Hurd By The Bay

Pondering the buzz around the San Francisco Bay Area as we head into the weekend, and I wonder how a guy can have “Little” in one nickname and “Big” in another.

--- Joe Pavelski has made the Sharks his team during the team’s first eight games of the Stanley Cup playoffs. The Sharks have a long history of folding under the pressure of Stanley’s looming presence, and just as Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau were doing their usual playoff thing (namely, nothing significant), Joe-Pa has exploded for seven goals, four assists and plus-six, all team-leading totals in the playoffs. He scored the overtime game-winner against Colorado two nights after Dan Boyle's fiasco created a 2-1 series deficit -- the type of adversity that normally sinks the Sharks. The line he centers with Devin Setoguchi and Ryane Clowe on the wings has replaced the Thornton-Marleau-Heatley line as the team’s best (in fact, Marleau’s status is iffy even if he is playing, and Heatley hasn’t skated on it for a bit).

--- Anyway, Pavelski’s two goals and an assist Thursday night ended the opening-game-of-series misery for the Sharks, and showed they might be ready this year to put in the effort night after night it

will take to beat the Red Wings. It also has increased debate around here about the nickname that best suits him. What do you prefer? I like “Lil’ Joe” (after the old Bonanza character)because at heart, Pavelski is a winner. But “The Big Pavelski” isn't bad, either. Comment below.

--- The other big chatter has to do with the Giants and Tim Lincecum, and it’ll be interesting to see how that team responds in the wake of a disappointing loss to the Phillies on Wednesday. The Giants lost four straight after their only other mini-controversy --- the team’s decision not to retaliate immediately against Vicente Padilla after he beaned Aaron Rowand in the face ---- and while the latest one wasn’t as polarizing, there’s no question the loss lingered. Lin-Cy-cum was two outs away from a dominant complete game, when a one-out walk caused manager Bruce Bochy to yank him. The game got away (sometimes ball is about nothing but luck), and Lincecum got a no-decision.

--- Question for the readers. If you’re Lincecum, do you go into Bochy’s office after that game and tell him essentially, “Next time I want to finish!”? And if you’re Bochy, would you respect or be angry with a pitcher for saying something like that? Myself, I think The Franchise has earned the right to make that call, even if it is April.

--- On the other side of the Bay, the A’s are approaching irrelevance. Until they solve their injury woes, they won’t win, and already, a fourth straight season is being torpedoed. Susan Slusser has some specific numbers in her story. I’m no math wizard, but just using those numbers against the length of the regular season, then the A’s are averaging a disabled list addition every week and a half. Throw the six weeks of spring training into the addition, and it’s about once ever three weeks. Ridiculous, and no end in sight.

--- Finally, a nice story on the potential new owner of the Warriors.

Every so often, my almost-7-year-old son, Clayton, says or does something that makes me wonder whether he, indeed, has part of my gene pool. Example: He showed up for a recent overnight visit wearing a New York Yankees hat.

Seriously made me wonder whether the kid should remain in the will, lol.

Now you gotta understand, my mother and her side of the family all hail from a small town in Connecticut that's the halfway point where Yankee and Red Sox nations collide. So I've spent a lifetime listening to the obnoxiousness that results in rooting for the Microsoft's of the world. I choose not to partake.

If I had my druthers, I'd rather my children not drink the juice (no pun intended), either. So I asked this child of mine, "Clayton, how can you possibly root for the Yankees."

He says, "I like Derek Jeter."

Kid's pretty smart for 6. Tonight or sometime this weekend, Jeter will become the most prolific hitter in Yankees history, and there's no player I'd rather have my son emulate.

I was blessed enough to cover baseball during the Great Shortstop Debate earlier this decade. And I remember specifically a conversation I had while watching Miguel Tejada wreak havoc on the Bombers at the old Yankee Stadium while a member of the A's. And I remember specifically telling my uncle that Jeter was the least effective shortstop from a group that included Tejada, A-Rod and Nomar Garciaparra.

"You'll see who the last one standing is," he said.

Boy, I wish he had been wrong. But what fueled my uncle's argument, and he was dead right, was that Jeter "does it the right way," and that "those guys outlast the others."

Let's see. Jeter has never been arrested. Never had shady pics show up on the Internet. Never has incurred the wrath of his peers.

I interviewed Jeter on a couple of occasions, but only once in one-on-one. It was amazing how he steered every question about his own individual accomplishments into a topic about the greater good --- namely, winning games and winning championships. Jeter already has won four of them, and No. 5 is there for the taking in October.

Now, almost every player will say that it's all about the winning. But in reality, only a handful really mean it. If in actuality, Jeter is one of those, then he not only is the greatest shortstop in Yankees history, he's the greatest actor in the history of American theatre.

I choose to believe that he is, quite simply, the antithesis of the modern athlete, someone who's old school in motivation and actions. There's a reason he's the heart and soul of America's most famous franchise, and thank goodness he measures up to the expectation in every way.

So it is that Clayton is off to a great start in making sound judgements. His Yankees hat? Hanging nicely on the door.