Tag Archives: san francisco

Money Jam

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A week ago, Eddie Money cashed in one of his tickets to paradise, leaving this world still awash in his hits. Seventy years old, he recently received a cancer diagnosis. The Brooklyn-born former cop-in-training developed a habit of kicking off his tours at the old Pine Knob outside of Detroit and previously ingratiated himself into Bill Graham’s Bay-Area scene, even joining the post-Janis-Joplin lineup of Big Brother and the Holding Company for a time. It was a recording of a live performance of a lesser-known tune on a Graham-coordinated date at San Francisco’s famous Winterland Ballroom that really hooked me, and it is this week’s Jam:

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Sports Law Roundup – 6/2/2017

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I used to write the sports technology roundup at TechGraphs, an internet website that died, and now I am writing the sports law roundup at ALDLAND, an internet website.

After a week off, this feature returns with the top sports-related legal stories from the past week:

  • Penn State child abuse: All three of the former Penn State University administrators charged in connection with the Jerry Sandusky sexual assault scandal inside the university’s football program will spend time in jail. In March, former PSU vice president Gary Schultz and former athletic director Tim Curley pleaded guilty to one count each of endangering the welfare of children, leaving former school president Graham Spanier as the sole defendant in the case facing a trial on charges of child endangerment and conspiracy. A jury subsequently convicted Spanier of a single misdemeanor count of child endangerment. Curley and Schultz each received sentences of a maximum of twenty-three months in jail. Curley will serve three of those months in jail and Schultz will serve two months, with each completing the remainder of his sentence in house arrest. Spanier was sentenced to a maximum of twelve months in jail and will serve two, with the remainder in house arrest, and still indicates he intends to appeal.
  • Cheerleader wages: The judge overseeing the proposed antitrust class action lawsuit brought by a former San Francisco 49ers cheerleader known in the context of the case as Kelsey K. in connection with alleged wage-suppression tactics has dismissed the case, although he is allowing the plaintiff’s attorneys until June 15 to attempt to amend the complaint. In February, the judge denied the lead plaintiff’s request to proceed with the case under the “Jane Doe” pseudonym, though he did permit her to use only her first name and last initial.
  • NASCAR pit crew: A judge denied the majority of two competing summary judgment motions and will allow a wrongful termination case by a former NASCAR pit crew member to proceed against his former employer, Michael Waltrip Racing (“MWR”). The plaintiff, Brandon Hopkins, injured his shoulder when a racecar hit him during a race. Treatment from MWR’s training staff was ineffective, and surgery was necessary. Surgery was delayed for reasons the parties dispute, however. Days before the scheduled surgery, Hopkins met with a supervisor, who assured Hopkins his job was safe. When Hopkins left the office to go home, he brought a particular tool– the design of which MWR considered confidential– with him, which, he said, was an accident. MWR did not believe Hopkins’ story and fired him the next day. Office security camera footage also showed Hopkins removing what may have been confidential documents from the office two days prior. The judge determined that there were sufficient facts that a jury could determine that Hopkins’ firing was connected to his injury, an impermissible basis for termination, or his misappropriation of confidential company information, which would be a permissible basis.
  • NBA fan assault: In February, Charles Oakley, a former member of the New York Knicks, was arrested and charged with assault after an argument with Knicks owner James Dolan during a game at Madison Square Garden. Now, Oakley has declined a prosecutor’s offer to drop the charges and requested that the matter be resolved in a trial, which Dolan likely views as a vehicle for unwanted public attention on himself.

Sports court is in recess.

Sports Law Roundup – 3/24/2017

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I used to write the sports technology roundup at TechGraphs, an internet website that died, and now I am writing the sports law roundup at ALDLAND, an internet website.

Here are the top sports-related legal stories from the past week:

  • Penn State child abuse: The criminal trial of former Penn State University President Graham Spanier began this week. Earlier this year, a court ruled that three former PSU administrators would face criminal charges stemming from the Jerry Sandusky sexual assault scandal inside the university’s football program. Last week, two of the three defendants– former PSU vice president Gary Schultz and former athletic director Tim Curley– pleaded guilty to one count each of endangering the welfare of children, leaving Spanier as the sole defendant, facing charges of child endangerment and conspiracy. Spanier has maintained his innocence ever since 2012, when he was charged, but prosecutors presented testimony from Schultz and Curley they hope will undermine that position. The prosecution concluded its case on Wednesday, and, after the defense rested on Thursday morning without calling any witnesses, the case went to the jury that afternoon. The jury deliberated for nearly seven hours yesterday afternoon without reaching a verdict. Those deliberations remain ongoing as of the publication time of this post.
  • Minor League Baseball wages: Earlier this month, a California trial judge handed a significant victory to minor-league baseball players suing MLB for higher wages and overtime pay when he granted their request for class certification. The defendants (which also include the Kansas City Royals, Miami Marlins, and San Francisco Giants) now have requested permission to immediately appeal that ruling. Because trial judges’ decisions on class certification usually, as a practical matter, are outcome-determinative, parties opposing those rulings have a large incentive to appeal them right away. Recent statistical research suggests that there is a relatively good chance the court will allow an immediate appeal of the sort the defendants in this case have requested.

Sports court is in recess.

Sports Law Roundup – 2/24/2017

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I used to write the sports technology roundup at TechGraphs, an internet website that died, and now I am writing the sports law roundup at ALDLAND, an internet website.

Here are the top sports-related legal stories from the past week:

  • Gymnast abuse: The Michigan Attorney General has charged a doctor with ties to USA Gymnastics, the national governing body for gymnastics in the United States; Michigan State University; and a gym in the Lansing area, who already is facing multiple civil and criminal accusations of improper sexual conduct, with twenty-two additional criminal counts in connection with his alleged sexual abuse of young female athletes. USA Gymnastics and Michigan State terminated their relationships with the doctor following the earlier accusations. Some of the new charges involve victims who were younger than thirteen at the times of the alleged acts, and all of the charges are felonies that carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
  • Cheerleader wages: The judge overseeing the proposed class-action lawsuit filed last month by a former San Francisco 49ers cheerleader, who alleges that the NFL and the twenty-six NFL teams that have cheerleaders conspired to suppress cheerleader wages below market value, has denied the lead plaintiff’s request that she be permitted to use a pseudonym (“Jane Doe”) for purposes of her participation in the lawsuit. Rejecting the plaintiff’s argument that revealing her name would subject her to harassment, injury or embarrassment, the judge found that the plaintiff failed to cite specific threats of harm to her personally. He is allowing her to identify herself only by her first and last initials “for the time being,” however.
  • Penn State child abuse: Earlier this month, a court ruled that three former Penn State University administrators will face criminal child endangerment charges stemming from the Jerry Sandusky sexual assault scandal inside the university’s football program. Last week, the three defendants asked for an immediate appeal of the ruling that they must face trial, which remains scheduled for next month. Now, the judge has granted the prosecutor’s request to add a conspiracy charge to the list of criminal counts pending against the defendants, whose appeal request remains unaddressed by the court.

Sports court is in recess.

Sports Law Roundup – 2/3/2017

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I used to write the sports technology roundup at TechGraphs, an internet website that died, and now I am writing the sports law roundup at ALDLAND, an internet website.

After a week off to attend a fancy law conference, we’re back with the top sports-related legal stories from the past week or so:

  • Baylor sexual assault: The scope of the sexual assault scandal at Baylor University continues to expand. Last week, a former Baylor student sued the university because, she alleged, she was the victim of a group rape committed by two football players in 2013 that the school ignored. The plaintiff also alleged that football players were responsible for numerous other crimes “involving violent physical assault, armed robbery, burglary, drugs, guns, and, notably, the most widespread culture of sexual violence and abuse of women ever reported in a collegiate athletic program.” She further claims that, between 2011 and 2014, thirty-one Baylor football players committed a total of fifty-two rapes, including five gang rapes. The complaint makes out claims under Title IX and common-law negligence theories. One significant hurdle for the plaintiff is that both types of claims are subject to two-year statutes of limitations. Since her alleged rape occurred in 2013, the university is likely to seek a dismissal on that basis.
  • College football defamation: In more Baylor football news, former head coach Art Briles now has dropped the defamation lawsuit he filed just two months ago against three Baylor regents and the university’s senior vice president and CEO for their statements that Briles was aware of sex crimes reportedly committed by his players and failed to provide that information to proper authorities, among other claims. As of this writing, no one has made an official comment on Briles’ behalf explaining the dismissal, but it appears to be connected to documents some of the same defendants in the Briles case filed in a new defamation case brought this week by former Baylor football director of operations Colin Shillinglaw. Those documents supposedly demonstrate Briles’ awareness of and attempts to cover up his players’ wrongdoing. If you’re the TMZ type, you can read more about the contents of the alleged Briles communications here.
  • Wrestling ban: Iran has announced that it will not allow the American wrestling team to compete in the 2017 Freestyle World Cup, which the Iranian city of Kermanshah is hosting this month. The ban comes as a form of retaliation for President Donald Trump’s January 27 executive order temporarily blocking people from entering the United States from Iran and six other majority-Muslim countries.
  • Football head injuries: A state court judge in New York denied the NFL’s motion to dismiss a wrongful-death lawsuit brought by the son of deceased player Arthur DeCarlo Sr., who, his son alleges, died as a result of CTE he contracted from head injuries sustained while playing football. This is the only CTE case against the NFL that is outside of the federal multidistrict settlement based in a Pennsylvania federal court. Addressing a statute-of-limitations issue, the New York judge likened the case to asbestos claims by describing CTE as a latent condition, the manifestation of which is not discoverable until the completion of a posthumous autopsy. Meanwhile, on Monday, a group of former college football players filed suit against helmet manufacturer Riddell seeking class-action status and alleging that Riddell made false claims about its helmet’s ability to protect against concussions. This is the fifth active concussion-related lawsuit pending against Riddell.
  • Cheerleader wages: A former San Francisco 49ers cheerleader filed a complaint against the NFL and the twenty-six NFL teams that have cheerleaders, alleging that they conspired to suppress cheerleader wages (which are between $1,000 and $1,500 per year, according to the complaint) below market value. The unnamed plaintiff is seeking to represent a class of all NFL cheerleaders employed in the past four years.
  • Child abuse: Three former Penn State University administrators will face criminal child endangerment charges stemming from the Jerry Sandusky sexual assault scandal inside the university’s football program. PSU’s former president, senior vice president, and athletic director were successful in quashing charges of failing to report child sexual abuse, but their trials on the remaining charge will go forward next month.
  • Student-athlete rights: The general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board issued an official memorandum stating that football players at Division I FBS schools “are employees under the [National Labor Relations Act], with the rights and protections of that act.” The precise legal consequences of this memorandum are unclear, at least to this writer, but the practical consequences likely will include an increase in unionization attempts and unfair labor practice filings among student-athletes at the covered schools. The memorandum already has generated critical comments from some members of Congress who believe it would have “devastating consequences for students and academic institutions[,] puts the interests of union leaders over America’s students, and . . . has the potential to create significant confusion at college campuses across the nation.”
  • Baseball hacking: As punishment for their hacking of the Houston Astros’ database, MLB fined the St. Louis Cardinals $2 million and forced them to forfeit two 2017 draft picks (the fifty-sixth and seventy-fifth overall picks) to the Astros. In addition, the league banned the currently jailed St. Louis employee who hacked the Houston system multiple times from future MLB employment. Most commentators and team officials regard the sanction as a light one.
  • Daily Fantasy Sports: The European island nation of Malta has granted daily fantasy sports website DraftKings a license to operate in that country, and that license may allow the site to operate in other European jurisdictions that recognize the Maltese license as well.
  • Live game streaming: MSG has entered into an agreement with the NHL to broadcast the four New York and New Jersey hockey teams (Sabres, Rangers, Islanders, and Devils) on the network’s live streaming service, MSG GO, which is available for free to MSG subscribers. Meanwhile, another New-York-area network, SNY, will begin streaming Mets games on its own website and the NBC Sports app. (NBC previously reached a streaming agreement with MLB Advanced Media for in-market access to Cubs, White Sox, Phillies, Athletics, and Giants games starting this year.)

Sports court is in recess.

Evidence that Chip Kelly definitely reads ALDLAND?

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Last week, physguy highlighted a situation that can occur toward the end of each half of a football game: if the offense is driving and runs a pass play with time winding down, the defense’s best response often is to commit aggressive pass interference in order to eat the dwindling clock and avoid a touchdown. While he imposed a rule change to counter this defensive incentive, Roger Goodell and co. had not implemented it in time for this week’s games, and San Francisco head coach Chip Kelly, almost certainly having read our site last week, took advantage against the Saints on Sunday:

It can’t be more clear than that. As physguy wrote to me after seeing this play, “This Saints example . . . clearly shows that it needs to be addressed. My rule change makes it so that the defense can only force a FG by beating the offense fair and square.”

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Previously
Disincentivizing Defensive Penalties in College Football: Ten-Second Runon

Related
Catching Fire: Is Brad Ausmus Evolving? Or, Evidence that Brad Ausmus Definitely Reads ALDLAND

Taylor Swift and Phish deserve 2016 World Series rings

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Taylor Swift’s influence on this year’s historic World Series is well-recognized. First, she cleared the Chicago Cubs’ path through the National League side of the playoff draw by failing to release a new album in an even year for the first time since 2006, thereby removing the true and powerful source of the San Francisco Giants’ even-year magic. Things wobbled a bit when, on the day of game three of the NLDS (in which the Cubs held a 2-0 series lead over the Giants), Swift announced that her first concert in nearly a year would take place later that month and, some thought, hinted at a new album release that would spirit the Giants to another world championship. San Francisco avoided elimination by beating Chicago that night.

Swift performed her concert, but she ultimately declined to release a new album, thereby halting the Giants’ playoff run and allowing the Cubs to advance to the World Series.

As all baseball fans know from the parable of the angels in the outfield, though, a team’s supernatural helper– be it Christopher Lloyd or T-Swizz– only will carry the team so far. In the World Series, the Cubs faltered again. Their offensive power, which had floated them to a regular-season-best 103 wins, suddenly became scarce in the playoffs, and they quickly found themselves in a 3-1 hole against Cleveland in the final round. Backs against the wall, Chicago would have to win three straight games in order to claim the title. To do that, their first baseman, Anthony Rizzo, would have to start hitting.

At twenty-seven years old, Rizzo qualifies as a wise old veteran on this young Cubs team, and he knew a change was necessary for the Cubs to have a shot at winning the series, so he made one. All year and throughout the playoffs, Rizzo had used Swift’s “Bad Blood” as his walkup music, and it had served him well. With one game left at Wrigley Field, the first of three consecutive must-wins, Rizzo hit shuffle on the jukebox, swapping “Bad Blood” for the Rocky theme. It worked. Rizzo hit a key double and scored a run, and the Cubs won 3-2, sending the series back to Cleveland, where they would win twice more, including a dramatic game-seven victory in extra innings. And it’s all thanks to Taylor Swift.

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Almost all of it, anyway. The touring phenomenon that is the band Phish has been making music together since 1983. In the more than thirty years of their existence, they have performed in Chicago numerous times. In fact, prior to this year, they’d played in Chicago twenty-eight times (I’m counting their five appearances in Rosemont), including a 1991 gig at the famous Cubby Bear bar. (For more on that storied venue’s history with music and baseball, enjoy this brief video from 1984.)

Until 2016, though, they never had performed inside the (helping) friendly confines of Wrigley Field. In the 108th year of Chicago’s north-side championship drought, however, Vermont’s finest made their Wrigley Field debut on June 24. We joined them on night two of their two-night Wrigley run, and they were excellent. The second night’s second set, in particular, was sublime.

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I don’t recall any explicit baseball references from the band that evening, but the first set offered some clues:

  • Waiting All Night (a World Series game seven preview)
  • 46 Days (sung as a reference to the days of 1946, the year after the Cubs’ last World Series appearance)
  • I Didn’t Know (You Were That Far Gone – from a World Series championship)
  • Good Times Bad Times (acknowledging that the Cubs and their fans have had their share of both)

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Are there musicians more closely associated with the Chicago Cubs than Taylor Swift and Phish? Probably. Eddie Vedder comes to mind. Michigander and ostensible Detroit Tigers fan Jack White has had his public flirtations. It is clear from the foregoing, however, that no musicians did more to help the Cubs break their various curses and claim a World Series title for the first time in 108 years than Swift and Phish. If Manny Ramirez is getting a World Series ring this year, then so should Taylor, Trey, Jon, Mike, and Page.

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Related
World Series Game 7 in two tweets
Book review: Chicago Blues: The City & The Music

Dusty Baker, John Lee Hooker, and the Fillmore District (via Ephus)

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Excerpt from Kiss the Sky: My Weekend in Monterey at the Greatest Concert Ever by Dusty Baker:

When I met John Lee Hooker that took it to another level for me. John Lee was born in Mississippi. His daddy was a sharecropper and a Baptist preacher. He played down-home Delta blues and no one did it better, as you know if you’ve heard his versions of “Crawling King Snake” and “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer.” He moved around a lot in his life, but spent a lot of time in California, especially as he got older. He was here so much that later in 1997 he opened John Lee Hooker’s Boom Boom Room in San Francisco’s Fillmore District. But John Lee and I go back farther than that. I played for the Dodgers for eight seasons starting in 1976, and John Lee was a Dodger fan. He had a house in Long Beach and would come to games. I signed a Dodger uniform for him – and I found out later he had that framed and on the wall of one of his houses in the Bay Area.
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John Lee would sometimes come see me at Candlestick when I was manager of the Giants. He was a real baseball fan. At home he’d have three TV sets on at a time, each tuned to baseball, and he would pay close attention. He’d been a catcher way back when and always loved to talk baseball with me. He came to a game as my guest in September 1995 and had himself so much fun, talking to the players in the clubhouse, wearing a fedora hat made of felt with diamond and gold pins shaped like musical notes. He watched the game from a broadcast booth up in the press box, then came down afterward and we talked in my office for hours. My dad was there, and my youngest brother, Millard, from my dad’s second marriage, who picked up a love of the blues from my dad, too. Deion Sanders played for the Giants that season and he was there in my office to hang with John Lee, too. Asked who his favorite Giants player was, John Lee said, “Royce Clayton.” And why was that? “Because he’s cool.” Royce was cool. He had that right.

The next August John Lee invited me to a big birthday party he was having. He was turning seventy-nine year old, but you’d never know it from talking to him. He was having himself so much fun all the time, he might as well have been a teenager. That was John Lee. He was still performing regularly, too. I went to that birthday party and met all kinds of people, including Elvin Bishop, whose guitar work I’d first seen at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. He’d actually seen John Lee’s “Baker” Dodgers uniform and asked about me and John Lee said he’d introduce us.

Elvin was my kind of guy. He’s lived up in Marin County for years, and was actually born in California, but grew up in Iowa and Oklahoma and earned a National Merit Scholarship to attend the University of Chicago and study physics starting in 1960. He met Paul Butterfield a few years later and started playing guitar in his blues band. Elvin formed his own group before long and had a hit with “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” (he didn’t sing on that one, though). Elvin has played with everyone you can think of. He played with Muddy Waters. He played with Lightnin’ Hopkins. He and I could have talked music all night, or baseball, but instead we started talking fishing, which we’re both serious about. After that we became fishing buddies.

(via Ephus)

Baker’s Washington Nationals are in a decisive NLDS game five tonight against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Game 162: Talking baseball at the end of the 2016 regular season

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Every MLB team is in action beginning at 3:00 this afternoon for the final* day of the 2016 regular season. Before heading down to Turner Field to catch the Tigers and say farewell to baseball in downtown Atlanta, I was a guest on today’s episode of the Banished to the Pen Podcast, in which I rambled about wild card scenarios and made severely underinformed playoff predictions.

Stream or download the podcast here.

* Final as to all except Detroit and Cleveland, which likely will need to play a makeup game tomorrow.

Belated welcome to the 2016 NFL season

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We probably aren’t going to have weekly wrapups this season, but I am kicking myself for forgetting to post this 2016 NFL season introduction. Even though Week 1’s already in the books (go Lions), this is too good not to share:

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