the san francisco giants and me: the 2000s, part 1

The move to the new ballpark meant that some fans couldn’t afford to attend as many games as they once did. Me? I was teaching at Cal at the time, two classes the subject of which escapes me now. Just as the spring semester of 2000 started, a professor had to drop his class in 20th century American Literature. Hey, I told the English department, I can teach that! They were desperate, and so I took on a third class. A quick calculation told me that the extra money I would earn just might pay for full season tickets at China Basin. So I called the team and ordered up two seats in the upper deck, just behind home plate.

They were high, but the view was gorgeous and you could see the entire field. For ten seasons I sat there, even though I couldn’t really afford to after that first year. The first season, every game was sold out, and I had no problem getting rid of my extras. With each season, though, it became harder to sell tickets I wasn’t using, so I was going to the same number of games, but the cost to me was rising (the tickets were the same price, but I was eating more of them). Still, I have great memories of that decade, because when you sit in the same seats every game, you get to know the people around you who are also sitting in the same seats.

The 2000s were dominated, for me at least, by two people: Barry Bonds and Brian Sabean. I’ll give Sabes a separate post, and even though an awful lot of these “giants and me” posts repeat my old stories, I am more aware of how often I’ve done my Barry Bonds spiel, so I’ll just say that I was a big fan and I loved watching him play for the Giants.

The team itself made the playoffs that first year, and J.T. Snow gave us our first Sure Memory when he homered to tie a playoff game against the Mets. They made the post-season in three of their first four seasons, culminating in a trip to the World Series in 2002. We don’t talk much about 2002 at my house, although perhaps now the awful memories can fade. Suffice to say that Game Six of that Series was the most heartbreaking event in a fan’s life that was full of them. They made the playoffs one more time in 2003, then began another slide that resulted in four straight losing seasons. We got to see the Giants in the World Series, we got to watch Barry Bonds smash records, we got to enjoy our beautiful new park … you can’t say the 2000s were uneventful, but they were far less enjoyable than they might have been. And that takes me to part two of this portion of my look back, and to the Giant who drove me crazier than anyone before or since: Brian Sabean.