Sports Authority

A new basketball season beckons and something bizarre is happening at Golden 1 Center. The Kings believe now is the time to win an NBA championship.

I began to follow the Kings for a living in 1984. They were based in Kansas City. My newspaper sent me to Missouri to see what the fuss was about.

For the next 40 years, I never saw the Kings march into a new season with a win-it-all attitude. Until now.

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A friend was telling me how much he enjoyed small, low-profile sporting events. He mentioned going to Sacramento State games. I know the feeling.

I prefer a summer night at the River Cats over the frenzied, obnoxious environments of NBA arenas and NFL stadiums. Sportswriters are supposed to get excited by big showdowns and great athletes.

They wore me out.

There was a time when writing about sports meant more than watching games on TV and holding up iPhones at press conferences. Old sportswriters like me sometimes got to hang around with people they wrote about.

My top three hang outs were Jesse Owens, Bill Russell, Willie Mays and Mario Andretti. No introductions needed.

But there was another sports figure who made a big impression. His name was Dr. Donald H. Catlin. The doctor taught me lots about sports and the drive to win at any cost.

Hazel Jackson isn’t coming home.

The young woman who shamed community leaders and brought down Land Park’s “whites only” public swimming pool is buried in a mass grave in Pennsylvania.

Hazel is mixed with eight or 10 other people who died without friends, family or money in 1969.

A representative from Mt. Zion Memorial, the cemetery near Philadelphia International Airport where Hazel is buried, tells me:

Try to imagine the 2025 World Series between the Dodgers and A’s. Picture how Major League Baseball explains why the A’s home field games will move to Oracle Park in San Francisco.

Imagine words like these: “Because the World Series requires an appropriate venue.”

Lucky for Major League Baseball, the A’s have no chance to reach the World Series. Not as long as the club is run by John Fisher, heir to the Gap clothing fortune and one of the cheapest, least effective operators in sports.