Who runs this town? (Part 2)
Monday we kicked off our five-part series by looking at cities in the East and asking "Who runs this town?" which produced some controversial answers, including Mike Schmidt and Ben Roethlisberger.
Now we move on to the West, where sports figures like Tommy Lasorda, Junior Seau, Willie Mays, Shaun Alexander, Jose Canseco and Clyde Drexler all have left their marks -- but fall way short of running their towns.
Nope, in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Oakland, Calif., and Portland, Ore., this is whom we got:
Los Angeles
Runs it: Kobe Bryant
Runners-up: Pete Carroll, Manny Ramirez
Kobe Bryant's right arm bears the tattoo of a crown, but it's not because he's some Napoleonic head case who declared himself emperor (no way, nothing that self-absorbed); it's actually in honor of his wife, Vanessa, whose name is written in script below the crown, letting everyone know who runs the Bryant household.
Frankly, Lakers fans don't care that Bryant is uxorious, and they forgive him for orchestrating the ouster of Shaquille O'Neal back in 2004, because last year Bryant finally led the Lakers to a championship without the Diesel. He's even free to cheat on his wife again without public consequence.
Pete Carroll is football in Los Angeles. Absent an NFL team, USC provides locals with their gridiron fix, and when the Trojans aren't losing their focus and falling to Pac-10 also-rans, Pete Carroll looks like an all-around great coach, not just a world-class recruiter.
Ramirez, the patron saint of traveling secretaries, took Hollywood by storm last year when he came over from the Red Sox, almost single-handedly carrying the Dodgers to the postseason. A year later, following revelations that he was on baseball's infamous list of 103 performance-enhancing drug users, fans still welcomed him back with open arms following a 50-game suspension for a 2009 infraction. He hasn't been the same hitter since his return from the suspension, but no one has publicly suspected his disuse of PEDs has anything to do with it.
San Diego
Runs it: Tony Gwynn
Runners-up: Philip Rivers, LaDainian Tomlinson
WHO RUNS THIS TOWN?
Page 2 goes region by region to decide which sports figures have the most juice.
Monday: Who runs the East?
Tuesday: Who runs the West?
Wednesday: Who runs the Midwest?
Thursday: Who runs the Central?
Friday: Who runs the South?
San Diego is a title-challenged town, with no championships in baseball or basketball, and just one title in football (AFL, 1963). Tony Gwynn knows this better than anyone, because he went to school at San Diego State, put together a remarkable Hall of Fame career playing for the Padres and now coaches baseball at his alma mater. If the Chargers ever win the Super Bowl, Gwynn will lose his hold on San Diego, but until then he's literally growing bigger every day.
Until Rivers & Co. win a Super Bowl, the Chargers' quarterback will rank as the third-best quarterback in the 2004 draft class, behind Super Bowl winners Ben Roethlisberger and Eli Manning. Still, Rivers played the 2007 AFC Championship Game with a torn ACL, so it's not like he begs out of big games when he's less than 100 percent healthy, which can't be said for every player in San Diego.
San Francisco
Runs it: Joe Montana
Runners-up: Barry Bonds, Jerry Rice
Like Chad Pennington, Joe Montana has an NFL Comeback Player of the Year Award (1986) in his trophy case; unlike Pennington, he's got other desirables in there, as well. Montana, a four-time Super Bowl champion, is the gold standard for NFL quarterbacks, the model by which all other signal-callers are measured.
He was a member of the NFL's 75th anniversary team in 1994, the same season Steve Young won a Super Bowl with the Niners and tried to make people forget about Montana. Young failed, because anyone can win one Super Bowl. Hell, Jim Plunkett won two -- just because he felt like it. But four? No, that's rarefied air, breathed only by mutants like Montana and Terry Bradshaw.
Brady won't ever be 4-0 in Super Bowls. Neither will Kurt Warner. Jim Plunkett might be able to pull it off, but first he has to beat out JaMarcus Russell for the Raiders' starting gig. And at this point, he deserves a shot.
Barry Bonds also deserves a shot. He's not retired, ya know. He's just waiting for someone who's willing to alienate 75 percent of their fan base to sell tickets to the 25 percent who root for laundry, regardless of the players wearing it. That's not the Giants anymore. They have abandoned the idea that scoring runs will help you win games, and are content to let their pitching staff accumulate as many ties as possible.
Seattle
Runs it: Ken Griffey Jr.
Runners-up: Steve Largent, Ichiro Suzuki
Seattle is slightly less allergic to titles than San Diego. The last time the city celebrated a major championship (read: not the Seattle Storm), I was rocking my Hush Puppies to "Ring My Bell" by Anita Ward. That was June 1979, when Ken Griffey Jr. was 10 years old (and out for the season with a pulled hammy) and Hall of Famer Steve Largent was catching left-handed footballs from Jim Zorn.
The Mariners brought Griffey back for a farewell tour this season, which was a noble gesture that (like most noble gestures) produced little. The Mariners finished third in the American League West, a good but not great 85-77. Griffey? His teammates carried him off the field after the last game of the season, which may have been a sign of respect or one final, preventative effort to keep him from hurting himself.
Largent, a seven-time Pro Bowler, is the only member of the Seahawks who's been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Unless you count Carl Eller, Franco Harris and Warren Moon, who played in Seattle when their careers were winding down. And if you count those guys, you shouldn't admit it.
In 2001 Ichiro was the first player since Fred Lynn to win the Rookie of the Year and MVP awards in the same season, the first of nine straight seasons (a record) in which he surpassed 200 hits, including his record-setting 262 in 2004. He was the first player since Vida Blue to wear his first name on the back of his uniform, a move that confused everyone except "Akeem" Olajuwon.
Oakland
Runs it: Al Davis
Runner-up: Billy Beane
The A's have had their share of great baseball teams over the past few decades, but their greatest players (Reggie, Rollie, Canseco, McGwire, Rickey, Giambi) all played in other cities many years past their glory days in gold and green.
In the past decade, the "Moneyball"-loving incarnations devised by general manager Billy Beane have been lauded for remaining competitive with shoestring budgets, emphasizing on-base percentage long before their organizational philosophy was copied and put to better use by teams like the Red Sox. That hasn't stopped Beane from constantly trying to buy on the cheap, though, all in the hopes of losing in the playoffs, where (as Beane frankly admits) his thinking doesn't work.
Al Davis has been trying to get people to copy his organizational philosophy -- crazy like a fox with rabies -- since his early years in the AFL. Unfortunately the only people who understand him have been institutionalized for years. But hey, by overpaying his No. 1 pick (Darrius Heyward-Bey), Davis single-handedly caused another team's No. 1 pick (Michael Crabtree) to hold out until just recently. That's some far-reaching crazy.
Portland
Runs it: Phil Knight
Runner-up: Bill Walton
Knight, who co-founded Nike in 1972, has watched athletes worldwide win titles while wearing his apparel. But were any of them playing for a Portland team? I'm not sure; I don't remember any long sections in "The Breaks of the Game" about the influence of Nike on the Blazers teams of the late 1970s.
Yeah, Portland has one major sports team, which has won one title in its history, the 1976-77 squad led by Bill Walton, whose shadow still looms large and red with a broken foot. If Greg Oden could lead the Blazers to a title, he would own that city for years to come. First he needs to beat out future Hall of Famer Joel Przybilla for the starting center position.
Phoenix
Runs it: Larry Fitzgerald
Runner-up: Steve Nash
Larry Fitzgerald is so popular in Arizona that his younger brother, Marcus, can call out Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner on Twitter for being an "old a-- man" who doesn't pass enough to No. 11, and no one even cares.
Warner, who could land in the Hall of Fame someday, will never get the respect he deserves. Nor, it seems, will Steve Nash, who has won two MVP awards but still can't keep Shaquille O'Neal from swiping his reality-show ideas.
Editor's note: Phoenix was originally omitted from this story because of an editing error.
Cam Martin is a contributor to Page 2. He previously worked for the Greenwich Time and Stamford Advocate, and has written online for CBS Sports and Comcast SportsNet New England. You can contact him at cdavidmartin@yahoo.com.
