SF Examiner: Affair with Giants is hot, but 49ers still San Francisco's true love

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

Brian Sabean, the man who helped build the Giants into champions, said San Francisco has become a baseball city. Unquestionably. Yet, it is no less a football city, as we were reminded the other evening.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2011 SF Newspaper Company

RealClearSports: Tiki Returns, But Who Wants Him?

By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

That Tiki Barber's possibilities of playing again in the NFL may be compressed to a brief two words, "No chance,'' is almost incidental. Tiki did sports a great favor on a slow news period.

He changed the subject.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011

SF Examiner: Giants still working out the spring kinks

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

It was a preview of summer in the heat of spring, baseball that didn’t mean a great deal, such as who won or lost, but to players seeking perfection and capacity crowd of 8,330 seeking a day in the sun it meant a great deal.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2011 SF Newspaper Company

RealClearSports: Guaranteed: There Will Be an NFL Season

By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

So that's settled. There will be an NFL season. Guaranteed.

What, you were worried, unhinged by the rhetoric? It's going the way it was supposed to go, to the 11th hour, to the edge. A long-ago Secretary of State named John Foster Dulles described the tactic as brinksmanship.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011

SF Examiner: Giants icon Willie Mays is truly one of a kind

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

He is the last one, not so much standing but sitting, at his own table, with his autograph in silver ink on the top. It is there Willie Mays holds court in the Giants’ spring training clubhouse, reflecting upon a past inextricably linked to the present.

Part of a trio, connected by greatness and proximity in the days when New York had three teams and baseball was all flannel uniforms and grace.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2011 SF Newspaper Company