The Most Difficult of Winters

It was bad enough last year (2009) to see not only the Dodgers falter in the NLCS for the second straight time, but then to watch the hated Yankees take it all.  Now this year those failures were compounded with a Giants World Series victory.  That was additional salt being poured in our open wound?  And to make matters worse for me, living in the Bay Area with Giant fan step sons and Giant fans at my work place, the misery is a daily event.  I can’t put 2010 in my rear view mirror fast enough.  It has been the most difficult of winters.

While Christmas shopping, you couldn’t avoid the Giant paraphernalia.  World Championship pennants, hats, t-shirts, jackets, posters, pictures in frames, mugs, stuffed animals, license plate frames, underwear.  You name it, if they can put a World Championship logo on it or a photo of a World Series Championship trophy,  it was for sale.

I can hardly blame them.  This is a fan base that has gone 56 years without a world series champion.  This is a franchise that never had awarded this city a title and they are enjoying it.  Of course, San Francisco did it's share of vandalism and revelry that got out of hand following the championship. (Depicted in the photo below).  Something not unique to San Francisco.

  

But back to baseball.  I find it hard to believe that the Giants, with all those hall of famers over the years, never won a  world championship.  A lot of Dodger clubs very much inferior offensively were able to win titles and the Giants never could figure it out, until this year.  I don’t care what many of the cybermetric types say.  Pitching wins championships.  The 2010 Giant club was made up of a group of misfits that could barely hit themselves out of a paper bag.  What they had was outstanding pitching.  Something those Dodger clubs of ’63, ’65 and ’66 had.  It only took the Giants forty plus years to figure it out.

So, here we are December 29, 2010,  47 more days until pitchers and catchers report.  Only 60 days until the first pre-season game, (which is February 26th, the earliest I have ever remembered spring training starting).  I am already lining up a visit to Glendale, AZ for the week of March 20th.  A brighter day is on the horizon.