Welcome to the weekend mish-mash, where it’s all you can eat, all the time.
I’ll start on a personal note. When I was hired as a sports writer by one of the smaller papers in the old Contra Costa Times empire, one of the first people I met was Don Zupan, an endearing soul. So it was with a heavy heart that I received the news recently that Don passed away two days before Thanksgiving. He was 87.
I knew him long before I met him, from reading with interest his column, “Zup’s Zig Zags.” I admit it. I was a bit star-struck.
My first big-time assignment was covering the 49ers. That was Don’s beat as well. He made sure I knew the names of the other beat writers and team officials, and made sure they knew mine. On one of our first road trips, he drove us to the Park N Fly near San Francisco Airport. We were early, so Zupie suggested we get a beer. I was confused. We were in a loud, grimy, agri-industrial area cluttered with diesel-belching trucks and loading docks. Get a beer? Where?
Turns out there was a hole-in-the-wall tavern. Don bought me a beer, then pointed out a woman at the end of the bar. “That’s Ann Calvello,” he said. The Roller Derby queen! My family was big into Roller Derby. I felt as if I had been introduced to a worldly wonderland.
Don and I walked the streets of Little Italy in my first trip to New York City. We roomed together in the Southfield Hilton the week before the 49ers’ first Super Bowl win. I still remember how he began his game story: “Destiny, hell!” His point was the Cinderella 49ers didn’t win the Super Bowl because God kissed them on the forehead. They won because they were a great team.
P.S.: That may have been the only time I knew him to invoke a curse word.
A more cheerful and agreeable man you never met. I saw him laugh plenty. I never saw him get mad. Not even when we teased him about his complicated relationship with a new phone system installed in the newsroom in the early 1980s.
Invariably, he would get a call intended for someone else in the department. “I got a call for you, Peterson,” he would say. “OK, send it over,” I’d reply. Don would punch a few buttons, put the handset back in the cradle and then … silence.
“Uh-oh,” Zupie would say. “Lost him.”
Now we’ve lost Don. No fair.
•••
With the Peralta College site out of play, the Oakland A’s are down to one sensible venue for a new stadium — the one they inhabit now. Once rid of the Raiders (bound for Las Vegas) and Warriors (bound for San Francisco), the entire 120-acre Coliseum footprint would be the A’s oyster.
Depending on how they wish to develop the plot, they could build a new baseball stadium in the shadow of the old one, as was done in Cincinnati, Milwaukee and New York (Mets and Yankees). But what if it turns out to be more feasible, for whatever reason, for the team to relocate until the new digs are in place? That would set up an interesting scenario.
History lesson: In the mid-1980s, Giants owner Bob Lurie decreed his team would no longer play at blustery Candlestick Park. After chats with Oakland and A’s officials, Lurie believed he had their blessing to share the Coliseum with the A’s for up to four years while the Giants built a new ballpark in San Francisco.
He didn’t. When Lurie floated that hypothetical publicly, both Oakland Mayor Lionel Wilson and A’s ownership balked — Wilson because it would interfere with his effort to fetch the Raiders home from Los Angeles, and the A’s because they were concerned it would cut into their attendance.
None of the principles — not the team officials, not the politicians — remain from that awkward tete-a-tete. Still, wouldn’t it be a hoot if the A’s came calling to ask the Giants for joint tenancy for a few years? They might find that elephants aren’t the only ones with long memories.
