Because of a campaign marked by streaky play, Giants fans this season have never been quite sure what they”ve been watching. If it was a horse race, there”s nothing much left to do but sift through what the horses left behind.
I mean a cloud of dust. What”d you think I meant?
Watching the Giants sink slowly into the National League West is a difficult moment, perhaps. But if you”re a Giants fan you”ve known hard times before. A lot harder than now.
” Hard times was Bobby Richardson”s desperate leap to snare Willie McCovey”s line drive in the ninth inning in 1962, allowing the Yankees to win the decisive seventh game of the World Series.
” Hard times was a pratfall in the long-awaited Bay Bridge World Series in 1989, marred by the Loma Prieta earthquake, which the Oakland A”s won in a four-game sweep.
” Hard times was taking a 5-0 lead into the home half of the seventh inning in the sixth game of the 2002 World Series, after winning Game 5, 16-4, and a chance to win it all on the line, and then somehow losing that game and the Series to the Angels.
” Hard times for those of us who are old enough were finishing second in the N.L. four years in a row in the mid-”60s, including two consecutive heated pennant races to the hated Dodgers, one by a scant two games, the second by a game and a half.
” Hard times is watching those Johnny-come-lately A”s go the World Series six times since 1968 — the year the Bay Area became a two-team market — and win four of them, including (dare we mention it again?) the “Earthquake Series” over our beloved Giants. All this while our heroes are 0-for-3 in the Series.
In retrospect, the package that this season arrived in did not have “winner” stamped all over it. Too many new faces. Too many unknowns among the starting pitchers, which in the end became largely a matter of Schmidt and Cain and pray for rain. Too many questions about how Barry Bonds would come back from knee surgery after missing virtually all of last season.
This might have been some small consolation if the Giants had failed to win in a tougher division. But in a division that could be won by a team that finishes not much better than .500 it is no consolation at all.
Regardless, if you”re a Giants fan you”ll remain a Giants fan. It”s really not a choice. It”s a habit. You get hooked on a team and you can”t shake it. There are no anti-Giant antidotes on the market and “cold sweats” won”t help.
I”m just glad it wasn”t the Chicago Cubs, who are ending a 61st straight year without a pennant this season. I have a friend who”s a devoted “Cubbie” fan. He still tapes all their games and watches them later in the day. He would not listen to the radio or watch television for fear of hearing the outcome of their games before he could watch his precious tape.
And he could get genuinely irate if you blew it for him by the mere mention of a Cubbie game outcome on any particular day. This would include every game in one of their frequent prolonged losing streaks. I”m not kidding. Once I erred in talking about the Cubs” loss that day. “Aw, what”d you have to tell me for?” he whined. The game was a 19-2 loss and was the Cubbies” 19th straight defeat.
A little personal history. For a few years in my lengthy career as a sports hack I traveled with the A”s, covering up to 180 Oakland games a year, counting spring training, which was the only time I saw the Giants. Mays, McCovey, Cepeda, Marichal, Gaylord Perry Hall of Famers all were all either over the hill or traded away by then.
Didn”t matter. My job was the A”s, my team was the Giants. Even if it meant rooting for the likes of Jack Clark, maybe the dumbest player I ever met.
Like so many other old-time Giants fans, my fascination with them was ignited the day Bobby Thomson, a career .270 hitter who never garnered as much as 3 percent of the Hall of Fame vote, hit the home run that beat the Dodgers in a playoff for the pennant. “The shot heard round the world.”
Consistent with the trail of broken hearts they”ve left behind, the Giants then went out and lost the ”51 Series to the Yankees in six games.
The trail led from the Polo Grounds, the home of the Giants in New York, located in an area known as Coogan”s Bluff, to San Francisco in 1958 and was noted in a two-line limerick written about that time. It went …
From Coogan”s Bluff to Candlestick,
They”ve done their best to make us sick.
Given the location of their home park now, we might add …
And after more failed pennant chasin”,
We”ll all barf in the China Basin.
Editor”s note: John Lindblom is a former Bay Area sports beat reporter who now covers sports and writes a column for the Record-Bee.
