Jesse Foppert, the quintessential San Francisco baseball player, is the only ballplayer to have worn both USF and Giants jerseys. He is now teaching and inspiring young San Franciscans at the Jesse Foppert Pitching Academy. A .400 hitter his senior year at San Rafael High School, Foppert had always resisted his coaches’ pleas to become a pitcher. He just wasn’t ready to give up his turns in the batter’s box. In 1999, two new faces appeared on the USF baseball scene: Coach Nino Giarratano and Foppert, a walk-on shortstop on a team deep at that position. Read More

Grandmaster Robert Castro is the grand master of many arts. A San Franciscan since moving at age 2 with his family to the Haight-Ashbury district from the Philippines, Castro’s musical career began when he was a student at the now defunct Polytechnic High School in the 1960s. As a boy in his premusician days, Castro had studied karate under the great “Cat Man” Yamaguchi at his school on Castro and 14th streets. Read More

Dennis Schindler has run in all 27 Emerald Across the Bay 12K races since the event originated in 1984 as Houlihan’s to Houlihan’s. Schindler has been joined by his wife’s brother, Andy Wesolek, for their race tradition each year except one.In 1998, Wesolek was unable to sneak away on race day, which fell on the morning of his own wedding, leaving his best buddy Schindler to run solo that year. “It was like I was missing a limb,” said Schindler, who returned from the race in time to witness his buddy get married. Read More

In June of 1999, his rookie season on the PBA Tour, Tony Reyes was bowling in Lakewood in Southern California and having his first national television experience. The 26-year-old recent San Jose State University graduate had climbed the ladder to the tournament final by defeating six opponents, four of them Hall of Famers. His first roll of that title match was a gutter ball, and he went on to lose the final. But that event proved to Reyes that he had made it; he was among the elite of his sport. Read More