Sports
Looking up at the bar’s television and surrounded by strangers Monday night, Marie Bolten was wiping away tears moments after the San Francisco Giants won the first World Series title in the city’s history. “Oh my god, I’m so excited,” said Bolten, 35, at Barclay’s Restaurant and Pub in Rockridge. “I’ve been a Giants fan for 15 years. Baseball is such a beautiful game, and the Giants have played amazing ball. Seeing them win is like giving birth for me.”
Marshawn Lynch, the often written and talked-about NFL player who graduated from Oakland Tech High School, made his hometown pro football debut during a trip to Oakland this weekend as a member of the Seattle Seahawks.
He was fresh off a trade that sent him from the Buffalo Bills to the Seahawks. But the visit home didn’t go quite as he had expected.
Former professional boxer Roberto Garcia, who moved here from the Philippines, is the head boxing trainer at Pacific Ring. Garcia has held the position for nearly two years, but has had more than a three-decade-long history with the sport, spending the last 16 as a trainer.
The San Francisco Giants handily won the first game of the World Series, 11-7, chasing vaunted Texas Rangers pitcher Cliff Lee from the game during a six-run fifth inning.
Second baseman Freddy Sanchez led the Giants with four hits and three runs batted in, becoming the first player in major league baseball history to double in his first three World Series at-bats.
On the stat sheet, the play looks like any other four-yard gain, a positive but unremarkable advancement on the football field. But it was how Laney College running back C.J. Anderson gained those four yards last Friday night that shows why he is one of the best junior college running backs in the state.
Led by running back Jordan Sanford’s four touchdowns, the Fremont Tigers took down the Tech Bulldogs, 26-7, in opening weekend Oakland Athletic League (OAL) football action this past Saturday at Curt Flood Field.
Oakland Tech head coach Delton Edwards, or Coach D, as he is warmly known among his program, is always around. 24-7 and 365 days a year, he likes to say. “Always,” says the 48-year-old. “You know how you bond with something? A lot of those coaches, they were a big influence on my life.”
Bicycles have long been ingrained in the Bay Area’s transportation culture, so it’s no surprise that fixed-gear bikes—single-gear bikes with no rear freewheel, making it impossible for the rider to coast—have found a home in Oakland.
There was talk of chickens and pigs at North Oakland’s Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library on Friday night, but it wasn’t a discussion of Animal Farm. Jordan Ruyle named the barnyard critters while calling out square dance steps as part of a monthly event he puts on with his wife’s quartet, the Squirrelly Stringband.