the san francisco giants and me: the 1960s

I don’t remember the exact quote … look, I can repeat this every time I look back, so just assume I’m always thinking that memories can’t be trusted … but as I recall, Bill James once wrote that one example of how the 60s were topsy-turvy was that youngsters were out in the streets instead of at the ball park with a sign that read “HIT IT HERE, WILLIE.” That’s mostly irrelevant, but I figure I can’t talk about the 60s without tossing in a reference to social upheaval.

I was six years old on Opening Day of 1960, which happened to be the year Candlestick Park opened. By the time the 1969 season ended, I was a senior in high school. And so, much of my story here revolves around adolescence, which tends to get in the way of things. I guess I’d say that the early 60s were my nerd years, and the late 60s were my nerd-on-drugs years. I suspect my memories of the 1962 World Series are driven more by what I’ve seen and heard since then … I don’t recall being broken-hearted when the Giants came close to winning it all (I was 9). Charlie Brown moped, of course … a couple of months after the Series ended, Charles Schultz had Charlie, still brooding, shouting “Why couldn't McCovey have hit the ball just three feet higher?” (A month after that, Charlie was still bemoaning his fate, crying “Or why couldn't McCovey have hit the ball even two feet higher?”) I have mostly random memories of those great Giants teams that featured so many future Hall of Famers … going to a game at Candlestick with my dad and siblings, checking out the occasional game on TV (the only Giants games that were televised in those days were away games against the Dodgers, as well as any time the Giants were on the Saturday national game). I picture the players in my head, but that’s about it.

The early-to-mid 60s, though, were the beginnings of my baseball nerdiness, which had little to do with the Giants. I wasn’t a big baseball card collector, although we often bought boxes of Post cereals when they had cards on the back of the box. No, the true sign of my baseball nerd status was a game from a company called Negamco.

In these days of impossibly detailed computer sports simulations, the above is like a fossil. You’d spin the spinner to get a “random” number between 1-50 … “random” since the spinner would soon get banged up, and you’d get “17” 6% of the time and never get “41” … if it landed on a line between numbers, you’d spin again … then you’d look at the charts on the left side of the picture to find out what happened (home run, double play, etc.). The charts on the right side were the rosters of all the major league teams, with each player rated according to his real-life skills (the rosters were updated every season, and waiting for the new ones to arrive was always an exciting time).

The accuracy was something less than perfect. A 50-number random generator wasn’t large enough, the ratings left off everything from what hand the batter/pitcher used to hit/pitch, to a fatigue factor (so a pitcher could pitch for 20 innings in a game and be the same as when he started), an adjustment for playing time (so a guy who hit .370 in 30 at-bats would hit .370 in the game in 3000 at-bats) … you get the idea. Still, it was my idea of fun, and I’d play the games out, using a real schedule so I could get every game of every team, keeping track of stats with pencil and paper and slide rule. I don’t recall getting much further in a schedule than May, but the next year, I’d be at it again. The years I remember getting this game are from 1961-1968.

At times, the “players” in the game seemed as real to me as the actual humans on which they were based. If you want to know what it was like to become absorbed in such a game, I recommend Robert Coover’s novel The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop.

By the late 60s, I’d discovered girls and drugs (not necessarily in that order). I never played Negamco again, although my taste for sports simulations was revived in recent years thanks to the Football Manager series, which I’ve been playing since I was still writing my dissertation back in the 90s. Check this YouTube channel for a documentary film created as a project for a master’s degree in media … the director presents himself as a film maker, a journalist, and an addict … his secret is that he is addicted to Football Manager.

Most stories about the 60s don’t end until some time in the 70s, and I’ll use the same trick here. From the fall of 1970 until the beginning of summer in 1971, I lived in Capitola with my older brother. We watched Giants games on our teeny little black-and-white TV, with the sound down and the stereo playing Astral Weeks. Yes, we were often under the influence of drugs … it was my hippie wannabe era. By the first of June in 1971, which is about when I moved out of Capitola, the Giants had built a 10-game lead in the NL West. They never fell out of first, although a late-season slide meant that in September, when I moved to Bloomington, Indiana to follow a girl, their lead had shrunk to a single game.

Still, they made the post-season for only the second time in their existence as a San Francisco team. But I wasn’t there … I was in the Midwest, and it was assumed we would all root for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the playoffs against the Giants. When I offered a feeble protest that I was from the Bay Area, I was reminded that I didn’t live there any more. The Giants lost in four games, and didn’t get back to the post-season for 16 years. I didn’t wait that long to return home … by June of ‘72, I was back in the Bay Area to stay.

Comments

[B. Guayante]

Hello,
I Googled to this site. I have been given a Giants team autographed ball. Willie May's name is on it at the sweet-spot. My uncle was the head bartender of the team's local haunt in the 60's in San Fran. They signed two balls for him, and I have both. Each are in the league paper boxes even. Do you know enough about this item to direct me to a place where I can sell or auction them. I am not a baseball fan, but I was my uncle's favorite so he left them to me. They are sitting at the bank costing me safe deposit box fees.
Thanks

[Steven Rubio]

I'd google "baseball memorabilia."