You Can't Argue With The Great Pumpkin

After decades of frustration in which San Francisco Giants fans have waited for a championship like Linus waiting in a pumpkin patch for the Great Pumpkin, it truly seems like this could be the year. No, not because of the statistical patterns concerning teams that take 2-0 leads in the World Series. I'm talking of the real reasons: the supernatural factors, including the intervention of the Great Pumpkin.

I'm sure Texas is an assembly of decent human beings. For one thing, they are no longer owned by George W. Bush. For another thing, they are no longer owned by Tom Hicks.

But Texas does not have Juan Uribe. He is the second cousin of Jose Uribe, starting shortstop for the Giants when I was a kid, and whose name inspired the "Oooo-reee--bayyy" chant that has now been transferred to Juan. It is a second chance after the Giants lost the 1989 World Series after the world literally shook. Sounds like a mystical connection to me.

In addition, there is the Halloween Factor. Obviously, it has been reported in the media how the Giants' team colors, orange and black, are in sync with Halloween. Plus, the Giants have the scary beard motif, which seems extra appropriate. However, there is a more important Halloween connection that has been overlooked up until now. The most popular animated Halloween TV special is almost certainly "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown"; Charles Schulz established a home and an ice rink and a museum in Santa Rosa, the town where I lived until I was nine.

Sure, Charlie Brown is known for getting knocked off the mound on pretty much every single pitch he threw in a baseball game, but before Peanuts came to an end, Charlie Brown hit a home run to win a game. Not even Nolan Ryan can argue with that. Plus, we have Cody Ross, our very own bald hero. Coincidence? I think not.

If you want a more logical rationale, let's look at the numbers. The year is 2010, and 10 is my favorite number. Plus, 20 plus 10 equals 30, which is my age. The Giants are my favorite team, and therefore their fate is clearly linked to attributes of my personality.

Spooky, isn't it?

Game 1

Sports are as much about potential as anything else. Yes, I know about winning rings, statistics, the Hall of Fame. But if you ask me, the anticipation before Game 1 of the World Series is as fundamental to our enjoyment of sports as is a win-loss record.

Spring Training in baseball epitomizes the mythologized notion of a fresh start, amazing potential. Each team is like Schrodinger's Cat: at the start of the year, such are the possibilities that the team both wins the championship and does not win the championship at the same time. It is only when the results play out that one possibility goes away.

If you win or if you lose, there is always another match, always another season. At least until your team disbands or you retire. This may diminish the value of a victory, but it can also mitigate the sting of a defeat. It all depends on your perspective.

This is why, after the Rangers took a 2-0 lead before I got home, it was still possible for the Giants to tie it 2-2 going into the bottom of the fourth inning. Even against Cliff Lee, who is a great pitcher; I will gnash my teeth when he is a Yankee next year, even though it isn't like the Giants need him. Still, it's not like he would be for the Dodgers, so there's that concept that the enemy of the Dodgers is my friend. See? The beauty of possibility.

(Speaking of possibility, I just read that there is a chance Newcastle United will sign Landon Donovan in the January transfer window. It's like when they signed Michael Owen, only better, because Landon Donovan isn't perpetually injured. The alliance of my favorite soccer team with my favorite American player would be outstanding.)

Both pitchers are settling in and getting quick innings. This is fun! Lee versus Lincecum! Two new teams in the World Series, the Giants versus the Rangers, new blood instead of the battle of the Brobdingnagian squads from Philly and NY that everyone expected.

(By the way, a brief aside to eTrade: you should know that I will never use your services; I will specifically go out of my way to avoid using your services, because of your endlessly lame commercials featuring that damn baby.)

So much for worrying about Andres Torres and his appendectomy! A beautiful double down the left field line with one out in the 5th puts a runner in scoring position for the go-ahead run. Let's go, Freddy Sanchez! I love extra base hits, because that eliminates the threat--mostly--of double plays. And Freddy doubles in Torres!

And now, of course, if I finish writing here, it will forever preserve a moment in time when the Giants were ahead and Pat Burrell draws a two out walk. So I think I will do that, and go cook pasta and chicken sausage, and enjoy the rest of the game away from the computer. Let's go, Giants!

But of course, possibilities aside, what really matters is the result. No one ever really loves the journey or moral victories. Those are platitudes for the rationalizing and the contemplative. When it comes to baseball, I wanna win.

Cue Russ Hodges

"Ragtag." "Improbable." "Bizarrely bearded." "These 'bleepin' guys."

These are some of the descriptions of the San Francisco Giants in the media from the east coast. I won't say there's an element of condescension, but that scent of fermented grape is not coming from wine I drank to toast the Giants' clinching of a spot in the World Series. For one thing, I didn't drink wine, but Calvadoon apple brandy, much more satisfying on a rainy, foggy night in San Francisco.

There is a certain element of magic to any playoff run, especially when you are considered the underdog, whether you adopt the underdog role as a chip on your shoulder or as house money to burn. On Wednesday night, I was walking home along Valencia Street, through a damp evening, and a crowd outside the Phoenix pub was being lead in a "Let's Go, Giants" rally chant by a man with a trombone. If that's not a bit of magic, I don't know what is.

But magic is in the eye of the beholder. Or in the voice of the announcer, as was the case of Russ Hodges' famous radio call of "The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!" after Bobby Thomson's 'Shot Heard Round The World."

Were the Phillies the better team? Well, the Phillies had the best record in baseball. I won't get into the question of an "on-paper" comparison of the teams, although that too could favor Philadelphia. All notions of the better team are irrelevant in the final analysis. All that matters is who wins the game. And last night in Philadelphia, the Giants won the pennant. The Phillies are going home.

(There is an interesting inverse proportion in San Francisco sports in terms of that reputation-result dichotomy. The Giants were considered rank outsiders to make the playoffs and are now National League champs; the 49ers were considered favorites to win the NFC West and have an abundance of talent, but are 1-6 now, and by measurement of their results, may be the worst football team in the NFL.)

The World Series starts Wednesday in the city by the bay. There is indeed magic in the air; sporting success weaves a new world of distraction and myth, legends and heroic moments, out of something whose stakes are not completely a matter of life and death. Sports stand in for the conflicts that trouble us, and give us comfort for a while.

Let's go, Giants!

The Fickle Size Of Expectation

Watching Manchester United waltz through West Bromwich Albion--2-0 at the 30 minute mark with a Javier Hernandez goal a highlight for my fantasy team--and knowing that Newcastle United are losing 2-0 at home to Wigan, I am confronted again with the question of expectations in sports.

It's hard to say that there is always a David versus Goliath factor, in the sense that 9 times out of 10 Goliath will win. West Brom recently beat Arsenal, after all. But there is a scale of economics that over the course of the season tends to weight the odds. I had hoped that Newcastle would come back up as a top-of-the-table club, that their relegation was a fluke. But it looks like they really have been on a slide, and that their exile in the Championship, even if they did bounce right back up, left them weakened as a club, not in a position to pay for the players they need to challenge the top teams.

This adds nuance to the season, in the sense that relegation battles and position in the standings become metaphors for adapting to one's station in life, and that winning a championship is not the only hallmark of a successful season.

The flip side of lowered expectations for Newcastle is the season that the Giants have had in Major League Baseball. For all the stress I went through in the final weeks of the pennant race, you would think that I had forgotten that the baseball preview magazine I read in April predicted San Francisco would finish second from last in the division, ahead of only San Diego. In fact, the Giants won the division on the final day of the season in a showdown with the Padres, whose second place finish helped underscore the reason why games are played in the field and not in the minds of journalists, who are kind of like meteorologists in that they are occasionally right, but clearly not prescient.

To look at things objectively, the Giants, in the playoffs for the first time since 2003, having beaten the Braves 3 games to 1 in the Divisional Series to advance to the National League Championship Series against the Phillies, are playing with house money. That may be an unfortunate metaphor in light of the Pete Rose story, but I'll go with it. Nevertheless, when the Giants lost game two against the Braves, I was distraught, convinced that every failure of the Giants was a failure of mine. Somewhere, I thought, a racist white conservative Republican fan of Atlanta was experiencing a moment of validation as a human being, which is utterly ridiculous, of course. Such a person could never be validated as a human being.

As I write this, West Brom knocks in a pinball goal, cutting the lead to 2-1. David is limbering up his slingshot arm.

So, with expectation being the fickle, changing, subjectively emotional beast it is, should I be satisfied with the Giants finishing in the top four teams, even if they can't overcome the Phillies, particularly with the Dodgers having suffered a shambles of a season? Probably. Would I be satisfied? Probably not, but watch this space. And more precisely, read what I write when content fills this space again.

And West Brom just tied Manchester United at Old Trafford. Wow. This is why we watch sports. Expectations are meant to be overturned.

Poisonous Barbs

Sports bring out the lunatic in me. If on balance I am a mild-mannered and agreeable person, I must be angelic when not watching sports. When I watch sports, I accuse the Atlanta Falcons of being racist for beating the 49ers, and I fear that every time the Padres beat the Giants--especially when it spoils a chance for the Giants to win the division--it could be taken as a sign that neo-conservative religious Republicans from a patriarchal system--or "Padres"--are superior to, you know, decent human beings.

It has been a frustrating couple of days, as the Giants have blown their first two chances to clinch the division, not even coming close to giving the Padres a contest; the 49ers played much better but still lost through some inexcusable mistakes--and yes, I say inexcusable knowing full well I would do no better, but pointing out that I'm not paid millions of dollars to avoid making those mistakes.

What is it about sports that turns me into a profanity-spewing, irrational madman, looking for second gunmen among the officiating crews?

Let's face it; the Giants were not expected to be in a position to challenge for a division title, so I should be happy they are doing so well. Baseball preview magazines picked them to finish fourth in the division, after all--those prognosticators should be trampled in spring training, not that I take these things personally. And yes, the 49ers were expected to play a competent brand of football, but still, why should I act as if their failures reflect upon my character? Why do we act as if athletes are totems whose success or failure has anything to do with us?

I think that we all want a simple measure of success or failure in life. How can we tell is we are doing well if there is no one to keep score? Hence Wall Street and the stock market. I mean, outside of material things, how do we keep track of how we are doing? Paying attention to our feelings? Come on. Only communists pay attention to their feelings. The rest of us need sports.

Or maybe I'm just a lunatic. A friend of mine said it was gutsy of me to watch the Giants' game today. Two things about that: I'm not watching it, just recording it in case we win; and that would be a rather depressing standard of bravery if watching a baseball game was "gutsy" of me.

Sports set their hooks in us. We want myth, we want heroes, but it is easy to forget there is always another day, another season. We can get too high after a win, too low after a loss, and always come back for more. Is there a strange vitality to that, or are we just crazy?

The existence of fantasy sports proves that both possibilities are correct.

Okay, so I'm tuning in to the Giants game now. Might as well face the inevitable. We are up 2-0, top of the 7th, 3-2 count, two on, two out. Bring on the pain. It's better than thinking of the pain and poverty around the world. Right?

And we just might win.

Ramon Ramirez strikes out Miguel Tejada to end the 7th. Go Giants!