this bear seemed to be roughly the same size as the truck. Of course he wasn’t really as big as the truck, but let us say that had he been human, he would have needed a bigger truck.

Seeing or smelling nothing worth eating in the diminutive vehicle, the bear dropped back down on all fours and continued into our front yard — a small meadow ringed by rhododendrons in glorious bloom and huckleberry bushes laden with blossoms presaging another abundant late summer harvest. I expected see the bear traverse the meadow and disappear into…

The bear came directly to the bottom of our front stairs. I know this because I was standing at the front door, the sliding glass variety, looking out at the bear looking up at me from six stairs down. That’s how many stairs there are: six. Then the bear rose up onto his hind legs again, perhaps to show me how big he was, or to reveal his gender, or to get a better look at me. In any case, he stayed upright for a long moment and then went back down on all fours and started up the stairs.

Two things struck me in that moment. Well, more than two things struck me, but two things struck me harder than the other things that were striking me. 1. For some reason I was not particularly frightened, though I thought I should be. 2. The bear looked goofy. He did not look anything like the bears I saw eons ago in Yosemite, nor did he look like the bears I’ve seen in National Geographic, the magazine or the documentary films. This bear looked goofy. He had lopsided floppy ears, and one rheumy eye noticeably larger than the other rheumy eye, and flies buzzing around his goofy face, which made me think he might be a very old bear with failing eyesight, which would explain why he was wandering around during the day instead of being appropriately nocturnal.

In any case, when he placed his enormous paw on the second step from the bottom, I banged on the glass, made what I hoped was a frightening face, and I growled. Roared, actually. To which that huge goofy bear responded by turning tail, so to speak, and hurrying away.

“Good pitching will beat good hitting any time, and vice versa.” — Bob Veale

Relieved to have so easily vanquished the bear, I turned the radio back on just as Andres Torres smacked a double down the right field line — so nice to have Torres back in the leadoff spot — and I noticed our cats Hootie (slender and black) and Django (fat and gray) were nonchalantly sprawled on the sofa as if nothing untoward had just happened. Important factoid: Hootie and Django are cats who run and hide when I, the person who feeds them and pets them and calls them silly names, makes too sudden a movement or raises my voice much past a whisper. Hootie and Django will catch a whiff of something (a passing mountain lion?) and thereafter refuse to leave the house for days on end. These are cats who scurry under the bathtub when people they’ve met 70 times come to visit. Yet these scaredycats seemed utterly clueless that a gigantic bear had just been moments away from breaking down the front door, ransacking the house, and eating them! Why were the cats so unmoved by the bear?

Because maybe the bear wasn’t a bear. Maybe the bear was a spirit being disguised as a bear. Wouldn’t that explain the goofy face and floppy ears? Maybe the bear was the embodiment of some old terror of mine, some old unfinished business that was now finished because I banged on the glass and made a terrible face and growled. I had become the bear. I had become my fear and thereby released the fear to be carried away into another dimension by the spirit bear being. Or maybe the cats knew this bear, knew he was goofy and harmless, and so were not afraid.

“A baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown divided into nine innings.” — Earl Wilson

So… after the Giants won a nailbiter on Cody Ross’s walk off single in the bottom of the ninth, I sat down at the piano and played for a while. And as I played, one of my favorite things happened. Hootie hopped up beside me on the piano bench and listened to me play. Or maybe he wasn’t listening, maybe he was just hanging out and enjoying the vibe of the person who feeds him enjoying playing the piano.

I don’t play written down music. I improvise on themes and patterns and inventions I’ve found over 40 years of playing every day for an hour or two or three. And on that day the bear came to visit, I played with the bear in mind, the music changing from somber to funny to nostalgic to grandiloquent to sweet — our little black cat sitting beside me the whole time.

Todd’s new CD of piano improvisations Ceremonies is available from underthetablebooks.com  and downloadable from iTunes, Amazon, and CD Baby.

If they were going to draft for defense first, they could have drafted Nick Fairley the impressive defensive tackle out of Auburn. Fairley was considered the next big thing to enter the NFL until it was discovered by NFL draftniks that Fairley was “only” 290+ pounds instead of his college listed poundage of 300 plus pounds, but he played great!

Or they could have drafted Clemson’s terrific Da’Quan Bowers, a great sack master in the second round. Bowers slid to the second round (and taken by Tampa Bay) because he might require a knee operation.

But the 49ers could have drafted Blaine Gabbert in the first round with the #7 pick overall and Da’Quan Bowers in the second round without having to give up any draft choices to move up in the draft to get their guy. Then they could have used the draft choices they actually did give up to draft a potentially good cornerback and a good receiver.

But, in the real draft world, the 49ers did draft defensive end Aldon Smith in the first round out of Missouri. Smith came out early after a great freshman season of quarterback sacks, and a sophomore season in which his play didn’t sparkle but his heart and toughness came into focus because he played a portion of the season with a broken fibula in his leg. He is not particularly fast (4.72 in the 40-yard dash) but he is quick and strong and has good balance. He appears to be a sincere, humble young man who will always give his best effort.

In the second round, 49er General Manager Baalke and most importantly Coach Jim Harbaugh gave up some draft choices to move up in the draft to grab Colin Kaepernick, a quarterback out of Nevada. He is 6’4”, sleek and a hard 230 pounds with a strong arm, plus he’s a fast, rugged runner. He has all the natural tools to become a fine NFL pro quarterback But, is he a good fit to run the classic West Coast offense?

It’s possible to view the choice of Kaepernick over Gabbert as desiring a huge Steve Young type (Kaepernick) over a modern Joe Montana (Gabbert). Plus, I believe Baalke still has his vision of the great outside linebacker Clay Matthews of the Green Bay Packers consistently and constantly rushing the Steelers quarterback all game long in the Packers win over Pittsburgh in the last Super Bowl. I don’t know any other outside linebacker who has the great motor that Matthews has to keep him keeping on coming — hard, every down of the whole game.

But, I do give Harbaugh this: he saw the film, he did the interviews, he knows the quarterback position, he’s in the game. He’s probably right. It’s also possible that Coach Harbaugh knows something about Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer’s threatened retirement that we don’t. Or, he might have information about quarterback Donavan McNabb’s uncomfortable position with the Washington Redskins.

As, I said a few years ago, Coach Mike Shanahan was a great offensive coordinator for the 49ers in the Steve Young reign and then coaching with the Denver Broncos. But, he has been inefficient coaching since he brought his son (an offensive coordinator) in to join him as a coach. His son doesn’t think Donovan McNabb is a starting quarterback any more. He thinks the Redskins starting quarterback should be Rex Grossman!? To be kind, Grossman is erratic. Mike Shanahan will never realize that he has been wealthy long enough to sire a decadent unintentionally subversive son.

Anyway, Coach Harbaugh may harness quarterback Alex Smith to teach Kaepernick to play, or entice Palmer or McNabb to become a 49er so Kaepernick can learn the pro game rather than “going on record” immediately. I am running with the thought that he can restore confidence to Alex Smith, and he will become a competent starter while Kaepernick learns the game.

“Carrier of news and knowledge, Instrument of trade and industry, Promoter of mutual acquaintance, Of peace and good-will Among men and nations.” — inscription on southeast corner of post office in Washington, D.C. by Charles William Eliot

Though it may at first seem a stretch to compare the struggle to save the historic Ukiah Post Office with the current labor dispute between National Football League owners and the NFL players’ union, similarities abound. The root cause of the national postal crisis was the great commercial success of the Postal Service; and the root cause of the football crisis was the fantastic commercial success of football. In both cases, ownership i.e., the corporate elite, decided that their employees were making far too much money compared to, say, Mexican peasants, and they, ownership, wanted as much of their employee’s money as they could steal.

Because the Postal Service is a government entity, the overlords used their congressional puppets to pass a law forcing the Postal Service to begin each fiscal year by owing their own pension fund more than $5 billion, thereby guaranteeing financial dissolution and providing an excuse for the overlords to wipe out thousands of community post offices and force millions of postal customers into the waiting arms of private carriers such as UPS and Fed-Ex.

The National Football League is a consortium of teams owned by billionaires, not mere millionaires. (The one exception is the ownership of the Green Bay Packers, otherwise known as the Communist Peoples Republic of Green Bay, Wisconsin.) Most of these billionaires, by the way, got their huge stadiums built with public money and massive local and state tax breaks, yet these supremely wealthy guys hate that their players, many of whom are African American, have a union and earn much more per year than, say, your average Haitian. Since the owners cannot pass a law forcing the players to work for less than the players are currently earning, the owners are threatening to cancel next season and forego billions of dollars of profit in hopes of destroying the players’ union and getting a much larger chunk of the profit pie than they, the owners, currently get.

“Football players, like prostitutes, are in the business of ruining their bodies for the pleasure of strangers.” — Merle Kessler

Now lest you think it absurd to compare athletes earning hundreds of thousands of dollars per year (and in some cases millions of dollars per year) to postal employees making lower middle-class incomes, consider that the average length of an NFL player’s football career is three years. That is correct: three years. And when the average NFL player ends his brief professional football career and enters the real world for the first time, he is rarely possessed of more than moderate wealth, is still in his 20s, and has little or no training for anything but the game he can no longer play.

My question is: why don’t people with billions of dollars want other people to have anything? I don’t think that’s understating the phenomenon. Why don’t billionaires (remember: a billion is a thousand million) want us to have excellent affordable health care? Why don’t they want us to have totally groovy centrally located post offices, and why don’t they want football players who help them earn billions of dollars to have a fair share of the proceeds and decent retirement benefits and post-career educational opportunities?

I suppose if the postal employees or the football players wanted the billionaires to give up some of the billions of dollars those billionaires already have, the answer might be, well, nobody likes to have their stuff taken away from them no matter how much stuff they have, and these owners are not the most highly evolved individuals, so…

But here’s the thing. Nobody is asking for any part of what these obscenely rich people already have. Postal employees and football players and folks trying to save their post offices simply want a reasonable part of the future; and that is what these billionaires are so adamantly opposed to. They, the billionaires, apparently do not want anyone else to have anything. Ever.

“Messenger of sympathy and love, Servant of parted friends, Consoler of the lonely, Bond of the scattered family, Enlarger of the common life.” — inscription on southwest corner of post office in Washington, D.C. by Charles William Eliot

Where else does such pathologically selfish behavior as exemplified by the billionaire oligarchs occur? I’ll tell you where; in two-year-olds, and in individuals stuck at the two-year-old stage of emotional development. I trust you have heard of the Terrible Twos. This expression refers to the ego development phase in which children between the ages of 18 months and three years are in the throes of formulating their identities separate from Mama, and concurrently testing those boundaries established by their parents and society to prepare them for lives of healthy interactions with others. The two words most commonly associated with the Terrible Twos are Me and Mine.

Having toiled as a teacher’s aide in preschools (first in my 20s and again in my 50s), and as a veteran babysitter, I have been privy to myriad variations on the following scene. Two-year-old Child #1 is playing with a toy and surrounded by several other toys. Child #2 picks up one of the unused toys and Child #1 howls, “No! Mine!” and tries to snatch the toy from Child #2. In response to Child #1’s hysterical aggression, Child #2 relinquishes the toy and picks up another toy, which causes Child #1 to snatch that toy away, too, and yowl, “No! Mine!” Etc.

At this point in the drama, it was my role to gently intervene and explain to Child #1 that the toys at our school belonged to all the children, and because he or she could only play with one or two toys at a time, sharing the surplus toys was the good and fair way to proceed. If Child #1 would still not willingly share toys with Child #2, Child #1 needed a Time Out and further explanations and examples of why sharing was the preferred mode of behavior.

For most children, this all-for-me and none-for-you phase passes as a matter of course. But for some people this phase never ends; and among those for whom the Me-Mine-Never-Yours phase has never ended are the people who rule America and own the football teams and want to close our post offices. Thus it behooves us to understand in dealing with these sad people that they are not inherently evil, but mentally ill.

“Baseball is what we were. Football is what we have become.” — Mary McGrory

Speaking of post offices, I am convinced that a town’s post office is a prime indicator of the emotional and spiritual well being of a community. When my wife and I took a driving trip through northern California, Oregon, and Washington two years ago, we stopped at dozens of post offices to mail postcards and letters, and to check out the local vibes; and in every place where several small town post offices had been consolidated into a single factory-like annex warehouse postal depot, the people were as phantoms, the restaurants were lousy, and you couldn’t find a decent bookstore to save your life.

Epilogue: This just in from my pal Max Greenstreet, musician, movie maker, and handyman in Belford, New Jersey, alerting me to be on the lookout for a package he just mailed from his beloved post office.

Doreen (at the post office) says hi. “Mendocino…” she said, fondly.

“Have you ever been there?” I asked.

“No,” she said grinning, “but I’ve always wanted to. Never got as far west as the Pacific Ocean.”

“The coast is fabulous. It’s a beautiful drive from San Francisco.”

“Someday,” she said, a dreamy look in her eyes.

Then our talk turned to tiling and the infinite world of bathroom remodeling.

Todd’s award-winning collection of short stories Buddha In A Teacup is now available as a Kindle and Nook Book, and in glorious three-dimensions from Mulligan Books in Ukiah, Laughing Dog Books in Boonville, or via the Postal Service (and signed by the author) from Underthetablebooks.com.

Harbaugh was never a star QB in the NFL, but he was a smart guy who was upbeat and good enough to stay in the league as a player for 15 or l6 years. He began his coaching career in an obscure position as a college talent evaluator. His specialty was the quarterback position — analyzing and projecting which college quarterbacks would make the most successful transition from college competition to being a pro quarterback in the NFL.

It was Harbaugh’s independent judgment of college quarterbacks that often went against the grain of the majority view of other scouts’ QB opinions that began his quarterback guru legend. His independent views, most often, were correct. For example, he believed (as did the late and great 49er Coach Bill Walsh) that Drew Breese would be a better quarterback than Jim Druckenmiller in the NFL.) Harbaugh’s notes on QB’s became NFL treasures to harvest because he had truly independent thoughts that, most often, were correct.

So, what then should we make of his recruitment of unsuccessful quarterback Alex Smith to stay in the fold of the 49ers? I think that Harbaugh believes that Smith has been badly treated by NFL (and former 49er) coaches Nolan and Singletary and that Harbaugh thinks he can restore confidence to Smith and teach him the proper mechanics to execute successfully on NFL Sundays.

I hope Harbaugh understands that if the 49ers have good coaching, they are only one good cornerback away from having a good defense. The 49ers’ major problem hasn’t been personnel but terrible coaching at almost every position, not just the oppressive non-creative head coaches. They are only a fast #1 receiver away from having a good offense. That is, if Harbaugh can coach-up QB Alex Smith to be competent at his position. If so, the team will follow Smith because they understand that this guy has been totally screwed by his coaches.

Remember that last season the Green Bay Packers won the Super Bowl with a patchwork offensive line constantly plagued by injuries. But head coach Mike McCarthy and defensive coordinator Dom Capers won by miraculously coaching a few stars. If Dom Capers were the 49ers’ defensive coach, they wouldn’t be looking for specialty pass rushers. He would run schemes to take down the opposition QB or, at least, to hurry the QB enough to protect his defensive backs.

The left side of the 49ers offensive line features left tackle Joe Staley and left guard Mike Iupati. As a combo, no NFL team has a better left side line. Last year was center David Bass’s first year at the position and he was competent. Right tackle is Anthony Davis and right guard is Chilo Rachal. Last year, Davis at age 20 was a baby at a big man’s position. But, he had good feet and will improve vastly over last season. Rachal is competent. They are a very young NFL line that will become consistently good.

Tight end Vernon Davis is one of the very best in the game at his position. He was underused as a receiver. Running back Frank Gore’s record reeks of positive yardage, and he also picks up blitzes very well. Fullback Moran Norris is a bulldozing runner and fierce blocker. Receiver Michael Crabtree is a good possession receiver but a strange guy who doesn’t work to connect to the rest of the team. As for Josh Morgan, the team needs a star at his #1 receiver position to upgrade the team. Morgan should be a #3 receiver.

The defense needs a cornerback to form a solid defensive backfield. And, they need a good defensive coordinator and defensive backfield coach that can coach up the three-time first team All American safety from USC Taylor Mays. Mays needs his skills and confidence jacked up by a considerate coach who can teach the position. They need to recapture safety Dashon Goldson.

Cornerback Nate Clements is aging fast but cornerback Shawnae Spencer is due for a good year. They have strength and speed at the linebacker positions led by the great Patrick Willis. They need to have creative gambling schemes to rush the opposition QB.

The defensive line needs to retain Aubrayo Franklin who along with Justin Smith and Isaac Sopoaga gives them a strong defensive line.

So, they need to retain free safety Goldson and defensive lineman Franklin who are both eligible for free agency. They have to coach up strong safety Taylor Mays and cornerback Spencer and offensive tackle, baby Davis. They need to draft a good cornerback at their #1 draft position, a quarterback at their 2nd draft position (c.f., Andy Dalton, TCU) and find a good receiver and a good safety in the rest of the draft. The 49ers have more draft selections than any other team.

I hope Harbaugh doesn’t dismantle the team as Pete Carroll did with the Seattle Seahawks. But, it’s quite possible that Harbaugh feels that he has to get rid of lots of bodies to change a losing culture that has developed in the 49ers organization.

I hope he realizes that he had two position coaches before him who weren’t ready to be the head guy. And if he frees the players from that ignorant cloud of oppression, they can become excellent.

Note: I think Jake Locker will become a fine NFL QB if he stops being a heavy lifter. He is losing the niftiness he had as a sophomore and junior at University of Washington.

After seven years, and millions of dollars in court costs, Bonds has been found guilty of obstruction of justice. As for the all-important three perjury charges, the jury couldn’t agree whether Bonds lied to a grand jury investigating the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) when he swore under oath that he never knowingly took performance enhancing drugs. Without corroborating evidence from Bonds’s trainer and lifelong friend Greg Anderson, the jury could was deadlocked and the Judge declared a mistrial on all perjury charges. But the obstruction of justice conviction makes Bonds a convicted felon, and sets him up for a May 20th hearing where he could get as many as 10 years behind bars.

What did Bonds do to “obstruct justice”? According to one juror, “Steve,” the obstruction of justice charge was reached because, “The whole grand jury testimony was a series of evasive answers. There were pointed questions that were asked two or three or four different ways that never got clearly answered. That’s how we came to that.” Wow. Apparently, a “series of evasive answers” lines you up for a 10-year sentence behind bars. By that standard, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and Scooter Libby should be breaking rocks in Leavenworth for their performance at the Valerie Plame trial.

As BALCO founder Victor Conte — who is no friend of Bonds — said to USA Today, “This verdict absolutely makes no sense to me. Of all of these counts, the one that makes the least sense to me is the obstruction charge. Tell me how there was obstruction of justice. This is all about the selected persecution of Barry Bonds. This is not fair. I was the heavy in this. I accepted full responsibility and the consequences and went to prison. How is that obstruction? Doesn’t make sense.”

It doesn’t. After all the public money, drama, and hysterics, this is what we’re left with. He was “evasive.” Keep in mind that we live in a country where the US Department of Justice has not pursued one person for the investment banking fraud that cratered the US economy in 2008. Not one indictment has been issued to a single Bush official on charges of ordering torture or lying to provoke an invasion of Iraq. Instead, we get farcical reality television like the US vs Barry Bonds.

This was a trial where you longed for the somber dignity of a Judge Judy. Since Anderson wouldn’t talk, the government was left with two real witnesses: Kimberly Bell, Bonds’ mistress, brought in to discuss his sexual dysfunctions resulting from steroids, and Steve Hoskins, the business manager whom Bonds fired for alleged theft and fraud. But their real star was a once-anonymous IRS official named Jeff Novitsky, who has proudly seen Bonds as an all-consuming obsession, US Constitution be damned.

ESPN legal expert Lester Munson described the verdict as “a major triumph for federal agent Jeff Novitzky.” That alone should chill our bones. Without a warrant, Novitzky started his BALCO investigation by rooting through Victor Conte’s trash and taking it back to his house to sift through in his leisure hours. But Conte was a nothing to Novitzky. From the beginning, his sights were on Barry Bonds.

Jonathan Littman of Yahoo! Sports wrote, “two agents working on the case knew that Novitzky ‘hated’ Bonds, and heard him brag about his hopes to cash in on a book deal. The agents demanded to see copies of his reports and were rebuffed by federal officials. Novitzky, however, was given carte blanche by the head of the IRS to drop the normal duties of an IRS agent — investigating tax fraud and money laundering — and became our de facto national sports doping czar.”

In 2004, accompanied by eleven agents, Novitsky marched into the offices of sports-drug testing monolith Comprehensive Drug Testing. Carrying a warrant which authorized him to see the sealed drug tests of just ten baseball players, he paraded out with 4,000 supposedly confidential medical files, including records for every baseball player in the Major leagues. As Jon Pessah wrote in ESPN Magazine, “Three federal judges reviewed the raid. One asked, incredulously, if the Fourth Amendment had been repealed. Another, Susan Illston, who has presided over the BALCO trials, called Novitzky’s actions a ‘callous disregard’ for constitutional rights. All three instructed him to return the records. Instead, Novitzky kept the evidence…”

During closing arguments, Bonds’s attorney, Cristina Arguedas, looked at the jury as she pointed at the prosecution, accused them of misconduct and asked, “Why are we even here?”

It’s a good question. But asking the question is much safer than answering it. We’re here because Major League Baseball and the US government has long decided that Barry Bonds would shoulder the burden for the steroid era. We’re here because a surly Black athlete who thinks that the press is just a step above vermin was easy pickings for an industry rife with systemic corruption. Major League Baseball made billions off of the steroid era, an era many now see as a rancid, tainted lie. It was an era where owners became obscenely wealthy and billions in public funds were spent on ballparks. The press cheered and America dug the long ball. Now the dust has cleared, our cities have been looted, Barry Bonds could be going to prison, and Commissioner Bud Selig still has a job — and a raise. With apologies to Harvey Dent, this is the story of the Black athlete today: die a hero or live long enough to be a villain. And the men in the suits walk — or in Selig’s case, slouch — all the way to the bank.

Around the start of the trial, nearly a decade ago, Bonds said, “This is something we, as African-American athletes, live with every day. I don’t need a headline that says, ‘Bonds says there’s racism in the game of baseball.’ We all know it. It’s just that some people don’t want to admit it. They’re going to play dumb like they don’t know what the hell is going on.”

We shouldn’t play dumb either. Both President Obama and Attorney General Holder said words to the effect that the US government would no longer be in the steroid-inspection business. Like so much else in the last two years, it was just words. ¥¥

(Dave Zirin is the author of “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love”  (Scribner) a new documentary “Not Just a Game.”  Email edgeofsports@gmail.com .)