the san francisco giants and me: 2010

Last one, I promise.

There are two stories I can tell. The first is about how a GM I thought was incompetent built a champion. The second, like the title of the post, is about me.

To get the first part out of the way. For a variety of reasons, the Giants finally began to build a worthy farm system, drafting some of the players who helped them win it all. Beyond that, Brian Sabean didn’t screw up too badly in 2010. The team’s offense needed work, so he went out and got another batch of Proven Veterans ™. Some worked (Aubrey Huff), some didn’t (Mark DeRosa). He then performed his usual mid-season magic, shoring up the bullpen and picking up Pat Burrell for nothing. Huff and Burrell were interesting because they had a history of taking a walk once in awhile, which has been rare for any Giant not named Bonds. Cody Ross worked out in the post-season, but in the regular season, he was shunted aside for another Sabean Special, Jose Guillen. Ultimately, the pitching was very good, and the hitting just good enough to get the team into the post-season, where the pitching then was extremely good, and voila, world champs!

But really, this is all about the second story. There are hundreds of people who could do a better job of recounting the Giants’ history in San Francisco. You could learn most of it just by spending a day at Baseball Reference.com. What matters, what made me write all this stuff, what made hundreds of thousands of people show up in The City today for a parade, was the personal meaning to us.

The team’s theme song as the season neared the end became “Don’t Stop Believing.” This song was mostly irrelevant to me; I couldn’t stop what I had never begun. I didn’t believe. Oh, I remind myself every year on Opening Day that this might be the year, but I don’t really believe it. The closest I came to believing was in 2002, and all that got me was a world of heartache that never seemed to go away.

My experience was not unique … there were many, many Giants fans who had suffered over the years just as I had. I didn’t have a special place because I remember all the way back to 1958, because however long it was for you, that was too long, and you were miserable just like me. My favorite anecdote about today’s parade was the story of a man on the street, holding his kid above his head so the little squirt might see something. The kid had a sign that read, “I've waited for this for seven months.”

But some fans got into the notion of believing. My son said time and again that he never stopped believing. My daughter would text me from bars every night, cheering the Giants on, and then one night she bought a $250 bleacher ticket for the next game, drove down from Sacramento, came over and found my son and I in our seats, and the three of us took in a playoff game. My daughter-in-law had her own way of believing: she never wanted to hear a bad word about her favorite, Jonathan Sanchez … she definitely believed in him.

But I didn’t believe. All I knew for sure was that the games were emotionally wrenching. On Monday morning, I drove my wife to the airport … she was off on a trip to Asia … and when I got home, one of my brothers called to see what my plans were for Game Five. I hadn’t had time to think about it, I told him, and a bit later he called back to say he was going to watch with my other brother and I was welcome to come along. But I think I knew what a wreck I would be, and I opted to fall apart in solitude. So I had a chat window open with my son, and my daughter and I texted through the game, and there was always Twitter to give me a false feeling of community. But, perhaps appropriately for the first season where I didn’t have season tickets, where I watched a lot of games alone in my attic, I watched Game Five by myself.

When Edgar Renteria hit the homer, I allowed a little believing to sneak in. When Brian Wilson took the mound in the ninth, a little more got there. And that was when I fell apart.

I didn’t yell or scream, but I had an unremitting grumble coming from somewhere in my throat. I was rocking back and forth, grabbing my face or my arm. And then I realized I was chanting. It wasn’t an easy one to hear, although of course there was no one to hear it but the cats. Once I knew I was doing it, I tried to stop, but it had a life of its own. I was bawling, and I was grumbling, and I was chanting through my tears: “I never thought it would happen, I never thought it would happen, I never thought it would happen.”

It happened.

Comments

[cynthia]

kinda sorta "me too". I was so sure it wasn't going to happen that I refused to even watch the freaking game. and now, having not watched, I'm still not sure it did happen.

I'll find a recording of the game and make it real when I'm ready to do it. I just couldn't take another 2002, or 2003, or or or ...

[Steven Rubio]

I don't blame you a bit. I left the room so many times when the other guys were batting during the post-season that whenever I'd go downstairs, Robin would say "the Giants aren't batting, I guess."

[Eric]

"usual mid-season magic"? Hasn't been a lot of mid-season magic since Schmidt. In fact, quite the opposite. For the past couple years, I found myself hoping that he would take a year off from his mid-season gamble on crusty veterans. The success of Ross and Burrell will only embolden Sabes as he continues to find broken-down vets to bring in, despite all the failures along the way (and there's been many). However, for the first time in a very long team, the young guys are the foundation and the vets are simply role players filling holes. And perhaps we might see some more homegrown talent get roster spots in the coming years. I'm optimistic

[David Beck]

Steve, this is David Beck. I've contributed to Gregg Pearlman's EEEEEE, and I have to tell you, reading about your journey through the Giants' wholly improbable championship finale was wonderfully exhilarating. Thank you for making the rapture of Our Boys' achievements that much more euphoric. Great work.

[Steven Rubio]

Thanks! I especially appreciate the kind words, coming from you.

[Phil Dellio]

Steve -- Bravo! Finally did what I'd planned to do, which is to print the whole thing out and read it from start to finish. Were you working from game logs at times? How could you ever remember specific games in such detail? I started watching baseball in '70, so I have a dim memory of the '71 divisional crown, reduced at this point to 1) Speier on the cover of Sports Illustrated, and 2) Dick (still "Richie," I think) playing for the Dodgers that year. I'd forgotten all about Toronto's near take-over of the franchise in '76. Strange, but I remember how devastated I was at the time when Moscone came to the rescue. It doesn't make sense: there was a clear sense at the time that if we didn't get the Giants, we were going to get a new franchise within a year or two, so I'm not sure why I felt it was better to inherit what was then a fairly mediocre team, rather than start from ground-zero with our own. The sheer animal magnetism of Ron Bryant? I guess it was impatience, or maybe that I wanted to be in the same division as the Reds, my favourite team before the Jays came along. Anyway, I'll link to this on the I Love Baseball message board where I hang out.

Wasn't there some ugly racial stuff at one point between Clark and Bonds?

[Steven Rubio]

Thanks, Phil, you were the inspiration for this one.

Yes, I used Baseball-Reference and Retrosheet. My general memories are fairly solid, but not details, so yes, I remember the awfulness of that game in 1984, remember that someone died at the game, but don't remember who pinch-hit for the Giants. I find that the Retrosheet program (which, in fairness, is to my mind presented nicer in a visual sense at B-R.com) is terrific for showing us how faulty our memories can be ... I'm such a spoilsport, someone will say something about a game they attended where so-and-so hit three homers, and they'll be specific in their memories, "it happened in July of '79, I think it was, against the Pirates at Candlestick," and I'll spend a few minutes looking through the old box scores and then report back that it was really in August of 1980 against the Phillies.

I think in fairness we have to say the supposed racial animosity between Clark and Bonds was overblown or even non-existent. It may have been real, but I don't think we know one way or the other, and my memory is just that what was once Clark's team became Bonds' team, and sure, that might have pissed Will off, and he has that Southern shit-kicker accent, and assumptions were made.

Bonds has never been shy about using race as a factor in why he thinks he is treated differently from other players, but I don't remember him ever saying that about Clark, or any other teammate, for that matter. Really, one of the remarkable things about Bonds is how rare it is to hear a teammate complain about him, despite the Conventional Wisdom that he was a cancer in the clubhouse. Even Jeff Kent, who was strangled in the dugout by Bonds, seemed to understand that Barry was one of the reasons he became a future Hall-of-Famer ... the 2010 Giants are an example of how nice it is when you like your teammates, but I'm a believer that more than anything else, winning makes good clubhouses. Given the extreme adversarial relationship between Bonds and the press, it's understandable that his public reputation, as drawn by those in the media, made it seem like Bonds was an impossible teammate (because he was impossible for the press, and it's human to project that elsewhere).

Again, thanks for reading!

[Phil Dellio]

I've made some anti-Bonds PED comments on your site, but I know I sided with him during the Clark thing; I probably made the same unfair assumptions about Clark that others made.

By the way, I had exactly the same turning-away-from-baseball interlude that you had (I bet that happens to most fans in their late teens or early 20s). With me it happened when I started university in '79, and lasted until (simultaneously) the Jays became a contender and I started reading James in '83. '79, '80, '81, and '82 I barely paid attention--a little bit when Brett was chasing .400, and a little bit when the Expos won half a divisional crown in '81, otherwise not at all. Still regret not paying attention to the '79 Pirates; I was off at the Fine Arts Theatre, pretending that I was getting something meaningful from Belle de Jour.

[Steven Rubio]

Never apologize for choosing Catherine Deneuve over anything else.