More Unconditional Love

I love baseball.  I always have. Since I come from a family that is about almost every sport except baseball, I believe that I was called to baseball for a reason that has not been revealed. I that seems ridiculous, but I have loved baseball since 1961 when Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle were having their home run race to break Babe Ruth's record. (Maris won because Mickey got sick) I was 8 that summer.

I knew very little about baseball. I knew that I would follow my brother to an empty lot at the end of our street.  He played baseball with the boys in the neighborhood, and they would not let me play. I knew that Walter Cronkite would give an update about the race on the evening news, and I never missed it.  I knew that girls played softball, and boys played baseball.  That meant that baseball was better and softball was something they made up later. I tried softball, but I was more prone to soccer and rowing. I threw like a girl.

In Buffalo, where I grew up, there was a minor league team that went away, the Buffalo Bisons. The team came back several years later.  I moved to Massachusetts after college, and that was when the real love set in.  Fenway Park. It had its own T station.  You could just take the subway. Bleacher seats were closer to the field the very close Green Monster.  On a hot summer night with nothing to do, I could take $20 to the park and have a great time of it.  It was before Roger Clemens won a Cy Young. I am always hoping it was before Performance Enhancing Drugs. They were still trying to win the World Series. I got everything about baseball.  Hot dogs. Statistics. Hope. Agony. I stayed with the Red Sox for a long time. Even after I moved to California, I could not let go of my team. I cried when they won the World Series last year.  And by then, I was already a fan of the San Francisco Giants.

Love for the San Francisco Giants was a different kind of thing.  I watched them cautiously at first.  Fenway was always full of business men wearing ties. They would just show up after work.  In San Francisco, the fans were more fun. Fewer ties. Lots of orange wigs and signs.  What was not to love about the G-men?  This summer has been the ultimate.  All that winning. There was no suffering because as Duane Kuiper told us, "They cannot lose." It sure seemed that way. That was in May. Madison Bumgarner was pitcher of the month. They were 9.5 games ahead of the Dodgers.  While hate is not a popular idea in San Francisco, it is okay to hate the Dodgers. And somewhere along the great reign as the team with the best record in baseball imploded. In just a short while, the record shrunk to where it is today.  The Giants and Dodgers are tied for first place in the NL West. The Oakland A's are the team with best record in baseball. I can't be for the A's, they play my Red Sox.

San Francisco: 46-36 (.561), Los Angeles: 47-37 (.560)  After Timmy Lincecum's second career no-hitter, there was going to be a spark.  The Giants have not won since then, but they have been playing better baseball.  The pitching has been stronger. The defense been fighting. The games have been better, more competitive.  But the losing has been really hard on me. I want the momentum to swing the Giants' way. Now, the Dodgers have it.

The hardest part has been watching the fans who had previously celebrated every run, are getting mean and nasty about losing. There are things I am really pissed about. Mostly, I just want them to seem like they want to win. That's when the have fun.

It was certainly cool that Buster Posey put an end to Homer Bailey's possible no-hitter. There were other nice pieces of baseball in the game.  So what if the return to excellence did not happen as a giant explosion after the No-No.  If anything, baseball is a game about patience. That is why it is good. Keep going my 2014 Giants. You ARE giants, and capable of true greatness. I don't care what anyone says.