Can't believe I played pickup basketball with him

Scribbled Notes: Spring training memories of restaurants and hoops battles … shameless plugs … a throwback to “State of the Barry” … and a previous life covering Oakland preps

I’ll never forget my first year as a San Francisco beat reporter at spring training. The year was 2000. I was 26 years old. The laptop issued to me did not have access to the internet. For people who did use the internet, they used AOL to connect via a telephone line, hoping to find a local number so they wouldn’t get charged a long-distance call.

On my …