Bay Area Sports Blog

After Santa Clara product and Boston Red Sox prospect Daniel Nava became the second player ever to hit a grand slam on the first pitch he saw in the major leagues, his college coach, Mark O’Brien, put it best.

That guy, I’m sure you could do a movie on him, man.

You could probably do a trilogy. Coming soon to a theater near you: Daniel Nava Holy Cow.

Nava met O’Brien at a baseball camp when O’Brien was an assistant under Mark Marquess at Stanford and accompanied the Cardinal to Omaha as a batboy. After O’Brien took the head coaching gig at Santa Clara, he invited Nava, who was 5-foot-8 and 135 pounds when he graduated from St. Francis in Mountain View, to try out as a walk-on. As O’Brien recalled to ESPN’s Gordon Edes:

He showed up and he could barely hit the ball out of the infield. I told him, ‘We’ll keep you on as manager,’ and he did everything for two years, including washing uniforms.

After two years at the College of San Mateo, Nava returned to Santa Clara for his senior season, this time as a player. While he starred for the Broncos, leading the West Coast Conference in hitting, he went undrafted. Nava eventually caught on with the Chico Outlaws of the Golden League, where he was noticed by the Boston Red Sox, who purchased his contract for $1.

Nava, who left a ticket at will call for Erin Andrews each of the last three years while tearing up the Red Sox minor league system, was called up before Saturday’s game. The rest was something straight from a movie.

So yes, two days later, Dallas Braden’s perfect game still stands. Bud Selig hasn’t put an asterisk next to it because of low attendance, nor has he declared the game a draw because both teams played hard. Alex Rodriguez wasn’t able to buy an erasing of the history books.

Braden was on NPR on Monday and tonight he’ll give the Top 10 list on Letterman. That’s when it will become real, probably. Letterman!

There has been much, much analysis of Braden’s perfect game, but most of it focuses on one solitary facet: How? As in, how the hell did that happen? As in, how did a guy with 17 previous career wins go out and toss the holy sacred perfecto? We loved this portrait from SI’s Joe Posnanski: “No, he was never highly regarded. He was not regarded at all.”

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Yeah, it’s April 1, which has turned from “Let’s play a prank on a coworker” day to “People messing around on the internet” day to “Don’t believe a single thing you read anywhere online” day. And of course our local bloggers have gotten in on the action. But the problem is, like any good joke, these ones needle you a little too close to the heart. You laugh, but you also cry a little. Happy April depressing state of our local franchise’s!

The roundup, from “least believable” to “most believable.” (But despite that, a round of applause to everybody for their efforts, really. Let’s get these people freelancing for the Onion soon.)

The joke: Warriors unveil “Golden State D-League” alternate jerseys.
The source: Golden State of Mind.
We cry because: We wanted to see Brandan Wright and Anthony Randolph play this season because they might actually represent some sort of future for the Warriors. Instead we saw Coby Karl and Cartier Martin. Sure, Reggie Williams worked out and will be a nice contributor in the future. But for every Reggie Williams there are five others who won’t work out and we still get all depressed about the elite-level talent sitting out injured.

The joke: Pac-1o expands to Pac-16.
The source: The Bootleg.
We cry because: Expansion is probably coming soon, and who likes change? We’re quite happy with the Big Game being the final game of the season unless Stanford plays Notre Dame or Cal plays Washington five weeks after. But we do like The Bootleg’s fantastical Pac-16 with St. Mary’s, Santa Clara, SJSU and Pacific joining Cal and Stanford in the “Bay Division.” Hey, the NCAA is trying to cut down on travel expenses right? Make it happen.

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Watch your behinds, kids.

Willie Mays yucks it up, unless you include all the talk about racism, with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show:

Andris Biedrins kicks out the scoreboard at Oracle Arena:

Steve Nash does everything random in the world:

Steve Nash channels Billy Mays and Joe Thornton does ventriloquist fart jokes. So we can abandon all our anti-business sentiment, suck at the corporate power teet and embed these videos for your Friday viewing pleasure. We do it for the children.

Warning: This next one keeps repeating. You won’t see anything new, just Joe doing the same fart joke over and over.

Ice Cube, probably the only person to put “Al Davis” and “gat” in the same verse of a rap song, has apparently put down his guns in his feud with the Silver and Black. Cube was patrolling the sidelines at Raiders practice Tuesday, according to the Chronicle, in preparation to shoot a documentary about the team’s influence on the world of hip-hop.

JaMarcus Russell had the most time with Cube, which is just what the Raiders need: A bad influence for their influence-able star player. Of course, Cube has been going the Eddie Murphy route in crapfests Are We There Yet, First Sunday and The Longshots, so maybe he’s not so bad after all. And his Raiders documentary landed with that most incendiary of networks, ESPN, so you can expect a lot of swearing, probably some people’s legs being shot off, and gallons of malt liquor being consumed. Or, really, not.

The Chron reminds us Cube rapped about Davis after he brought the Raiders back to Oakland, saying “Stop givin’ juice to the Raiders, cause Al Davis never paid us.” But he also wrote a song called “Raider Nation” that will debut with the movie. Potential lyric: “Russell didn’t even throw it to Hey-Bey. I have to say it was a good day.”

…Other linkage, not including midget strippers and fantasy football…

The Giants, needing a bat? Naaah. The Panda, in a walking cast? Whaaat? Merc

Try to imagine Oakland without the A’s. Now follow that to its next logical conclusion: “Oklnd” t-shirts. Oklnd.com

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Well, this is rich. Michael Crabtree, the last rookie to sign a contract, the wide receiver who coaches keep insisting isn’t a diva, will be featured tonight in a show called “Hey, Rookie, Welcome to the NFL.” Which chronicles rookies’ exploits from Draft Day through the preseason.

Scene six: It’s daytime outside, but we would never know it. Crabtree sits at a table. Lightbulb flickers above his head. He picks up a pen. Looks at it. Ponders it. Brings it down to sign the contract but … no. He lays it next to the paper. And scene.

With camp drawing to a close it’s time to evaluate how it went sans Crabtree. ESPN.com’s Mike Sando thinks training camp was a “downer” in part because Damon Huard didn’t emerge to win the starting QB job. Oooo keeeey. Niners Nation takes a look at some right tackle options in the wake of Marvel Smith’s retirement. And rut-row, Nate Clements has been giving up some big plays!!!!!??!!?!?!

…Other linkage, not including the Dodgers and Rockies making some moves to counter the Giants’ Penny pickup…

Things aren’t going so well in Oakland these days, and some Raiders fans want their money back. Unfortunately, this isn’t Wal-Mart. Raider Take

The Giants and their hobbies: Rich Aurilia has started bottling wine with fellow fogie Dave Roberts. Barry Zito talks music at Amoeba and says on start days “you gotta turn into a warrior, man, you gotta go kill, so System of a Down helps me get there.” YouTube

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Well what did you expect, a no hitter? Tim Lincecum said he was “feeling a lot of nerves” in his first All-Star game appearance and you can’t really blame him, what with Obama and Sheryl Crow in the house. Lincecum, who Tim McCarver and Joe Buck referred to as “unbelievable” and “deceptive” was neither of those things Tuesday. While Fox’s scouting report of Lincecum included the line, “Frail Frame, Bionic Arm,” it was his frail nerves that led to the American League’s two first inning runs. Well, that and the shoddy defense behind him. David Wright and Albert Pujols botched a couple of would-be double plays, though, to be fair, Lincecum was late covering first base on another ground ball. Come on, guys, this one counts!

Carl Crawford made the play of the game in the AL’s 4-3 win, robbing Brad Hawpe of a home run with a catch that was reminiscent of Torii Hunter’s grab of a ball hit by Barry Bonds at Miller Park in 2002. Oakland’s Andrew Bailey didn’t make an appearance after pregame introductions. In other baseball news, the Giants promoted catcher Buster Posey to Triple-A Fresno.

…Other links, not including a compilation of the world’s fastest things. Oakland Raiders wide receiver Darrius Heyward-Bey somehow didn’t make the cut…

Mike Singletary sets a timetable for naming a starting QB. We set a timetable for the ensuing QB controversy: minutes later. Niner Noise

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She’s now living in Chicago, playing roller derby, with one of those fantastic derby nicknames: “Malice With Chains.” But back in 2000, Alice Gleason was just an awkward college athlete wondering how to tell her Santa Clara soccer teammates she was gay.

Gleason tells OutSports:

It was difficult. It was a difficult time for me and a difficult time for my friends who knew me.  As I struggled with my sexuality, I think they did too.  It was an awkward period.

The awkwardness didn’t prevent the Broncos from being an elite program: Santa Clara went to the Final Four two of the three years Gleason played goalie there. She transferred to UNLV, and that team was “10 to 15 percent lesbians.” Those Rebels.

It’s a blessing that Steve Nash majored in Sociology and not Film Studies at Santa Clara because, honestly, classes on the finer aspects of filmmaking would’ve done nothing but blurred Nash’s 20-20 creative vision. Last year, Nash gave us classic footage of himself and Baron Davis on a tandem bike. If you can believe it, Nash’s latest short, SuperBADge, is even better. The cop comedy includes strong performances from Shaq (Thaddeus Thundercastle) and Alando Tucker (Billy Ray Badger), and an unheralded debut by chalk-wielding graffiti artist and Sideshow Bob lookalike Robin Lopez. It’s outstanding. Please go watch it now.

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