Monday evening quarterback

A busy start to the week for me — in good ways — but for whatever reason, sports have been on my mind all day today as I've plowed through the business of doing business.

To wit:

• I don't have a strong feeling yet about the Giants' not-altogether-unanticipated hiring of Bruce Bochy as their new shipper. Cynic that I am, I'm more than a little curious as to why San Diego was so eager to let him go to another National League West team while he was still under contract.
  
  
• I go back and forth on whether Barry Bonds will return to the Giants next season, now that he has filed for free agency. Two months ago, I thought Barry and the G-Men were finished. Now, I rather think the Giants will re-sign him. To use a poker term, the Giants are pot-committed — they've invested far too much of their marketing capital and credibility in Barry's quest for the career home run record to risk his breaking Aaron's mark in another uniform.
  
  
• Besides which, I doubt that many teams — if any — are going to queue up to sign Bonds as a free agent. The last time Barry was eligible to write his own ticket, no team in baseball offered him a deal except the Giants. And at that time, he was far and away the best player in the game, not a 42-year-old whose knees and elbows are held together with duct tape and baling wire.
  
  
• Man, those 49ers suck, don't they?
  
  
• The only reason the 1-7 Arizona Cardinals haven't fired head coach Dennis Green is that no one else in football wants to work for the Bidwills. That, and if they cut Green loose, the Bidwills would owe him nearly $4 million to buy out his contract.
  
  
• Congrats to Jim Thorpe, who won our local senior pro golf tournament, the Charles Schwab Cup Championship, for the second time in four years. (Thorpe was also the 2003 Schwab Cup winner.) Thorpe was an underrated pro during his PGA years who's found some welcome success on the Champions Tour. And don't you just love the fact that they call the old guys tour the Champions Tour, instead of, say, the Old Guys Tour?
  
  
• On the eve of the start of the NBA season, I still can't believe Don Nelson is back coaching the Golden State Warriors. Next thing you know, bell-bottoms will come back into style.
  
  
• Speaking of the Warriors, nice to hear that former Warriors star Lorenzo Romar picked up a hefty contract extension that will see him continue as head basketball coach for the University of Washington beyond the 2012-13 season. Romar landed his first head coaching job at my old school Pepperdine in the late '90s, and by all accounts, is not only a whale of a coach but a fine gentleman to boot.
  
  
• Alas, my former baseball team tanked in the World Series. I was a rabid Detroit Tigers fan from 1968 — when the Tigers also faced off against St. Louis in the Series, only with happier results for Motown partisans — until 1976, when my family settled in the Bay Area and I adopted the Giants as my "home team." The first major league ballgame I ever saw was a 6-3 victory by the Tigers over the Athletics at the Oakland Coliseum.
  
  
• Hey, Tony LaRussa: ARF!
  
  
• Did I already mention that the 49ers suck?