BOSTON -- Boston Celtics Hall of Famer Larry Bird is teaming with a local winery to produce a line of wines to be sold under the name "Legends."

CORVALLIS, Ore. -- While it's generally taboo in college football to look beyond the next game, both Oregon State and Stanford can't help but consider the possibility of a postseason when they play Saturday.

WASHINGTON -- Rafael Palmeiro's reputation and future in baseball might be murky, but lawmakers said Thursday there isn't enough evidence to prove that he lied under oath when he told Congress that he never used steroids -- less than two months before failing a drug test.

BERKELEY -- Soon, the California football team will have a state-of-the-art training facility that all the top teams like to brag about in the living rooms of recruits.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The St. Helena High School boys soccer team saw its season end on Thursday night at the hands of the University-San Francisco Red Devils, but the Saints did not go down quietly in a North Coast Section Class A semifinal match played at Kezar Stadium.

The Napa Valley College men's basketball team lost its season opener Thursday, an 82-66 decision to DeAnza College in the first round of the Monterey Peninsula College Tournament.

Napa High got its four-peat, but not in the fashion in which it had hoped.

The Vintage High School junior varsity football team definitely took advantage of the Big Game atmosphere Thursday night at Memorial Stadium, as the Crushers defeated cross-town rival Napa High by a 42-14 score in the Little Big Game.

Vintage High School has won some big football games in its 34-year history, including CIF Sac-Joaquin Section championships in 1980 and 1986.

I love fall in the Napa Valley, especially traveling around and watching all the leaves in the vineyards change colors. I pulled off Highway 29 the other day and took a walk through a vineyard that had blood red leaves, all in perfect shape. I then found some yellow- and burgundy-colored leaves and just studied them for a while. What beauty. Last weekend leaves were turning and falling everywhere from maples, elms, the popular trees, and many others, all shedding. As I sat in my car under my carport (which has an aluminum extension roof over my boat), I listened as the many redwood pine cone pods fell and landed on the roof with a tapping wound. They then slide down to the ground to help provide a cushion of protein for the next year.

I've never seen crows play before. They usually consort en masse in one of the tall pine trees skirting my house, chirping with gravely voices in subdued conversation with one another. Sometimes I see them pecking for bugs in the horse pasture, or flying at dusk -- a mysterious, if not sinister scene of dark airborne creatures disappearing into a purpling sky.

Napa Valley Fly Fishermen Club