A Wonderfully Wonderfully Fun Wonderful Matter
I use this blog to write a lot about what I see going on in the World around and hope to do a decent job of articulating how much more wonderful the Kingdom is.
But tonight I simply have to get into the official open record a truly wonderful matter I've been waiting forty years for. It is simply this.
My favorite major league baseball team, the San Francisco Giants, are indeed
WORLD CHAMPIONS.
I can't even believe I'm writing those very words, but I can officially, fully, completely, and truthfully write in great big superfont capital letters
WORLD CHAMPION SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS.
I'm not going to go into all the splendid thrills of rooting for this team, nor detail the incessantly turgid of despair waiting for our team to finally get a ring, or as my good friend and I have always said, to do the dance on the mound. (And for those who'd say the Giants already have world championships, those were in New York. Just not the same.)
I just want to share with you two moments that I think about in all of this. Two simple moments in my life that are light years apart in emotional substance. I could write a book about this man's Giants fandom. For now, just these two items.
The first was when I entered a major league baseball park for the very first time, this one Candlestick Park in the summer of 1971. I was blown away, as all youngsters are, by the color and pageantry of a real live game. They were playing the Cardinals, and we won that game. I even think Willie Mays hit a home run, but it is hard to recall. I was ten years old and just liked it all.
Fast forward to 1987, this moment featuring the Cardinals also. This was about as harrowingly depressing as it could ever be. I don't know why I remember it so well, the particular image of me just looking out into the misty ominous darkness through the front windshield. Perhaps it was just because the oppression of my despair was so crushing at that moment that it stood out.
We had just given up the NLCS to the Cardinals. We were up 3-2 going to St. Louis where we lost the sixth game 1-0 on a handful of really stupid things that happened against us. The seventh game was over early when their light hitting shortstop hit a three-run homer to give them a whopping lead we couldn't overcome.
The evening of that game, for some reason I cannot for the life of me remember, I was driving alone down Hillside Boulevard in Colma near San Francisco, just along the southwest side of San Bruno Mountain. As I drove I just remember having a wretchedly shellshocked feeling, one I will never forget and never want to experience again. Yes, I know it's just baseball and all that, but if you are such a passionate fan of your team, you can relate.
The thing is, if you know what's in Colma then you'd know why this was such a perfect picture of that despondancy. Colma is essentially one big graveyard. It is cemetary after cemetary after cemetary. As I drove it was just dark and depressing and damned awful.
Tonight, the complete opposite of that feeling showered over me.
Just pure joy. Rapturous bountiful exhilarating joy.
It is just baseball, yeah. But tonight God bestowed a small blessing upon Giants fans everywhere who've stayed true to Our Boys no matter how heart-splitting things have been.
Tonight it happened.
They did the dance on the mound.
_
But tonight I simply have to get into the official open record a truly wonderful matter I've been waiting forty years for. It is simply this.
My favorite major league baseball team, the San Francisco Giants, are indeed
WORLD CHAMPIONS.
I can't even believe I'm writing those very words, but I can officially, fully, completely, and truthfully write in great big superfont capital letters
WORLD CHAMPION SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS.
I'm not going to go into all the splendid thrills of rooting for this team, nor detail the incessantly turgid of despair waiting for our team to finally get a ring, or as my good friend and I have always said, to do the dance on the mound. (And for those who'd say the Giants already have world championships, those were in New York. Just not the same.)
I just want to share with you two moments that I think about in all of this. Two simple moments in my life that are light years apart in emotional substance. I could write a book about this man's Giants fandom. For now, just these two items.
The first was when I entered a major league baseball park for the very first time, this one Candlestick Park in the summer of 1971. I was blown away, as all youngsters are, by the color and pageantry of a real live game. They were playing the Cardinals, and we won that game. I even think Willie Mays hit a home run, but it is hard to recall. I was ten years old and just liked it all.
Fast forward to 1987, this moment featuring the Cardinals also. This was about as harrowingly depressing as it could ever be. I don't know why I remember it so well, the particular image of me just looking out into the misty ominous darkness through the front windshield. Perhaps it was just because the oppression of my despair was so crushing at that moment that it stood out.
We had just given up the NLCS to the Cardinals. We were up 3-2 going to St. Louis where we lost the sixth game 1-0 on a handful of really stupid things that happened against us. The seventh game was over early when their light hitting shortstop hit a three-run homer to give them a whopping lead we couldn't overcome.
The evening of that game, for some reason I cannot for the life of me remember, I was driving alone down Hillside Boulevard in Colma near San Francisco, just along the southwest side of San Bruno Mountain. As I drove I just remember having a wretchedly shellshocked feeling, one I will never forget and never want to experience again. Yes, I know it's just baseball and all that, but if you are such a passionate fan of your team, you can relate.
The thing is, if you know what's in Colma then you'd know why this was such a perfect picture of that despondancy. Colma is essentially one big graveyard. It is cemetary after cemetary after cemetary. As I drove it was just dark and depressing and damned awful.
Tonight, the complete opposite of that feeling showered over me.
Just pure joy. Rapturous bountiful exhilarating joy.
It is just baseball, yeah. But tonight God bestowed a small blessing upon Giants fans everywhere who've stayed true to Our Boys no matter how heart-splitting things have been.
Tonight it happened.
They did the dance on the mound.
_
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