Scott Ostler: The top faces of Bay Area sports.
Who is the face of sports in the Bay Area? It’s not A’s infielder Eric Sogard. The guy they call Sogie (rhymes with pierogi, the tasty Polish dumpling, and with hoagie — what time is lunch?) lost in the finals of a “Face of MLB” Twitter contest.
Just as well. It would have undermined the A’s underdog mojo if Sogie had gone all Hollywood by winning a popularity contest. The A’s need to be overlooked, and they will remain so in today’s column. You’re welcome.
Back to the theme: the Face of Bay Area Sports. Who’s the hottest jock star, the athlete who would give you the biggest charge if you saw him or her sitting at the next table in a restaurant?
Avoiding MLB.com’s mistake of trusting an important election to the Twitterati, I kept my selection panel and voting group small: one. That minimized politicking and bickering.
A word about the losers. There are no A’s, but if this was like an All-Star game and I had to pick one representative, it would be general manager Billy Beane. Wow, four straight playoffs from 2000-03 and the team’s rock star is a guy who wears flip-flops to work and hardly ever watches his team’s games live.
Raiders? Sebastian Janikowski is their top nominee. (I wonder if he likes pierogis.) It could be a different story next year, because the Raiders are about to draft 22 new and exciting starters.
Drumroll, please — here’s the top five, in ascending order:
1. Jim Harbaugh.
During Jerry Brown’s first term as California governor, Chicago columnist Mike Royko noted Brown’s unconventional lifestyle and crazy idealism and dubbed him, mockingly, Governor Moonbeam. (Considering the source, Brown might have taken it as a great compliment.)
Now we’ve got Coach Moonbeam. This is not the place (or the person) to analyze or critique Harbaugh’s Queeg-like quirks. It’s the place to salute his West Coast weirdness, along with his three crazy successful 49ers seasons.
He is $10 million worth of coach in $8 pants. His sideline antics are studied by lead singers of heavy-metal bands. His postgame comments have caused a “Whaaa?” thought balloon to form over the grave of Winston Churchill.
He is (thunder sound effect) the most interesting man in the NFL, and the Face of Bay Area Sports — unless he just got traded to the Jets.
2. Stephen Curry.
However, Steph, one more turnover in crunch time and you’re off our Face list, OK?
I’d like to see a vote of NBA fans on what shot is the most gaspworthy — a thunder dunk by LeBron James or Blake Griffin, or a Steph Curry step-back three-point rainbow. I believe Curry’s shot would win.
Curry’s got everything you want in a Face, including a baby face, and a game devoid of pomp and self-loving chest-pounding.
(Side note: Curry holds a slight lead over Lincecum in the mustache battle.)
3. Colin Kaepernick.
A pause here as every reader jumps onto e-mail demanding to know either how I could include this arrogant, overhyped impostor on this list or how I could put the greatest quarterback in football this far down the list.
The crazy thing is that both of those warring factions can boil down their argument to one defiant word: “Scoreboard!”
The debates over Kaepernick’s suitability to lead an elite team and his hip-hop off-field style will go on forever, all the more reason he defines a metropolis where people can’t agree on whether water is wet.
4. Buster Posey.
There’s something about a bad (as in good) catcher who can rake that gives fans and teammates a sense that their team is in good hands. Posey carries himself like a catcher, although sleeker and more Boy Scout-ish than the prototypical scrap-iron, blue-beard backstop.
It doesn’t hurt that the Giants’ years of wandering in the wilderness ended the day Posey was called up from Fresno, and that their shot at repeating in 2011 was messed up the day Buster Ballgame’s leg got bent.
5. Tim Lincecum.
His glory days may be two years in his rear-view mirror, but the Freak is beloved by the bay.
Part of that is his personal style. Lincecum comes off as a hipster dweeb, cool because he doesn’t seem to be trying. And on the Giants, at least, nobody matches Lincecum’s generosity in public soul-searching and soul-baring. We appreciate that he thinks, and that he cares enough about Giants fans to share his feelings.
Plus, the little fella can still, on occasion, blow down the big fellas.