A lesson from Steve Jobs

The joys of parenthood are many and ever-changing.

The mental victory dance you do at 2:12 a.m. upon hearing your 3-year-old flushing the toilet after her first nocturnal visit to the potty? Yours precedes her own victory dance, two years later, after she’s finished confidently striding across the stage to collect her Kindergarten “diploma.”

Why are you crying, Daddy?

You’ll understand when you have kids of your own, sweetie.

What does the above have to do with sports? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And that’s why I dig writing here, in my independent little corner of the world wide web, more than any place I’ve written.

With the exception of my book, which was a true labor of love (“labor” being the key word, as it was arduous for both me and my expectant bride), I’ve been writing what other people want me to write my whole career — and for a long time that was fine.

But as I grew older, as I grew more independent in my thinking and nature, I did what a lot of people do as they get older.

I changed.

I developed something of a stubborn streak.

I decided that when push came to shove, I was going to stick to my guns and insist that I’m right.

Not always the best approach in the corporate world, and my two most recent jobs have been with huge, national companies. It’s as much about  who you spend time trying to appease as it is the quality of your performance when it comes to working in big buildings, and I’m the first to admit I haven’t always played nice with the people holding my career cards.

So here I am, writing when I want and about what want.

Liberating, to be sure. Lucrative? Not so much. Not yet, anyway. That’ll come.

That’s the plan, anyway, but it has to start with great work. And for work to be great, it has to be something you love. This is one of the many lessons I’ve learned in the wake of Steve Jobs’ death.

While he was living, I didn’t pay much attention to Jobs’ life, his legacy, his overwhelming impact on the lives of millions of people. Since he passed, though, I’ve devoured every word I can find detailing that life remarkably lived, and among my joyous and profound discoveries is that he lived that remarkable life because he figured something out that it takes many of us far too long to realize, and it’s not a complicated lesson or message.

In fact, it’s pretty simple.

A career is far too long to not spend it truly loving what you do, and life is far too short not to spend it doing what you want with those you hold most dear. Find a way to marry those concepts and you’re way ahead of the game.

You might not change the world as did Jobs, but you can change your world and the world of those around you.

And that’s pretty remarkable, too.

Carroll, Panda and the Giants

Now on the tail end of a busy week of searching for ways to piece together a living, I’ve come to the following conclusion: Looking for work is more exhausting than actually working.

Unless, perhaps, you’re Brian Sabean and his front-office crew. With 13 arbitration-eligible players, eight free agents and holes in the roster a-plenty, they entered the offseason with perhaps the longest to-do list in the big leagues.

They’ve already addressed some of their issues, bringing back lefty relievers Javier Lopez and Jeremy Affeldt last week and acquiring outfielder Melky Cabrera this week by sending mercurial starter Jonathan Sanchez to Kansas City.

There’s still a ton of work to do, though, and among the issues is finding a reliable backup middle infielder.

As of now, Brandon Crawford is atop the depth chart at shortstop, Freddy Sanchez is No. 1 at second base (assuming he’s healthy), and Jeff Keppinger and Mike Fontenot, both among the arbitration-eligible Giants, are No. 2 at shortstop and second base, respectively.

Keppinger should be kept, in my opinion. Freddy hasn’t exactly proven to be a quick healer since he arrived via trade from Pittsburgh, and Keppinger is essentially Freddy Light. He can do everything a healthy Freddy does, just not quite as well.

Fontenot? Eh. He’s a non-tender in my book. Nice little scrapper, but if Crawford doesn’t quite work out, you simply can’t go with Fontenot for the long haul. We’ve seen that movie before. He gets exposed after a week or two, the holes in his swing pried open with the Jaws of Lively Fastballs.

So the need for a reliable backup shortstop should be prioritized — unless, of course, Sabean pulls off a stunner and reels in Jimmy Rollins.

This is what has me thinking about Jamey Carroll, whose name kept popping up on my Twitter feed (@BigUrbSports) this week as a possible “get” for the Giants.

My thoughts as I read the tweets?

Carroll had a nice year for the Dodgers, and he’d be a nice fit as a backup and in the clubhouse, but he made $1.8 million last season, he’s going to be 38 by the time next season starts, and word is he wants more than one year. Under those terms, no thanks. A year and a mil? Bring him on.

On Friday, though, the Twins signed Carroll to a two-year deal said to be worth about $7 million. Wow. If Jamey Carroll is worth $3.5 million, the Twins have scouts that see something I clearly do not.  

Moving on, another priority for the Giants is keeping Pablo Sandoval healthy, and they might want to add “keeping him safe” to the mix. 

While on tour in Taiwan with a Giants manager Bruce Bochy and a group of MLB “all-stars,” the Panda denied having put on some of the pounds he lost last winter, but don’t buy that for a second.

There’s no question he put on weight. It’s undeniable.

But he knows how to get it off, and he’s already working on it at the same Phoenix-area facility that transformed his body and career last offseason. That’s great news, because the Giants absolutely need him at his best again in 2012.

Not-so-great news is that he’s still considering a trip to his native Venezuela for some winter ball. If I’m the Giants, I strongly urge him to reconsider, and this where “keeping him safe” enters the equation.

Or did you miss the terrifying story about Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos being kidnapped from outside his home in Venezuela this week? People with big money are frequent targets of such crimes in that country; it’s why many Venezuelan-born players make their offseason homes in the U.S.

Granted, Sandoval would be there for only a week or two, and he’s a considerably bigger star than Ramos. If he requested national security he’d probably get it. But why take the chance?

That’s it for today, folks. There’s still some daylight left, so there’s still time to hustle for gigs.

A’s all ears? Who’s not?

It’s become big news this week that A’s general manager Billy Beane, which whom I spoke Thursday night, is going to be all ears this offseason when it comes to discussing trades.

That’s big news? Not really. As Beane has often told me, “If you’re not listening, you’re not doing your job.”

Look, there isn’t a GM in the game — in all of professional sports, really — that isn’t all ears at all times.  Beane, in particular, is open to hearing whatever proposal one of his colleagues might want to throw out, even if it’s ridiculous at the time.

In fact, it’s an important and wise method by which Beane and his brethren gather information. Over the course of any given trade discussion, even if it doesn’t immediately lead to a deal, GMs can find out which players might be available in future deals.

For example, here’s a conversation that might take place in January …

GM No. 1: I’m looking to move Player A and I’d like to offer him to you in return for Player B.

GM No. 2: Hmmmm. Well, we like Player A, but Player B is more than we’re willing to give up. How about Players C and D? Player D’s ripping it up at Triple-A.

GM No. 1: Oh well. I figured it was worth a shot. Thanks for your time, buddy. Talk to you later.

Now fast-forward a few months, right before the start of the season …

GM No. 1: Hey buddy, tough spring for you guys, huh? Can’t believe Player B’s ankle is broken. And Player C needs Tommy John? Brutal. How you holding up?

GM No. 2: I’ve been better. Ownership’s basically giving up on the season and wants me to cut payroll. They’re talking about cleaning house.

GM No. 1: Wow. That sucks. Well, maybe I can help you out. Gimme Player D and I’ll get you some cash.

That’s a bare-bones version of how it often works, so when you hear that Beane is listening to offers, it’s no reason to flip out. It could very well be nothing more than a smartly publicized fact-finding mission.

If it’s not?

Well, there have been reports that second baseman Jemile Weeks is the only “untouchable” on the Oakland roster; everyone else can be had in the right deal.

The A’s are essentially being held hostage by MLB’s blue-ribbon panel on their stadium situation, so they need to go young (again) in hopes that whatever collection of young talent they assemble is ready to compete at a high level by the time a move is actually made.

How young is young, though?

Weeks is 24.

Trevor Cahill, a 2010 AL All-Star who’d figure to draw considerable interest on the trade market, is 23.

Gio Gonzalez, a 2011 AL All-Star, is all of 26.

True, you want to sell high when you have some talent that might fetch a fat haul. But until there’s an actual stadium deal, the A’s need to be careful not to further alienate a fan base that’s been feeling all but ignored for years.

Keep Weeks, by all means. He belongs on the list of untouchables. But so do Cahill and Gonzalez, at the very least.

Good For Ball/Bad For Ball

What follows is a version of something I’ve been writing, off and on, for about 10 years. It’s proven somewhat popular with readers because it’s a quick and easy read, and I dig writing it because it allows me to touch on all sports, local and national. Hope you dig it, too …

Assuming the intentions are pure, running for local public office is Good For Ball. The pay — if any — stinks, and the time commitment is considerable, so it’s essentially a selfless, thankless service to your fellow citizens. The colorful cardboard gardens of campaign placards that pop up around the neighborhood are a bit of an eyesore, but hey, knock yourself out.

Then you have the people who apparently sneak around late at night and uproot said gardens, ripping said placards in half and littering the yards in which they were displayed with torn and twisted cardboard. Who knew city council candidates prompted such vitriol? Bad For Ball.

Everyting in life, you see, can be classified in one of two ways: Good For Ball or Bad For Ball. With that in mind, we take our latest spin around the sports world and determine what’s what.

The big story in the Bay Area on Monday was the trade that sent Giants lefty Jonathan Sanchez to Kansas City. Can’t really call it the trade that brought Melky Cabrera to San Francisco because there is not yet any sort of connection to Cabrera. To Sanchez, Giants fans alternately have been joyously connected and bitterly disconnected over the years. Has there ever been an athlete in these parts so clearly talented and wildly inconsistent? Not in recent memory. Seems like a classic change-of-scenery guy from here, and given the good times he provided as “Good Sanchy” — particularly the I-can’t-believe-what-just-happened triple against the Padres and the 11-K game against the Braves in the playoffs last year – he deserves Good For Ball status and best wishes with the next chapter of his baffling career. 

Joe Frazier was nobody’s punching bag in the ring. He was a force of nature. A world champion. A worthy foil to the great Muhammad Ali. Unfortunately, a great many sports fans of the generation that followed Frazier’s prime know less about his frightening mastery of the sweet science than they know of Ali’s constant belittling of the man who, according to Ali himself, nearly beat him to death in the 1975 classic “Thrilla in Manila.” Sad beyond words that Frazier died without ever getting his due outside boxing’s inner circles, and while it’s borderline sacriledge to cast Ali in anything less than a glowing light, it’s inescapable that The Greatest’s use of Smokin’ Joe as a verbal punching bag created the bitterness that clouded Frazier’s legacy. Bad For Ball.

Alex Smith, after years of ridicule, is a winning NFL quarterback. Sure, it feels a little like saying Tom Arnold is an Oscar-winning actor, but Good For Ball nonetheless.

Joe Paterno. Bad For Ball. No further explanaton needed. Wow.

Stanford football finally takes the big stage this weekend, with ESPN’s “College Gameday” down on The Farm for the Pac-12 showdown with Swoosh University. It’d be nice if Cardinal wideout Chris Owusu were at Andrew Luck’s disposal, but beggars can’t be choosers, and the BCS poll has forced one of the nation’s top teams, starring the nation’s top QB, to all but beg for this kind of attention. Well, here it is. Good For Ball.

NBA commish David Stern is arrogance personified. His most recent transgression? Telling the players to take the deal that’s on the table now or the next offer will be worse. In what world does that type of negotiation thuggery work? Can’t think of one outside the mafia. Bad For Ball.

And finally, a nod to Tommy Kelly of the Raiders, who gave a voice to every frustrated Oakland fan in the wake of Sunday’s pathetic showing against Tim Tebow and the Broncos. The read option isn’t supposed to work in the NFL, especially against a team that had two weeks to work on defending it, but it worked against the Raiders, who seem on the verge of full-on implosion. Kelly no doubt deserves his share of the blame, as does every member of Oakland’s front seven, but at least he was man enough to publicly blast the embarrassment that went down. Good For Ball.

Melky for Sanchy: advantage, Giants

There were general managers in big-league baseball slapping their foreheads Monday, for two different reasons.

Some were doing said slapping and saying, “All it took to get Melky Cabrera was Jonathan Sanchez?!?”

Giants general manager Brian Sabean, who pulled off the deal, might have been thinking those very thoughts. After all, in the wake of Sanchez’s rough 2011, which ended with him on the disabled list, the market for him couldn’t have been entirely robust.

That could be why Sabean, late Monday afternoon, told me the deal took less than a week to put together once it was clear there was something of a match.

Other GMs might have been slapping their heads Monday saying, “All it took to get Jonathan Sanchez was Melky Cabrera?!?”

Both are justified, but the Giants’ deal to acquire Cabrera in exchange for Sanchez and a minor-league pitcher looks like a strong move from the San Francisco side of things.

Cabrera, who turned 27 in August, had a career year in 2011, batting .305 with a .339 on-base percentage, 18 homers, 44 doubles, 87 RBIs and 20 stolen bags while making $1.25 million with the Royals.

Many people who saw a lot of Cabrera with the Yankees, including a couple of my co-workers at 95.7 FM The Game (@957TheGAME), will tell you he’s a stiff who couldn’t handle the heat in New York. They’ll point to his pedestrian numbers in Atlanta, which released him after a pedestrian 2010 (.255/.317 OBP/27 2B /4 HR/42 RBI/7 SB), as evidence that 2011 was an aberration.

Hey, gotta present both sides of the story here. Cabrera’s had only one big year.

But it was last year, and this is a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately business.

Now for the other side of the deal.

Sanchez, who turns 29 later this month, did not have a career year last year. He went 4-7 with a 4.26 ERA and a 1.44 WHIP, a dramatic downturn from what appeared, at the time, to be a breakthrough 2010: 13-9, 3.07 ERA, 1.23 WHIP.

In fact, 2010 was the first and only of Sanchez’s six seasons (or partial seasons) in the bigs with an ERA under 4.25. Career, he is 38-46 with a 4.26 ERA and a 1.39 WHP. That’s the very definition of pedestrian.

How’s this shake out financially? Cabrera and Sanchez both are eligible for arbitration this winter. Via arbitration, you generally get a raise. Even Sanchez, as average as he was in 2011. Cabrera, on the other hand, was very good.

So let’s say Cabrera doubles his 2011 salary to $2.5 million. Heck, let’s say he triples it, to $3.75 million.

Sanchez made $4.8 million in 2011. He’s gonna cost the Royals — or someone else, if K.C. flips him — more than $5 million.

Giants fans who don’t like this deal might note Sanchez’s prodigious talent, his no-hitter and his stellar 2010. Those less enamored with the mercurial lefty will note the flip-a-coin nature of his starts — Good Sanchy or Bad Sanchy today? — and his tendency to shrink under pressure.

Savor Sanchez’ win over the Padres on the last day of the 2010 regular season all you want, but remember that he lasted only five innings, and when the heat truly was on — most notably, after he guaranteed a sweep of the Padres earlier that season, and his Game 6 meltdown in the NLCS — he came up small.

He never really improved, is the truth of it. He put it all together for a while here and a while there, a longer while in 2010, but by and large he was bad as frequently as he was good.

Here’s the bottom line on this deal: The Giants gained a reliable, motivated (with free agency pending) everyday player who can fill the void in center field and bat first or second in the order — emphasis on reliable everyday player. What they gave up was an unreliable every-fifth-day player who exasperated fans, coaches, teammates and the front office.

Need another reason to like this one? This is the big one: It means Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain are staying put for now.

No way Sabean, who told me less than two weeks ago that he wasn’t ruling out trading a starter because it might be easier to improve the offense that way as opposed to free agency, deals two-fifths of his rotation.

A possible negative to the deal? It seems to signal that Sabean meant it when he downplayed the Giants’ chances of retaining Carlos Beltran.

But if Cody Ross can bounce back and have a year on par with his career, is an outfield of Ross, Cabrera and Nate Schierholtz anything to scoff at?

Is not a top of the order featuring Cabrera, Freddy Sanchez, Pablo Sandoval and Buster Posey a significant upgrade over what the Giants featured while falling just shy of a return to the playoffs?

Granted, there’s a lot of hope factored in right now; hope that Posey and Sanchez are healthy, that Aubrey Huff’s every-other-year trend continues, that Schierholtz and Cabrera continue to get better, that Barry Zito isn’t a mess as the rotation’s No. 5 man, etc.

The Giants got better on Monday, though, and for a first dish o up on the Hot Stove, it feeds the starving baseball soul just fine.

Another leg of the journey

Just wrapped up my first weekend among the unemployed. Sweet. Thank God for my wife, who refuses to let me feel sorry for myself, and for my two daughters, two refuse to make me feel anything less than incredibly blessed. Not that my wife doesn’t make me feel blessed. She’s made ungodly sacrifices as I’ve gone from being the …

… sports editor of the Half Moon Bay Review …

… to sports editor of the Review and Pacifica Tribune (concurrently) …

… to sports editor of the Tribune and “correspondent” (read: junior college baseball writer) for the San Mateo Times …

… to executive sports editor of the Gilroy Dispatch, Hollister Haybaler and Morgan Hill Times …

… to copy editor at the Contra Costa Times …

… to slot editor/backup golf columnist at the Contra Costa Times …

… to copy editor at Quokka Sports in San Francisco, the company that pioneered the big-photo-with-linked-text-beneath-it format you see on virtually every sports website today …

… to senior writer/editor at Quokka …

… to co-managing editor of NBCOlympics.com, an NBC/Quokka venture …

… to A’s beat writer for MLB.com …

… to national writer for MLB.com …

… back to A’s beat writer for MLB.com (while writing “ACES”) …

… to part-time host on KNBR …

… to MLB Insider for CSN Bay Area …

… to part-time host on 95.7 FM The GAME while at CSN Bay Area …

… to now. Part-time host at 95.7 The Game. More money going out than coming in. Way more.

Sob story? Nah. More like a roller coaster. I’ve eaten lettuce sandwiches. I’ve been on the sidelines at the NFC Championship Game. I’ve lived in the extra bedroom of friends. I’ve traveled the country covering big-league baseball. I’ve pirated cable. I’ve been given more free cable — Playboy Channel in Spanish? — than I know what to do with.

This is a low. This is a high. Higher highs are coming, and you’re coming with me.

I just got a text from my wife. Her name is Kelli. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met, and her beauty ranks about 30th on her list of top qualities. Nos. 1 and 2 might be her sense of humor and her ability to make me feel like I can do anything, now matter how dire the circumstances might seem.

Those two qualities fueled her text, which made me smile Cheshire-wide and tear up at the same time — on a BART train, to less.

“You’re Mychael Frikkin’ Urban,” she wrote. “You can do this.”

And so I will. Starting today.

Check back later for some actual sports stuff, and if you’re reading this between the hours of 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Monday, please tune into 95.7 FM (957thegame). I’m co-hosting this week, with my friend John Lund (@johnlundradio) on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday.

And so it begins …

Hey everyone, glad you’ve made your way to my own not-so-private Idaho. Or in this case, the Livermore Public Library.

Terrific little spot, this library. I wrote much of my first (and, thus far, only) book here — “ACES,” the story of the final year together (2004) for the Oakland A’s Big Three of Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and Barry Zito. More books are planned now my schedule has been freed up for the time being, and I plan to write those here, too.

Free Wi-Fi and drinking fountains spittin’ ice water with flouride? I’m a simple man, and that’s all I need. All I can really afford right now, too.

About that. I was under the impression that my status at CSN Bay Area was to be kept under wraps until my contract expired, but apparently the cat’s not just out of the bag. It’s out of the bag, on the prowl and soiling my wicker furniture. The company even issued a statement to BayAreaSportsGuy.com, so here you go:

“Mychael Urban is no longer employed with Comcast SportsNet. We appreciate his contributions over the last few years and we wish him well.”

Bottom line, my contract expires Dec. 12, and the head of our web department informed me Wednesday that she had decided not to pick up the option year built into the deal. One more reason to envy Jeremy Affeldt.

I was tempted to write, “What really sucks is that I had a better year than Affeldt,” but apparently I did not. Or at least I didn’t in the eyes of the people who decided to give me the boot.

So now what? Sit around and mope? Trash CSN Bay Area? Nah. Moping takes more energy than doing something you love, and I’m not a bad-mouth type of guy.

I really dug my gig at CSN Bay Area, especially learning the new skill of working on TV, and I made a lot of good friends there. I’d work there again under the right circumstances. They did what they felt they needed to do, and that’s the nature of working under a contract in a highly subjective business.

So what’s now is finding a way to keep my wife and two little girls — they’re 7 and 8 years old, and you’ll get to know them over time if you stick with this blog for a bit — healthy and happy. There’s never a good time to lose a job, but right before the holidays has to be at least one of the faces on Mt. Suckmore, so I don’t have time to mope. I’ve gotta get crackin’ and find some more work, pronto.

Hopefully, this blog helps in that regard, but it’s not just a blog. Think of it as a one-man sports page. I’ve developed a lot of contacts over my 20-plus years in Bay Area sports media, and I plan to milk them all in putting together a place where you’ll find breaking news — yes, breaking news — as well as columns and features and other content, on all sports, that you’ll soon discover absolutely has to be part of your daily routine.

And as one of my college coaches often said, by way of demanding hustle at all times, “You never know who’s watching.”

Your role here: Check in often, and be sure to follow me on Twitter. I changed by handle to @BigUrbSports, and whenever I post something new here, I’ll tweet out a link to it. Such as the one-on-one I’ll be having with a key member of the 2012 Giants tomorrow morning.

For now, though, I’ve gotta bail. There’s a butt-load of snarky anonymous comments about me out there on this world wide web of ours, many delighting in misfortune or wildly speculating as to why I got the boot.

I’m pretty sure most of ‘em are being posted by that damn cat.