It’s a given that the Giants will have strong pitching again, but hopes that their offense will be much improved are largely based on problematical players.
There’s only one certainty: A healthy Buster Posey will give a big middle-of-the-lineup boost to the offense. Posey is the team’s best hitter, one who knows how to go to the opposite field with an outside pitch or pull an inside pitch for extra bases, even a home run. He gives the Giants an extra boost because he plays a position where offense is often sacrificed for good defense.
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PEBBLE BEACH — It is a week as much for nostalgia as for sport, a time to walk the fairways of the present and wake up echoes of the past, to watch Tiger Woods and Bill Murray and remember Arnold Palmer and Dean Martin.
Old ballparks come down, old athletes pass on. But the golf tournament Bing Crosby started in the late 1930s that became the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am in the 1980s continues on, tugging us backward as it pulls us forward.
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Somehow it all seemed natural, Tiger Woods back at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, upbeat, expansive. Maybe it’s because he feels comfortable in Northern California, having gone to school at Stanford.
Maybe it’s because he believes he’s back to being Tiger Woods.
He has changed. The sport has changed.
Tiger’s grown older. He turned 36 a month and a half ago, and finally, after the pain, mental and physical, he appears healthy once more.
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There are at least three reasons why San Franciscans should be happy that the 49ers have solidified their stadium plans in Santa Clara with $200 million from the league:
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Tom Brady didn’t catch the man whom as a kid he idolized. It could have been because a couple of his best receivers didn’t catch the ball. But ever the team player, Brady was philosophical, not angry.
Another Super Bowl for Brady — the fifth in 10 years — and after three victories, a second straight loss. This time to the same team, the New York Giants, who beat him four years ago. Sunday, in Super Bowl XLVI, those Giants defeated Brady’s New England Patriots 21-17.
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They didn’t, in the poignant phrasing of New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, “know what the [bleep]” they were going to do with Julian Edelman. But they knew on the day of the 2009 NFL draft they were going to do something.“We drafted you as a football player,” apparently is what Belichick, in his arrogance and brilliance, told Edelman. “We’re going to have you on the field somewhere.”Maybe, in Super Bowl XLVI on Sunday, everywhere.
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INDIANAPOLIS — It could be better for Tom Brady. He could be playing for the 49ers, his team when he was a kid. Such a Niners fan. “I’d run around the parking lot at Candlestick in my Joe Montana jersey or Steve Young jersey,” Brady said. “Throwing the ball. There were some great times.”These aren’t bad times. On Sunday, for a fifth time, Brady — the one known as “Tommy” when he was growing up in San Mateo — will be playing in a Super Bowl. That it will be for the New England Patriots is perhaps the only part of the story he would amend.
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How will new Raiders coach Dennis Allen do? There are no guarantees when an assistant coach moves up, but there are some encouraging signs.One is his relative youth, 39. The Raiders have had success with coaches in their 30s — Jon Gruden, John Madden and even Al Davis, who started as a coach before abandoning that process. Resurrecting the Raiders is a long-term project, not a quick fix, and a younger coach has the energy needed for the job.
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It feels like an old friend left town. A week after the 49ers’ season ended, there’s definitely something missing around The City. The discussions around town, between strangers, in the sports bars, the restaurants, in buses and the taxis. By the end, The City was just like it was in the good old days of Montana, Rice and Young.
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It’s difficult to predict how an assistant coach will do when he becomes a head coach, as Dennis Allen is set to do for the Raiders, and even a glimpse of Raiders history doesn’t help much.
John Madden and Tom Flores prospered, but they were given talent-laden teams. Mike Shanahan didn’t last out a season, but that was partly because he was trying to put in an offensive system Al Davis hated.
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URL: http://www.sfexaminer.com/archive/17571/17571?page=14&type[story]=story
