Veni – Vidi – Vixi – Favi

I suppose every website needs a mission statement.

This probably isn't one.

But it is a pretty good explanation of why this place exists.

Welcome to croixdecandlestick.com.

Inspired by the pin that represented so much more than just fandom (more on that later).

Yes, there will be nostalgia here. A lot of it, actually. The name probably gives that away. There will be old jerseys, old stadiums, old broadcasts, old cards, old stories and probably more than a few moments of “Wait, you remember that too?”

But this isn't a museum. This isn't about pretending everything was better back then.

It's about then, now and what's next. Honor what was. Celebrate what is. Ponder and plan for what's next.

And as I sit down to write this, I realize there may be no better day to finally get this thing started.

Today I turn 50.

I've had the idea for this website for a while. I've had the domain, the notes, the ideas and more than a few versions of what I thought this could become. What I haven't had is the right moment to actually sit down and start.

So here we are. Fifty seems like a pretty good excuse. A day to reflect. A day to celebrate. A day to look back at the things that have shaped me, appreciate what is here now, and look ahead at what might be next.

Which, when I think about it, is pretty much the entire point of this place.

Because for me, sports keeps giving me more.

More stories. More history. More rabbit holes. More reasons to call somebody and say, “Did you see that?” More moments that somehow become attached to a particular summer, a particular stadium, a particular jersey or a particular person.

I don't always see sports through rose-colored glasses. I want to. Sometimes I probably do. But sports is also culture, community, business, opportunity, distraction, achievement, excellence, failure, history, memories, moments, possibility, hope and dreams.

It can be analytical and complicated.

It can also be incredibly simple.

At the heart of it all, I'm a fan.

Probably because I wasn't particularly good at most of it.

I played. I participated. I tried. Not many out there that would describe me as “athletic.” Let's leave it there.

What I lacked in talent, I made up for in curiosity. And somehow, 50 years into this thing, I'm still curious. Still watching, still learning, still collecting, still looking for that next new fandom, that next ride, that next story.

We got a pretty good reminder of what that feels like this summer.

The 2026 World Cup had it all. Games all day and into the night. The consistency of a summer sporting event that just keeps showing up at your door. The passion. The pageantry. The traditions.

And then there was the United States.

Suddenly there was that feeling. Wait. Could we actually win this whole thing? That's the stuff.

The USMNT run created hope, and hope is one of the most powerful drugs in sports. Then there was Country Roads, which somehow went from a song to a stadium tradition right in front of our eyes.

There were controversies, of course. There always are. This isn't really the place to litigate all of them. Because underneath all of it was something I think gets lost when we spend too much time arguing about sports.

It was fun. It was an event. It was communal. It was memorable.

And it reminded me exactly why I keep coming back.

Because sports can still surprise you, and I want to be around for the next surprise.

My pastime is baseball.

The one team I've followed day in and day out for as long as I can remember is the San Francisco Giants.

Baseball is probably going to get the biggest seat at this particular table because there is just too much there. The history. The numbers. The uniforms. The ballparks. The radio calls. The characters. The weirdness. The traditions. The cards. The books. The stories that get passed down from one generation to the next.

Baseball gives you an excuse to obsess over things that probably don't deserve this much attention.

Naturally, I'm in.

A baseball jersey can tell you what decade you're looking at before you ever see the name on the back. A ballpark can tell you something about a city. A box score can tell a story. A radio announcer can become the voice of your day from spring to fall.

That's the good stuff.

And we're going to get into a lot of it here.

Football is probably my sports passion.

The team is the Forty Niners.

Then there's my dynasty fantasy football team. Start one QB, .75 PPR, Taxi Squads... Yes, I know exactly how ridiculous that sounds. Yes, I will absolutely write about it. Fantasy football started as a game layered on top of football. Somewhere along the way it became its own little ecosystem of strategy, economics, probability, irrational attachment and occasionally yelling at a television.

And then there's whatever bandwagon I happen to be jumping onto at the moment.

Sometimes that's a team I suddenly believe is making a run. Sometimes it's a player I have decided is going to have the game of his life. Sometimes it's simply whoever I need to cover because I put together a completely reasonable parlay and now I need a team to win by three and a half.

Suddenly I'm emotionally invested in the Browns or find myself wildly celebrating a random 4th quarter catch by Mike Evans.

This is how fandom works.

The funny thing about football is that the game itself has become bigger than the game. Every Sunday is increasingly an event. Red Zone. The tailgate. The food. The fantasy implications. The group chat. The bets. The uniforms. The traditions. The people you watch with.

Sometimes the final score is almost secondary to the experience surrounding it.

Almost. Don't tell me that when my team loses.

Growing up in the Sacramento suburbs, I remember what it was like when the Kings came to town.

1985, I was an instant fan.

I would fall asleep listening to Gary Gerould call the games, then wake up and run outside to get the Sacramento Bee so I could read about how they lost. Most of the time, anyway.

But when they won…

There is something special about seeing this area go completely all-in on the Kings.

Three arenas. Almost moves. Mostly bad basketball. A handful of truly unforgettable teams. And an enormous amount of hope.

Someday.

Basketball itself is something different for me. Basketball is still the hoop outside. You see the ball and the hoop and immediately know what you're supposed to be doing.

It was probably my favorite team sport to play as a kid. March Madness remains one of my favorite sporting events on the calendar.

And somewhere between those two things is what basketball means to me.

Just get a ball, find a hoop and let's play.

As a native Californian, hockey wasn't exactly in our DNA. I knew it existed. I saw it on ESPN. But it wasn't really part of the sports landscape I grew up around.

Then I went to high school in Cupertino in 1992, and the San Jose Sharks arrived. Suddenly hockey was local.

Then came 1994.

The Sharks made their unexpected run, while the New York Rangers were making their own storybook run to the Stanley Cup, and then there was NHL '94…

That was enough. I was in.

I'll admit that adulthood, kids and the general chaos of life mean I don't watch nearly as much hockey as I'd like. But I do know this: the sports moment of 2026 for me might be getting the kids up early on a weekend morning to watch the Stars and Stripes win both the Women's and Men's Olympic gold.

Those are the moments you remember. Not because they fit neatly into a calendar, but because you were there. And so were they.

I played soccer as a kid. Not particularly well. There's a theme developing here.

As a child of the 1980s, soccer existed, but it wasn't exactly everywhere. There was no major American professional league to follow. ESPN showed indoor soccer. I didn't really know what the World Cup was, much less what it meant.

I vaguely remember stumbling across parts of the 1986 World Cup, or at least whatever portion made it onto American television.

Then came 1994 (again).

I had just graduated from Del Campo High School, and that's when the soccer switch really flipped.

Soccer became my adult fandom.

I watched MLS begin. I happened to be living in the Washington, D.C. area and had coworkers who took me to DC United games. I bounced up and down on those movable bleachers at RFK Stadium.

That was it. I was hooked.

Then, in 2002, my brother, sister and I went to London.

Naturally, I tried to see a soccer game.

I somehow ended up randomly choosing Chelsea vs. Arsenal at Stamford Bridge. Little did I know. The tickets were nowhere close to our budget, so we improvised. We watched the 1-1 draw from the Shed Bar attached to the grounds.

And the experience of getting there was almost as memorable as the game itself.

The Tube got closer to Stamford Bridge. The number of fans grew. The excitement built. Then you got off the Tube and suddenly found yourself dumped into this beautiful London neighborhood. No giant parking lot. No massive concrete bowl surrounded by asphalt. Just a beautiful stadium sitting right there in the neighborhood and the chants and hum of anticipation from the arriving supporters.

And from that day forward, my Premier League blood ran Chelsea Blue.

Then came the chase.

Because that's another thing about fandom. You are always looking for the next story. The next unlikely run. The next moment when something you didn't expect suddenly becomes possible.

For me, one of those was Chelsea's completely unexpected run to win the Champions League in 2012.

That is the stuff I'm talking about.

And now, in another wonderfully weird turn of the fandom wheel, I'm coaching my daughter's U10 team of Magpies this season.

Full circle.

And then there's golf.

We'll keep this brief... for now.

Because golf is going to take us down some serious rabbit holes around here.

Golf wasn't really something kids played when I was growing up, but I did. Again, not particularly well. People around me played casually, and I was hooked the first time I picked up my grandfather's putter and learned to putt on orange shag carpeting into a highball glass.

That'll do it.

Then Tiger happened.

I watched golf change in real time, not just as a player and fan, but from a professional and industry perspective. I got to witness the way Tiger changed the culture, the business and the reach of the game. That part of golf history is going to deserve plenty of its own rabbit holes around here.

Golf has been a passion for me for a long time. I've spent much of my professional life around the game. I want to play more. I want to get better. I want to understand it more.

And I want, probably against all available evidence, to someday achieve something resembling perfection.

That's the cruel joke of golf. The ultimate pursuit of excellence wrapped inside a game specifically designed to remind you that perfection is not happening today.

Maybe that's the lesson.

Golf is moments, community, the pursuit of excellence, frustration and the chase.

And yes, there will be golf rabbit holes here.

Many of them.

Sports fandom doesn't stop at the major leagues.

I like the games you play at bars. I like to bowl, and I'm fascinated by the fact that we still have a legit old school bowling alley in town.

I don't hunt or fish, but I appreciate the people who do and the passion they bring to it.

I like poker. Although, admittedly, having kids has put a significant dent in the poker schedule. Maybe that's an excuse. Maybe I just need to play more poker. I miss pre WSOP boom poker. Texas Hold'em is great, but there is a whole world of poker out there.

I miss the old days of Mike Tyson and the huge boxing events.

And yes, I'm thinking Punch Out!! when I say Tyson.

I'm not necessarily a boxing fan, but the event? That was something. Groups of people chipping in to buy the pay per view. Everybody gathering around. The anticipation. The spectacle.

Those nights mattered.

And professional wrestling?

I'll take it. I appreciate the theater of it. Sometimes completely disconnecting from reality for a few hours is exactly what the doctor ordered, especially in a world where reality seems to have forgotten to take a day off.

And yes, I collect sports stuff.

Books. Jerseys. Baseball cards. Certain baseball cards, anyway.

There are stories behind those objects, and those stories are often more interesting than the objects themselves.

So I suppose this is where we get to the mission statement.

I like sports because sports bring people together.

The game itself is only part of it.

It's the tailgate. The living room. The bar. The golf course. The bowling alley. The fantasy draft. The group chat. The road trip. The jersey. The old ticket stub. The story you were told, the story you tell.

It's the person sitting next to you who becomes a friend because you both happened to be rooting for the same team.

Sports create community in a way very few things can.

And sports create memories.

Sometimes enormous ones. Sometimes tiny ones.

The championship. The heartbreaking loss. The ridiculous trade. The terrible referee. The perfect catch. The first game. The last game.

The game you watched with somebody who isn't here anymore.

The game your kids will remember because you woke them up early enough to watch it with you.

Those moments are the real collection.

croixdecandlestick.com is going to be a little bit of all of that.

Nostalgia, certainly. But not nostalgia for nostalgia's sake.

This isn't everything was better back then. Sometimes it was. Sometimes it absolutely wasn't.

It's about looking backward to understand where we came from, looking around to appreciate what we have, and looking forward to wonder what comes next.

A new season. A new player. A new stadium. A new jersey. A new recipe for the tailgate. A new golf course. A new card. A new story. A new fandom. Maybe even a new obsession.

That's the fun of it.

I don't know exactly where all of this is going.

That's kind of the point.

I want this place to spark curiosity. To bring back a memory. To send you down a rabbit hole you didn't know existed. To make you appreciate something you had forgotten. Maybe introduce you to something completely new.

Maybe make you argue with me.

That could be fun too.

Because life is good.

Sports are good.

And there is still so much out there to discover.

Today, on the day I turn 50, that feels like a pretty good thing to remember.

Fifty years in, I'm still looking for what's next.

So welcome to Croix de Candlestick.

Veni – Vidi – Vixi – Favi

I Came – I Saw – I Lived – I Am a Fan

Until next time…