This year I am being resolute.<\/p>\n
I am forgoing anything that so much as resembles a resolution. My resolution over\/under is roughly four days. At which time I begin berating myself for a complete lack of discipline that generally lasts until roughly the following New Year\u2019s Eve.<\/p>\n
That said, I\u2019m heading for the treadmill as soon as I finish writing this yarn. Which should be by Tuesday.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m thinking that some of our other Bay Area heroes might be feeling the same way.<\/p>\n
49er\u2019s general manager John Lynch would likely be one of them. Last New Year\u2019s he was resolute in being cautious. Remember all those pre-season \u201cDon\u2019t expect much\u201d warnings he gave us? \u201cWe\u2019re going to take our lumps,\u201d he confided. And suddenly his two best defenders were gone for the year. His quarterback and his tight end were on the sick and wounded list and his wide receiver room had more ants in it than humans who could catch a football. We all sat back and said, \u201cBoy, John Lynch was sure right about this team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now it becomes obvious. John Lynch\u2019s New Year\u2019s resolution was, \u201cThis year I\u2019m going to make those media cretins look like idiots.\u201d<\/p>\n
And Buster Posey\u2019s New Year\u2019s resolution last year I\u2019m quite sure was something like, \u201cI resolve to get somebody who can hit like Rafael Devers and pitch like Logan Webb.\u201d<\/p>\n
And this year, I\u2019m quite sure Buster\u2019s resolution would be something like, \u201cI resolve to get somebody who can hit like Rafael Devers and pitch like Logan Webb \u2014 and, if it\u2019s not asking too much, maybe a couple of guys who can catch it, throw it, and run the bases, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Buster\u2019s out there doing the best he can. But it seems that the guys in the suits who sign Buster\u2019s checks are not really too willing to write a bigger check for a player \u2014 any player \u2014 who the Dodgers don\u2019t think is worthy.<\/p>\n
And that brings me to Steve Kerr. I\u2019ve known Steve since he was at Palisades High School. At that time he looked like he was 12. When he went to Arizona he looked 16. And, when he retired from the NBA he looked old enough to vote.<\/p>\n
Even through his time as a GM in Phoenix and his tenure as an NBA championship winning coach, Kerr looked like he could still be asked for an ID at BevMo. In the last couple of months, my friend Steve Kerr looks about 75.<\/p>\n
He could look younger in a few weeks from now when his team will almost certainly ship a one-time franchise maker Jonathan Kuminga off to someplace for something \u2014 likely nothing that will move the playoff needle.<\/p>\n
The last time I spent any real time with Steve Kerr was in Hawaii before he even came to the Warriors. I\u2019m thinking his New Year\u2019s resolution has something to do with clear skies and balmy breezes, and his only rotation issues would be from the lazy Susan on the luau table.<\/p>\n
I have little doubt but that the two college football general managers here in the Bay Area have similar New Year\u2019s resolutions: \u201cI resolve to get lots of money from lots of people in order to avoid being pummeled by more generous donors from another institution of higher learning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Andrew Luck at Stanford and Ron Rivera at Cal are both great people. Both are guys you want to hang out with. Both have earned their chops. And both are in the business of extricating large sums of money from graduated poobahs so that they may buy athletes. Like someone who\u2019s capable of throwing a football, someone who\u2019s capable of catching a football, and somebody who\u2019s capable of destroying anyone on another team who\u2019s capable of throwing or catching a football.<\/p>\n
Seems simple, doesn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n
Finally, I can\u2019t let a New Year\u2019s column go without talking about some who left us in 2025.<\/p>\n
I confess. I read the obits. I do it predominantly to make sure I\u2019m not in them. But I also do it because as the years go on I know all too many of the names in there. Some make me recall a moment in time.<\/p>\n
George Foreman died this year. Not always the affable sort he was known to be, but always an entrepreneur. George lived in Oakland when he started his career, and had an office near the airport there. On the door of his office it said, \u201cGeorge Foreman Development Company,\u201d so I asked him, \u201cWhat do you develop?\u201d His answer was what made him who he is. \u201cGeorge Foreman,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
We lost a legendary basketball coach named George Raveling. I spent many years working alongside George calling games. He won everywhere he coached including at Washington State in Pullman, Wash., where he had to recruit against other (then) Pac-10 schools in L.A., the Bay Area and Seattle. \u201cHow do you get a recruit to come to play here instead of under the bright lights?\u201d I asked him. \u201cYou fly \u2019em in at night, and you fly \u2019em out at night,\u201d George said, \u201cFrom the plane it looks like Paris.\u201d<\/p>\n
When George was a Villanova student, he was asked to be a part of the security for Martin Luther King when he gave the \u201cI have a dream\u201d speech. George was so taken by the speech that when it was over, he asked Dr. King if he could have his copy. King handed it to him.<\/p>\n
George told me it was hand written. It still lives in a Raveling family vault.<\/p>\n
I lost some colleagues this year, too. Gone are John Feinstein, an author and sports writer who could talk about much more than that, and Mike Patrick, an ESPN broadcasting colleague who was the pro\u2019s pro.<\/p>\n
I sat at dinner in Chicago one night with Harry Caray and Bob Uecker, who was maybe the funniest man I\u2019ve ever been around in sports. He died this year.<\/p>\n
I was at Jim Marshall\u2019s wrong way run at Kezar Stadium; I interviewed Ron Turcotte, Secretariat\u2019s jockey during the triple crown run;<\/p>\n
They\u2019re all gone.<\/p>\n
And I\u2019m headed for the treadmill. This year I mean it.<\/p>\n
Barry Tompkins is a 40-year network television sportscaster and a San Francisco native. Email him at barrytompkins1@gmail.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This year I am being resolute. I am forgoing anything that so much as resembles a resolution. My…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646963,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2070],"tags":[374,692,391,2493,7,47774,4438,6,9],"class_list":{"0":"post-646962","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-bears","8":"tag-bears","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-chicago-bears","11":"tag-chicagobears","12":"tag-football","13":"tag-marin-sports","14":"tag-newsletter","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115823031478672871","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}