Go Niners!

I underestimated our local lads. A tremendously exciting and impressive win yesterday. So now what?

I shall, after 8 years, bring back from exile my two Niners caps from the glory years. They have been stored in a drawer and not allowed on my head since the humiliating 2-14 season in 2004. It was a puny and seemingly futile action to protest incompetent ownership and management in the post-de Bartolo years. In addition to putting my beloved team in the competitive toilet they were intent on exhorting and extorting San Francisco to give them a new stadium or – threat – we’ll move to Santa Clara. Good riddance, said I. No way should public money be spent to keep a for-profit sports enterprise in town. The baseball Giants built a new ballpark with private capital (and a few appropriate tax breaks). These absentee owners from Ohio can do the same – or go ahead and move.

In honor of this year's miraculous resurrection I shall – for now – proudly wear my caps. What I’ll do in 2014 when they open their new stadium in Santa Clara is not clear. Root for the turncoats? Maybe. Cheer for the Raiders – if they’re still in Oakland? Not likely. Feel sorry for the taxpayers in Santa Clara who are footing the bill for an $800 million bond issue? Ha!

In the meantime – Go Niners!