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The San Francisco FlameThrowers, a professional ultimate team playing in the San Francisco Bay Area, play their next home game on Saturday, May 13, against the Seattle Cascades at  6 p.m. The Bay Area Women's Rising Stars game is at 5 p.m.  All FlameThrowers home games are played at the  Laney College Football Field   in Oakland.
For information and tickets,  click here.
Lindheim
5-1-17 - Cal Bears - Ron Sellers
Marshawn Lynch, prior to Cal's game last fall against Washington, recreates
his memorable golf cart drive of 10 years earlier, after the Golden Bears beat Washington. (Lynch had scored the winning touchdown in a 31-24 overtime victory and hopped in a cart to celebrate.) His mother, Mama (Delisha) Lynch, said afterwards she was "...shaking like a leaf on a tree," with her son at the wheel. Photo by Ron Sellers.

Marshawn Lynch's Best Mode 
By Dave Newhouse
 
Marshawn Lynch has come back home to Oakland, but only in a professional sense. Oakland has been his true home all along, but his football travels relocated him to Buffalo and Seattle. But with his recent trade from the Seahawks to the Raiders, he is experiencing an emotional homecoming.

But which Marshawn Lynch will he allow the Raider Nation to see and hear -- the reluctant interviewee of his previous two pro stops, or the other Marshawn Lynch, outgoing and engaging?

Yes, there is that other Marshawn Lynch, whom I encountered at Cal from 2005 to 2007. I covered the Golden Bears in football during those years for the now defunct Oakland Tribune. And Lynch was a joy to be around, always forthcoming and -- believe it or not -- available to be interviewed.

I can't remember him ever turning down an interview request. Or a photo request. He even agreed to remove his shirt to show off a tattoo across his back that was a tribute to his mother. He was delightful to be around, even educating yours truly on the hip language of the day: "Chillin'," etc.

You could ask him almost anything, even about his academics at Cal. He said he was getting B's in his classes, which ended in his junior year when he left early for the NFL, becoming the 12th overall player taken by the Bills.

I don't know how he could have been more honest about his life without it becoming an open book. I even recall his discussing being shot while riding with some friends on their way to attending a graduation ceremony at Oakland Tech, several years after Lynch had attend the same high school.

My last conversation with Lynch was immediately after his draft selection party, held at Oakland Tech. I read later about his hitting a pedestrian while driving in Buffalo, which might have factored into his sudden unavailability to the media, a pattern which then carried over to Seattle.

Even though he has lots to discuss as a five-time Pro Bowl selection, a six-time 1,000-yard rusher, an All-Pro in 2012, and a Super Bowl XLVIII champion, he chooses to be perceived as Marshawn the Mute, the intensely private football hero.

I've heard through the grapevine -- there are grapes, indeed, in Washington state -- that Lynch was the most popular player in the Seattle locker room.
 
I was visiting the Seattle area after the Seahawks won the Super Bowl, and watched the parade on TV as Lynch sat on the hood of the lead bus and threw Skittles to his adoring fans. Then I saw him blow off reporters afterwards.

But that parade offered a rare appearance of Marshawn the Mirthful, the same fun-loving running back who drove an equipment golf cart in Memorial Stadium after he helped Cal beat Washington. I've got to believe that's the real Marshawn Lynch, now masked in disguise.

I hope he reappears in Oakland and reveals his true identity. He's 31 now, with maybe two productive years remaining because of his physically demanding Beast Mode way of carrying the football. There's an old saying in sports: He's trying to say hello when it's time to say goodbye. In other words, when your career is over, don't try to become someone you haven't been.

Marshawn Lynch is a good man with a lot to say. He just needs to say it while anyone is willing to listen. After his career is over, it may be too late.
 
Dave Newhouse's journalism career spans more than half a century, including 45 years at the Oakland Tribune before his retirement in November 2011. His twelfth book, co-authored with Eddie Hart, will be published this spring:   Disqualified: Eddie Hart, Munich 1972, and the Voices of the Most Tragic Olympics. 
Dave grew up in Menlo Park, graduated from San Jose State, and has radio and television experience in addition to his work as an award-winning sportswriter and columnist.

Pops
3-6-17 - Pops

Michael King (left), with an associate from USF (center), and Karla Granadino-King, are pictured at the Olympic Club in San Francisco,  proudly sharing with the world their  Pops Premium Rumpopo. A King family secret, Pops Premium Rumpopo is a  delicious rum cream liqueur recipe brewed in the family tradition.  The award winning recipe is a Belizean family favorite and now available at all Total Wine & More stores in California and Bay Area retailers.
For more information, visit https://www.bzecheers.com/rumpopo

Pops - Original
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