Are you looking for a great take on sports? Something that’s not sugar-coated and watered-down? Someone, that’s going to keep it real, while giving you a laugh at the same time? That’s what you’ll get from reading one of Ray Ratto’s sports columns, which can be found a couple times a week in the San Francisco Chronicle. And if you need more Ratto, which some people, I included, need at times, not only does he write for CBS’ sportsline.com, but he has also written for espn.com as well. Speaking of ESPN, he is also a frequent guest on ESPN’s Jim Rome is Burning sports talk show.
Ray Ratto, 52, has been a writer in the Bay Area for quite some time. He received his education at St. Joseph’s High in Alameda, before arriving and graduating at the best school for broadcast / journalism in Northern California, San Francisco State University. Ratto has been writing about sports for almost 30 years now, while being a sports columnist for about 20 of those years.
However, before getting his chance to write columns, Ratto had to, as many young bucks in the media business do, start his career by being a “staff reporter” for each of San Francisco’s two big papers, the Examiner and the Chronicle. After doing some good work for both papers, Ratto finally got his chance to become the column writer that he had been longing to be.
The first two papers that gave Ratto the opportunity to showcase his sports writing skills are no longer in service. He first wrote for a paper called The National, the short name for a nation-wide sports tabloid newspaper / magazine called The National Sports Daily. Although due to a lack of readership, and other misfortune, The National, which was started in 1990, came to a halt only 18 months later. After that brief venture, Ratto went on to write as a columnist for yet another paper that was on its way to becoming extinct by the time he had arrived. This paper was called the Peninsula Times Tribune. It was a small daily paper that started in 1962 which was owned and eventually closed by the Tribune Company of Chicago in 1992 due to its declining circulation. But with the bad, always comes the good as Ratto then got a job writing sports columns for San Francisco’s “second” paper, the San Francisco Examiner, which would in turn set up Ratto for his best Jefferson’s impression, as he “moved on up” to San Francisco’s #1 paper, the San Francisco Chronicle, jumpstarting an illustrious career.
Ray Ratto, to me, is the San Francisco Chronicle’s Sporting Green. Every remembrance of the Chronicle’s Sporting Green starts with a picture of his portly face and walrus-looking mustache. He’s quick with his humor, as he always has the right words to say. For example, this is what Ratto wrote when talking about Oakland Raiders’ kicker Sebastian Janikowski in the article written this past Sunday as the Raiders beat the Jets:
“He has been asked, over the years, to try some improbably long kicks that lower his rating - and no, we're leaving the 76-yard attempt against San Diego as Lane Kiffin's last middle finger to Davis rather than a serious attempt to score.”
There are plenty of good articles that one can bring up examples of, but then that would ruin all of the fun for you readers that have yet to experience one of his articles. So, if you have the time, and you like the combination of sports and comedy, check out Ray Ratto’s columns in the San Francisco Chronicle either in print or at sfgate.com in the sports section.
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