subject: Padecky: Outsiders Won't Appreciate Giants [print this page] Excuse me, I see you are wearing a Yankee capExcuse me, I see you are wearing a Yankee cap. Are you a Yankee fan?
As questions go, I admit, it wasnt my most penetrating.
The man allowed that he was.
Wow, I said, can you believe the Giants are better than the Yankees? Thats amazing to me.
The man stared at me for a second with this look of controlled hostility, turned and walked out of the post office without attending to his business.
Based on this one-case study, my theory had been confirmed. A Yankee fan recognizes the World Series penthouse is Yankee property and they occasionally rent it out to the less fortunate. The Giants are the renters now, merely visitors, and will be flushed from memory once spring training begins.
It is a viewpoint, I am afraid, that is shared by more than Yankee fans. The magic, the thrill, the spectacle, call it what you will, that carried San Francisco to its first World Series title carries very little currency outside Northern California.
OK, theyll say, even a blind hog can root an acre a day. OK, they had their little fun.
They now can wait for another 56 years. Really, how can we take them seriously? Mays, McCovey and Marichal didnt win a World Series but Cody Ross and Andres Torres and Juan Uribe did? Huh? The American sports fan likes pedigree. He wants his winners to have big-time players, all-time names on the championship trophy. And, no, Tim Lincecum does not qualify as such, after only three full years in the big leagues.
Its as if big-time players are necessary to validate ultimate victories. Sure, every World Series has a Scott Brosius, a .257 career hitter who became a .471 hitter and MVP of the 1998 World Series. But the 2010 Giants? It was like they sent a parade of Scott Brosiuses to the plate and that simply wont do, not to those of us who worship at the altar of American Idol.
And what a shame it is, to have such a dismissive point of view. It misses the larger, charismatic picture, that the 2010 San Francisco Giants were a veritable force of nature.
To see the Giants was to understand them, to really understand the value of that little and often under-valued quality called chemistry.
Ask any general manager in baseball and hell tell you the same thing: When I am through stocking a team, the first thing that should impress me when I look at the final roster is the fit, the fit of personalities, that we are all pulling the sled in the same direction, at the same speed. The guy with the most talent will not find it awkward to go out after the game and have a burger with the guy with the least talent.
If chemistry doesnt happen, the manager at the end of the season will tell his GM that it felt like he was managing a bunch of pre-schoolers. Talent is never enough. Thats why the 2010 Giants should be admired and studied for the template they provided all of baseball. As Abe Lincoln once said, a house divided can not stand.
That holds true of a country staying together as well as baseball teams.
To pardon the mixed metaphor, the Giants caught lightning in a bottle because they kept pulling the same sled. They never had the most talent in baseball. You could find maybe five rosters who had more overall skill. So when they won the division on the last day of the season, as their fan base said lets not greedy with expectation, the players shrugged.
The other shoe sure was to fall, because the other teams surely had more talent. The shoe never fell because it was never all about talent. Sure, Cain and Lincecum and Bumgarner pitched lights out, but the Giants still had to field and still had to hit.
The home run-happy baseball fan could accept 80 percent pitching and 20 percent hitting if this was the pitching-rich 1960s.
But this isnt the 1960s. This is still The Time of The Big Fly. Its what fueled the steroid rage of the last 20 years. Baseballs money-makers saw the lust for it in their fans and so they gave the issue a blind eye. And while the power numbers have decreased, the home run is still the magnetic intersection where all truly worthy memories meet. Just notice the amount of time ESPN devotes in its nightly recaps for home runs as opposed to the well-placed fastball.
The Giants won the World Series and a murmur went out among the Yankee fans and everyone else who didnt believe in the pedigree of the Giants or in the manner in which they won. It cant be over. Just cant. There has to be something else, like a Super World Series to follow. And if the Giants win that, there has to be a Super Duper World Series.
Play long enough and a true champion will emerge.
So that Yankee fan had to walk away and so did everyone else accustomed to home runs and big names, addicted to the sizzle of the sensational and photogenic swing of the bat.
Pitching and the well-timed hit by Juan Uribe just cant be enough. But it was.
Because Uribe and all the other bit players were not made to feel like excess baggage.
So many are not willing to accept the likes of Andres Torres and the Cody Ross have a place on baseballs ultimate stage. But they did. And they always will. Unless, of course, the World Series becomes a Home Run Derby.
