On Pac-12 football, Pat Casey and Bud Ossey, MLB to PDX, Erik Spoelstra and the Miami Heat and Chad Doing and the Denver Broncos …
Here, there and almost everywhere in the world of sports …
• The Pac-12 football schedule was (finally) announced Saturday, with Oregon fans happy with the Ducks’ lone crossover game, Oregon State fans not so much.
The Ducks, ranked 14th in the latest AP poll, play host to Chip Kelly’s UCLA Bruins on Nov. 20. The Bruins were 4-8 a year ago. The Beavers’ only game against a South Division opponent, meanwhile, is at defending South champion Utah on Dec. 5.
Oregon opens at home against Stanford on Nov. 7 while Oregon State faces Washington State at Reser Stadium the same day. The Civil War game is the day after Thanksgiving — Nov. 27 — at Reser.
The Ducks ran away with the North Division title last season at 8-1 while the Beavers, California and Washington tied for second at 4-5. Oregon’s goal this season: Go undefeated and advance to the conference championship game on Dec. 18. Oregon State’s goal: Win four games and make a bowl game for the first time since 2013.
Every team, incidentally, plays against all other division opponents in addition to the one crossover tilt. And each team winds up its regular season with an interdivision contest on the Dec. 18-19 weekend.
No fans will be allowed in this strangest of all sports years. I just hope the season can proceed without major disruptions due to the coronavirus.
Pat Casey
• When OSU baseball coaching legend Pat Casey’s daughter, Ellie, was married in Portland recently, he made one extra stop — to see Bud Ossey.
Bud Ossey
Ossey, who turns 101 next month, has been all but sequestered in his Tigard retirement home since the pandemic shutdown began in March. He can take visitors, but only outside in the terrace by the center. So Casey spent about 45 minutes shooting the breeze with his old friend and Beaver sports’ No. 1 fan.
“I love the guy,” Casey says. “He’s a warrior — a good man. Bud should be appreciated for what he has done during his life. He has done so much for so many people.
“I asked him to tell me the secret to such a long, happy life. He said, ‘Vodka.’ ”
Casey, who is undergoing hip replacement surgery on Wednesday, enjoyed watching former OSU second baseman Nick Madrigal’s quick rise to the big leagues with the Chicago White Sox this season. Madrigal, the No. 4 pick in the 2018 draft, hit .340 in 103 at-bats in the regular season, then went 3 for 12 in the three-game playoff series with Oakland.
“It’s been awesome watching Nick,” Casey says. “When you go fourth in the draft, you know you’ll get an opportunity to be on a fast track, but you never know.
“When he came to us, he was stubborn in certain things he did. He was so instinctive, he wanted to do things he did in high school. He’d try to take extra bases all the time. He wanted to be a No. 3 hitter, so he’d swing at everything. He fixed all of that, which didn’t surprise me. He sure swung the bat well this season. I always felt he’d play in the big leagues because he does so many things so well.”
Another ex-Beaver, Michael Conforto, finished sixth in the National League with a .322 batting average. The right fielder also had nine home runs and 31 RBIs in 54 games for the New York Mets.
“Michael is going to be an $80-90 million guy with his next contract,” Casey says.
Casey, who resigned after winning his third College World Series championship in 2018, says he misses coaching. It wouldn’t surprise me if Casey, 61, takes another college job after the 2021 season. I don’t think he’d coach in the Pac-12, but the Southeast Conference? Made to order for the future College Baseball Hall-of-Famer.
• Remember the drive to bring major league baseball to Portland?
You’ve heard little about it in recent months, but MLB to PDX is still alive.
“We’re still grinding,” says Mike Barrett, managing director for Portland Diamond Project. “The time we’re in has affected everything, but it’s not stopped what we’re doing or what we’re trying to get done. We’re still full steam ahead.”
Commissioner Rob Manfred has identified Portland as a city on a short list of candidates for an expansion franchise when the MLB grows to 32 teams. The other possibility is to move the A’s from Oakland to Portland. The only thing missing is a stadium.
PDP has majority ownership and a potential stadium site lined up, but any decision by Manfred regarding expansion or relocation has been put on hold due to the pandemic. I wonder, too, if Portland’s chances have been impacted by the national image of the city through riots and damage to the downtown area in connection with the Black Lives Matters protests. Is this the kind of city where MLB wants to land?
“We hear those concerns,” Barrett says. “They’re valid, but I don’t believe it’s changed anything. Portland is still seen as a valuable potential market for Major League Baseball.
“Over the last couple of summers, we’re made ourselves public and raised awareness for the project. With COVID, we’ve had to curtail the public appearances. We’re still going, but we’re not as visible. We haven’t gone away. The opportunity we bring now is as strong or stronger than before all this started.”
MLB has taken a major financial hit through its shortened, spectator-less 2020 season. Barrett hopes that will speed up the time line for Manfred to make a decision on expansion, or for the A’s — who have their own stadium issues in Oakland — to make a move.
I hope so. We could use some good news.
Erik Spoelstra
• Erik Spoelstra took the Miami Heat to four straight NBA Finals from 2011-14, winning championships in 2012 and ’13 behind LeBron James and Dwyane Wade. This season, though, Spoelstra has done the best coaching job in his dozen seasons at the Heat helm.
In the ensuing six years after the Heat’s last Finals appearance, they made the playoffs only twice and won one playoff series. In this truncated season, though, Spoelstra has taken a team with what appeared to be a mediocre roster all the way to the Finals. Who’d have thought that players such as Duncan Robinson, Tyler Herro and Jae Crowder would play such pivotal roles on a Finals team? Unpolished center Bam Adebayo and veteran guard Goran Dragic have developed into stars.
It’s a shame that Adebayo, Dragic and Jimmy Butler have been hampered by injuries in the championship series against the LA Lakers. I don’t think Miami would have beaten the Lakers, but I felt like it would be a competitive series. Now it could turn out to be a sweep.
Spoelstra, who turns 50 on Nov. 1, is moving toward what could wind up as a Hall of Fame career. His career regular-season record is 567-392, putting him 25th on the NBA’s all-time win list. Spoelstra’s win percentage (.591) ranks 13th among coaches with 400 career games.
Not bad for the kid out of Jesuit High and the University of Portland, who began with the Heat 25 years ago as a vastly underpaid video coordinator.
Chad Doing (right) with friend Steve Lee at Broncos game
• Chad “The Body” Doing is a renowned fan of the Denver Broncos, but Portland’s popular radio personality outdid himself last week to attend the Broncos’ game against Tampa Bay at Empower Field.
Due to the coronavirus, the Broncos chose to allow 5,700 fans to attend the game against the Buccaneers in their cavernous 76,000-seat capacity facility. The Broncos held a lottery for season ticket-holders to distribute tickets for the Bucs game. Doing used the secondary market to purchase a pair of what he termed “reasonably priced club level tickets” — at $600 per — for him and a friend to attend the game.
Yes, the host of “Rip City Drive” on KPOJ (AM 620) is a B-I-G Broncos fan.
The in-game experience, Doing says, “was odd.”
“When you think football (at Empower Field), you think 70,000 fans and noise,” he says. “There was no crowd noise pumped in, so all we had was the noise being made by the 5,700 in attendance.”
A fan sitting near Doing was heckling Tampa Bay quarterback Tom Brady.
“He was yelling, ‘Brady, you’re a girl!’ “ Doing says. “No doubt Tom could hear him, as quiet as it was in the stadium. It was like we were sitting in a park, watching a sporting event from a distance. Very laid-back, like a baseball game.”
Doing was impressed with how organized the set-up was at the stadium. Fans were required to wear masks until they go to their seats and were socially distanced through the facility. Everyone was assigned to a specific gate to keep the crowds down at each entrance.
“Everything was well put together in terms of signage, staffing and markings on the floor to concessions and rest rooms,” Doing says. “That part of it was great. There were no lines. I haven’t seen a men’s rest room that quiet since I went to a Brittany Spears concert in the TacomaDome in 2008.”
Doing says it was an overall pleasurable experience, despite the Broncos’ 28-10 loss to Brady and the Bucs.
“One of the main reasons I did it was because I want to encourage people to continue to live your life and explore even in this pandemic,” he says. “I wanted to show how safe it would be. You don’t have to stay locked up in your home. I felt safe on the plane and in the stadium.
“My message would be, if you want to get out, as long as you take precautions and follow the necessary instructions, you can do it. You’ll be surprised how safe you can feel.”
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