The news on the local sporting front has been pretty grim lately — the Sharks got iced, the 49ers are dreadful and the Warriors just got dunked on by Baron Davis — so it’s great to know that at least there is hope for the future.

That upside comes in the way of Tim Lincecum, the S.F. Giants’ marvelous, young right-hander who this week made the cover of Sports Illustrated under the headline "The Freak" for his uncanny ability to throw a 98-mph fastball using his whippet-like 170-pound frame.

Although the cover piece focuses on Lincecum’s pitching mechanics, it also goes into telling detail about why nine teams picked other players in the 2006 draft (perceived injury risk) before the Giants selected Lincecum — who is now one of only two pitchers in baseball history to win 70 percent of his decisions during his first two seasons (the other — Mets former flamethrower Dwight Gooden).

Oh, and at 24, he has a very good shot at being the starting National League pitcher in this year’s All-Star game.

Fans can only hope that the dreaded SI cover jinx goes on the disabled list.

A recent column I did on a proposal that would allow bike riders to cruise through stops signs and proceed with less caution at red lights drew dozens of responses, including one from someone known to put the pedal to the metal — politically speaking.

John Burton, the former head of the state Senate and a longtime power in city politics, felt compelled to call and express his sentiment that changing a law for bike riders was ridiculous since they don’t follow the ones currently on the books. He had a better suggestion aimed at improving safety — and reducing the number of Darwin Award winners — make bike lights mandatory for all cyclists.

"The real danger is around dusk and at night, you can’t see most of the bicyclists because most of them only have these little flashers," Burton said. "I’ve talked with some people in the bike movement and they think the idea of required lights is a good idea, but I don’t know if anybody is doing anything about it."

Burton said one idea would be to have somebody donate the lights, which only cost about $12 apiece — a small price to give bicyclists a chance to ride another day.

Burton, not your average shrinking violet, said he was concerned about the state of bike riding in The City. Why? "I saw a woman, riding a bike without a helmet, run a stop sign," he said. "And she had a baby on the back."

Almost lost in the tributes to Clay Felker, the legendary magazine editor who died this week, was his impact on West Coast journalism. Felker, whose creativeness brought comparisons to Time founder Henry Luce, copied his formula for New York Magazine in a California monthly journal called New West in the late 1970s.

Before media tycoon Rupert Murdoch sold it, New West was one of the liveliest publications around, winning awards for exposés on the dangers of the Firestone 500 tire.

It also produced the first long investigative piece on the People’s Temple, written by my esteemed former Chronicle colleague Marshall Kilduff, who couldn’t get it printed in his own newspaper because one of the city desk editors had ties to the "church."

New West died shortly after being purchased by Texas Monthly, after editors there came to the realization they knew nothing about California.

Mayor Gavin Newsom has said numerous times that he regretted telling a reporter once that he wanted to run for president. Whether that same feeling applies regarding his stated intention to run for governor only time will tell.

Newsom’s bold, early bid for the governor’s job may have caught some people by surprise, but the strategy behind it is anything but startling. The crowd of Democratic candidates for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s job in 2010 is going to require voters to carry a scorecard, and there’s only going to be so much money to go around for those who have any realistic chance of raising the $30 million or more that most political observers think it will take to win the state house.

But raising funds is only one reason for the move. Newsom needs to raise his profile — his supporters hope in a positive way — if he has any chance to deal with the name recognition of Attorney General (and former governor) Jerry Brown, or the voter-rich advantage believed to be held by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Villaraigosa — whom like Newsom is slick, photogenic and focused on issues he thinks will resonate with a statewide audience — has one drawback that Newsom’s announcement hopes to capitalize on. The Los Angeles mayor faces re-election in 2009, and voters don’t like it when their politicians seek re-election for one office when it’s clear they have their eye on another.

In any event, both mayors have a problem that won’t be easy to shake — history. The race for governor is littered with the tattered dreams of big-city mayors throughout California, a list that is long and memorable and includes such names as Joseph Alioto, Dianne Feinstein, Sam Yorty, Tom Bradley and Pete Wilson. (Wilson won the governor’s seat only after becoming a U.S. senator.)

What’s obvious from that lineup is that the nation-state of California is so large, even the biggest city mayors aren’t always well-known outside of their regions, as well as the fact that what plays in San Francisco doesn’t fare well in Modesto, let alone the Bible Belt of Orange County.

"The record for big-city mayors becoming governor is not all that good," said Mark DiCamillo, who has run the California Field Poll for years.

Newsom has one other worry — that his eyes don’t wander any further off the prize called San Francisco.

Accidents do happen — like the time I was having breakfast with a San Francisco police commander and forgot to turn my phone off of vibrate. When it went off, I jumped and we were both so startled I thought my nervous friend in blue might shoot me.

And accidents especially seem to happen to bicyclists in the Bay Area, because every time there is a collision, a story follows fanning the public outrage.

Oh, and did I mention that in almost every story, it was the car driver who is said to be at fault? In this part of the world, pedal power equates with political power.

So I have to admit, I was a bit taken aback to hear that bicycle advocates were actually the ones generating an idea that would allow them to legally blow past stop signs and perhaps use a little more caution at red lights, which were to be seen by them as stop signs.

Are bike riders getting bored and looking for a little more action on the streets of San Francisco and beyond? It sounded like a plotline for "The Happening," M. Night Shyamalan’s new movie about people spontaneously ending their lives for mysterious reasons.

This city compliments itself on grand social experiments, like the Darwinian idea to put skateboarders and bicyclists in lanes right next to cars some years back. My only objection to that grand plan is that I believe any interest in thinning our breed should occur naturally and not at the stubby hands of the members of our Board of Supervisors.

Yet it turns out that the idea to greatly up the danger quotient for bicyclists and drivers was not locally generated — it’s apparently based on a law that was passed in Idaho. And that’s when I realized why what happens in the Spud State should not be duplicated here, because if we did, there be a lot more than just potatoes with skinned faces.

You see, Idaho only has about 1.5 million people in the entire state, which spans close to 84,000 square miles. Between San Francisco and San Mateo counties we have just as many people, but crunched into less than 1,000 square miles. And that will go a long way toward explaining why bike commuting in big cities is well beyond a job — it’s a precarious adventure.

Certainly, it’s understandable why bike riders don’t like to stop at every stop or do anything that stops their momentum — which of course explains why they do zip through stop signs and lights with such regularity that San Francisco police say only a tiny percentage of them follow the traffic rules that we are all supposed to abide.

That sentiment was echoed by the spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area transit agency considering the so-called stop-and-roll proposal.

"Treating a bike as a car is simply wrong and right now traffic laws treat bikes like cars," said Randy Rentschler, the MTC spokesman. "We’re trying to look at things that would benefit bike riders, but that also make sense."

And that’s where this latest proposal runs into some logistical traffic, since it doesn’t make much sense to alter laws if the very community they’re designed to serve doesn’t pay attention to the ones already in existence. And promoting legislation for any special-interest group is always a bad idea, especially, in my humble opinion, if it has the added effect of increasing the chances of getting someone killed.

Rentschler told me that at a time when gas is hitting $4.50 per gallon, it makes sense to try to push alternatives to costly and environmentally unfriendly transit options such as driving. And I’m with him there — as apparently are millions of other Americans, since the number of people using public transportation has shot up along with the cost of oil.

But clearly one of the main impediments to commuting by bike, besides family and time constraints, is safety, which is why it’s curious that any advocacy groups promoting more bicycle ridership would conceivably come up with a proposal that would place more pedal pushers in harm’s way.

According to The Examiner, there were nearly 1,700 bicyclists injured in San Francisco and San Mateo counties between 2005 and 2007, and anyone who drives along Bay Area streets knows how many near misses there are that could quickly up that figure. Given that cities and counties have spent millions throughout the years to crack down on red-light runners, it doesn’t make sense to ignore the other part of the equation.

For now, it appears the rolling roulette plan has been put on hold. And for a lot of good reasons, let’s hope in this case that what happens in Idaho, stays in Idaho.