Steven Rubio's Online Life

champions

opening day 2023

I posted Music Friday a day early because today is the Giants' home opener, and that takes precedence over music.

Beginning in 1980, and going through 2019, I attended 40 consecutive Giants home openers. There were good ones and bad ones ... the Giants won 25 of the 40. There was a one-hitter by Matt Cain, there was the first game at the new park, there was the game where Barry hit #660. Barry had a feel for Opening Day drama ... in 1993, in his first Opening Day at-bat in a Giants jersey, he homered. And in 2002, he hit a walk-off homer to send the fans home happy. There was the ridiculous game against the Padres in 1983, where the Giants fell behind 4-0, and then 13-3, and then 16-6, only to bring the tying run to the plate in the 8th before losing at last. And, of course, there was 2011 and 2013 and 2015, when championship flags were raised in celebration of the previous year's World Series wins.

Then things changed for everyone in 2020. Opening Day didn't happen that year until July, and there were no people in the stands. Fans returned in 2021, but I was still way, plus my streak had already been broken. Then last year, I decided to return, and was greeted with a walk-off victory.

And so today, it'll be Opening Day #42 for me. Things change, even in baseball, and this will be the first time the Giants open against an American League team. I'll try to remember to post a picture or two later today.

steven rubio's world cup

It's back. Not sure how much I'll write ... there are political concerns, and the matches are often at 2:00 AM my time ... but I'll do something, at least. Here is the first post:

"Some Pre-cup viewing and reading material"

roger angell, 1920-2022

It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitive as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look -- I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring -- caring deeply and passionately, really caring -- which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naivete -- the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball -- seems a small price to pay for such a gift.

-- Roger Angell

opening day

It was Sunday, September 29, 2019. It was the last game of the season for the Giants, who hosted the NL West champion Dodgers (who would lose to the Nationals in the post-season). The game was meaningless ... both teams had finalized their positions for the year. The Giants were done, the Dodgers had more to play. But the ballpark was packed, because it was Bruce Bochy's last game as manager.

There was a heartwarming ceremony after the game, with close to 50 former Giants showing up to give their thanks for Bochy. (One of them, who played for Bochy for two different teams, was current Dodger manager Dave Roberts, who came out for the party wearing his LA cap. Barry Bonds grabbed it off his head and threw it into the outfield.)

The best in-game moment came in the bottom of the 5th. Clayton Kershaw came out to get some work in for the Dodgers, and after retiring the first two batters, Bochy seized the moment, and sent Madison Bumgarner out to pinch-hit in what would be his final appearance as a Giant. Madbum worked the count to 3-2 before lining out to third base, and as he and Kershaw left the field, they both nodded in each other's direction with a tip of the cap.

Fast forward to April 3, 2020. I had tickets to attend my 41st consecutive Opening Day. But by the middle of March, everything shut down for COVID. The opener was postponed until late July, and when play resumed, there were no fans, only cardboard cutouts. By 2021, things had returned to something resembling normal, but I was still staying inside as much as possible, so I didn't attend a single game of that exciting season.

Tomorrow is the 2022 Opening Day, and once again, I have tickets. The Giants will raise their 2021 NL West pennant, the umpire will say "Play ball!", and I'll be at my first baseball game in 2 1/2 years.

buster

wrexham and me

Lots of this stuff I've written about on this blog, but time to put it in one place. Don't want to bury the lead, though, so first:

"'Deadpool' star Ryan Reynolds completes Wrexham takeover with Hollywood's Rob McElhenney"

Wrexham A.F.C. are a Welsh soccer club that plays in the English soccer system. They are not a big club ... they currently play in the fifth level of the English system ... but they are an old club, the third-oldest in the world.

In the buildup to the 1994 World Cup in the USA, I read a book called Twenty Two Foreigners in Funny Shorts by Peter Davies. It was written for the American market, a way to introduce us to the world's game. Davies broke his story into three basic parts: a history of the sport, and two ongoing sagas, one of European soccer at the time, and one of his local club. He wanted the reader to get a sense of the scope of soccer, from the top to the bottom, so he included that local club, which was in the fourth tier, telling the events of the 1992-1993 season, which saw the club winning promotion to the third tier. That club was Wrexham.

In those days, there wasn't much soccer on U.S. TV after the World Cup had ended, and the Internet as we now know it was a much smaller affair. So it was hard to keep up ... our own league, MLS, didn't start until 1996. I did my best on the old CompuServe sports forum, and because they were as available to me as the biggest clubs in Europe, all things considered, I adopted Wrexham, feeling I knew the players after reading Davies' book. I asked around, and a man named Rhys Gwynllyw was kind enough to update me on Wrexham (he later founded The Webbed Robin, and I believe he is now a Math Professor). I started an email list with his help. Here is something Gareth Collins wrote about that list in 2018:

Rhys and Steven were the Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's of their time. I can still remember being totally overjoyed when I first came across The Webbed Robin, I seem to remember Rhys used to type up (or perhaps OCR?) Wrexham news articles from the Evening Leader and Daily Post that I think his Dad used to mail him. This is in the days before either of those publications had a web site. So if you lived say 100 miles from Wrexham at that time you'd get no detailed news and would have to rely on 2 sentences on Teletext. The Webbed Robin was amazing in its day. Tons of detailed match reports and detailed news stories all lovingly curated. The Webbed Robin and the ISFA e-mail list were like going from the stone age to the electric age in one massive leap for fan-kind.

I have followed Wrexham from afar for more than 25 years now. Saw them on TV a couple of times, and these days, even small clubs have an Internet presence, so I can watch highlights and interviews of them. And that game I mentioned last week, Football Manager? Every year, I try my hand at running Wrexham. (Confession: I have always sucked at FM.)

The most famous match in Wrexham history is probably their FA Cup match against Arsenal in 1992. The previous season, Arsenal had won the championship, while Wrexham finished last in the lowest division. The match was sure to be a blowout. In an amazing example of what you can find online in 2020, here is the entire match from 1992:

If you don't have two hours to spare, here are the highlights:

soccer on tv

I've written occasionally about soccer on U.S. television, and how it has changed so much over the years. Television changes too, of course, which leads me to the match I'll be watching today in a little bit.

It's a Champions League match between Chelsea and Sevilla. Chelsea includes American wonderkid Christian Pulisic, who is all of 22 years old now, so I guess he's no longer a kid. He is still a wonder. He is recovering from an injury, and it's not certain he will play.

I am watching it on CBS All Access. It's a premium channel, meaning you pay to watch it. We've subscribed and unsubscribed a few times, because it's the home of Star Trek: Discovery, and my wife is a fan. They also have the U.S. rights to the Champions League in English. Long ago, there was no soccer on American TV other than the weekly Soccer Made in Germany, which ran on PBS for a dozen years. Now, there's no escaping the sport. Today alone, there are eight Champions League matches, one MLS match, six Copa Libertadores matches, a Confederation Cup match from Africa, and two matches in the CONCACAF League. At other times, we can watch the English Championship league, the Mexican league, the Europa League, Serie A, the Bundesliga, La Liga from Spain, and the English Premier League, the English language rights to which are owned by NBC.

Some of the above requires money to watch ... some of it ends up on NBC itself. I can't bring myself to buy one-league packages, although I get most Premier League matches as part of my cable package, as well as most Spanish-language networks. CBS All Access is a little different, though, since it offers more than just soccer, so I'm not just paying to watch Chelsea-Sevilla.

It's impossible to find the time to watch it all ... heck, it's almost impossible to find out where to watch, given the multiple options (for this I rely on LiveSoccer TV). The confusion is felt by non-soccer fans as well, because it's almost impossible to find TV series you want to watch ... you really have to pay attention to know if you are looking for the broadcast networks, the cable channels like FX, premium channels like HBO and Showtime and Starz, or streaming sites like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO Max, Peacock ... you get the idea. Our choices are overwhelming.

But I really notice when it comes to soccer, because we've gone from an almost complete absence on our TVs to now, when there is barely a match anywhere in the world that isn't being shown in the States.

Meanwhile, here's a video titles "100+ Players Humiliated by Christian Pulisic":

even among the greats, joe morgan stood out

Sam Fels has already said a lot of what I think here: "Joe Morgan, championed by the analytics he hated, passes away at 77".

Maybe Morgan never realized that the analytics he degraded as useless would tell you he was the best second baseman of the modern era by a distance.

His death will certainly wash away his belligerence as a broadcaster, and it should. Because the actual baseball is what’s important. And Morgan is one of the best to ever do the actual baseball.

That’ll be his legacy.

I'm sure there will be plenty of fine articles ... that's just the first one I saw. Joe is remembered fondly here in the Bay Area. He moved to Oakland when he was 5. I attended Merritt College in Oakland for a semester when I returned to school in the mid-80s. Joe was one of its most illustrious alumni ... memory is probably wrong as usual, but I remember there was a big picture of Morgan on the wall of the library.

Joe Morgan was the greatest second-baseman in my lifetime. Added to his many accomplishments, Giants' fans remember him for his time with the team when he was in his late-30s. In particular, this highlight is shown at the ballpark to this day:

pandemic baseball

It might be time for a baseball post. I've barely posted about the game this season. Once the beginning was postponed, I called up memories of a few Opening Days of the past, and when the season finally began, I wrote about missing an Opening Day after going to every one since 1980. I didn't think the season should have been played, but ever the hypocrite, I watched the Giants games anyway. And it appears MLB did a decent job keeping people healthy. Some of the new rules are screwy, although I welcome a universal DH. But it doesn't really matter unless they carry the dumb rules over into next season.

But without being able to attend a game (first time since 1977, I think), and with everything goofy, I didn't pay much attention. I like what I've seen of Gabe Kapler and his team of coaches, I have faith in Farhan Zaidi, and the future looks good. But I haven't drawn much inspiration from the team.

And, since I've always been a Giants fan first and a baseball fan second, I'm barely paying attention to the playoffs. I'd like to see the A's do well for my sister Chris, although they are already on the brink of elimination. I don't care about the Astros cheating, so I'd be happy to see Dusty Baker finally win a World Series. Over the years, I've picked up some friends and family who are Dodger fans, and the Dodgers are great again this year ... I really don't want them to win it all, but I expect they will, and I'll actually be happy for those friends and family.

But really, my favorite part of this baseball season comes from a guy who was released and who then retired. Hunter Pence, Forever Giant. The day after his retirement, he showed up on a boat in McCovey Cove to root for the Giants. In 2020, it doesn't get much better than that.