by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

SAN FRANCISCO–The latest is everyone professional and college sports teams although they don’t say it real loud are concerned about the Ebola situation when teams have to make the trip to Dallas. For the professional teams in MLB, NFL, NHL, and the NBA all have their own charter planes. So folks who fly in and out of Dallas have a lot of concern because people don’t know about this desease and it might be airborne too.

The government says it doesn’t know much about it, the Centers for Deasese Control in Atlanta I won’t say their confused but they don’t know enough yet. Whatever they know is kind of controversial. On Sunday a goup of nurses in Oakland they went and demonstrated in front of the hospital in Oakland saying the nurses are not the problem. They say the nurses need more training.

This is a desease that is not new but it’s new to the United States but it’s been happening in Africa for along time. It’s not a direct threat right now to the players and the public at large. The players do travel in their own private planes. All teams in the four main leagues charter their planes. The same cannot be said about college players because many times when I fly to Anaheim from Oakland I run into college athletes like the Stanford women’s polo team.

I would be more concerned for the college teams because 99 percent of colleges don’t have the funds to charter their own planes. To charter a plane your talking about $40-50,000 a trip. It’s a long trip from coast to coast. I would be more concerned for college players if this pandemic spreads to other cities and states.

Kaplan returns A’s owner mayoral donation: Oakland A’s owner Lew Wolf this week received $700 that he donated to Rebecca Kaplan Oakland mayorial candidate because of a conflict of interest. Kaplan whose campaigning for mayor doesn’t want to be tainted by this donation. It would give the appearance that if Kaplan got in she would owe political favors to the Oakland A’s.

Wolf has a right to donate money to a political campaign he’s a citizen of the United States. Not only you don’t have to be a millionare you can give money to any government office. The difference here as opposed to the common citizen, Wolf is the owner of the A’s and it gives a bad impression, if Kaplan kept the money and the A’s start looking for a favor.

Is the Raiders general manager Reggie McKenzie on the chopping block? The Oakland Raiders are now 0-5 and I watched most of the game versus the Chargers on Sunday at the Coliseum and Raiders rookie quarterback Derrek Carr became the first rookie to throw four touchdowns in a game so maybe a star is born. They already fired Dennis Allen and you have Tony Sparano as the new head coach give him a shot and he told the team to forget about the 0-4 record before last Sunday’s game.

I watched that game and any Raider fan would be happy to see this kid Derrick Carr who threw for four touchdowns that would be a ray of hope for the Raiders that they have a quarterback for the future. Maybe that could start mending this situation. The fact remains their still 0-5 and they’re going to end up with the worst record in the league and they have to host the Arizona Cardinals this Sunday.

MLB postseason: The playoffs are a different season as we can see, the St.Louis Cardinals hit only 105 home runs in their regular season. Yet they hit four home runs on Sunday night against the San Francisco Giants. Kolten Wong hit one that won the game by edging the Giants 5-4 and tying up the series 1-1. Giants releiver Sergio Romo was the difference for the one run victory.

However the Cardinals lost their ace catcher and star of the team to an Oblique injury Yadier Molina. Molina is the best catcher in baseball next to Giants catcher Buster Posey. There is nobody close to Molina.
He’s the leader of that team and this will allow the Giants more prone to win this series. The Giants should be favorites. The Giants will also have to see an old guy that they don’t like A.J. Pierzynski also a former Giant.

Pierzynski will probably be catching on Tuesday night for the Cards, the Cards have 27 year old Tony Cruz but the Cardinals front office was brilliant in bringing in Pierzynski and the team carried three catchers and it paid off. They lost Molina, they have Cruz who is still a young guy and is suppose to be good defensivley. Pierzynski hits Giants pitching very well and he’s hit Hudson well.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish radio voice for Oakland A’s baseball and does News and Commentary weekly for sportsradioservice.com

photo credit: google images