Ray Ratto

The Latest

  • Dec 31, 2018

    Why 2019 will be the Year of Real Estate for Bay Area sports teams

    There are lots of ways 2019 can go, sporty-wise, and this won’t be one of those insipid end-of-year columns predicting anyone’s future, or making resolutions for them, or even pretending its actually 2020 and looking back at 2019. The present is difficult enough for all of us, as you might have guessed by reading and listening to us all these…

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  • Dec 31, 2018

    Jon Gruden should let Mike Mayock's voice be heard in Raiders' rebuild

    The Narnia Raiders have hired Mike Mayock as their new general manager, so I see no reason why he and Jon Gruden shouldn’t start arguing about the direction of this rootless franchise. At least you’d like to think they will, even if you’re a Raiders fan. This needs to be a hire that challenges both to work together for their...

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  • Dec 30, 2018

    What Raiders, 49ers had in common proves Bay Area can endure football

    Well, this much good happened on the last day of the 2018 football season, Bay Area Editions: The Oakland Raiders managed to finish their work in record time. Their work, mind you, was to lose to the Kansas City Chiefs, which they did by turning the ball over the first four times they got it en route to a 35-3 mauling….

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  • Dec 28, 2018

    Patrick McCaw signing offer sheet with Cavaliers is a lesson on leverage

    Not that the Golden State Warriors had any plans for Patrick McCaw after a summer and fall of non-contact, but the fact that the Cleveland Cavaliers offered him a two-year, $6 million deal speaks to a basic truth about life in general and sports in particular. There is nothing more dismal than imagining leverage where it does not exist. McCaw and the...

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  • Dec 27, 2018

    Anthony Davis' future surpasses Kevin Durant's as NBA's biggest thing

      The National Basketball Association has been slowly transitioning to a summer league over the past several seasons, given that the summer is when the player movement market transitions from discourse and rumor to money-burning fact. Indeed, the dog days of December are being backed-and-filled with some discussion of what ails the Golden State Warriors, but far more where Anthony Davis’…

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  • Dec 27, 2018

    Remembering Warren Wells, a prototypical Raider from their best past

    Two years ago, Warren Wells flew from his home in Beaumont, Texas, to light the Al Davis memorial torch at Oakland Coliseum. He’d been in uncertain health for some time, so the trip had particular significance both for him and for those who remember the flame from his own brief but prescient career as an Oakland Raider. Wells, who...

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  • Dec 26, 2018

    Defense was Warriors' psychological weapon, and they've misplaced it

    It’s the obvious answer to the question nobody wants to ask, because as is true in all sports debates, once the answer is provided, the debate dies. Put simply, the Warriors have downgraded themselves to a good but flawed team, the current equal to seemingly lesser lights like Denver and Oklahoma City and Toronto and Milwaukee, all because the...

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  • Dec 23, 2018

    Nick Mullens learns lesson of doing too much in 49ers' loss to Bears

    Rest assured that the play that Nick Mullens didn’t make at the end of Sunday’s 14-9 loss to the Chicago Bears will linger with him only forever, because it started eating at him immediately. As it should have, because that’s how disappointment is supposed to work. “I started thinking about it the second I threw it,” the 49ers quarterback who has...

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  • Dec 21, 2018

    Raiders in San Francisco makes sense — for right amount of money

    The hot news dump of the day is that the San Francisco Giants are “considering” the conversion of their ballpark to the home of Black Hole 2.0. And by “considering,” we mean trying to figure out how much money they can squeeze out of Mark Davis’ claws to let them tear up the ball field 10 times. Or, more practically,…

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  • Dec 21, 2018

    Raiders' Monday night probable finale will paint brave, soft face of fans

    From the moment Mark Davis secured the money to build his Xanadu in the desert, there have been two Raiders — the Oakland ones, and the Circling Las Vegas ones. It is why the things the Raiders have done under the aegis of Jon Gruden have made more sense the further away from Oakland you get. When other teams gut themselves…

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