Sports Authority

I’m always thinking up ways to help the Kings win. Been trying for 41 years.

Traditional strategies—smart draft picks, wise trades, astute coaching decisions, brilliant front-office moves—are the stuff of fantasy.

Now a new season arrives. Things look worse than ever.

They had a new team and needed a name. Something memorable. Something that tells a story.

They considered Solons and Senators, baseball names from the city’s past. But this team doesn’t play baseball.

This is a hurling team, ready to master an Irish game contested on soccer pitches with sticks and a ball and no gloves. Part lacrosse, part baseball, part football, part golf. Rough and tumble and exhaustive and exhilarating. The world’s fastest field sport not involving horses.

The name they chose is Kavanagh’s. Pronounced like it reads, silent g. The name arrives with serendipity and Irish luck.

One player heard about an old Irish priest who made South Sacramento his domain for 65 years. The priest ran a parish, orphanage and school on Franklin Boulevard. He became a legend for his relentless, godly work. Parishioners worshiped him. Diocesan leaders were jealous of his influence.

Give the A’s credit. Halfway into their Northern California farewell tour, they have spotlighted the challenges Sacramento faces as it pursues a Major League Baseball expansion team.

Local sports fans know by heart the attributes that make Sacramento an obvious choice. Market size. Loyal fan base. Great weather.

I went to Cal Expo a few weeks before the State Fair opened to see how the new football stadium was coming along.

You know the stadium, the one that’s supposed to replace the racetrack where thoroughbreds and harness horses ran until Cal Expo kicked them out last year.

The stadium where Sacramento State University will play when it leaps into the football stratosphere by joining the Mid-American Conference.

The stadium where titans such as Mississippi Valley State will battle the Hornets for national championships.

I fell for Ed Kripp when I learned he buried his favorite racehorse at Buffalo Park, the stadium Kripp built for his baseball team.
The horse was entombed at Broadway and Riverside Boulevard, 6 feet under home plate. Or under first base. Or centerfield. As I wrote in 2023, the truth is unclear.
Kripp was not an average sportsman. He was a high roller who ran gambling parlors in cigar shops and a Downtown dance hall called Dreamland.

For seven decades, Sacramento State University wandered through the academy’s lost forest, praying higher education gods would take the school seriously.

Now there’s a leader with a new approach. President J. Luke Wood is turning Sac State’s weaknesses into strength, jujutsu style.

Wood backflips his critics. If the academic world thinks the Hornets are a circus, Wood provides the clown show.