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Monday, October 1, 2001
Everybody into the Cove!

By Brian Murphy
Special to Page 2

Come to The Cooler, friends.


	Every yacht, raft, canoe, boat, dinghy and boogie board in the Bay Area seemed to be floating in McCovey Cove on Sunday.

But just for this day, I plead you, Don't Drink the Water.

The Cooler is filled to the brim with the H-two-oh from a Sunday at McCovey Cove, perhaps the coolest place in the American sports landscape. I dipped the jug in the brackish Bay after spending a scorching afternoon in pursuit of No. 70, and brought it to you on this Monday morning as evidence of my weekend's work.

Admire it. Hang out at The Cooler. Talk Barry Bonds with me under the fluorescents. But if you drop a Dixie Cup under this jug, the tetanus shot, pal, is on your dime.

So, I went to a Giants game Sunday, and a regatta broke out. It was Woodstock on the water. The only thing missing was Country Joe McDonald singing, "And it's 1-2-3/What are we floatin' for?"

They were floating for Seven-Oh, and on a day when the NFL roared, and NASCAR ran, nothing else mattered: If you weren't at Pac Bell, hanging out on the right-field wall, on the right-field portwalk or among the floatation devices in the Cove -- a space so populous, it made Hong Kong look like the plains of Kansas -- you did not exist.

What a sight, amigos! I ushered my comedy guru T.C. out to the wall during the third inning to get his take, and as he surveyed the yachts, boats, canoes, dinghies, surfboards and boogie boards, he issued his proclamation: "The only thing missing is a Chinese junk."

I agreed, but went one step further: "And the S.S. Minnow."


	"What are we floatin' for? The big seven-oh."

Then again, if the Minnow had made its way into the Cove, the party spirit that pervaded the place might have turned ugly. I could see Mary Ann getting carted off in some sort of piratelike mutiny, being passed along from raft to raft over the heads of shirtless Giants fans.

One dude was clearly one of San Francisco's proud homeless community. He was going Huck Finn all the way, standing shirtless, in jeans, on a giant piece of wood, trying to steer his way to Barry Land using a stick to push himself against the tide. Classic stuff.

One cat, dipping his legs in the contaminated Bay, sported a serious Spicoli look: Flowered trunks, no shirt, shaggy blonde mane, and his nose perfectly white with zinc oxide. Another dude sported a wildly inappropriate Magic Johnson game jersey while floating. My man! An egregious display. This was all baseball, all the time, and this cat showed up in a "Lakers, No. 32" jersey? He might as well have showed up in a Sergei Fedorov gamer.

Footballs were tossed. Splash fights went down. It was the most joy I'd witnessed anywhere in this land since Sept. 11, and damned if I didn't get a tear in my eye: My hometown, the sun shining, a ballgame on a patch of grass near the Bay, the greatest player since Mays going for immortality ...

And then my reverie was broken by some twentysomething flatbellies bombing off a wooden plank above the steering column on a motorboat.

Kersplash!

It was a Cannonball. Of course, it was. The last bit of comedy missing was a "Caddyshack" allusion, and when I saw these dudes bombing off the wood plank into the water, I could only think of Caddie Day at the Bushwood Pool (1:00-1:15), when the one caddie flew off the high dive and, admonished by the lifeguard, shouted out, midair, the Churchillian line: "You shave your ass!"

(My friends and I have long debated: Was that a command? A statement of fact? An accusation? The brilliance is in the writing; leaving the viewer open to his own interpretation. But I digress.)

Bonds did not hit 70, in case you didn't know. Didn't matter. It was the best American day in three weeks, and for that, we dedicate the List of Five:

1. The NL playoffs: I'm not digging 'em
The Cooler has gone on record, totally fired up for the American League playoffs. The best four teams in ball are going at it, from Ichiro's slashing swing to Giambi's keg of hair gel to Torre's cool dignity to Thome's pull-a-butt-muscle-swinging-for-the-fence. All good, except for the DH rule.

But in the senior circuit? If it holds, we get aging Arizona, which plays in a mall; Houston's admittedly killer lineup, in one of America's most depressingly bland cities; St. Louis' admittedly solid baseball act, soiled by the sight of self-appointed genius Tony La Russa in the dugout; and the Braves, the insurance company of the National League.

Come on, Giants! Come on, Phillies! Bring some character into these proceedings, lest we find ourselves listening to Tim McCarver talking about the subtleties of Erubiel Durazo's swing!

2. The new Redskins song


	Marty Schottenheimer and the Redskins have some serious problems.

You didn't think we'd let Danny (The Little General) Snyder start 0-3 and not roast him, did you? Come on. Get a hold of yourself.

What better way to toast the Redskins' demise than to devise new lyrics to the formerly great Redskins fight song, "Hail to the Redskins"? You know the tune. You used to hear it when Washington played in the postseason. Let's trot out some lyrics. All together now:

Laugh at the Red-skins!
Laugh heart-i-ly!
Dan's team is bru-tal!
The shame of old D.C.!

Hey, it was the best I could do on a Sunday night after getting baked by the California sun. E-mail me your revisions.

3. On the other hand ...
For every 0-3 team, there is a 3-0 team. For every Washington, there is a San Diego. For every Jeff George, there is a ... gosh, I get all nervous and excited just saying his name ... Doug Flutie.

There. I said it. I think I have a male crush on the mullet-sporting dwarf. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I saw LaDainian Tomlinson last year get basically nullified by a glorified high school defense in a TCU-San Jose State game. Now, the guy is delivering the goods down at The Murph (it will never be Qualcomm at The Cooler) and I think I know why: When he gathers in every huddle, he hears plays called out by the Elvis of NFL QBs. (And no, I don't mean Grbac. He can take a walk. With Cornell.) Flutie, the Chargers, the unbeaten start: I'm on board, people. Next stop: Taking down the Brownies on their way to 4-0.

4. Jerry Rice: Have you no shame?


	Jerry Rice is due for a tetanus shot after venturing into the Black Hole.

Saw No. 80 score twice for the Raiders on Sunday. Fine. Guy has a right to earn a living. Saw him jump into The Black Hole after one score. Here's where I have a problem.

J.R.! Get in line, dude. You, along with 450 McCovey Cove-dwellers, are due for a tetanus shot today, my man. Yo, it's cool if you score. Just stay out of the quarantined area, pal. Call it a friendly tip.

5. My college football take for the week
All right. I'm officially SICK OF FLORIDA FOOTBALL. All Caps. That means any college team in the state. That means Miami. That means Florida. That means FSU, even though the 'Noles don't matter after The Incident at Chapel Hill. So I'm all for Oklahoma's continued run. I'm all for Chris Simms putting it together down in Austin. I'm all for the shoeless folk at Virginia Tech keeping it up.

And, ahem, I'm all for Playing Some Ball on the West Coast! You might or might not have noted UCLA's first four games. If you have not noted, no sweat. Let the Best Little Team You've Never Seen keep laying wood, wrapping up and racking up wins. See, the national title game is set for the sacred turf of the Rose Bowl. We don't just let any Floridian trod on that grass. You must first prove you can Play Some Ball on the West Coast.

Come to think of it, that zinc-oxide bro' I saw in McCovey Cove could have been the guy who first laid that line on me back in '89 at the UCLA-Michigan game.

It's a small world. And, we must remember, a beautiful one.

Brian Murphy of the San Francisco Chronicle writes the "Weekend Water Cooler" every week for Page 2.