Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Winning

I was gonna save this 'til I could speak rationally about it but, I can't sleep (and just got a text message), so why not now?

Wow. Just fucking WOW.

Here's the thing: We all knew this was gonna happen. We all KNEW we were gonna win. This team. This scrappy, rag tag mafioso of misfits and outcasts, we just knew. Somewhere in our bones we knew that this young, insanely good pitching staff would carry us through. That all those torturous close games all season long had just been a proving ground for us to handle any kind of pressure. That some bat, on some night, would come through when we needed it to. That's how it's worked all season long.

Not one superstar. Not even one regular star. Just a series of guys having fun, playing baseball, enjoying the hell out of it. There's the crazy like a fox, incredibly intelligent, but out of his mind closer. The journeyman first baseman who has never been on a winning team and his college teammate who was almost out of the game. There's the ROY candidate who they debated about bringing up from the minors. The guy we picked up off of waivers WAIVERS just to keep away from San Diego who ends up being the MVP of the NLCS.

And we knew. We knew going to Texas that we had this. We won games 1 & 2 decisively. We lost one. We regrouped. No one else knew. No one in the national media had any idea. But we knew.

But still. You're cautious. You have to be. As a sports fan, it is your duty to be pessimistic. You never ever say, "Yeah, we totes got this." It's jinx juice. You shouldn't even THINK overly confident. Because a good sports fan is always waiting for it all to come crashing down. For every nerve racking, torturous 1 run win by these Giants, there is a corresponding nerve racking, torturous 1 run loss. (Good god, look at that end of June stretch.)

And Giants fans? We've been here before. We've been so close and watched it implode.

But not this time. Because we totes got this.

Like I said yesterday, it wasn't this way all season. I think I attended more losses than wins. I shook my head in disgust at silent bats. I watched a miserable outing v. the Brewers in person. (A game that should have been about 11-0 and is not accurately reflected in the 3-0 that it was.) We watched Zito and Lincecum struggle. For most of the season we got just plain crazy Brian Wilson working us into a jam in seemingly every game. We grounded into double plays over and over and over again. We left men on base, something so frustrating that my dad said, "Well, at least we do it consistently."

But then. Then the stars aligned. Wilson, with the most saves in a season in franchise history, became a master of his domain. (I would say that started with going into the All Star game and just straight dominating.) Timmy found his rhythm. Zito didn't, but that's okay, others did. Cain, who for so long has been the quiet, steady pitching leader of this team, got the run support when he needed it. And a 21 year old from North Carolina who, and I will never get over this, bought his wife a bull calf for her birthday, just straight dealed. Cody Ross became a hero. Edgar Renteria became a hero. Pat Burrell...as Andy tweeted: In 2 World Series appearances, Burrell is 1-27 at the plate. And yet has 2 world series rings. Baseball. What's not to love?

And it was ours. It was gloriously and completely ours. That trophy, with all the pointy little pennants, was coming to San Francisco for the first time ever. EVER.

Orange and black never looked so good...

1 comment:

  1. And someday we can tell young Giants fans what it was like to watch this amazing season and World Series. We have seen a Texas slaughter. We can describe the intensity of the parade. What a great time to be alive!

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