The good news: The Giants added some much-needed pop to their lineup at the trade deadline Tuesday without mortgaging the team’s future. The bad news: No player has ever won a World Series alone.
I’m usually skeptical of deadline deals where minor-league prospects are discarded to bring in an All-Star who’s suddenly cast as the team’s savior, but the Giants’ decision to send Nate Schierholtz and a pair of minor-leaguers to the Philadelphia Phillies in exchange for outfielder Hunter Pence seems practical. But can one trade win a championship?
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The most vexing question facing the Giants at the trade deadline this year: What to expect out of Aubrey Huff down the stretch?
Just nine days ago, the Giants seemed content to let the deadline pass without a major shake-up. They’d opened the second half with a 7-1 record and were leading the Los Angeles Dodgers by 2½ games in the NL West standings.
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If the Randy Moss experiment is going to blow up in San Francisco this season, it will likely happen by the end of training camp, which gets underway in Santa Clara this week with veterans reporting today and the first full team practice on Friday.
Depending on who you ask, Moss is either a prima donna who plays when he wants to play or a misunderstood talent who is guilty of being defiant, impulsive and aloof, at times, but not a locker-room cancer.
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At first glance, Alex Morgan looks like one of those people who got dealt a stacked hand at birth: she came in at No. 66 in Maxim magazine’s Hot 100 of 2012 list, she’s intelligent and she’s athletically talented. But in reality, the former Cal standout is a product of hard work, dedication and fearlessness.
And as the U.S. Olympic women’s soccer team kicks off pool play against France at 9 a.m. today, fans across the country are hoping Morgan, 23, can use those tools to lead the team to its fourth gold medal since 1996.
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Like many U.S. athletes competing in London this summer, Cassidy Krug dreamed of making the Olympic team before she’d even reached grade school. She remembers watching the gymnastics meet at the Seoul Olympics on TV as a 3-year-old and telling her mother, “I want to do that.”
Krug never did make that gymnastics team, but the former NCAA diving champ at Stanford will finally get a taste of Olympic competition Aug. 3 when she takes her first plunge off the 3-meter springboard in preliminaries.
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As the A’s swept the Yankees last weekend with their MLB-leading 11th walk-off win, I was convinced the best move Billy Beane can make at the trade deadline next week is staying put and rolling with the players he already has on the roster.
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If every Olympic athlete affiliated with either Stanford or Cal could team up and compete together in London this summer, they would have more representation than at least two-thirds of the 204 countries participating in the games.
Cal is sending 37 current or former athletes to London next week, along with four coaches and one medical officer, while Stanford qualified 38 affiliated Olympians and one coach.
In 2008, this fictional nation hauled in 42 medals, which would have ranked sixth in the medal count, ahead of France, Germany and Italy.
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Under normal circumstances, I’d question the wisdom of a pitcher as talented as Mark Appel turning away a $3.8 million professional contract to return for his senior year of college baseball. But when Stanford sent out a brief statement announcing Appel’s decision Friday, it seemed like the right move. He needs to press the reset button after his draft-week debacle last month.
Six weeks ago, the 6-foot-5 right-hander looked every bit like the No.
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Thank you, Serena Williams.
You had every reason to skip the Bank of the West Classic at Stanford this year. But you still came out and won four matches in five days, even though you were jet-lagged and tired from waking up at 1 a.m., since your body was still working off the British clock. Sandwiched between Wimbledon and the London Olympics (which will hold its tennis events at Wimbledon), no one would have faulted you for savoring your latest Grand Slam title on the other side of the pond last week.
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The comparisons to four-time Olympic gold medalist Greg Louganis started catching wind before Kristian Ipsen had blown out the candles on his 10th birthday cake. At age 9, the Walnut Creek native became the youngest diver to win a junior national title and he brought home at least one every year after that.
Now, Ipsen, 19, will finally get a chance to capture his sport’s biggest prize, an Olympic gold, when he competes in the men’s synchronized 3-meter springboard with partner Troy Dumais at the London Games (finals are Aug. 1).
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Stanford’s Mallory Burdette stood shot-for-shot with the world’s ninth-ranked player for almost an entire set Thursday before her opponent, Marion Bartoli, won 11 straight games to claim the second-round match at the Bank of the West Classic.
The contest, held at Stanford’s Taube Tennis Center, was only Burdette’s second WTA-level match; she won her first two days earlier, earning the chance to face the tournament’s second seed, Bartoli, a three-time finalist.
“I think she had good spirit on the court, she handled herself extremely well,” Bartoli said.
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With the Los Angeles Dodgers and Giants separated by only a half-game in the National League West standings heading into the second half, I find myself hearing Russ Hodges’ unforgettable call of Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ’Round the World” crackling through a radio somewhere in the recesses of my mind. Granted, we still have a ways to go — the Giants have 76 games left, the Dodgers 75 — but it was hard to not romanticize about the prospect of another historic finish when the rivals met up for a three-game set at China Basin a couple weeks ago.
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As a rookie, Buster Posey drew headlines like, “Too Good to Be True,” along with comparisons to one of the best hitters in the game, Minnesota Twins’ catcher Joe Mauer. Even Hall of Famer Johnny Bench said: “He’s got it all.”But after Posey fractured his fibula and tore ligaments in his left ankle last May, some questioned whether he could ever return to his pre-injury form.
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In 2008, Tony Azevedo led the U.S. men’s water polo team to its first Olympic medal in 20 years. Now, Stanford’s all-time leading scorer is relinquishing his six-figure professional salary in a quest to capture the country’s first gold medal since 1904.
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Three games left to play in the first half and the A’s are only a game under .500. They’ve scored the third-fewest runs in baseball and six everyday position players have missed games because of injury. Opening Day starter Brandon McCarthy is in the midst of his second trip to the disabled list and neither Dallas Braden nor Brett Anderson have thrown a pitch in a game this season.
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