We've become what I feared: Fans of 'elitist' European sports

I've become what I used to ridicule and I blame Mrs. Brad.

For decades, a good chunk of our married lives has revolved around watching sports – baseball, basketball and football.

Until now. Now we've largely traded the NFL and even much of the baseball season for professional cycling and Formula 1 auto racing.

Yeah, right?

The beauty of loving multiple sports is that something is always in season – for most of my life, it was Giants, Warriors or 49ers season. It really still is.

But that's waned in recent years, with an increase in NBA fandom and a slight lessening of the others (Mrs. Brad won't watch the NFL because of the league's macho posturing and inattention to head injuries; the ascendency of the Warriors means we're focused on the NBA until mid-June, which is nearly halfway through the baseball season).

But there are newcomers in our sports world.

In the past two years, cycling races and Formula 1 moved into our sports space, making us stereotypical elitist suburban Baby Boomer sports fans. Those are the fans I secretly mocked when I was a sports editor, suggesting they considered themselves better than run-of-the-mill "regular sports fans." They liked cycling and golf and tennis and European auto racing.

Now we're among them. Kind of.

First, cycling. Mrs. Brad stumbled upon the Tour de France last year, enjoying it partly because of the slow pace of the event and the beautiful scenery (she also loved watching the "Slow TV" shows, like a 10-hour show with a camera mounted on a train traversing Norway). But she started understanding strategy and soon, she had a favorite team. She would watch the daily six-hour international broadcasts of Tour de France stages on the Peacock app and tell me about strategy and winners.

This year, she's watched several multistage races – often working or napping during the events. So I got interested. We root for the Jumbo Visma team. When Jonas Vingegaard won the Tour, our team won. When Wout van Aert won stages, our team won. When Primož Roglič dropped out, our team lost a guy.

La Vuelta, a stage race in Spain, is now at its midpoint and we're watching it. Cycling has our attention.

Second Formula 1. The attraction came about because we watched the Netflix series "Drive to Survive," which covered the past three seasons of F1 (as we fans call it). The series taught us how the races work and showed drama beyond simply who wins.

This year, we began recording each qualifying session and race (since they often begin before 5 a.m. PT). That's an hour of qualifying (ESPN also generally broadcasts three separate practice periods!) and two hours of the race. We have our favorite drivers (mine is Sergio Perez, hers is Daniel Riccardio) and we keep track of the individual and team standings. We root for the worst team in F-1 (Williams) to finish in the top 10 and finally get a point in the standings. We now are emboldened to criticize tire choices and pit strategies.

Here's the thing: The cycling races are great. So is Formula 1. I was wrong to doubt them.

But as I embrace them, I suspect my biggest fear is that admitting cycling and auto racing are cool could lead to me having to reexamine my prejudices against other sports. Is it possible that I could actually like NASCAR, professional golf and other sports that I dismiss? Even soccer?

Nah. And it's almost Warriors season, so I can go back to that.

Except for when there's a big cycling event or an F-1 race.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Left-handed obsession brings dubious payoff decades later

When I was about 13, there were a few things I wanted to be.

• The San Francisco Giants radio play-by-play announcer.
• Someone with better hair.
• A member of the Commodores.
• Left-handed.

I worked on one option a lot: Being left-handed. (Well, I also practiced doing radio play-by-play into my tape recorder during the baseball "Game of the Week," but that was only once a month or so.)

Being a lefty was cool.

Barack Obama is a lefty. So is Paul McCartney. So were Neil Armstrong and Napoleon.

But then, though, I was mostly focused on how cool left-handed athletes were.

Decades later, being a lefty is still cool, despite all the things a southpaw (there are even cool synonyms for "left-handed") will tell you make life difficult. For instance, most tools are made for right-handers. Also, our writing style means left-handers drag their hands across what they've just written, scissors are made for righties and credit cards are swiped on the right side of the machine. And don't get them started on spiral-bound notebooks.

The conclusion? Who cares, because lefties seem cool, particularly in sports: The lefty quarterback. The lefty jump shot. A left-handed pitcher.

I worked at it, teaching myself to bat left-handed in the way many in my generation did: Wiffle ball, with a light bat.

But I didn't just grab a plastic bat and hit lefty. I had a plan – one I also used while learning how to throw lefty and shoot a basketball left-handed: I watched myself in the mirror. I observed how it looked when I batted, threw or shot right-handed, then mimicked it with my left hand.

I was a weird kid.

Learning how to do things with the opposite hand is not easy. It takes repetition. But I wanted things to look the same lefty as they were when I did them right-handed.

My sister was a lefty, so we had a left-handed baseball mitt. After practicing the throwing motion over and over in front of a mirror, I went out and threw a tennis ball against a wall lefty until it felt kind of normal. Kind of normal. I had to practice.

Same with shooting a basketball. I practiced shooting lefty on our driveway hoop. Over and over.

The result? I got pretty good doing sports lefty, almost as good as I could do things right-handed. (Offsetting fact: I wasn't very good right-handed at hitting, throwing or shooting a basketball, so the bar was low.)

I extended the left-handed obsession beyond sports. I taught myself how to write lefty. I brushed my teeth lefty. I learned how to use a spoon and fork lefty.

Decades later, I benefit from that childhood obsession. I never got a whiff of announcing for the Giants, I listen to the Commodores and still have bad hair, but I can do some things lefty.

When I hurt my right shoulder a few years ago, I realized could still throw things and shoot a basketball. It was awkward, but the practice from decades earlier helped. (Offsetting fact: At my age, you're rarely asked to throw something or shoot a basketball.)

Still, my junior high obsession led to one of my greatest natural skills: I quickly identify left-handed people on movies and TV shows. I shout out, "he's a lefty!" or "she's left-handed!" to Mrs. Brad.

It's not the same as being able to throw 80 mph left-handed, but it's something.

I guess.

Reach Lefty Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

 

Editor's tips on how to avoid the process of bad word usage

I'm kind of a word snob. I don't use multisyllabic words all the time (the exception: "multisyllabic"), but I insist that some words are irritatingly unnecessary.

That makes sense, seeing that my job title in real life is "senior editor" (I suspect the "senior" part is often more applicable than "editor," but that's for another day).

Anyway, as part of my job, I frequently come across common, unnecessary words, which surprisingly irritate me.

Because you are nice and don't want to irritate me, here are five words and how not to use them.

(Side note: Don't ask me to differentiate between affect and effect. Each time they're used, I have to stop and think about it for at least 10 seconds).

1. Utilize. This word gets . . . used . . .  frequently by people who apparently are trying simply to add two syllables to the word "use." In zero cases does "utilize" mean something other than "use."  Even worse, the word "utilization" also should be replaced with use (with the hard "s" sound). Here's a tip to remember the correct way: Always use the simple word. Get it?

2. Process. Former Daily Republic reporter and colleague Ryan McCarthy was a hawk about this. Ryan claimed that the word "process" was almost always unnecessary, particularly in government writing. He would see a report that said, "the city will begin the hiring process . . . " and say "they mean the city will hire." He'd see something about "the writing process" and say, "don't they mean 'writing?'" I'd never considered that before Ryan. Now I can't forget it.

3. Signage. One of my (not) favorite dumb words since signage really just is a two-syllable word for signs. Over the past few decades, it's become commonplace for people to talk about putting up "signage" around the office or around the property, by which they mean to put up signs. This leads to the next word  . . .

4. Usage. If "signage" really means "sign," then it follows (correctly) that "usage" really means "use." Usage is the cousin to utilize! I guess there are some instances in which "usage" is correct, but for the life of me I can't figure out when. Once again, this is an example of adding a syllable to a word to make it seem more important, which is like me going by the name Bradage to seem more significant. It's just silly(age).

5. Myriad. Admittedly, this is a good word, but it should always be alone. And by that, I mean it's wrong to add "of" after it. There are myriad reasons for this – not myriad of reasons for this. Because myriad means "countless," and you wouldn't say there are countless of reasons why you do something. Right?

There are far more misused words and perhaps in the future, we can discuss them.

But let me make this much clear: While there are myriad of decision-making processes by which you can determine whether to utilize signage or usage, all of them are wrong.

Because there are myriad decisions to determine whether to use incorrect words(age).

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

 

Vin and me: The night I 'saved' legendary announcer's life

Vin Scully is likely the greatest sportscaster in history.

The longtime (67 years!) voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers died Tuesday at 94, creating an outpouring of affection from fans, broadcasters and anyone who ever heard him announce a game for the Dodgers or on national TV.

I won't make a big deal about it, but I possibly saved Scully's life 35 years ago. More on that later.

Scully's career involved describing performances by Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider and other Brooklyn Dodgers, then coming West and broadcasting the careers of every Dodger from Sandy Koufax through Clayton Kershaw. He was the national announcer for Hank Aaron's 715th homer in 1974. He was there for Bill Buckner's error in 1986 and for Kirk Gibson's homer off Dennis Eckersley in 1988.

Scully was also among the top NFL and golf announcers for decades. He was the play-by-play announcer in January 1982, when Joe Montana hit Dwight Clark with a touchdown pass to give the 49ers a 28-27 win over the Cowboys and send them to their first Super Bowl.

Scully wasn't just great, he created a generation of imitators. It was nearly impossible to listen to a baseball broadcast in the 1980s without hearing someone who sounded suspiciously like Scully. Giants current radio voice Jon Miller (another legendary announcer) does brilliant imitations of Scully, including a Japanese version.

Scully has company on the Mount Rushmore of greatest baseball announces (I'd definitely include Al Michaels–the Giants play-by-play announcer while I was in junior high–and Bob Uecker, who has been broadcasting Milwaukee Brewers games for 51 years), but Scully's combination of storytelling, warmth and basic human decency is hard to surpass.

And I arguably saved his life one summer night in the late 1980s.

I was a young sports writer, covering a Giants-Dodgers game at Candlestick Park. Twice a week in those days, I would drive from Fairfield to San Francisco or Oakland to cover games. One night, about 90 minutes before the game, I was returning to the press box from eating in the press cafeteria when I saw Scully walking the other way.

He noticed my press pass and acknowledged that he was a little lost in the concrete jungle of Candlestick.

"Saaaaaaay," he said in that drawn-out Scully voice, "Could you tell me where the dining room is?"

What? I felt like I was listening to Scully describe Steve Garvey or Ron Cey hitting a homer to beat my childhood Giants. But I also felt like I was listening to him describe Joe Montana hitting Dwight Clark with that famous pass. Vin Scully was talking to me!

Finally, I snapped out of my reverie.

"It's back there. Just around that corner," I said, pointing.

"Thanks," he said. (Actually, it was more like, "Thaaaaaaaanks.")

And he was gone, presumably to eat.

Over the years, I've considered what might have happened had I not given Scully that information. Perhaps he would have gotten lost and never found the cafeteria. He might have fainted from weakness in a bleak corner of Candlestick Park (there were plenty) and never been found.

It's not unreasonable to consider that had I not pointed out how to get to the press cafeteria to Vin Scully, he would have died that night. We wouldn't have heard his call of Kirk Gibson's homer. Dodgers fans would have lost 25-plus years of Scully calling games on radio and TV.

America lost a treasure Tuesday, but had I not heroically  intervened when a stranger asked me how to get to a cafeteria, America could have lost that treasure 30-plus years ago.

I'm glad I could help, to which American should say, "Thaaaaaaanks."

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.