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Dodgers May Not Win World Series, but They’re Shoo-Ins for ‘The Smiley’

February 28, 2011   Tom Krasovic   No comments

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Don Mattingly
GLENDALE Ariz. — Every team in the National League West except the Dodgers owns a league pennant from the last 13 years, two claiming the World Series, most recently the Giants last fall. The Dodgers have gone nearly twice as long without a league flag. In that time, all four expansion teams from the 1990s cracked the World Series.

West Coast Bias doesn’t want the Dodgers to feel lonely, so I’m creating a trophy — The Smiley — to honor them for putting smiles on the most faces.

Estimated cost of the trophy, something tinny and Dodger Blue, is $19.88 — same year as the Dodgers’ last World Series. The Smiley would be cheaper without engraving Bud Selig‘s name, but I’m guessing Aol will foot the bill, even after buying the Huffington Post for $315 million.

 

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Dodgers may not win World Series, but another Smiley might be in their future

February 28, 2011   Tom Krasovic   No comments

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GLENDALE Ariz. — Every team in the National League West except the Dodgers owns a league pennant from the last 13 years, two claiming the World Series, most recently the Giants last fall. The Dodgers have gone nearly twice as long without a league flag. In that time, all four expansion teams from the 1990s cracked the World Series.

West Coast Bias doesn’t want the Dodgers to feel lonely, so I’m creating a trophy — The Smiley — to honor them for putting smiles on the most faces.

Estimated cost of the trophy, something tinny and Dodger Blue, is $19.88 — same year as the Dodgers’ last World Series. The Smiley would be cheaper without engraving Bud Selig’s name, but I’m guessing AOL will foot the bill, even after buying the Huffington Post for $315 million.

 

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Jimmer Fredette, BYU Calling to Mind Larry Bird, Indiana State

February 26, 2011   Tom Krasovic   No comments

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SAN DIEGO — I hope Larry Bird was watching Saturday when Jimmer Fredette and Brigham Young carved up highly ranked San Diego State for the second time this year.

For Larry Legend, it was a chance to relive his college days, the Jimmer doing for Brigham Young what Bird used to do for Indiana State.

Fredette is the nation’s leading scorer largely because of his silky, rapid jumpshot that extends to some 30 feet, which creates ample space for teammates to get their favorite shots

Scores of gifted gunners, both present and past, open up the chessboard for their teammates, but rare are those who can punish the defense with the pass.

Saturday, Fredette showed a Birdlike ability to find the open man. The result was a steady hailstorm of 3-pointers that carried BYU to the victory, 80-67, leaving the No. 7 Cougars (27-2, 13-1) atop the Mountain West Conference and No. 6 San Diego State (27-2, 12-2) looking up.

With a CBS national audience watching, the common perception that Fredette is defined by his scoring was reshaped by passes through and over double teams, fast break lobs and creative bounce passes. Fredette had nine assists, one shy of his personal best, despite drawing athletic defenders such as 6-foot-8 Billy White and 6-foot-7 Kawhi Leonard

“He is as creative as any player I’ve played with as a player in college, or played against, or coached,” said BYU coach Dave Rose, who was a teammate of Clyde Drexler’s on the University of Houston‘s Phi Slamma Jamma teams.

 

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Gunslinger Kevin Towers Settling In as Diamondbacks General Manager

February 24, 2011   Tom Krasovic   No comments

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Kevin TowersSCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Kevin Towers loathed the Diamondbacks in their heyday, calling them arrogant when he was general manager of the Padres, so it’s something to see him now amid the sagebrush and cactus, talking of his paradise found as Arizona’s GM.

Yet, where better than the Old West for a GM who shoots from the hip and has Gunslinger in his email address? Among his favorite spots in Phoenix is Rawhide, an Old West town where, for a PR stunt 11 years ago, he and other Padres honchos assembled in gunslinger garb.

But it’s far more than locale that has Towers smiling on this February morning as he reviews his first five months on the job.

For all his headline-grabbing trades and quips as Padres GM, he wasn’t always allowed to indulge his, well, his gunslinger-ishness, sometimes for his own good, he admits, citing mostly his early years as a GM under the savvy, if obsessive Larry Lucchino. Now, befitting his 14 years of GM experience, he’s getting more elbow room.

“It’s a perfect job,” he says.

Most fun he’s had in a decade-plus, he adds, calling Diamondback-dom “the best working environment” of any front office where he’s worked.

 

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Trevor Hoffman Taking His Time Before Delivering Next Pitch in Retirement

February 16, 2011   Tom Krasovic   No comments

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PEORIA, Ariz. — Winter’s migratory patterns wired into him like those of sea turtles or birds, Trevor Hoffman could’ve homed in on the ballfields here blindfolded when spring training beckoned.

The drive from coastal San Diego to greater Phoenix? A prolonged exhale, Hoffman grateful that his new life as a former ballplayer still includes baseball.

“I don’t know what I would have done had I not been able to get on the highway and drive out for spring training,” said the save king, who retired from pitching last month. “Sitting at home, it would’ve have been like, ‘I’m missing out on something.’ “

It’s an odd sight nonetheless, Hoffman with fungo bat, standing on a mound yet well behind the rubber, eyeing not the catcher but a Padres pitcher in front of him.

Don’t call him Coach Hoffman, though. That title fits his older brother Glenn, San Diego’s third-base coach.

 

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Can BCS Reform Come from England — Bloody Well Right

February 14, 2011   Tom Krasovic   No comments

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SAN DIEGO — Home to footballers who couldn’t throw a spiral across Abbey Road, what could England possibly have to offer American football? Crumpets at halftime? Frumpy cheerleaders?

Texas billionaire Mark Cuban actually is curious to find out.

Four students from Oxford, England’s oldest university, have a winning plan to reform college football’s controversial system of deciding its champion. At least, that’s what five judges decided on Friday, after graduate students from 10 universities made pitches for BCS reform, the topic presented to them 24 hours earlier at San Diego State‘s sixth international MBA case competition.

“We decided to focus on an issue that sports fans throughout the country really can rally around,” said director Scott Minto.

 

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Can BCS Reform Come from England — Bloody Well Right

February 14, 2011   Tom Krasovic   No comments

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SAN DIEGO — Home to footballers who couldn’t throw a spiral across Abbey Road, what could England possibly have to offer American football? Crumpets at halftime? Frumpy cheerleaders?

Texas billionaire Mark Cuban actually is curious to find out.

Four students from Oxford, England’s oldest university, have a winning plan to reform college football’s controversial system of deciding its champion. At least, that’s what five judges decided on Friday, after graduate students from 10 universities made pitches for BCS reform, the topic presented to them 24 hours earlier at San Diego State‘s sixth international MBA case competition.

“We decided to focus on an issue that sports fans throughout the country really can rally around,” said director Scott Minto.

 

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It’s Showtime at San Diego State, but Aztecs Have Work to Do

February 09, 2011   Tom Krasovic   No comments

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SAN DIEGO — The San Diego State story is mostly about entertainment.

People who may not have known basketballs from pumpkins endure slow traffic and fill the arena on this hilltop campus, then yell and clap for two hours.

SDSU’s amazing season is about a 65-year-old coach who looks like Orville Redenbacher, but crackles and pops like the rowdy students who zing opponents.

“Coach always tells us before the game, ‘You know the student section is going to cheer, but let’s get these old people out of their seats, let’s get ‘em cheering,’ ” said senior center Brian Carwell.

Fun, that’s the ticket.

Coach Steve Fisher believes in fast-break basketball. Building on his recruiting victories, he has his athletic Aztecs defending, rebounding and running to red-line their RPMs.

Especially inside their bowl of a gym, where they’ve won 17 consecutive games, the No. 6 Aztecs (24-1) feel the need for speed, like the Top Gun pilots who trained north of San Diego

“The most fun thing about basketball is getting out there and running, just having fun,” point guard D.J. Gay said late Tuesday, after the 85-53 blow-by of pitiful Utah.

 

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Steelers’ Super Bowl Loss Leaves Sour Taste for Padres Pitching Coach

February 07, 2011   Tom Krasovic   No comments

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Todd Hundley and Darren BalsleyEven as our West Coast guys Aaron Rodgers, Clay Matthews III and Desmond Bishop celebrated the Super Bowl victory, West Coast Bias fretted on late Sunday.

I feared for Padres pitching coach Darren Balsley, Steelers fan deluxe.

Spring training opens next Sunday, so it’s best that Bud Black fly to Balsley’s home in Tennessee today. Or else the pitching guru might stay in his man cave, clutching his Terrible Towel, for weeks.

Steeler fandom being what it is, we all know at least one wacko Steelers fan. Balsley’s my guy.

Trust me, if more folks cared an eighth as much about the Padres as Balsley does the Steelers, I’d never write another pennant race article likening Petco Park to Switzerland.

My favorite part of Super Bowl week was our phone chat 24 hours before kickoff, Balsley as intense as Mike Tomlin, riffing like only the psycho fans do.

“I don’t like that we’re wearing the white jerseys,” he told me, right out the chute.

 

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Rocky Long, SDSU Target Inland Empire in Plans to Become Next TCU or Boise

February 03, 2011   Tom Krasovic   No comments

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SAN DIEGO — Like music mogul Jay Z and building tycoon Donald Trump, San Diego State’s football coach is in an empire state of mind.

Only without the artistic riffs or weird hair.

San Diego State, Rocky Long tells me, can become football’s next TCU or Boise State. Which is to say, San Diego State can rise into mid-major prominence and crash a BCS bowl.

“That’s realistic within a five- or six-year period,” Long was telling West Coast Bias on letter-of-intent day.

Hearing this, my mind raced back to a different time yet on the same sunny campus here 11 miles east of the Pacific Ocean.

Twenty years ago, another Aztecs head coach painted SDSU as a latent “Miami of the West,” and he meant Florida’s mighty Miami, not Ben Roethlisberger’s Miami of Ohio.

Making his dreamy talk seem less dreamy, Al Luginbill recruited several future NFL players to his SDSU offenses and defenses. But his Aztecs more resembled the misbehaving Hurricanes than the triumphant Canes. Luginbill was pink-slipped in 1993 after five interesting, if maddening, seasons that yielded no conference titles or bowl victories.

“We should’ve been better,” one of those Aztecs, Robert Griffith, an electrical engineering grad and former Pro Bowl safety for the Minnesota Vikings, told me in November.

 

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