San Jose Inside

More news from the “Where have I been?” file, but has anyone noticed what the culture is like at a 49er game now? I went to the game on Sunday, the 49ers vs. the Detroit Lions, and I was shocked at how different the culture of the crowd had become since I last was there.

The last time I set foot in Candlestick Park (it was actually Candlestick then, and I was happy to see on Sunday that it has changed back to Candlestick) was about 1998. And there have been a lot of changes.

Purchasing the Future

The year of 2008 is already shaping up as a fascinating one, but tough decisions are ahead. BART, professional sports and our incredibly increasing deficits—state, local and national—are going to loom very large.

As a New Year dawns (I love using that phrase so full of hope), it is time to take stock of our city and community. There are things that we should hope for in the New Year; and, more than that, we should work fervently for them to occur. It is critical to build in the present if you want a future to be proud of.

49ers to Santa Clara, A’s to Fremont, Warriors to Mexican Heritage Plaza

In a very complicated deal consummated late Thursday night, the San Jose City Council has decided that the best use for the beleaguered Mexican Heritage Plaza is to turn it into a sporting facility designed and equipped to house last year’s NBA Cinderella team, the Golden State Warriors.

Advance Copy of Series Finale Critical For Competitiveness

When Dan Fenton took his job as CEO of Team San Jose, the prospect of running another organization along with his current duties as leader of the Convention and Visitors Bureau seemed a daunting and overwhelming task until the city made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: an advanced copy of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”

As I was watching the Sharks lose another game to the Detroit Red Wings this weekend, I thought about the feelings of disappointment, lack of confidence and heartbreak that San Jose’s only sports team is putting us through for another year in a row. Then I thought about how those athletes must feel?  Do they take it as hard as we do?  Is a sweet victory greater for them than for us? And, in turn, is a horrible defeat, like the one on Saturday (and Wednesday for that matter), worse for them or for us? 

We seem to spend a lot of time on this site bemoaning the fact that San Jose is perceived as a second-class member of the “ten largest cities in the U.S.” club (we don’t get the big convention or we don’t get the big team). Why? In a blog earlier this week, some cynic even compared San Jose to Toledo and Omaha. The comparison might be apt if we were surrounded by the vacuum of the prairie, but we aren’t.

With all the local sports action this year, it’s hard to pick a favorite event or most important story. Even after a few pints at O’Flaherty’s, our merry little group of writers couldn’t agree on a single thing (nothing new there), so we put the following short list together to get the ball rolling. We have told you ours, now you tell us yours.

You can’t turn a page in the paper without the subject of stadiums dominating the news.  The Oakland A’s to Fremont, the 49ers to Santa Clara—it doesn’t stop!  Not that I don’t like hearing of sports teams coming closer to San Jose.  I mean, we did pass Detroit in size, didn’t we?  So by default we deserve more sports teams! 

Yesterday, I attended what many are calling a seminal event in the history of sports and business.  At the headquarters of Cisco in north San Jose, most of the northern California media assembled with CEO, John Chambers, and the owner of the Oakland Athletics in the person of Lew Wolff.  Also present were Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and A’s General Manager Billy Beane of “Money Ball” fame.  It was a quartet that few reporters could resist.  They didn’t and the cast did not disappoint.