In terms of describing my day-to-day outlook on my respective sports teams, one can use many negative adjectives. Obsessive. Pessimistic. A relentless reverse-jinxer. However, the one thing that I cannot be charged with is complacency. Over the past three years, the Giants have met my life’s quota of unforgettable sports moments. My brain has yet to even start processing last year’s ring, as I’m still basking in the glory of the improbable 2010 run. Honestly, they could lose every game for the next ten years, and it wouldn’t bother me a bit. Ok, I know that statement is bullshit, on par with naive hyperbole of a glowing newlywed. Honey, tell the story about the hilarious “possum on the sailboat” incident. Oh gosh, doesn’t she tell the best stories?? In the moment, things like this seem like the truth, and, in the moment, they probably are. But truths are a malleable bunch, and they change over time. What happens in ten years? Twenty years? Fifty years? Godammit woman, can you please stop telling the story about the possum on the sailboat every fucking day?! We all get it. Possum are scary. The jury has rendered its decision on possums, and they never need to be brought up again. Ok?! At some point, the things that were at first so easily dismissed become little droplets of burning-hot oil filling up the cavities in one’s mind. Really 2 innings, Zito?! Calm down...it’s ok...he’s doing his best. Drip. Maybe Pablo is just exceptionally big-boned. Drip. Hey, Belt is still young-ish, maybe that supposed power will eventually show itself. Drip. And repressing such feelings is just prolonging the inevitable overflow. They must be addressed early on or risk an embarrassing, and possibly criminal, Exxon Valdez-like spill that will irreparably fracture the relationship, and will be incomprehensibly annoying to the people around you (ask anyone who knew a Red Sox fan before 2004).
At the moment, I am in the midst of a Nicholas Sparks-ian love affair (the one with the two old geezers and the flashbacks) with the Giants. However, if the Giants were to hypothetically fall into another half-century dry spell, I know in my heart-of-hearts that I would morph this aforementioned homicidal loon. Because I have done it before. Lost myself in the vast and highly populated sea of sports-fan-self-pity. And, now that I am in a reflective, Sparks-ian state of mind, I think that it is important for me to recount my circular downfall into the drain, my emergence out from it, and what I’ve learned moving forward. Because I know many of you are unknowingly sinking deeper into its contemptuous waters as we speak, and sometimes we need an emotional life raft cast out in the form of ridiculously cheesy/contrived/stupidly-too-good-to-be-true Ryan Gosling lines.
After the Giants blew Game 6 of the 2002 World Series, lost their awesome BALCO pick-me-ups, and entered the 2005-2009 stretch that I’ll simply refer to as “The Dark Period,” my faith in the Giants was slipping. The thing is, when your team hasn’t won a championship since the Eisenhower Administration, a ring seems to be all that matters. The regular season wins are nice, but they all are seen through a contextual lens in which they are merely individual steps towards the overall goal of crossing the ultimate finish line. And, each time the team falls short, it seems to become more unjust and more painful. The “why me?” moments seem to pile up, one after the other, like your team is being singled out from all the rest. This begins a vicious cycle of codependency and hatred that only a truly degenerate fan can know. And I was most definitely a truly degenerate fan.
But then, a miracle. To say I was merely skeptical as I looked over the 2010 spring training roster would be giving myself far too much credit. The ’09 team had missed the playoffs (in the perennially pitiful NL West no less) and the only offseason additions were Mark DeRosa and Aubrey Huff. Two players that I liked, but who were not exactly “game changers.” The murder’s row they rolled out on opening day left a lot to be desired:
1. Aaron “If Only You Could Trade Heart For Hand-Eye Coordination” Rowand, CF
2. Edgar “How Does This Guy Have So Little Power?” Renteria, SS
3. Pablo “Is That A Fat Dip or Food In His Mouth? I Swear It’s Food” Sandoval, 3B
4. Aubrey “If This Guy’s Your Cleanup Hitter Your Team Has Problems” Huff, 1B
5. Mark “Wow, This Guy Hit Fifth??” DeRosa, LF
6. Bengie “Probably the Only Professional Athlete That I’m Faster Than” Molina, C
7. John “I Shit You Not, This Happened” Bowker, RF
8. Juan Uribe, 2B
(I love Juan way too much to give him a sarcastic nickname. One of the best Dodger double agents ever - second to Jason Schmidt who is, of course, the unanimous G.O.A.T. of Giants-to-Dodgers double agents. Although Brian Wilson *wink, wink* I see you working)
If Nostradamus would have arisen from the grave, dressed in an Aladdin-style genie costume, and told me that the fate of the world rested on me betting $10 that this team would win the World Series, I would have told him I’d rather go see The Last Airbender in theater. And, as the team left the field on July 4th with a 41-40 record, I would have been busy vandalizing Nostradamus’s grave in retribution for trying to plant such a ridiculous notion in my head. However, a couple trades, a Pat Burrell resurrection, and a Torres/Posey/Bumgarner emergence later, the team snuck into the playoffs on the last day of the season (side note: this improbable run required a 1.78 Team ERA in September - the lowest monthly ERA in the history of divisional play in the MLB - and 18 straight games of allowing 3 runs or less).
What happened next is difficult to describe. I’d love to tell you that what occurred during the Giant’s 2010 payoff run was simply the result of well-played baseball, but that would be an obvious and outright lie. This shit was 5% defense, 10% Brooks Conrad, 10% Cody Ross, 25% pitching nirvana, and 50% divine intervention. Nothing could go wrong for this team. The only equivalent I can draw from personal experience is the sound of an un-restrainable laugh that bursts through as one looks down and sees Aces for the third hand in a row. Here’s how the Giants robbed the NLDS from the Braves:
Game 1: Lincecum wins the game single-handedly, 1-0. Seriously, he could have batted in all nine spots in the lineup and had Bochy ghost-run for him and the Giants couldn’t have lost this game. You might ask, how did the Giants manage to squeeze out their measly run? In classic Giant’s fashion: on a two-out Cody Ross RBI single after a bad call kept the inning alive. If it wasn’t for that call, they might still be playing this game.
Game 2: The Giants blow a 4-0 lead and the Braves win 5-4, scoring 3 runs in the 8th and winning on a Rick Ankiel splash hit in the 11th. I repeat: a Rick Ankiel splash hit. An absolutely soul-crushing loss. The kind of loss that team’s can lose and entire series over. My pessimism? Probably a 9 on a scale of 1 to the Warrior’s blowing a 22-pt 3rd quarter lead in Game 1 against San Antonio (I can’t see this losing its death-grip over the “10” level of my pessimism scale any time soon. It still hurts. Goddamn you, Warriors, goddamn you).
Game 3: The Giants lead 1-0 through 7 innings - their only run? Scored on a cupcake of a pop-out that second baseman Brooks Conrad dropped (let me take this moment to thank the crime syndicate that paid off Mr. Conrad in this series. Along with the countless millions you cashed in on, you made my year, and possibly my life). Eric Hinske hits a pinch-hit, two-strike, back-breaking two-run homer in the 8th to put the Braves up 2-1, and now Kimbrel is coming in. Oh, and we got Cody Ross and Travis Ishikawa starting off the inning? Does anyone have a gun? An Ishikawa walk, and two-out singles by Torres and Huff, and the game was tied. Posey comes to plate and hits a gimme-ground-out to second base. But (thank you unknown mob boss, whom I will now simply refer to as “Godfather”), Conrad lets a ground ball go through his legs, his third error of the game. The Giants win.
Game 4: It’s Bobby Cox’s last season, there’s no way the Braves lose the elimination game. The Braves take a one-run lead and Derek Lowe carries a no-hitter into the sixth, but the Giants finally get through to him. How? A walk, an infield single, a questionable walk, a fielder’s choice, a real single, and two errors (the second of which was on the classic double play-ball where the second baseman turns it without ever actually touching the base. This occurs on like 75% of double-plays and never gets called by any umpire. For some unknown reason (is this you again Godfather?), the ump decided this would be the one time he’d shatter this implicit truce and call the runner safe). A shaky, scary, nail-biting Brian Wilson-special later, and the Giants won 3-2.
Ok, so it only took half a dozen bad calls and Brooks Conrad meltdown for the Giants to pull out three one-run victories against the Braves. So they must be totally fucked against the Phillies right? These were my thoughts literally seconds after the Giants advanced. The 2010 Phillies are, in my opinion, one of the best teams that the National League has fielded in my lifetime. They are a poor man’s version of the Braves from the mid-90s, in terms of their three-headed-monster of a rotation, and I would argue that this Phillies team is superior offensively. When I looked at the match-ups before this series started I did not see a single game that the Giants had an advantage in. Yes, the Giant’s pitching was (maybe) on par with the Phils, but their lineup was so vasty inferior:
Phillies
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Giants
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Victorino
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Torres
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Polanco
|
Sanchez
|
Utley
|
Huff
|
Howard
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Posey
|
Werth
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Burrell
|
Rollins
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Uribe
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Ibanez
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Fontenot
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Ruiz
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Ross
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As the pessimism was back in full-tilt, I set myself up with the expectation that the Giants could maybe put up a fight and steal of couple of games, sign a game-changing outfielder in the offseason (maybe Carl Crawford, Adam Dunn, or Jayson Werth - holy shit, all Giant’s fans can collectively rejoice that I’m not the GM), and make their run in 2011. However, no one informed me that Cody Ross had unlocked the real-life version of the Backyard Baseball power-up “Aluminum Power.” For those of you who are unfamiliar with this power-up, let me give you its definition, as defined on Wikipedia: “Aluminum Power - the rarest and most valued of power-ups and can disappear after one or no tries when in use. Players use an aluminum bat to hit a definite home run.” Ross managed to skip out on the infuriating “one swing version,” instead wrangling himself the unheard of “every at-bat for the rest of the season version.”
Cody Ross? Really? This is like back-to-back hole-in-ones. On par 4s. While winning the lottery. In multiple states. The Giants won in six games, although they were outscored 20-19 in the aggregate. Of course. Because that makes total sense. Ok, on to the World Series, I guess.
When the Giants made the World Series in ’02, I felt like it was destiny. This was the year Bonds was finally going to silence his critics and win a ring. This was the year where the front office had gone out and made the team a force to be reckoned with. There were a lot of expectations. And there was a lot of emotional currency on the table. Therefore, when they blew it, I was crushed. This was the exact opposite from the 2010 team. When this team stepped onto the field in Game 1, I was playing with house money. I couldn’t believe what was happening. In my mind, they shouldn’t have even made the playoffs. Much less advanced. Much less won it all. So it was all gravy. It was all fun. But, you see, this team was also a team of destiny. Not the projected, forcefully self-imposed kind that I felt about the ’02 team. Or the kind that the Yankees feel every season. The real kind. The kind where everyone is looking around and one another with silly grins on their faces, all thinking the same thing, but not willing to say it out loud. What the fuck is going on here?
To be clear though, over the course of the season, this had morphed into a much different team. And, in my defense over the whole “Nostradamus diss,” the World Series roster was miles better than the opening day version. Compare the Game 1 lineup to the opening day lineup:
Opening Day
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Game 1
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Rowand
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Torres
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Renteria
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Sanchez
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Sandoval
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Posey
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Huff
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Burrell
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DeRosa
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Ross
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Molina
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Huff
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Bowker
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Uribe
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Uribe
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Renteria
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This team truly believe that they were meant to be there. And they played like it. Unlike the nail-biting NLDS and NLCS, the Giants wiped the floor with the Rangers in the World Series, 4 games to 1. All relatively one-sided, straightforward victories. A TV producer’s nightmare, a Giant fan’s dream.
Boom. Curse lifted. Pessimism gone. “Why me?” mindset eliminated. Let’s be clear: I am not claiming enlightenment or anything, but since the Giants have won the World Series, and the “why me?” haze has been lifted from my life, I have come realize that is not the frequency of the heartbreaking moments that increases, but rather one’s susceptibility to feel them. And, although I am currently floating through this disappointing Giant's season with the cloying optimism of a tear-soaked Taylor Swift fan watching the end of The Notebook for the 50th time, I know that this is a fact that I will have to come back and read aloud to myself when the Giants resign Zito in the offseason. Or when Lincecum allows 9 runs over an inning and a third. Or when I look at the calendar and it's the year 2045, the Giants haven't won another World Series, and they are 15 games out of first. It's all a matter of perspective, Cody, it's all a matter of perspective.
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