My journey to Giants beat began on The City’s rugged playgrounds ADVANTAGES OF SUBSCRIBING
SAN FRANCISCO >> The wind was strong enough to blow a pitcher off the mound.
The infields typically featured more concrete than dirt.
The fans — my parents and a few other moms and dads — ditched blankets and brought sleeping bags and lawn chairs to watch us play on weeknights.
It’s not the romantic portrait of freshcut grass and picturesque summer nights Hollywood sells, but it’s the way I came to know and love baseball.
A fifth-generation San Franciscan, I grew up playing the game at three playgrounds named after the Sunset District (West Sunset, South Sunset, even plain old Sunset) and on a few other patches of dirt where sliding into second base was more likely to land you in the emergency room than in scoring position.
Now, I will call AT&T Park a place of work and seek answers for you Giants faithful from ballparks, hotels and airports around the country.
I’m thrilled to join the Mercury News and the East Bay Times as the new Giants beat reporter. There is a history of great reporting and baseball storytelling in this position, and I want to not just continue that but take it to new levels.
This spring, I will be telling you about how Evan Longoria and Andrew McCutchen are fitting in with their new club, how the battle for the final two rotation spots is shaping up and what prospects are on the rise.
We want you, the diehard Giants fan, to be an integral part of a daily dialogue. We’ll do regular mailbag Q&As and pregame video updates via Facebook Live, where you can ask questions and I will provide you with news, updates and analysis in real time.
I began covering baseball as a high-school senior, broadcasting the at-bats of my best friends. Since then, I have called games at Arizona State, spent two summers working in the Cape Cod League and most recently, started writing about the Giants in June for KNBR.
From my days taking high hoppers off the chin on San Francisco playgrounds to my time standing outside the clubhouse at Chase Field when Matt Cain announced his retirement, my passion for analyzing every detail of the game has continued to grow.
I’m excited to have such a special opportunity, a San Francisco boy reared on Giants baseball helping bring you closer to the team you have cheered and studied and cursed and obsessed about for years.
Let’s get this started. If you’re a print subscriber, you already have unlimited access to the coverage we post on our websites all day long, as soon as it appears. And you get our E-Edition, an electronic version of the newspaper. It’s just like a newspaper — you turn pages, the whole bit — except for the paper, and the ink on your fingers. Best of all, it’s our Final Edition, with final scores even on late-night games, and it lands in your emailbox before sunrise every morning.