Did you hear about the old Russian guy who refused to sell his familial home to make room for Olympic Park in Sochi? All around him houses were leveled, trees uprooted, fields paved over in sacrifice to Putin’s Olympics. But Prokofey Drovichev held firm. He was born in that house. His grandparents were buried in the small cemetery next to the compound.

Drovichev waited for the bulldozers, but they never came. When the Winter Games arrived along with a few hundred thousand visitors, his house was still there, and the cemetery, too, shielded behind a fence. And there they remain.

For the last four years or so, I have sort of been that guy. All around me the scenery has turned to blogosphere. Every sportswriter has a blog. Every journalist of every stripe has a blog. It may in fact be true that everyone in the developed world has a blog.

I held out. I handled the Raiders blog and 49ers blog (briefly) for the Press Democrat, but lately I have no true beat. I still cover those NFL teams to some extent. I occasionally cover the A’s, the Giants, the Warriors, PGA Golf, all that driving at Sonoma Raceway and many, many high-school games and matches. I don’t really have a territory, an area of expertise.

Oh, well. I’m blogging anyway. I promise from the outset that this site will be unfocused and unpredictable. There will be something to baffle each of you on occasion, and, I hope, a few things that offend nearly everyone once in a while. Your favorite sport will be addressed, and then ignored. I will opine and analyze seemingly by whim. And there will really be no guidelines. Except one. I draw the line at badminton.

Real topics coming to this space soon.

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