The Year In Sports

Foolin' by Def Leppard- The second greatest song featuring stuttering, Def Lepperd's big power-ballad from "Pyromania" best describes the Rai-duhs. In the preseason, Al signed Randy Moss and Lamont Jordan and with Norv preaching the virtues of the "vertical game" Rai-duhs fans thought they'd finally start seeing some commitment to excellence. They didn't. Instead, the Rai-duhs were f-f-foolin'. The team turned out to be like every other Rai-duhs team not coached by John Gruden-- badly coached, prone to dumb-ass mistakes, heavily penalized, and rancor-prone. The flip flopping on QB between Kerry Collins and Tui was the worst flip flop since John Kerry voted for something before not voting for it. Plus, if we remember correctly, the video featured some woman running around holding a big-ass sword which made absolutely no sense at all and was kind of stupid. Kind of like the Raiders.

Since U Been Gone by Kelly Clarkson- Every once in awhile, we get this panic attack that we're just not cool enough and that we need to hip it up. So we read through all the cool blogs to find out what the cool kids are listening to and discovered that all of the coolest of the cool people out there were raving about this song. So then we dowloaded it and discovered that what we thought was this weird psycho psychadelic folk song by some up-and-coming solo performer was really some big, gaudy pop song by someone on "American Idol." We just don't understand why this song was the one song that hipsters were allowed to admit they liked. It's just a dumb-ass, well done pop song. And besides, Mariah Carey's "We Belong Together" was such the better song.

Anyhoo, this song brings us to our two Bay Area baseball teams who both spent most of the entirety of the season under the shadow of people who weren't there. In the case of the A's, it was two of the Big Three, Mulder and Hudson, who were traded away by Billy Beane after some sort of Excel spread sheet malfunction. Actually, when the trades were announced we thought it was pretty ballsy and just might be crazy enough to work. Which might actually be true in that some of the kids Beane traded for turned out to be good, like Haren Unfortunately, in keeping with our theme, Harden and Crosby went down and the inevitable A's late summer hot streak came to a crashing end. The theme continued for the A's as they said goodbye to former owners Schott and Hoffman and hello to Lew Wolff. And sadly, sports fans everywhere also said goodbye to local treasure Bill King. His loss will be the hardest one to fill.

And as for the Orange & Black, it was all about the Barry's Knee. Which brings us too...

Solitary Man by Neil Diamond- It's hard to think what the Jewish Elvis has in common with Barry Lamar Bonds, but if there's any song that sums up the Barry Experience in 2005, it was this one. On the verge of embarking on the chase for the greatest record in sports, Barry made quite a bit of news, but not on the diamond. There was, of course, the knee problem. One surgery turned into another, which turned into another with a side order of infection. All this led to rumors that this was nothing but one big attempt to hide from the scrutiny of all the steroid allegations. But that wasn't the big fun of the year. Nope. There was also the testy press conference, the discussions of his ball's, the mistress and IRS problems, the diss by his BFF Garry Sheffield, the Woe is Me press conference, and the constant "will he play or won't he?" circus. But perhaps the most problematic issue of the year, and the one which Mr. Diamond's early classic is most apropos, is all the stories out there that the last people to know what's going on with Barry and His Knee were his employees, the Giants. In fact, the best way of knowing what was going on with Barry this season was through his Web site.

It is completely true that Barry has brought a lot to the Giants. Made them and their shiny, constantly being renamed stadium even. But we won't be surprised if the day Barry announces his retirement, there won't be some sort of champagne popping at 24 Willie Mays Plaza.

Find Your Way Back by Jefferson Starship - At one point, the Starship, then the Airplane, were a great band. "Surrealistic Pillow?" Great album. Then they started fighting among themselves, kicked out a bunch of people in the band, did way too much coke, and became virtually irrelevant, only to have a mild renaissance in the early 80's before somebody got the brilliant idea to add more synthesizers and sing about building cities. Which brings us to the Niners, a once great team that had a similar trajectory, except without all the blow. And now the Niners, out in the football wilderness, are trying to find their way back as it were. Niners fans can only hope this doesn't end with the Parag Marathe's Starship headlining a concert at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.

Come On Ride the Train by Quad City DJ's - Oh, come on, you know you like the song. You know that when you're a little buzzed and the DJ puts this song on, you're hopping and bopping up and down and having a good time and even though you're slightly embarrassed because it's a DANCE SONG that's neither hip-hop or Techno, you're boogying. And just as you're into the song for no explicable reason other than it's fun, the same could be said for the Warriors.

We've been here before. We all know how this is going to end. And face it, we all know deep down that the Warriors are nothing more than the NBA equivalent of one of those bottom seeded teams in the NCAA tourney that lives and dies by threes and manages to maybe upset a couple of better-than-average teams for a major tourney only to get exposed by a really good team. But that hasn't stopped us from hopping (and maybe possibly hopping off) the Warriors bandwagon. The Warriors are the H-O-T-T Bay Area team right now and there's no real explainable reason for it other than they have a good beat and you can dance to it.

Running With the Devil by Van Halen- Is there a more mighty guitar solo? Does this not make you want to crank up the stereo? And why does every major song with the devil in it (Running with the Devil, Sympathy for the Devil, The Devil Went Down to Georgia) have a kick-ass solo in it. Anyways, this song, sums up the biggest story in the Bay Area and indeed in maybe all of sports. That story is, of course, steroids.

You remember how proud we all were during the dot.com days as the city was once again recognized for being on the cutting edge of some sort of revolution? Well feel proud, Bay Area, we're leading the way on cheating in sports too. After all, the BA in BALCO doesn't stand for Big Ass. And it's not just BALCO that put us on the map. It's Jose Canseco and your Oakland A's. Canseco was, after all, the self-proclaimed Johnny Appleseed of steroids, the ass-injector who started the ass injecting. After all, Canseco begat McGwire who begat the Giambi Brothers. And it was the success of the three of them that led to the sudden explosion of big, beefy ballplayers.

Canseco is central to this story too because his book might have been the biggest, most important thing to happen in sports this year. Just look at where we are as a result of the book-- McGwire is virtual recluse afraid to show his face in public, Sammy Sosa is unable to get a job, Rafael Palmiero is now a punch line, and the baseball union actually caved in to one of Bud Selig's demands. Then there is the Barry who sometime next year, will pass Babe Ruth and go onwards to Henry Aaron to the shock and horror of baseball executives everywhere. Have to say this for next year's drama, the dude not only has to carry the weight of the Giants on him, but baseball history and the huge, gargantuan elephant that'll be everywhere he goes whenever he does anything