The Cubs are in town for their one and only visit to San Francisco, and so we have our annual contest of which fans have suffered more. Of course the Cubs fans have – 101 years without a World Series win and 64 years without an appearance. The Giants have simply been without a championship for 55 years and for their entire existence in San Francisco. But they’ve been to the World Series three times since. Yippee.

The Cubs are having another one of their horrible, cover-the-children’s-eyes kind of years.

They’re ten games back, and they’ve imploded. This week the Cubs have suspended Milton Bradley for the rest of the season, months after signing him to a three-year $30 million deal (what insanity was that?).

Bradley has had an escalating series of issues with the Cubs, but the straw that finally broke the Cubs back was he did the the worst thing you can do in all of Cubdom: he told the truth.  

“You can understand why they haven’t won in 100 years here,” Bradley said to a local scribe, while unloading on the club.

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I’ve learned that:

*That the flu – both my own and my daughter’s – puts a real dent in tweeting and blogging. Suddenly lying flat and watching “Across the Universe” becomes much more important.

*That when Eddie D. shows up the party really gets rolling. Still. The event on Saturday night at the Palace Hotel in downtown San Francisco was reminiscent of the high-rolling 49ers of the past – and you have to credit the Yorks for doing it up in style.

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This busy sports Saturday is interrupting my college football watching ( Good job Bruins! Way to win a very tough road game. Young Lance Kiffin is looking pretty wobbly in Tennessee already).

The U.S. Open rainout is the only thing that made this a Saturday where I could manage my sports intake (thanks Rafa for dispensing with Gonzalez in about 32 minutes this morning before the rain started) and participate in the rest of my life.

The day’s big news: the Sharks finally delivered on their longtime promise of Big Changes.  They acquired Dany Heatley, giving up Cheeeeeeech and Milan Michalek.  And Richard Seymour finally arrived in Raiders camp. Read the rest of this entry »

Back when I was a young, Candlestick Park was a nasty place. You had to wear a puffy down jacket to ward off the chill. You had to bring the scratchy wool car blanket, one that was probably covered with burrs from the last picnic, out of the trunk. If you were of a certain age – and I don’t mean 21 – you had to brink a flask.

And if the Dodgers were in town, you had to watch your back.

AT&T has a much different vibe. It’s not as cold. It’s not as nasty. And the Giants haven’t completely sucked for as long as they had back in the day (though, in truth, they’ve been pretty sucky lately – just in a nicer environment and with better pitching). But tonight the vibe could get downright Stick-ish. Read the rest of this entry »