New edition is almost here!
The new edition of “Giants Past and Present” is at the publisher’s warehouse, and will be available in bookstores very soon. Dan Fost will also have copies for sale if anyone wants to buy directly from the author. It is already available for pre-ordering on Amazon.com.
The new edition looks fantastic. MVP Books gave the cover a complete makeover. A banner proclaims it the “2012 Championship Edition,” while the word GIANTS is bigger and bolder than ever, in black block letters outlined in orange. Best of all, the cover features 2012 National League MVP Buster Posey, following through on his timeless swing, against a backdrop of the Polo Grounds, where so many other great Giants once performed their heroic feats. Buster would have fit right in.
Naturally, I am optimistic about the Giants’ chances this year. I know the Dodgers have spent big to acquire a lot of big time talent, but the Giants have youth, pitching and Bruce Bochy. I talked about all of this with Jeff Thurn, host of a show on ESPN Radio in Sioux Falls, South Dakota (the other SF, as I think of it), and you can listen to that 9 minute conversation here:
Dan Fost on Jeff Thurn ESPN Radio show February 20, 2013
World Champions – again!
It is almost as hard to believe it now as it was in 2010. Did the San Francisco Giants really win the World Series? You’d better believe it.
If it’s on the cover of Sports Illustrated, it’s got to be true!
If 2010 was a team of castoffs and misfits, at least it was a veteran club, and one with dominant pitching. The 2012 Giants seemed like a bunch of kids, and the arms all seemed to fade as the season lurched to a close. The word I heard the most from the Giants this year was “grind.”
Even as the playoffs started, the Giants did not carry any air of inevitability, or invincibility. Falling behind the Reds, and then the Cardinals, the season could have ended at any moment.
Until, suddenly – dramatically – for the second time in the post-season, the Giants got their wake-up call. It was an unlikely time. Barry Zito, who had not looked good against the Reds, got the call as the stopper in St. Louis. He gave up three hits before the Giants had one.
And then Marco Scutaro and Pablo Sandoval singled, and with one out, Hunter Pence hit a weak dribbler back to pitcher Lance Lynn, and the Giants got the sort of lucky break that defined this entire post-season – and, I suppose if you believe in these things, defined the Giants as a Team of Destiny. Lynn threw to second base, and there was no one there. He tried to hold up his throw, and it hit the bag. Scutaro scored. Another out, another couple of singles – one on a beautifully planned bunt by Zito – and the Giants were on their way to a 5-0 victory. They would never lose again in 2012.
About those lucky breaks the Giants caught, whether it was Johnny Cueto leaving Game 1 of the Cincinnati series, or Angel Pagan‘s grounder hitting third base against Detroit (again with the base!), or Gregor Blanco‘s exquisite bunt, stopping incredibly inside the chalk. Include in those the sloppy defense by the opponents in every series, and then consider: the Giants made no such blunders.
And that’s by design. The Giants are built around pitching and defense. It makes sense, when you think that pitching wins games, and defense is a big part of pitching. Manager Bruce Bochy could have played Xavier Nady or Hector Sanchez in a quest for more offense, but he knew the formula. If you keep the other team from scoring, you don’t have to score too much yourself.
In building that type of team, General Manager Brian Sabean also built just the right lineup for AT&T Park. The best defenders are not necessarily sluggers in the Barry Bonds mold. Instead, Sabean acquired and promoted contact hitters, who can spray the ball into the gaps. Players like Melky Cabrera, Pagan, Blanco, and even Pence, Buster Posey, Scutaro, Brandon Belt and Sandoval all fit this model. With Scutaro in particular showing the virtue of taking pitches, and not striking out, the Giants were built for the modern post-season.
The Giants had one more ingredient: Heart. It sounds like a cliche. It is said of nearly every team. (Well, maybe not the 2009 Yankees.) But consider some of the stories on these Giants – and not just overcoming the Brian Wilson injury or the Cabrera suspension. Instead: Ryan Vogelsong, wandering baseball’s wilderness for years before he came home to San Francisco and became a bona fide star. Scutaro, the very definition of a journeyman infielder, earning the nickname Blockbuster as he turned into Ty Cobb when he arrived on the Giants in July. Zito, never living up to his massive contract, but suddenly becoming a consistent winner. Tim Lincecum, losing his magic touch, but happily accepting a role as a middle reliever, and becoming unhittable once again. Posey, coming back from the most devastating (and unnecessary) injury this side of Joe Theisman to become National League MVP. And plenty of other players – Matt Cain, Madison Bumgarner, Sergio Romo, Brandon Crawford, Pence, Sandoval – putting plenty of other struggles behind them for the sake of the team. I have to believe even having guys like Nady, Aubrey Huff and Ryan Theriot just in the dugout cheering (never mind scoring the winning run in the clincher, as Theriot did) had to help.
Without these guys, there’s no parade in San Francisco on Halloween.
Nicely done. And thank you. Every one of you.
World Series, baby!
I almost did not recognize my San Francisco Giants when they started this postseason. And I’m not referring to the complete changeover in the starting eight from 2010 – with only Buster Posey remaining. (Pablo Sandoval rode the pine in that historic postseason.)
Marco Scutaro drinking in raindrops in 2012 NLCS Game 7
What I was wondering, less than one month ago: Where was the Torture? The Giants clinched the West so early, the world seemed upside-down.
But through the National League Division Series against the Cincinnati Reds, and the National League Championship Series against the St. Louis Cardinals, the Giants have shown that even though they have so many new cast members, they all know the script: Torture.
Having fallen behind two games to none against the Reds, the Giants managed to come all the way back. They proceeded to drop three of the first four games to the Cards, and once again won three straight to take the pennant.
Memo to Bruce Bochy and the boys: Please just win this next series early!
I had great fun the other day discussing this and other weighty matters on Michael Krasny‘s excellent program Forum on KQED. (Krasny graciously said that “Giants Past and Present” is “one of the best books about the Giants.”) You can listen to the show here:
The show opened with Giants’ President Larry Baer, and you could really hear how much fun he’s having. Larry is a lifelong Giants fan in his dream job, and you can’t help but smile every time you see him. Then Michael led a spirited discussion with me, KNBR’s awesome Marty Lurie, and San Jose Mercury News columnist Mark Purdy. I sure learned a lot listening to those guys – especially when Marty told us that, however bad Pete Kozma played shorstop for the Cardinals in the NLCS, he was not as bad as the Washington Senators’ Roger Peckinpaugh in the 1925 World Series, who made eight errors! (Another highlight: Marty let me try on his 2010 World Series ring – and it is a thing of beauty!)
One thought I had that I did not get to share: As we discussed the Giants, and beautiful AT&T Park, I wanted to give props to General Manager Brian Sabean for building a team perfect for its ballpark. Instead of going out and signing home run hitters, who only get frustrated with the park’s wide open spaces, Sabean brought in gap hitters like Angel Pagan, Marco Scutaro and Gregor Blanco. You could put Melky Cabrera in there too (even though we don’t really like to talk about him any more), and it looks like it’ll be a good fit for the Brandons – Belt and Crawford. Need I say Buster Posey?
And maybe, if Hunter Pence hits more line drives like his famed “triple double” from game 7 of the NLCS – the ball that hit the bat three times – instead of swinging for the fences, the Giants will have the ingredients necessary to foil those big bopping Tigers.
After all, Marty Lurie viewed Pence’s lucky-breaking line drive as karmic payback for Willie McCovey’s smash that ended the 1962 World Series. No one could have hit that ball any harder, but it went straight to the Yankees’ Bobby Richardson. Pence’s ball curved away from Kozma, and the Giants were in business.
It’s good to be good. But sometimes it’s better to be lucky.
Even if it’s a little Torturous.
Orange October
Kruk and Kuip know Torture when they see it. (Thanks to the Facebook group, “Giants baseball… torture.”)
Once again, the Giants are roaring into October, and the diehards are ready for another magical run. I sure am. But I can’t help but note that things feel different this time.
For one thing: Where is the Torture?
And for another: What happened to our lovable band of castoffs and misfits?
The Giants of 2010 knew how to break a curse. They took all the Torture of the past half-century-plus in San Francisco — all the second place finishes of the 1960s, McCovey’s line drive, Jose Oquendo, Candy Maldonado, Dusty Baker and Russ Ortiz — and they owned it. When Duane Kuiper coined his slogan in May of that season, “Giants Baseball: It’s Torture!,” he gave the team a rallying cry that told the world, we don’t care how many times we bring it to the brink, we can win.
No one personified Torture more than Brian Wilson. He became the face of the franchise, muscle-bound, and weird beyond words, stalking to the mound, throwing heat – and giving up the walks that would bring opponents tantalizingly close, only to slam the door on such Torture. And it all flowed from Wilson: His pal, Pat Burrell, donning the leather straps as the Machine; Burrell’s pal, Aubrey Huff, donning the satin thong that assured the postseason; and the rest of the castoffs, midseason acquisitions like Javier Lopez, Ramon Ramirez, and Cody Ross, who was claimed off waivers and went on to author some improbably insane postseason heroics.
The Giants kept their team remarkably intact in 2011, and it got them nowhere. But they did learn something important that season: the importance of Buster. When Posey went down in May, the Giants were essentially done.
I’ve often felt that Posey could be the Giants’ Derek Jeter. Like Jeter, he provided the missing ingredient to bring his team a championship in his rookie year. He is calm, poised beyond his years, confident and capable. I don’t think anyone would argue with the Giants naming Buster their captain.
And that’s where the big difference between 2010 and 2012 comes in. Instead of Buster quietly fitting in among the Freak, the Beard and the rest of the castoffs, he is the undisputed leader of this year’s squad. The Giants have a much more understated, workmanlike approach, exemplified for me by three young, strong, silent Southerners – Posey, Matt Cain and Madison Bumgarner. I think (warning: armchair psychoanalysis ahead) this may be why Tim Lincecum is struggling; the free-spirited, pot-smoking, long-haired Freak is no longer at home in his own clubhouse.
One of the interesting things about this switch in team personality hit me in August, when Carl Steward, a fine columnist for the Bay Area Newspaper Group (aka the San Jose Oakland Contra Costa Marin Mercury Times News Journal), took note of the Giants hitting a real low point in the season. They had been swept by the Dodgers at home. They looked like they couldn’t score runs. Steward wondered if Coors Field could prove a tonic (it did), and if Posey and Cain were too quiet to fire up the team the way Huff and Burrell did two years earlier. Steward wrote:
Good teams need strong, occasionally outspoken leaders. Leadership can’t always be by setting a good example aka Cain/Posey. Sometimes you have to get in players’ ears. Sometimes you need to throw a fit or berate one of us media types after a loss. Sometimes you have to remind teammates that it’s baseball and it’s supposed to be fun as you set off a cherry bomb in the middle of the clubhouse, or hide a four-day-old chicken neck in somebody’s locker.
It may be Cain’s team and Posey’s team, but they’re the strong, silent, stable types. The Giants need somebody right now to throw the cherry bomb. Make somebody laugh. Make somebody ticked off. Become the human defibrillator.
Not only did the Giants start hitting at Coors, but they got their cherry bomb two weeks later, when Melky Cabrera was suspended.
He was cast off. The Giants were misfits no more. And never mind Torture, they overtook the Dodgers and clinched the division with 10 games to spare.
I can’t wait to see what they do in October.
Free Crawford!
No one gets too excited when Brandon Crawford comes to bat. I can speak for all Giants fans and say we hold our collective breath and hope for the best for this kid. It would be so great if he could emerge as a big league hitter, but we fear he’s been thrown to the wolves too early and may not get there.
Yet I couldn’t help but notice that he has gone through some pretty impressive stretches this season. I’ve looked at the stats, and found this:
After dropping to a dismal .173 batting average on April 21 in New York – yes, well below his listed weight of 215 pounds – Crawford went on an impressive little run, hitting .259 in the next 17 games. Then Bruce Bochy boldly batted Brendan second in the order – where he’s likely to see better pitches – and he responded, hitting .300 over the next nine games, with an on-base percentage of .356, 7 RBI and 8 runs scored.
You can see and sort Crawford’s game-by-game stats at the table below. (I love Baseball Reference! The column headed BOP indicates batting order position; from May 17 to May 28, Crawford hit second in all but one game. If you click on those dates, you can get a table showing the stats from those games – my source of information.)
Boch said at the time he was experimenting, but that Crawford had been hitting well enough to merit a shot.
I would have thought Crawford had passed his audition, but then Ryan Theriot came off the disabled list, and as a proven major league hitter (in years prior to this one), Bochy handed him the 2-hole. I can’t criticize that move, especially since Crawford struck out 15 times in his 45 plate appearances batting second. (Bochy also gave him two more shots at the 2-hole and he went oh-for-7.) And Theriot has proven Bochy right so far, batting .321 with a .406 OBA and zero whiffs in 32 plate appearances.
It’s funny, because I had been wondering why Angel Pagan doesn’t bat second, and Henry Schulman today reports that Bochy has considered that idea. (Schulman mostly writes about Pablo Sandoval‘s weight, thank goodness – I had long thought of that as, if you’ll excuse me, the elephant in the room, and I’m glad to read that the Giants are addressing it.) Wouldn’t you love a lineup of Blanco-Pagan-Cabrera-Posey-Sandoval? I sure would.
Meanwhile, since Crawford returned to his usual spot in Siberia, I mean the 8-hole, with its diet of pitches outside the strike zone, he has resumed his old ways, going 2-for-13 in the past five games.
He may be a future number two hitter, but he’s not there yet – at least, not for a team, like the Giants, that has serious playoff plans.
Torture, again
My son and I in the stands at AT&T Park on May 6, 2012 - a "Torture" classic in which Giants closer Santiago Casilla coughed up a ninth inning lead to the Brewers, only to see the Giants win it in the 11th on a Hector Sanchez bases loaded single.
Nearly two months into the 2012 season, I think we’re getting a pretty good sense of what we’ve got in this year’s Giants team. It both pains and pleases me to report that we are not yet ready to retire the label the Giants earned the past two seasons: Torture.
Yes, Torture with a capital T and that rhymes with B and that stands for Bochy…. And Brandon…. And Bad Hitting and Bungled Baseballs. Yet another season of stellar pitching is at risk of fizzling in a .500 rathole because the offense and the defense don’t adequately support the aces on the hill. The Giants’ staff is the envy of baseball, and if you doubt that, think of it this way: What manager wouldn’t want his biggest pitching problem to be – Tim Lincecum?
Plus, injuries keep threatening to sink the season before it even gets rolling, whether it’s Brian Wilson going down for his second Tommy John surgery, or Pablo Sandoval showing a new disadvantage to switch-hitting by breaking the same bone in his left hand that he broke in his right hand last year.
So while so many of my fellow fans sink into that funk of watching our version of the Mudville Nine rally only to lose again, I see the potential for another glorious 2010-type season. In fact, think of how torturous 2010 really was. For starters, 2010 was the year Duane Kuiper hung his sputtering Torture moniker on the orange-and-black after an endless supply of nail-biters.
That season’s opening day lineup included names like John Bowker, Mark DeRosa, Aaron Rowand and Bengie Molina. (Good guys, but do any fans miss them?) In 2010, the Giants trailed the Padres nearly all year (and the 2010 Pads were a better team than the 2012 Dodgers, in my opinion – much better pitching, fueled by a lights-out bullpen). Pablo Sandoval suffered not only a sophomore slump, but threatened to become the Kung Fu Hippo. And remember August? Just when you want your team to make a stretch run, the Giants’ pitching staff began to unravel. They led the league in walks. Lincecum went through the first prolonged struggle in his charmed career.
And we never really came to love Edgar Renteria until his very last game in a Giants’ uniform.
Happy endings like 2010’s enable us to forget all the struggles that comprise a baseball season. Before a game I went to last year, Giants’ coach Tim Flannery addressed a crowd of Little Leaguers, telling them that the secret to baseball success is “tricking your mind into staying positive.” In 2010, he pointed out, the world champion Giants lost 70 games.
Maybe I’m just tricking my own mind here, but I find a lot to be positive about in 2012.
- First, and foremost, Buster Posey is back and better than ever.
- To our great relief as well, Buster at last has a backup, Hector Sanchez, who can really hit. It feels fine whenever Bochy wants to give Buster a rest, or a day at first base.
- Melky Cabrera is a true major league superstar – and Pablo Sandoval is on his way there. Angel Pagan is solid, speedy, and a team leader. (I’m biased toward Angel, since I just wrote a story about him for the Giants magazine – look for it at the ballpark this summer.)
- Melky and Angel aren’t the only great additions. Gregor Blanco is a revelation. Joaquin Arias fills the utility role nicely. Ryan Theriot is a great guy to have on the bench.
- Bruce Bochy is getting comfortable trusting his young guys, and Brandons Belt and Crawford are starting to come around. (By-the-By, what is it with the Base-Ball Giants and the initials BB? From Bobby Bonds to Barry Bonds, from Bob Brenly and Brett Butler to Bruce Bochy and Brandon Belt, we love shooting BBs here in Baghdad by the Bay. Then again, Brian Bocock couldn’t carry the bat of old New York Giant Hall-of-Famer Beauty Bancroft.)
I love Giants fans, but I do find it funny that they complained so long to “Free Belt,” yet they show as little patience with the miscues of youth as they used to accuse Bochy and Brian Sabean of having. You can’t have it both ways. We are spoiled by guys like Posey and Sandoval, who hit well right from the start, but instead we ought to consider the example of Melky Cabrera, who struggled and bounced around for years until he found his stroke last year in Kansas City.
So don’t get down. If the 2010 Giants could rally from 7.5 games back on July 4 – to say nothing of forbears like the 1951 team, which was 13 back on Aug. 11 –this year’s model can certainly overcome a May deficit. It may take some more Sabean midseason magic. It may take some help in getting the Dodgers to fall to earth. It may require the folks at Dignity Health (cue Renel: formerly Catholic Healthcare West, the official health care provider of your San Francisco Giants) to restore both dignity and health to a team that needs both.
Whatever it takes, though, remember this: With a second wild card this year, it’s easier than ever to make the playoffs. And once in the playoffs, pitching can carry you a long, long way.
Right Timmy?
Bruce Bochy Looks Like the Best in the Business
Big hat, big brain: Bruce Bochy (Photo by George Gojkovich/Getty Images)
Today’s guest post is from Bleacher Report Contributor Simon Cherin-Gordon, a Berkeley High Senior who has been helping me on projects large and small on this site and elsewhere for the past year.
After Bruce Bochy led the Giants on a second half surge that netted them an unexpected division title, many Giants’ fans were calling for Bochy to win the Manager of the Year award. While Bochy was deserving, so were others, including Padres’ skipper Bud Black, who won 90 games with a roster that most expected to struggle all year. The award went to him, and rightfully so.
Bochy, meanwhile, went on to win the World Series, strengthening his position as one of the game’s best.
However, it is only now, two months into the 2011 season, that we are seeing Bochy’s finest work. After an uneventful offseason, the Giants looked like they’d be caught in another fierce battle with better offensive teams out west, and would need heroic career years out of guys who already delivered their heroic career years in 2010. While Pat Burrell’s resurrection and Cody Ross’ hot streak could be attributed to Bochy, that may be giving him more credit than he deserves.
In fact, the 2010 Giants may have underperformed in multiple, albeit subtle, ways. The 2010 team was 6th in the NL in total bases, batting average, and home runs, yet finished only 9th in runs scored, indicating an inefficient offense. On the defensive side, they led the league in fielding percentage as well as ERA, a seemingly fool-proof formula for allowing the fewest runs. However, Bud Black’s Padres allowed less runs than the Giants in 2010. And even when taking the end result of runs allowed and runs scored for San Francisco, their 92-70 record was slightly worse than their Pythagorean projection (a simple Bill Jamesian stat that projects W-L record based on run differential), which had them at 94-68.
As anyone should have seen coming, the offense has taken a step back so far in 2011, and, to the surprise of many, the defense has gotten a whole lot worse. Mark DeRosa may eventually help some, and Aubrey Huff will likely pick his numbers up. Other than that, not many hitters are underperforming, and the lack of pop may be here to stay. The pitching staff is still excellent, but the defense has hurt them. Bochy doesn’t have the benefit of this being “the Giants’ year,” and needs to squeeze as much as he can out of this deep but flawed roster.
He’s done so miraculously, using his depth to its full capacity and, in doing so, covering up the flaws. His game management, use of certain players in certain roles, and steady presence has the Giants winning way more than they should be. Despite the league’s 3rd best ERA and 13th best defense, San Francisco is 3rd best in the league in runs allowed. And while the Pythagorean projection says the team should be 23-24, Bochy has them at 27-20, solely atop the NL West.
The toughest thing about managing the defending champs is the heightened desire around the league to defeat you, especially early in the season. Every other team out there circles the Giants on their calenders, and plays with an added intensity when they meet. Facing teams that are playing with an extra edge every single day can, and often does, prove to be too much for a defending champ. This leads to a scrambling manager, a belief in the players that they aren’t good as they were last year, and a downward spiral. Bochy and his 2011 club has been the antithesis of this. The Giants are playing more intensely than their opponents. Bochy has his player’s roles figured out and never panics when a decision backfires.
Although no team has won back-to-back World Series titles since 2000, no manager of a defending champ has done as good a job as Bruce Bochy in a long time. And regardless of what happens this October, a return to the playoffs for this team should net Bochy the Manager of the Year award in a landslide.
Read more of Simon Cherin-Gordon’s sportswriting here
World Champions!
Harry waves his Giant rally rag as horns honk along the Embarcadero after the Giants' World Series clincher Nov. 1, 2010
The San Francisco Giants’ whole improbable, ridiculous, joyful, torturous ride through the 2010 baseball season has ended in the most improbable, ridiculous, joyful but definitely not torturous fashion. The Giants are World Champions and San Francisco is celebrating like never before.
The rings that the players will get are more than just symbols of this incredible season. They are pure redemption for all the incredible players who came through here before, all the close calls, near-misses, heartaches and yes, Torture, that the Giants and their fans have endured for more than a half-century in San Francisco.
It’s redemption for Dusty Baker and Russ Ortiz and that exhausted, overworked bullpen of 2002. It’s redemption for Robb Nen who was so clutch yet couldn’t stop little Neifi Perez in 1998. It’s redemption for Saloman Torres and the 103-win team of 1993. It’s redemption for Candy Maldonado and the sliding-catch-that-wasn’t in 1987. It’s redemption for Juan Marichal, blowing his top in 1965 and blowing a pennant in the process. It’s redemption for Barry Bonds, who thrilled us on the field, but left us in the humiliating position of defending his behavior. It’s redemption for Horace Stoneham, who gave us frigid Candlestick Park, and for Bob Lurie, who tried and failed to get rid of it.
These and so many other people have given Giant fans so many great memories, so many winning seasons, so many pennant races and playoffs that we have no right to complain. But like Chris “Mad Dog” Russo declared so plaintively after that punch to the gut from the Florida Marlins in 2003 — and yes, this is also redemption for Jose Cruz Jr., as hard as that is to write — we wanted to know what it would be like for the Giants to win just one time. Just one lousy goddamn time!
Now we know.
It’s amazing. Gratifying. Stupendous. Mind-boggling.
I am soaking it all in. We screamed til we were hoarse. We leapt off chairs at Paragon, a block from the ballpark. We high-fived and hugged friends and strangers. We honked our horn all the way through the city, with every landmark – the Ferry Building, Coit Tower, City Hall – bathed in orange light.
I heard Mike Krukow quoting J.T. Snow on the radio last night, saying this was closure for 2002. Kruk clearly felt closure for 1987/1989, and he cited all those same players who were all pulling for this Giants team to finally exorcise those ghosts.
I read where Buster Posey said:
“It’s crazy to think with all the great baseball players who have come through San Francisco, there hasn’t been a World Series championship. The beautiful thing about the organization is, you’ve got guys like Will Clark here. You’ve got J.T. Snow here. You’ve got Shawon Dunston here. When we get back to San Francisco, we’ll have Willie Mays and Willie McCovey and Gaylord Perry. The list goes on and on. It’s so humbling to have won the first World Series in San Francisco. It’s unbelievable.”
Thank you, Buster, for saying that. And thank you, Matt Cain, the longest serving Giant, who has known such hard luck and come through like such a pro. And thank you, Brian Wilson, who has defined this team and this city, from torture to the whole bearded freaky orange-and-black Halloween championship. (Neither Wilson nor Cain gave up an earned run in the playoffs!) And thank you, Bill Neukom, Brian Sabean, Bruce Bochy, Tim Lincecum, Madison Bumgarner, Edgar Renteria – what is redemption if not Renteria (and Bochy and Sabean), vilified by fans, turning heroic on the biggest stage of all? – thank you to all the Giants past and present for making this moment possible. Thank you Aubrey Huff, for the thong, the quotes, the home runs and most of all, the first sacrifice bunt of your career. What a sacrifice! Thank you, too, to Duane Kuiper, for giving us Torture, and to Mike Krukow, Jon Miller and Dave Flemming, for unparalleled insight and enthusiasm. Thank you to the great middle relievers, the incredible untold story of this team, and to Barry Zito, a class act and hard-luck, hard-working pitcher. Is there any Giant we don’t just love today?
I can’t wait to see those Hall of Famers participating in the parade they long-deserved. hope the great Willie Mays, who was in the parade that welcomed the Giants to San Francisco in 1958, will be well enough to ride in this one. I look forward to Willie McCovey, a fearsome slugger best remembered for his line drive out in 1962, getting that round of cheers from the fans who love him so much.
Our Giant fandom has been torture at times. We reveled in the torture. How sweet it is to revel in victory instead.
Why torture means the Giants will win it all
Dan Fost at Game 3 of the NLCS with a great Giants fan. Her sign reads: "All of us are created equal. Some of us become GIANTS."
With the World Series that opened in San Francisco tonight, the Giants started battling some old ghosts. The team had been greeted with a ticker tape parade on its arrival in The City in 1958, but it hasn’t had one since, as it’s always come up just shy of winning it all.
But this year feels different. I know, I know, we should not get ahead of ourselves and predict a Giant victory – but I can’t help but feel that this team has what it takes for that ultimate Champagne shower. And believe me, I am one of those fans who is reminding everyone that, even as the Giants were romping in Game One, the Rangers had lost Game One to the Yankees, too.
But the tension at the end of tonight’s game – tension that should not exist in a game where you have an ace pitcher and score 11 runs – reminded me of the essential difference between this Giant team and all the other San Francisco squads that fell short is: Torture.
Yes, that word. Giant fans know it all too well. But we kept it in our closets. It lurked underneath our orange jerseys, the ones with Mays or McCovey or Clark or Bonds on the back – all those Giants who never won World Series in San Francisco (Mays won one in New York). We did not wear it on our sleeves, like Red Sox fans. We did not have a Curse that we could curse, like the Cubs and the Red Sox and the White Sox.
Yet this year, Duane Kuiper – he of the one career home run – put a stamp on the Giants early, recognizing a team that would win or lose its games by one Torturous run. “Giants baseball!” he would declare after such a finish. “Torture!”
The Giants adopted the phrase. It even started turning up in manager Bruce Bochy’s postgame interviews. Kuiper told me in September that the Giants organization wanted him to tone it down, but even if he stopped, his partner Mike Krukow – sunny Kruk, who always predicts the possibility of a pennant – picked up on the theme. And Torture was too true not to stick.
Anyway, these Giants have barely been in town long enough to know the Tortured history. The entire starting lineup basically arrived either this year or last. Matt Cain is the longest tenured Giant, and he just turned 26 and made his debut in 2005. No one knows 2002, to say nothing of 2003 (Jose Cruz!), or 2000, or the other epic choke jobs that long defined Torture for the fans.
But now we are buying Torture T-shirts and laughing in the face of Torture — at least, when it isn’t Torturing us, with Brian Wilson walking the go-ahead run in the ninth inning and then getting a 3-2 count on the Phillies most dangerous hitter.
Of course, if they don’t win, I anticipate it’ll be in pretty Torturous fashion as well. The people who proclaimed the Torture to be over after the Giants won the division learned the hard way that it doesn’t end; as Ashkon sings in the YouTube video that defines this playoff run, “it goes on and on and on and on.”
Torturous Giant losses are nothing new. They go back to the team’s earliest days. Fred Merkle failed to touch second base on a game-winning hit, costing the Giants a pennant. Fred Snodgrass muffed a fly ball, costing the team the 1912 World Series. There are botched rundowns at home plate, bad hop grounders in the ninth inning of seventh games, and years of devastating defeats to the Yankees, who taunted them from right across the Harlem River.
And that was nothing. Once the Giants got to San Francisco, they raised Torture to an art form.
They lost their first West Coast Series to, yes, the Yankees, in a heartbreaker that still stings: a 1-0 Game 7 loss to the Yankees defined by the final pitch, which resulted a smash off the bat of Hall of Famer Willie McCovey that somehow landed in Bobby Richardson’s glove, instead of scoring the tying and winning runs from second and third bases. A team full of Hall of Famers never made it back, instead taking five straight second place finishes, often to the hated Dodgers.
And never mind other ignominies, like 1987 (Candy Maldonado! Jose Oquendo!) – the Giants’ World Series experience has always been an exercise in creative Torture, as if devised by some Folsom Street dominatrix: a four-game sweep in the earthquake marred 1989 Series; and a horrific meltdown in the 2002 Series when – up 3 games to 2, and with a 5-0 lead and eight outs to go in Game 6, the Giants managed to cough up the lead, the game, and the whole World Series.
That sort of wrenching loss has long been a Giants hallmark, even when they were based in New York, but the San Francisco iteration has turned it into an art form.
Yet along came the 2010 Giants, and we are believers all over again. And with the team back in the Fall Classic, I thought it prudent to look for historical comparisons and calculate the reasons why the Giants will – or won’t – win the Series this year.
Here – in honor of Cody Ross, and the most superstitious of sports, are 13 reasons why the Giants will win:
- It’s Magic Inside. Corny? Yes. Silly marketing-speak? You bet. But how else to explain how this ragtag group – these so-called knuckleheads, the so-called Dirty Dozen – could actually come from so far back to win the National League pennant? Whoever came up with the Magic campaign must have known something. Baseball is the most superstitious of sports. Why else would Aubrey Huff of the Giants parade around in a red thong?
- It’s Torture Inside. This team has embraced the Torture. For years, the Giants have denied their cursed position, unlike the Red Sox or Cubs. (I have a t-shirt purchased at Wrigley Field that reads: Chicago Cubs, World Champions, 1908.) But once you take ownership of something, you can start to use it. Owning the Torture means knowing that Brian Wilson can walk two guys in the ninth inning, because even though our ulcers start screaming, he’s going to get the called third strike and save the game.
- Curse-busters. If you’re going to end a curse, it helps to have people who have done it before. Like Juan Uribe and Aaron Rowand, veterans of the 2005 White Sox, which lifted the cloud of the 1919 Black Sox scandal in winning the club’s first Series in 86 years. (Javier Lopez pitched for the 2007 world champion Red Sox, but that was a second title for Boston, which broke its curse in 2004.)
- Curse opponents. If the Giants are cursed, the Rangers have it even worse. This squad has never even been to the World Series, either in its first incarnation as the Washington Senators (the second team with that name, established in 1961 after the original Senators became the Minnesota Twins), or in its many years trying to convince Texas football fans to brave 100 degree temperatures and watch baseball. Sorry, Rangers. It’s football season now.
- Players with no sense of history. Look at the heroes who joined the team this year: Aubrey Huff, Buster Posey, Madison Bumgarner, Cody Ross, Ramon Ramirez, Javier Lopez. Last year brought Juan Uribe, Edgar Renteria, and Andres Torres. No one on this team was here for Game 6 of the 2002 World Series. They don’t know that they can’t win.
- Revenge for 2002. The Giants are one-by-one erasing the memory of 2002 by dashing the latest dreams of former Angels David Eckstein (2010 Padres), Troy Glaus (2010x Braves) and now old teammate Bengie Molina (2010 Rangers).
- Will Clark. Will the Thrill – in many ways, the ultimate Giant – hit a home run off Nolan Ryan in his first major league at bat, and Ryan now owns the Texas Rangers.
- The Giants have some unfinished business with the Washington Senators. Okay, maybe a stretch – I mean, the Giants never played the Rangers’ actual precursors. But the last time the Giants played the original Senators, when John McGraw managed the “Jints” and Walter Johnson pitched for Washington, the Senators won their only Series when a routine grounder hit a pebble and skipped over Giants Hall of Fame third baseman Freddie Lindstrom, knotting the score and setting the stage for another bad-hop grounder that won the game and the Series in the 12th inning.
- The Yankee factor. The Rangers beat the Yankees – just like the 2004 Red Sox and 2002 Angels did in overcoming their curses. But the 2005 White Sox didn’t need to beat the Yankees. And the 2007 Tampa Bay Rays beat the Yankees and still managed to lose to the Phillies.
- The Texas factor. The 2005 White Sox won the Series by beating a team from Texas as cursed then as the Rangers are now – the Houston Astros.
- George Bush used to own the Rangers. ‘Nuff said.
- Ex-Cub factor: This rule of baseball, nearly immutable, decrees that the team with more ex-Cubs will lose. The Giants have Mike Fontenot, and Mark DeRosa has been out all year with an injury. The Rangers, though, have Andres Blanco and Clay Rapada – and the Cubs originally drafted Josh Hamilton, the Rangers’ best player.
- The underdog factor. The last time the Giants won the World Series, of course, no one gave them a chance against the Indians who destroyed the American League in 1954. And the Giants won four straight.
But of course, don’t take my word for any of this. That’s why they play the games. Which will, of course, be Torture.