Giants’ pursuit of Chapman not a good idea
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In pursuit of bullpen reconstruction, the Giants have an idea to pursue free agent pitcher Aroldis Chapman, according to a USA Today report. That’s not a good idea. For baseball reasons alone, you could certainly make the case that Chapman is necessary. He throws the ball over 100 miles per hour left-handed. He helped the Cubs win the World Series and has averaged 35 saves over the past three seasons, with nearly two strikeouts per inning pitched. In case you’ve forgotten, the Giants’ relief pitching was the team’s undoing in 2016 as it barely slipped into the postseason and then fittingly blew a lead in the final inning of the National
League Division Series.
But is Chapman necessary? Or a necessary evil? Or not worth being necessary? He comes with baggage full of gunfire. Literally.
About a year ago, according to a Florida police report, the 29-year-old Chapman acknowledged that he shot off a gun multiple times in his garage to put a scare into his girlfriend, who is the mother of his child. The woman also accused Chapman of choking her. Chapman denied that part. Police ultimately decided to make no arrest because of “inconsistencies” in the stories they were provided and alack of physical evidence regarding the choking. Major League Baseball still suspended Chapman for 30 days at the start of this season.
The Giants obviously have looked into the Chapman incident and still decided to meet with his representatives this week. If they do sign him, their public image will still take a hit among Giants’ fans for whom domestic violence is a major red light when it comes to supporting an athlete or a team. As it should be. Chapman rode the Cubs’ wave of good feeling once he was traded to Chicago and his offseason trouble did not cause any protests. But that’s Chicago. The Bay Area might be different. Even if the choking accusation is wrong, Chapman freely admitted to cops that he shot off a gun to intimidate his kid’s mom. Let’s see how the Giants marketing department promotes that next spring. Or better yet, let’s not. Chapman pitched last season for the Yankees and Cubs without further incident. But consider that his alleged price tag is a multi-year deal totaling $100 million. And the “multiyear” part does not refer to 20 years. It’s four or five. Do you really want to give that much money over that long a term to someone who, until the end of his career, will always be considered a personality risk?
Meanwhile, in other rapidly-developing Bay Area baseball news, the Oakland A’s are rumored to be pursuing ... no one.
I still don’t understand entirely what went wrong with Jeff Tedford when he coached football at Cal for seven or eight good to excellent seasons and then three deflating ones. That was from 2002 to 2012, when he was fired after producing a 3-9 record, just his second losing team out of 11 in Berkeley.
At the time, I wondered when Tedford might again become a college head coach. The answer arrived this week: He’s the new man at Fresno State. That’s his alma mater. Should be a good match. He won’t be taking over the team until next season, which means he will not be on the sidelines when the team plays San Jose State on Thanksgiving weekend. That’s too bad. It would make that otherwise fairly meaningless game a lot more interesting.
Tedford’s career has taken some odd turns since leaving Cal. He was briefly the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ offensive coordinator before heart surgery caused him to take a leave of absence. Then he surfaced as head coach of the B.C. Lions in the Canadian Football League. He quit that job after a year and joined the University of Washington as an “offensive consultant” for the 2016 season, which has gone quite splendidly for the Huskies.
At Fresno State, Ted- ford has a tough to-do list. The program has fallen on hard times, which is why Tim DeRuyter was fired last month after losing 16 of his previous 20 games. The Bulldogs’ roster is not exactly full of NFL prospects, which Tedford specialized in producing at Cal. The wish here is for his time in Fresno to be healthy, happy and as imaginative with X’s and 0’s as it often was in Berkeley. College football in California is better when the Bulldogs are going to bowls.
Our next president, Donald Trump, is not modest about his prowess on the links. He once said: “There’s very few people that can beat me in golf.”
Maybe that’s true. But in his visits to our part of the world for the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, Trump has not been a winner. The event, which pairs celebrities with PGA Tour professionals in two-man teams, takes place every February on the Monterey Peninsula.
Trump has accepted invitations to the tournament seven times, beginning in 1993 and most recently in 2006. His team has never made the cut after 36 holes, although technically Trump is 0-for-6 because the 1998 third round was washed out by bad weather and never replayed. It is also difficult to break down how much Trump was responsible for those results because amateurs do not submit separate scorecards for themselves. Only their team score is recorded. The pro keeps his own card. If the two-man team does not make the cut on Saturday night, the pro plays the final round on his own.
Yet this much, we can glean from the Pebble Beach record book: None of Trump’s seven professional partners over the years has been helped much by the partnership. The top finisher of the seven was Brian Claar in 2003. He ended the tournament in a tie for 42nd place. Davis Love III won that year.
My own memories of Trump at Pebble are that he was his usual Trumpish self, hamming it up to the crowds and enjoying himself. One amateur participant told me that Trump was very cordial when being introduced to the player’s relatives. Another golfer just rolled his eyes when I asked what it was like being in his group. In other words, a mixed reaction, sort of like the American electorate.