Invasion of the padded people

Summertime is baseball time, the time when teams that are in the hunt for the playoffs (and their fans) begin to kinda maybe sorta believe that this year could be The Year. Why, then, here in the early days of August, when the Giants have been playing well (even on the road!) and have added a couple of new bats to the lineup, why, I ask you, are the KNBR morning guys talking about football? Interviewing Oakland Raiders second round draft picks, heading to Napa for a visit to the Raiders training camp . . . no, no, no. Football is for the fall, mid-September at the earliest, better October, when OK, the World Series is being played but the season is winding down and it's OK to have That Other Popular Sport step in to take up TV time and space on the sports page. But geez, even this morning's New York Times devoted a full page to the Giants (the football ones).

It didn't used to be this way. The lineup went like this: Summer, baseball; fall, football; winter, basketball; spring, swimming, water polo, track and field, whatever other non-baseball sports they could cram into the short period before spring training begins and baseball starts anew. But not now, oh no. Now we have football talked about late in July. Basketball goes on forever. Really, forever; their playoff season is just shy of the 100 years war.

It's not that I don't like other sports; I do. And when the Olympics come around, I'm riveted to the television coverage, be it winter or summer games. And I can appreciate the skill and physical stamina required to be a wide receiver for an NFL team. But I don't want to watch football, either in person or on TV. What I really don't like about football in August, though, is that it reminds me of how soon the baseball season will draw to a close, bringing with it the annual need to go through the painful withdrawal symptoms—no game broadcast, no postgame wrap, no Kruk and Kuip on the KNBR morning show, no anticipation of a well-pitched game, a great catch up against the wall, a home run hit into McCovey Cove, another trip to the ballpark where all that matters is runs, hits, errors, the final score. Baseball movies help a bit, but only a bit; there's nothing like the real thing.