#McCovey

[jamisonwieser]

San Francisco's newest park is open! 

China Basin Park is part of the high-density, mixed-income, mixed-use Mission Rock development that the San Francisco Giants – Go Giants! – are building on what had been a parking lot across the channel from their waterfront ballpark in Mission Bay.

40% of the housing is priced below market rate, 1/3 of the land is dedicated to public open space, the park opened two weeks ago, and it is fantastic.

I could not have picked a better time to take my dog for a walk and check it out.

I didn't know a game was going on until I arrived and walked onto the field facing the ballpark at a picture-perfect moment. Someone was flying a kite, groups of people were hanging out on blankets, and a dad was playing catch with his kids while the crowd in the ballpark cheered.

It's only going to get better as the trees and plants grown in.

[sanfranciscoblog]

A statue of SF Giants legend Willie McCovey stands over McCovey Cove, opposite the ballpark.

[jedivoodoochile]

Actor and future minor league baseball player Kurt Russell meets Willie McCovey.

[d-criss-news]

Friday BP: Darren Criss to sing anthem for Giants home opener

I was over the moon yesterday when the San Francisco Giants announced that Emmy and Golden Globe award winner Darren Criss will be appearing to sing the national anthem for the home opener on April 7th against the Kansas City Royals.

Criss is perhaps best known for his roles on “Glee” and “American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace” (for which he won Emmy and Golden Globe awards in 2018). He is also an accomplished musician, a San Francisco native, and a life long Giants fan.

Full disclosure, I might be one of the biggest Darren Criss fans there is. I’ve followed him since his days on YouTube, where he got his start singing Disney covers, and then with the theater company he co-founded called Starkid Productions, with whom he played Harry Potter in their A Very Potter Musical series.

In the peak years of his run as Blaine Anderson on “Glee” I had hoped to see him get to sing at one of the Giants’ playoff home games in the 2010-2014 championship era, but it was his “Glee” co-star Matthew Morrison (a friend of Barry Zito) who got the opportunity in Game 2 of the 2012 World Series. So this will mark Criss’ first time singing the anthem for his hometown team.

I’ve seen Criss perform live multiple times, most recently when he was starring in a run of Hedwig and the Angry Inch in San Francisco in 2016. Not only was his love for the Giants enshrined in his section of the playbill, but he made repeated references to (then) AT&T Park during the show (which features a fair amount of ad-libbing in the performances).

So I, for one, am even more excited now about the home opener and Giants baseball returning to Oracle Park.

[tommylindholm]

[gummyartstradingcards]

[bostonfly]

I know a guy who REALLY loves baseball. This is "Bob Gibson Vs. Willie McCovey".

(not my photos)

[principiumindividuationis777]

[randrcards]

Willie McCovey 2022 Donruss # 164

[reasonsforhope]

The Klamath River’s salmon population has declined due to myriad factors, but the biggest culprit is believed to be a series of dams built along the river from 1918 to 1962, cutting off fish migration routes.

Now, after decades of Indigenous advocacy, four of the structures are being demolished as part of the largest dam removal project in United States history. In November, crews finished removing the first of the four dams as part of a push to restore 644 kilometres (400 miles) of fish habitat.

“Dam removal is the largest single step that we can take to restore the Klamath River ecosystem,” [Barry McCovey, a member of the Yurok Tribe and director of tribal fisheries,] told Al Jazeera. “We’re going to see benefits to the ecosystem and then, in turn, to the fishery for decades and decades to come.” ...

A ‘watershed moment’

Four years later, [after a catastrophic fish die-off in 2002,] in 2006, the licence for the hydroelectric dams expired. That created an opportunity, according to Mark Bransom, CEO of the Klamath River Renewal Corporation (KRRC), a nonprofit founded to oversee the dam removals.

Standards for protecting fisheries had increased since the initial license was issued, and the utility company responsible for the dams faced a choice. It could either upgrade the dams at an economic loss or enter into a settlement agreement that would allow it to operate the dams until they could be demolished.

“A big driver was the economics — knowing that they would have to modify these facilities to bring them up to modern environmental standards,” Bransom explained. “And the economics just didn’t pencil out.”

The utility company chose the settlement. In 2016, the KRRC was created to work with the state governments of California and Oregon to demolish the dams.

Final approval for the deal came in 2022, in what Bransom remembers as a “watershed moment”.

Regulators at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) voted unanimously to tear down the dams, citing the benefit to the environment as well as to Indigenous tribes...

Tears of joy

Destruction of the first dam — the smallest, known as Copco 2 — began in June, with heavy machinery like excavators tearing down its concrete walls.

[Amy Cordalis, a Yurok Tribe member, fisherwoman and lawyer for the tribe,] was present for the start of the destruction. Bransom had invited her and fellow KRRC board members to visit the bend in the Klamath River where Copco 2 was being removed. She remembers taking his hand as they walked along a gravel ridge towards the water, a vein of blue nestled amid rolling hills.

“And then, there it was,” Cordalis said. “Or there it wasn’t. The dam was gone.”

For the first time in a century, water flowed freely through that area of the river. Cordalis felt like she was seeing her homelands restored.

Tears of joy began to roll down her cheeks. “I just cried so hard because it was so beautiful.”

The experience was also “profound” for Bransom. “It really was literally a jolt of energy that flowed through us,” he said, calling the visit “perhaps one of the most touching, most moving moments in my entire life”.

Demolition on Copco 2 was completed in November, with work starting on the other three dams. The entire project is scheduled to wrap in late 2024.

[A resilient river]

But experts like McCovey say major hurdles remain to restoring the river’s historic salmon population.

Climate change is warming the water. Wildfires and flash floods are contaminating the river with debris. And tiny particles from rubber vehicle tires are washing off roadways and into waterways, where their chemicals can kill fish within hours.

McCovey, however, is optimistic that the dam demolitions will help the river become more resilient.

“Dam removal is one of the best things we can do to help the Klamath basin be ready to handle climate change,” McCovey explained. He added that the river’s uninterrupted flow will also help flush out sediment and improve water quality.

The removal project is not the solution to all the river’s woes, but McCovey believes it’s a start — a step towards rebuilding the reciprocal relationship between the waterway and the Indigenous people who rely on it.

“We do a little bit of work, and then we start to see more salmon, and then maybe we get to eat more salmon, and that starts to help our people heal a little bit,” McCovey said. “And once we start healing, then we’re in a place where we can start to help the ecosystem a little bit more.”"

-via Al Jazeera, December 4, 2023

[ghosthierophant]

my dad doesn't know yet : (

RICKEY?!?!?!

[baseballbybsmile]

Happy Birthday In Heaven Willie McCovey ~ The Baseball HOF legend was born in Mobile, Alabama on this day in 1938.

[sanfranciscoblog]

A statue of Giants legend Willie McCovey stands across from Pac Bell Park, at the entrance to the channel now called McCovey Cove in his honor.

[lordmccoveycove]

Click Image Above to Read Story

Chapters: 7/? Word Count: 30,943 Fandom: Expanded Universes (General) Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Leo Verde, Lilith Montgomery Additional Tags: The Lost Era (2293 - 2364), Adult Language, Angst, Drama, Espionage, Crew as Family, Starfleet Intelligence, Starfleet Marine Corps

Series: Part 12 of Star Trek: First Duty, Part 1 of First Duty: Musashi Summary:

First Novel of First Duty: Musashi!

Stardate 4402.48: Three months after its commissioning, Captain Leo Verde and the crew of the starship Musashi are sent to the far corner of Federation space to augment Border Service patrols and secretly support covert anti-piracy operations already underway. When a deep-cover operative's identity is compromised, the crew must execute a high-stakes rescue mission with lives on the line, putting themselves between ruthless pirates and the fragile security of the far reaches of Federation's frontier.

Cover: USS Musashi rendered by Star Trek Online, Orion Nebula by NASA JWST (public domain), 2270s Delta by PDMahler (deviantArt, used with permission), lettering by Lord McCovey Cove.

[beatrice-otter]

The tribes, environmentalists and their allies celebrated the shrinking waters as an essential next step in what they say will be a decades-long process of restoring one of the West's largest salmon fisheries and a region the size of West Virginia back to health. Yurok tribal member and fisheries director Barry McCovey was amazed at how fast the river and the lands surrounding the Copco dam were revealed. "The river had already found its path and reclaimed its original riverbed, which is pretty amazing to see," he said. The 6,500-member tribe's lands span the Klamath's final 44 miles to the Pacific Ocean, and the Yurok and other tribes that depend on the Klamath for subsistence and cultural activities have long advocated for the dams' removal and for ecological restoration. Amid the largest-ever dam removal in the U.S., rumors and misunderstandings have spread through social media, in grange halls and in local establishments. In the meantime, public agencies and private firms race to correct misinformation by providing facts and real data on how the Klamath is recovering from what one official called "major heart surgery." But while dam removal continues, a coalition of tribes, upper Klamath Basin farmers, and the Biden administration have struck a new deal to restore the Klamath Basin and improve water supplies for birds, fish and farmers alike. ...

The Yurok Tribe also contracted with Resource Environmental Solutions to collect the billions of seeds from native plants needed to restore the denuded lands revealed when the waters subsided. The company, known to locals as RES, took a whole-ecological approach while planning the project. In addition to rehabbing about 2,200 acres of land exposed after the four shallow reservoirs finish draining, "we have obligations for a number of species, including eagles and Western pond turtles," said David Coffman, RES' Northern California and Southern Oregon director. ... The company also plans to support important pollinators like native bumblebees and monarch butterflies and protect species of special concern like the willow flycatcher. And, Coffman said, removal of invasive plant species like star thistle is also underway. In some cases, he said, workers will pull any invasives out by hand if they notice them encroaching on newly planted areas. ...

The Interior Department announced Wednesday that the agency had signed a deal with the Yurok, Karuk and Klamath Tribes and the Klamath Basin Water Users Association to collaborate on Klamath Basin restoration and improving water reliability for the Klamath Project, a federal irrigation and agricultural project. An Interior Department spokesperson said the agency had been meeting with river tribes and the farmers of the Upper Basin for the first time in a decade to develop a plan to restore basin health, support fish and wildlife in the region, and support agriculture in the Upper Basin. "We're trying to make it as healthy as possible and restore things like wetlands, natural stream channels and forested watershed," the spokesperson said. He likened it to keeping the "sponge" wetlands provide to store water wet. The effort is meant to be a cross-agency and cross-state process. The Biden administration also announced $72 million in funding for ecosystem restoration and agricultural infrastructure modernization throughout the Klamath Basin from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act.  

[gummyartstradingcards]