Josh brings in Section 925 creator Connor Buestad to talk about exploratory surgery on A's pitcher Dallas Braden, the A's chances at a playoff run, and the Melk Man. Brought to you in beautiful LO-FO so listen closely.
Read MoreJosh goes solo and talks Olympics, 49ers, Anthony "Boobie" Dixon, and Bay Area Baseball Fandom.
Read More[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57A4ae_iQas&feature=youtube_gdata_player] By Connor Buestad (connorbuestad@gmail.com)
It is a bit of a stretch to think Oracle’s CEO, Larry Ellison, pays much attention to the Summer X Games. Skateboard Vert, BMX, Street Luge, and Motocross are not exactly the traditional leisure activities associated with billionaire software moguls pushing 70. The folks at ESPN have never been shy to admit that their target demographic is more 15-year-old kids who are perpetually “stoked” and less 67-year-old fat cats who own one of the Hawaiian Islands (Lanai).
Even still, one can’t help but wonder if Ellison was flipping through channels in his private jet back in 1999 when he saw a highlight of X Gamer Travis Pastrana launching himself out of a motocross stadium and into the San Francisco Bay atop his dirtbike. It was the type of attention-grabbing stunt that etched Pastrana’s name into San Francisco lore forever, a goal that Larry Ellison seems dead-set on achieving himself.
The 2012-2013 edition of the America’s Cup might be just the event to finally give ‘ol Larry a sufficient amount of attention. Luckily for San Franciscan’s, Ellison will be showing off his newest toys for the whole city to enjoy, and it all begins (sort of) on August 21st, right here in the San Francisco Bay.
11 boats from eight countries will be arriving in San Francisco this month to kick off the second season of what’s called the America’s Cup World Series. The World Series has no effect on the winner of next year’s main event, the America’s Cup Finals, but it will serve as a fantastic showcase of a sport that is currently experiencing a technological renaissance of sorts. From August 21-26, 45-foot catamaran boats will race off the shores of the Marina Green and Piers 27/29. The boats will also be in SF for the second leg of this year’s America’s Cup World Series during Fleet Week (October 2-7). A true San Francisco spectacle if there ever was one.
While next year’s America’s Cup Finals will feature 75-foot catamarans with 11-men crews, this month’s World Series will involve 45-foot catamarans with crews of five. Ellison’s Team Oracle will be split into two teams for the World Series, “Oracle-Spithill” and “Oracle-Coutts”. James Spithill is a 32-year-old sailing phenom who was the youngest skipper ever to win the America’s Cup in 2010, while Russell Coutts is known as one of the best sailors of all time and has won multiple America’s Cup titles. For the big race next year, the young Spithill will be the skipper of Team Oracle, while the older Coutts will work on strategy from the shore as the team’s CEO.
The catamaran boats that fans will see this month on the bay are without a doubt some of the most exciting and cutting-edge water vessels ever created. America’s Cup level sailors must be in premier physical shape and have the fearless attitude of a NASCAR driver in order to compete. With speeds upwards of 40 MPH, these boats whip across the bay in a blink of an eye, a brutal capsize or collision always one wrong decision away. To be sure, vodka swigging joyriders no longer have a place in this sport. They’ve been replaced by ultra-fit athletes in Red Bull helmets.
While the America’s Cup World Series will give San Franciscan’s their first taste of international sailing at the highest level, the main event won’t get going until next summer. That’s when the Louis Vuitton Cup will be decided and subsequently, the America’s Cup Finals Champion.
The America’s Cup, make no mistake about it, is a very hard sport to understand, follow, and fully appreciate. The rules are constantly changing, the teams are almost all comprised of sailing mercenaries (Oracle only has one American-born sailor), and well, who actually knows how to sail here in the United States? Nevertheless, Ellison has harnessed technology to the point where sailing is becoming digestible and enjoyable for even the most casual of sports fans.
With all due respect to hockey and Lord Stanley’s Cup, the America’s Cup has by far the coolest trophy in sports. It’s been around since 1851 and is appropriately nicknamed “The Oldest Trophy in Sports.” Unlike hockey, the winner of the cup not only gets to parade around town with a giant silver trophy, but they also get to decide when, where, and how the next America’s Cup competition will be held.
Boats from various countries are invited to compete in America’s Cup competition whenever they are held, roughly every four years. Most every boat is bankrolled by mega-millionaire businessmen who sponsor the boat and hire a crew of the best sailors they can find in the world to sail it for them. In essence, it is an event where the Donald Trumps of the world get to compete with one another to see who’s the real king of the One Percent Castle.
In 2010, Larry Ellison’s “BMW-Oracle” boat beat billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli’s boat from Switzerland called “Alinghi”. To the victor went the spoils, and Ellison has decided to hold the America’s Cup right here in San Francisco Bay for the first time ever.
Based on their victory in 2010, “Team Oracle” automatically has a spot clinched in the San Francisco edition of the America’s Cup Finals which won’t be held until September 2013. This race will pit “The Defender” (Team Oracle) versus “The Challenger”. The Challenger must earn the right to compete one-on-one with Team Oracle by winning what’s called the Louis Vuitton Cup. This event will be held in San Francisco from July 4th – September 1, 2013, and will consist of four boats from around the world battling it out in the Bay until one boat moves on to face Team Oracle.
As is often the case in the sport of sailing, Ellison and his team’s 2010 America’s Cup victory did not come without a great deal of controversy. Long story short, Ellison and Bertarelli became tangled in an ugly lawsuit leading up to their America’s Cup Final race. The argument was essentially a debate over the rules, and by the end of the suit, a fair agreement was never truly reached. Believe it or not, the two teams didn’t even race the same style of boat in the America’s Cup Final. Bertarelli’s Swiss team ended up sailing a catamaran while Ellison’s crew sailed a trimaran. As it turned out, Ellison’s three-hulled boat proved faster than Bertarelli’s two-hulled boat.
Unsurprisingly, Bertarelli will not be competing in next year’s Louis Vuitton Cup. Unfortunately, various other teams are also opting to stay home and not attend Ellison’s party. It was originally thought that up to 15 teams would be arriving in San Francisco in 2013 to compete for a chance at the America’s Cup. Many speculated that this influx of foreign money could be prove to be a boon for city of San Francisco, even despite the up front investment the city has spent on infrastructure. As it stands today, the four teams scheduled to sail in the Louis Vuitton Cup include Artemis Racing (Sweden), Emirates Team New Zealand (New Zealand), Luna Rossa Challenge (Italy) and Team Korea (Korea).
Teams must pay an exorbitant amount of money to build a competitive boat and acquire a sufficient amount of sponsorship dollars to compete in the America’s Cup. In Ellison’s defense, he and race officials have worked toward making next year’s America’s Cup more fair than in year’s past. For starters, all entrants must sail 75-foot catamarans that possess similar specifications. Regardless, all the talk of the 2013 America’s Cup being akin to a Super Bowl or World Cup is beginning to seem overblown.
Whether or not the Louis Vuitton Cup and the America’s Cup Finals will be a boon or a bust remains to be seen. Four teams have RSVP’d and it is rumored that the list may dwindle down to three by the race’s opening gun. What we do know for sure, however, is that the America’s Cup World Series is still in good health. 11 state-of-the-art boats from around the world will be sailing into The Bay later this month to showcase the sport in the best way they know how.
Even if you don’t know the first thing about how to “jibe”, “tack”, or “hike-out”, grab your dearest set of binoculars, your iPhone to track the race online, and your favorite pair of seersucker shorts. After a 161 year wait, America’s Cup sailing is coming to San Francisco.
By Connor Buestad
In order to trace the steps of St. Mary’s College point guard Matthew Dellavedova, one must fly all the way to the southeast edge of Australia to Melbourne, then trek a hundred miles northwest to a city called Maryborough. There, you’ll find an unassuming town that prides itself on having an historic train station and a competitive Aussie Rules football team. This, as it turns out, is the corner of the globe where “Delly” first fell in love with the game of basketball. A game that is now taking him on a trip to places he could have only dreamed of as a youngster growing up down under.
It goes without saying that Dellavedova grew up far removed from the competitive playgrounds of US cities where the NBA’s future stars typically cultivate their games. He was just as far removed from the brightly-lit gymnasiums where suburban ballplayers attend summer hoop camps and AAU tournaments. Matthew Dellavedova grew up off the grid of competitive basketball. Fortunately for Matt, basketball turns out to be a game that requires very little infrastructure, so long as one has a penchant for putting the ball through a hoop. If we learned anything from Larry Bird a.ka. “The Hick From French Lick”, a dirt driveway with a shoddy hoop in the front yard can supply all the tools one needs to make it as a basketball player.
It was at the tender age of 16 when the lure of fierce competition, state of the art facilities and worldwide exposure led Dellavedova to the Australian Institute of Sport. Built in 1981 in an effort to improve Australia’s Olympic team, AIS has slowly evolved into a place where the best young sports stars of Australia go to hone their skills and market themselves as great athletes to a multi-national audience. During his time at AIS, Dellavedova began to set his sights on coming to America and following in the footsteps of the likes of Adam Caporn, Daniel Kickert and Patty Mills.
As Dellavedova began to wind down his youth career, his relatively modest tool-kit of height and athleticism left Matt with a limited number of Division 1 scholarship offers. “I only went on two visits,” explained Dellavedova. “I went to the University of the Pacific and then to Saint Mary’s. I ended up really liking the people and the atmosphere here at SMC, so I decided to come.” And with that, the 18 year old from rural Australia showed up in Moraga, California, equipped with an unorthodox jump-shot and “deceptive” athleticism. He was in theory joining Saint Mary’s to replace perhaps the best point guard the college had ever seen in Patty Mills, but no one would have blamed him if he didn’t come close to achieving such a tall task.
Instead, Dellavedova burst onto the scene as a freshman during the 2009-2010 season to help lead St. Mary’s to their greatest basketball season of all time. Dellavedova made the WCC All-Freshman team, scoring in double figures and leading the league in minutes played per game. On a team led by guard Mickey McConnell and forward Omar “Broadway O” Samhan, Dellavedova surprised everyone by how quickly he assimilated himself to major D1 college basketball. Using a formula of two parts grit and one part talent, Dellavedova hounded opposing point guards on the defensive end, looking more like a weathered boxer in the twelfth round than a basketball player in the fourth quarter.
When asked about SMC’s run into the sweet 16 during his freshman year, Dellavedova tends to play it down, as he does with most things he talks about. There is no question Dellavedova prefers to simplify things and keep his basketball career in perspective. In other words, Matthew Dellavedova refuses to believe the hype.
To be sure, there was no shortage of hype when St. Mary’s took the court versus second seeded Villanova for a chance to advance to the sweet 16. While Samhan stole the headlines, it was Matthew Dellavedova who quietly added 14 points while keeping Villanova’s dynamic guard duo in check for all 40 minutes. If ever there was a game that put St. Mary’s on the map, it was their Cinderella victory over Villanova. “I remember it all going by very fast,” said Dellavedova. “I was just focused on the games and really had no idea how big the tournament was to all the fans throughout America. When it was all over, I finally had time to appreciate how big of a win that was for the St. Mary’s community.”
Following a sophomore year in which the Gaels narrowly missed the field of 64, Dellavedova took over the reins as the undisputed team leader for his junior season. With the graduation of point guard Mickey McConnell, it was finally Dellavedova’s team, and he certainly knew what to do with it. After Gonzaga’s decade reign over the WCC, Delly and company were finally able to dethrone the Zags and win both the WCC regular season and tournament championships in the same season.
In what was a thrilling conference tournament final in Las Vegas, Dellavedova found himself locked in a pick-and-roll chess match with 7-foot Gonzaga forward Robert Sacre. “Sacre kept guarding me at the top of the key, because when we screened, they would switch defenders on us,” explained Dellavedova. Fortunately, Delly’s love for the art of the running floater proved to be a pivotal asset down the stretch. Delly repeatedly grinded his way into the lane, somehow always finding a way past Gonzaga’s athletic defenders. St. Mary’s looked to have the contest secured, when the Zags' Elias Harris’ last second prayer from the top of the key was answered, sending the game into overtime where the Gaels narrowly eked out a historic victory.
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Perhaps it was fitting that when I got a chance to chat with Matthew Dellavedova, he arrived at the interview wearing his St. Mary’s practice gear, still sweating, fresh off a Tuesday morning workout. It was mid-April and the sun was shining bright on SMC’s sprawling countryside campus. Needless to say, it was a perfect time for Dellavedova to be out enjoying himself. If ever there was an “offseason” for Matthew Dellavedova, this would be it. Instead, St. Mary’s feisty point guard showed virtually no signs of sun exposure, a gym rat in the truest sense of the word. Beside getting out to Bianca’s Deli at the intersection of Moraga Road and Moraga Way for his regular Grilled Chicken and Jack (add Avocado), Dellavedova is most comfortable staying dedicated to the gym, and it shows.
Dellavedova's commitment to constant improvement now has him set to cross paths with basketball’s greatest collection of current talent, the 2012 edition of the USA Dream Team. Dellavedova recently earned a spot on Australia’s national team, known as the Boomers. He will get to play alongside SMC alumnus and current NBA guard Patty Mills, as well as the Golden State Warriors’ new aquisition, Andrew Bogut. With the London Olympics starting in late July, Dellavedova is now preparing to square off against the likes of Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant and Chris Paul. When asked about his thoughts on playing against such extraordinary talent, Dellavedova responds in his signature low-key manner, “It will be good to test my skills against the best.”
There is no question that Dellavedova has leveraged his international basketball opportunities as a means to improve his play as a Gael. Last summer he got to play against France’s Tony Parker, and at the 2011 FIBA Oceania Championships Dellavedova was able to go up against the Spanish national team, in Spain. Facing a raucous home court advantage for the Spaniards, Dellavedova ran up and down the floor with Spanish legends in the making: Pau Gasol, Serge Ibaka, and Ricky Rubio. Games like these go a long way in explaining why Delly plays with such a high level of poise in the WCC. A road game at Gonzaga versus Kevin Pangos doesn’t exactly intimidate a player who is used to matching up with Ricky Rubio in front of his home country crowd.
Go to any St. Mary’s game at McKeon Pavilion in Moraga and it doesn’t take long to notice how important Australian basketball is to the Gaels, and vice-versa. Year after year, SMC opens up their campus to basketball stars in the making, looking for a place to call home and a platform to pursue their dreams. Aussie flags and chants are common at McKeon, and St. Mary’s games are closely covered back in Australia.
Come late July, St. Mary’s students and alums will undoubtedly tune in to follow their adopted native son, Matthew Dellavedova. Who knows how he will perform under the bright lights of the Olympics, stuck with the task of guarding Chris Paul, Kobe, or even LeBron. However, one thing Dellavedova has proven thus far in his distinguished career, he won’t be overwhelmed by the situation.
For 30 minutes I talked to Matthew Dellavedova, and for 30 minutes I tried to uncover some insight on what it’s like to take St. Mary’s to the sweet 16 as a freshman, or win the West Coast Conference title in overtime, or guard Ricky Rubio on his home soil of Spain. But, no matter how far I dug, the more I became content with the fact that Dellavedova really doesn’t believe the hype. The intrinsic satisfaction of seeking out and playing against the best basketball players in the world is what seems to drive Dellavedova to continue to strive and improve. Luckily for Moraga, they get one more year to call him their own.
