Shyanne Sellers is stuck on the outside of the WNBA looking in
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San Francisco Chronicle
7 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Crazy Crab not quite sold on Valkyries' Violet, the Bay Area's newest mascot
Ducked into a dive bar in Dogpatch on Monday night, after the Golden State Valkyries ' game. Quick stop to wind down from all the excitement. Guess who I saw? You'll never guess. Crazy Crab! In the flesh, or whatever. Quoth the Golden State Valkyries: WNBA team's mascot is a raven named Violet You remember Crazy Crab, the San Francisco Giants ' mascot in 1984. A one-season wonder, or as one scribe put it, a one-season blunder. He was conceived as an anti-mascot, meant to satirize the mascot craze. Giants' fans were supposed to hate him, and they obliged. The only open seat at the bar was next to Crazy Crab, so I eased myself in. Funny I would run into him. I had just come from the unveiling of the newest Bay Area mascot, Violet, a 6-foot-tall raven dressed as a cheerleader. She made her debut at halftime. The crowd, primed by days of hoopla buildup, was enthusiastic. 'It's OK to smoke here?' I asked, breaking the ice. 'You a narc?' Crazy Crab shot back, re-freezing the ice. 'Don't tell me, it's bad for my health. Do I look like Jack LaLanne? I'll tell you what's bad for your health: Eating crab. We're bottom feeders, full of toxins. Especially nicotine.' 'Say,' I said, 'I don't mean to bother you. . .' 'Too late,' he shot back. I continued: 'But I was a big fan of yours back in '84. I tried to get your autograph after a game as you were driving out of the players' lot. You stole my pen and drove off, laughing.' 'Glory days,' Crazy said, sarcastically. 'You know the Giants hired me to be obnoxious and offensive, right? So I worked my ass off to develop bad habits. Like this (holding up his cigarette). I mastered the art of rude. Barry Bonds studied under me. You're lucky I didn't make fun of your shirt.' 'You did!' I said. He glanced at my shirt and rolled his eyes, which were on the ends of those two stalk things sticking out of his head. He turned back to the TV above the bar, watching the Valkyries' postgame show, all about their 74-57 win over the Connecticut Sun. 'Did you watch the game?' I inquired. He sighed and said, 'That's why I'm here. I heard about the new mascot. Had to check her out. Her? It? Pronouns confuse me. Nouns confuse me. I'm a crab, not a rocket linguist.' 'What do you think? This new mascot, is she the real deal?' Drag on cig. Long pause. Exhale. 'Violet. That's her name, right, the new kid?' 'Yep, Violet.' 'Allow me to be a pain in the ass. It's my jam. The Valkyries 'adopt' this bird, put her in a basketball outfit, and she doesn't know what a basketball is? She can't make a layup? Not a dunk, a layup. Look, I'm a crab, I can make a layup.' 'She can dance a little, and do handsprings,' I said. Crazy Crab looked at me and shook his head. 'There was a lot of potential here,' he said, sadly. 'Ravens have a deep mystique in Norse mythology, as I'm sure you know. They worked closely on the battlefield with the Valkyries, they were the eyes and ears of the god Odin. In Poe's famous poem, the raven comes from 'the Night's Plutonian shore,' the underworld. This Violet chick comes from cheerleading camp.' 'It's just supposed to be a fun mascot,' I said. 'You know, do goofy stuff, grab popcorn from fans, distract opponents when they're shooting free throws.' 'Oh, I get it,' Crazy said. 'But they threw me off with the big cosmic buildup. Had me expecting power, strength, valor. Not cartwheels.' Crazy knocked back his beer and signaled to the barkeep for another. 'I'm a tough critic,' he said. 'You can't just waltz into a ballgame and become queen of the ball. If you want to crown her ass, then crown her ass. I'm going to wait and see. You a jazz fan, sport?' 'Yeah, sort of,' I said. 'Jazz musicians have a saying, when they're talking about a new cat on the scene. They ask, 'Sure he can play, but does he have anything to say? ' Does this Violet have anything to say?' This was getting deeper than I expected. I felt like I was back in my college dorm, the weed kicking in. 'What does any mascot have to say, Crazy Crab? What does Lou Seal have to say?' 'Lou Seal? First of all, his real name is Lewis Schnukelman. Decent fellow. But would the Giants trade him for a guy who can make contact with two strikes and a runner on third? Truth is, the only great mascot was the San Diego Chicken. Nobody could pee on an umpire's leg like that dude. The rest of us labor in his shadow — Lou, Sourdough Sam, the Stanford tree, Stomper — may he rest in peace.' 'Maybe Violet will bloom, so to speak,' I said. 'What advice would you give her if you happened to run into her?' Crazy Crab blew out a cloud of smoke and snorted. 'Run into her where? At Safeway? I live under a rock. But if she asked me, I'd tell her, just be yourself. Be true to your craft. And ask that Janelle Salaün to show you how to shoot a freaking layup.' I nodded, and got up to leave. Crazy Crab grabbed a cocktail napkin and reached into a pocket. 'Hey kid, I've still got your pen. Want that autograph?'
Washington Post
8 minutes ago
- Washington Post
Rays beat Athletics 7-4, snapping three-game losing streak
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Brandon Lowe and Junior Caminero hit back-to-back home runs, and Ryan Pepiot went 6 1/3 innings as the Tampa Bay Rays beat the Athletics 7-4 on Monday night. Lowe's 23rd and Caminero's 33rd home runs of the season stretched a 6-1 Rays lead in the seventh inning that was cut to three in the bottom half. Lowe added a sacrifice fly in the eighth.
New York Times
8 minutes ago
- New York Times
Dodgers' middling play has dropped their division lead to just 1 game
ANAHEIM, Calif. — Shortly after the top of the sixth inning, the Los Angeles Dodgers lined up in punt formation. A fourth loss in as many tries this season to the fourth-place Los Angeles Angels loomed, but the score remained just 6-0 when Freddie Freeman was replaced at first base by backup catcher Dalton Rushing. The tactic is not new: This is the team that executed this play in the World Series just this last fall and got a parade at the end of it. But still, the early pulling of the reigning World Series MVP cemented a drubbing, with a 7-4 loss pushing the Dodgers into an uncomfortable position. Advertisement Their ace allowed the most runs he's allowed in a Major League Baseball game Monday night. Their offense went silent against José Soriano, a gifted starter with a power sinker, but who also had allowed seven runs the last time he took the mound. By night's end, the San Diego Padres had closed the Dodgers' lead in the division to one game, the closest the race has been since June 14. They have to get through the Angels first, but what follows is a stretch of six games in 10 days against San Diego that could shape the narrative of the final month of the season. 'This was a bad loss for us,' Max Muncy said. 'There's not really a way of getting around that.' It's not an encouraging script at this point. The Dodgers have gone 15-19 since the start of July. Their starting pitching is healthy, and some of their stars in the lineup have shown signs they can emerge from their slumber, enough that Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said this weekend he saw 'this is how we can go on a run.' 'We're all looking for some traction here and trying to stack some wins,' Roberts said Monday night. That run hasn't come yet. 'It's not going well for us right now,' Muncy said. 'We got to find a way to snap out of it. No one's going to feel sorry for us. So it's on us to find our way out of it, and we need to do it.' They had a chance to sweep the Toronto Blue Jays this weekend and squandered enough chances to leave a season-high 16 base runners stranded. Monday, it took until the seventh inning to get a runner beyond first base as Soriano bullied them with an array of high-velocity sinkers at the bottom of the strike zone. 'You get one of the guys that just really get their pitches going, and it's a little bit what happened tonight,' Muncy said. Shohei and Max yard. — Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) August 12, 2025 That seventh-inning threat ended when Alex Freeland chopped an inning-ending double-play ball back to the mound with the bases loaded. A Tungstonian blast from Shohei Ohtani — his 100th in this ballpark — is what it took to get the Dodgers on the board. Muncy's three-run blast punctuated a four-run eighth-inning outburst that came far too late. The scramble to try to get back into the game, started by Freeman's exit, created enough lineup machinations that Mookie Betts wound up in right field for the first time all season, fielding a fly ball to start the eighth inning. Teoscar Hernández had been the Dodgers' only remaining outfielder, with Roberts holding the slumping former All-Star in reserve in case a situation arose in the ninth inning. That chance never came. Advertisement By then, the night had already been a wrap. Yoshinobu Yamamoto was bumped a day in the Dodgers' six-man rotation for this start, with Roberts saying it was an organizational decision looking to get ahead of an innings jump Yamamoto has already had this season from a year ago — and not because of any issue with the right-hander's health. Yamamoto said he felt the time off was a positive rather than a source of rust. He slogged through the first regardless. Zach Neto ambushed Yamamoto's first fastball of the game for a solo home run. An uncharitable strike zone led to a pair of walks, and Yoan Moncada punched a single to double the early advantage against him. 'That kind of threw me off rhythm,' Yamamoto said through interpreter Yoshihiro Sonoda. The wheels came off for Yamamoto in the fifth inning, as he surrendered a pair of singles before hitting Nolan Schanuel with a two-strike fastball to load the bases without recording an out. He wouldn't survive the frame, with the Angels bleeding him for four more runs on an array of soft contact before his career-high tying fifth walk of the game ended his night. His ERA is 2.84, his highest of the season. Not that the Dodgers appear very well positioned to make up for a night like Yamamoto's on Monday night. Winning has hardly come easy even for a club that says it boasts more talent than last season's World Series champions. Those teams pivoted to punt formation in the postseason out of necessity. Nights like Monday were just a reaction to the circumstances of how poorly they're playing. 'With what I saw for (six) innings, it just felt like a good time to get him off his feet,' Roberts said of pulling Freeman. He has a case, given how poorly the Dodgers started the night. Their continued maddening play hardly comes at an ideal time. A division lead that got up to nine games through July 3 is now down to one. Advertisement 'There definitely has to be some urgency,' Roberts said. 'I don't think anyone is blind to the fact that the standings are the standings. It's gotten a lot more interesting. So we've got to go out there and play good baseball. I definitely feel that our guys are starting to feel that urgency. It's been long enough of middling baseball.' (Photo of Yoshinobu Yamamoto: Ronald Martinez / Getty Images) Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle
