Here's todays sports news...

Poor Cal-- so close yet so far. Our theory about what happened is that the idea of Cal having the #1 ranked team in the country was so crazy that even in this year (decade, actually) of sports craziness, the God of Sports deemed that just too crazy and set the upset in motion. Of course, we're also looking at the Rockies in the World Series, so whadda we know? Okay, before the Raiders recap,......

Here's todays sports news...

There's big legal news concerning the Barry, none of which involves Curt Schilling or Grand Juries. Oh no. Barry has just been slapped with a lawsuit by an inmate in a South Carolina prison, Jonathan Lee Riches (aka "the White Suge Knight), for fraud. No, not for breaking the record while on the juice, but for perpetuating a "Fraud Against Mankind," which Lee Riches calls "Batman and Identity Robbin." The Smoking Gun has the details, but from a quick perusal here are some of the claims made: ...

American sports fans, do you know what you're missing right now? -- the magical, the legendary, the completely captivating Tour de France. Yup. In fact, the Tour has already reached its first rest day after eight straight days of racing.

Let's face it: for cycling fans, the Tour is the pure Nirvana. Thanks to the Versus (formerly OLN) network, US fans (all 12 of them) of skinny tires, incredible bike handling, and human suffering can watch cycling every day for three straight weeks. It just doesn't get any better than this. It's like the NCAA tournament, the US Open, the NFL playoffs, the NBA Finals, and the World Series all rolled in to one. Every night -- every goddamn night -- cycling fans can kick back in their recliners (or on their stationary trainers), drink in the international flavor, and let the joy of cycling wash over them. Every night! For three straight weeks!

Here's todays sports news...

After games like last night, Sports Talk radio can kind of be essential listening. Misery loves company after all and there's a lot of misery out there in Giants Land. Yes, the baseball season is 162 games so one loss don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world but sometimes one game means more than others. Like last night's game. ...

--Happy 77th birthday, Willie Mays! --Comparing rebuilding the maze to acupuncture. And hey -- the 80/880 connection is reopening tomorrow! That was fast! --Cinco de Mayo in San Jose wasn't nearly as bad as it's been before. --They let Fajitagate Alex Fagan Jr. into the Army Special Forces? --OMFG -- there's a chihuahua race in San Bruno next week!!! --Profile of the Warriors fan who came up with the "WE BELIEVE" slogan. Picture of Willie......

Today is, of course, Selection Sunday, the best day of the year for college basketball fans. But not necssarily so of Stanford fans as their chances of making it to the Tourney went down, down, down over the past couple of days. The Merc has a primer for today's fun. -Everbody loves the 49ers free agent moves. -Today's "the Warriors just might make the playoffs story" from the Merc. -Milton Bradley tries to preach the......

We can't say this was one of the worst years in Bay Area sports but it has to be up there. One only has to look at the early part of this decade to see how far we've fallen. The A's and Giants were both perennial contenders and the Raiders were playoff bound. Only the 49ers and Warriors were woeful but well, beggars can't be choosers. We did get one Super Bowl appearance and one World Series out of our teams. ...

This afternoon beneath overcast skies at McAfee Coliseum, the 2006 Oakland Athletics continued to defy expectations by smacking the Minnesota Twins 8-3 in a fashion befitting a potential World Series team. The entire game was a literal composite of the A’s season: solid pitching, timely defense and amazing clutch hitting. ...

Our new daily news roundup column! Someone gave Amy Lee (the acting head of the Dept. of Building Inspection, not the lead singer of Evanescence) a dishwasher. Boo hoo, people who bought condos by the ballpark think they're too small. The company providing free wifi in the South Bay is better than what Google's promising SF. There were a lot of tourists in the area this summer. They're building a J-Pop culture center in J-Town,......

If we ever host a World Series of San Francisco Pop Culture contest, we're totally asking the question "Who's Laurie Beijen?" Ms. Beijen is, of course, the well-connected bride who made Gavin Newsom move last year's Cow Hollow ski jump event because she had a wedding planned at Flood Mansion the day it was originally set (August 27, 2005). And we can't think of a nicer anniversary present to get Laurie Beijen than the news......

After a day off, the 2006 Tour de France is heading into its second week today, unbeknownst to most Americans. According to the Chronicle, only 280,000 Americans watch the Tour on TV. Compare that to 91 million for the Super Bowl and 17 million for the World Series.

Americans aren't interested in international sports, mostly because we don't win them. The entire run of this year's soccer World Cup has garnered only nine million viewers nationwide -- the American Idol finale had 36 million viewers, on one night. Unless the USA is kicking ass as a country, such as in the Olympics -- and often not even then, Americans care little for televised coverage of international competition in sports like soccer, track and field, and cycling.

The Tour de France is worth watching though. It is the biggest event in the sport of cycling and really highlights the sporting differences between Americans and the rest of the world. And it's very accessible. Outdoor Life Network (OLN) provides daily repeat coverage of every single stage, including extended, live pedal-by-pedal from two of the best to ever call a race: Phil Leggett and Paul Sherwin.

This year, fate and The Man haven't made it any easier for the ADD-addled American television audience to watch skinny foreign guys in lycra riding bikes for hours and hours, day after day. After an opening week dominated more by who wasn't racing than by who was, the Tour suddenly went from a peloton of favorites to a small breakaway of "other guys."

Maillot jeune graphic from Team CSC website.

LAist tracks an award-winning TV writer who worked on Good Times to a homeless shelter and sees a Little Old Lady get a jaywalking ticket because she can't get across fast enough (in the same post!). Poets invade Metro and an LAist contributor's new book asks WWJB. Gothamist gets down with the immigration rally and their readers want to be heard. The anniversary of the Mets' 1986 World Series is celebrated via a RBI Baseball......

You still the man, Rick . . . You still the man. A bold prediction from A's Brand Baseball: By the time "One Shining Moment" ends on Monday night, Barry Zito will have thrown the first pitch of the Oakland Athletics' 2006 season to Johnny Damon, who will still be an idiot. Unless it's raining--we don't predict that boldly. When we came to you before Opening Day last season, the home nine were in......

With the start of the upcoming baseball season less than a week away, SFist's sports desk will try and break the new season down for y'all, round-table, free-form, discussion style. In the next few days, we'll debate the winners, the losers, and all the in-betweens. This discussion could be great, it could be lame, it could be meh. We guess we'll find out ...

Frank Thomas has hit 448 home runs, and has hit .307/.427/.568, over his 16-year career. That's pretty impressive, but in the last 2 seasons, Frank Thomas has been mostly injured: he's appeared in a total of 108 major league baseball games. Whatever Frank Thomas does in the 2006 baseball season, he'll do in the uniform of the Oakland A's. Thursday, the A's signed Thomas to a $500,000 contract, which reportedly includes $2.6 million in......

It's the name of a TV show, people! Our new District 6 election column. This week on Everybody Hates Chris -- Everyone Hates An Open Field. Matier and Ross report today that the dreams of the District 6 Anyone But Daly crowd were dashed as Christine Pelosi debunked the rumor first announced in Beyond Chron and announced that she will not be running for Daly's seat on the Board of Supes. (For some reason, she's listed as "Christina" Pelosi in the M&R column but it looks like her name is actually "Christine." Maybe name recognition was going to be a problem for her in the race.) Christine Pelosi, whose mother you may have heard of, is a former San Francisco deputy DA who is now a member of the DNC and the chair of the Platform Committee for the California Democratic Party. In her day job, Christine serves as Chief of Staff to Congressman John Tierney (D-Mass.) (who her mother then appointed to the Intelligence committee) and used to date (scroll down) now 63-year-old Texas Democratic congressman Max Sandlin (during which time her mother appointed him to the Ways and Means committee). Sandlin lost his bid for reelection last year (and is now dating a representative from South Dakota. What a player!) It sounds like all the rumors might have been started because the younger Ms. Pelosi just moved into SoMA, by the ballpark. Christine says, "I moved South of Market not to run for district supervisor but to be close to the ballyard where I can enjoy my beloved Giants, mindful that the last time Giants won the World Series, the Democrats won back the U.S. House and Senate." Isn't anyone going to run against Daly? What about you, District 6 resident Al Gore? Picture of Christina Pelosi (at left) with mom from Washington Life, from the 2000 Italian-American Foundation Gala...

Hey, the party's not till Monday, so check out some crazy characters hitting SF stages this weekend....

Someone, please, adopt this dog! Just don't name him October. Did you catch some free theater this Thursday? Some local music? Or Bay Blogger MJ's event at Space180? Give Dubya the ol' na-na-na-na, hey hey hey, goodbye? Maybe you just stayed in and were inspired to cook like Julie and Julia. Well, you won't be checking out the live-action Buffy musical episode, anyways -- thanks, Fox. Best to drink those troubles away. In soberer news: we're still following the Pamela Vitale and Lashuan Harris cases. RIP, Bill King. RIP, Bay Area football season? And it was 16 years ago that SFist Rain's eagerly-anticipated Bay Bridge World Series Game 3 got rudely interrupted. And Muni? Still blows. ...

We'll never forget where we were during the early evening hours of October 17th, 1989. It was one of those warm, Indian Summer days, and the air was completely still. To the superstitious, that's known as "earthquake weather." We had just gotten to Candlestick Park for the third game of the World Series. Giants versus A's--an event we'd hoped to see at least once in our lifetimes. We were ensconced in our seats in......

We've come to bury Ken Macha, not to praise him . . . 2005 was a down year for the A's, and they won 88 games. That's 3 fewer than they won in 2004--a year when they were expected to contend for the World Series. Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder are starting in the playoffs for the Braves and Cardinals this week, and A's pitchers had the 6th-best staff ERA, and the lowest opponents'......

Starting this Saturday, the Oakland Museum of California is hosting an exhibition from the Baseball Hall of Fame, called Baseball As America, displaying the history of America's game. The show's been traveling across the country since 2002, and features, among other things: Shoeless Joe Jackson's shoes, a baseball from the first baseball game ever, Babe Ruth's bat, Jackie Robinson's 1956 Brooklyn Dodgers jersey, and a Bay Area-specific section chock full of Giants and A's goodness, curated by the Oakland Museum of California. Sure, you grumble, it's all about fetishing objects at the expense of the actual experience of playing some ball -- but dang, who doesn't want to see Shoeless Joe Jackson's shoes??? The show runs until January 22, 2006; get your tickets here. At a minimum, you should totally be able to buy all the birthday presents for your dad/brother/best man that you'll ever need at the exhibition store. Picture of PA world series scoreboard from the Baseball as America webpage, from the Field Museum...

On Monday, local activists submitted the 15,000 signatures needed to put the measure "College Not Combat" onto the ballots in November. The "groundbreaking" resolution calls for San Francisco schools and colleges to forbid military recruiters from talking to students and possibly convincing them to exercise their freedom of choice by choosing the military. Anti-War activists are claiming that part of the reason for the initiative is that in facing low recruitment numbers, the military has resorted to lying and bullying people into joining. Which is a bit on the cheesy side. On the other hand, our college promised us a fulfilling career and high paying jobs and, well, now we write blurbs for SFist during lunch break as the only way to get any creative fulfillment. ...