As I think I've said before, I feel sort of stuck, right now, as far as these posts. I really am not feeling very analytic about the Giants' march through the postseason. But I doubt anyone wants to wallow in nostalgia with me; unlike my friend Steven Rubio, I don't mind doing that myself, and I don't mind doing it here occasionally, but I'm not going to overdo it. (By the way, Giants fans -- if you're not reading Steven Rubio, you should be). I will note, as I read his stuff, that I'm an oddly disconnected Giants fan...not only am I in Texas now, but I've never lived in San Francisco, and while I like it just fine and I do have family there now, and I love the Bay Area and absolutely love Oakland, the bottom line is that for me rooting for the Giants has very little to do with San Francisco. That's OK; I had to suffer mostly alone (well, with my family, but that's about it) during the long years 1972-1985 when the Giants were a clown franchise, and I spend the last decade having people coming up to me and demanding to know how I could possibly root for the Greatest Baseball Player Since Ruth. Including people I barely knew, Including strangers (I wear a fair number of Giants tee-shirts). So there's that.
At any rate, I need something concrete to hang this post on, and here it is: There's something on this year's TV broadcasts that is just incredibly stupid and which, despite myself, I just love. For some reason, the folks at Fox have decided to compare various player accomplishments to the postseason history of the franchise (Giants only, since of course the Rangers don't really have that sort of history). Now, as I said, this is profoundly stupid. The McGraw Giants, and the Terry Giants, and the Durocher Giants didn't have a "postseason." They had a World Series, over and out. So Giants team "postseason" records are just foolish -- most postseason records are silly, and since I guess Bud Selig wants another round, it's all going to be meaningless in a bit, again.
But I'm really enjoying it, anyway. They've put Carl Hubbell's name on the screen, and Mathewson, and even some pretty obscure ones, and I'm enjoying the whole thing a lot. Who cares if it makes any sense?
My only question about it is that I seem to recall that it was Fox Sports that, when they took over baseball broadcasts, were going to banish history. I'm pretty sure it was Fox that supposedly was never going to mention anyone who was dead, and that even applied to Babe Ruth. At least as far as I can tell, their new strategy is 100% in the opposite direction; they wound up giving a trivia question, I think in Game Two, that drew us to someone from the 1934 Tigers that I didn't even know (or at least remember knowing), and I must be easily in the top 10% of the audience as far as knowledge of baseball history is concerned, and I wouldn't be surprised if I was in the top 1%.
So the postseason history stuff is stupid, but I love it. And I think I'll stop there. I guess by next Friday the Series will be over, one way or another...I'll probably post once after the last game, but I'm trying to keep it to a minimum. Anyway, you know who I'm rooting for.
Friday, October 29, 2010
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Thanks for the kind words. I'd just like to point out that, outside of a random week or two in my wannabe hippie days, I have never lived in San Francisco, either. But growing up in a working-class suburb of The City gave San Francisco a glow of possibilities for me. I've lived in Berkeley for almost four decades now, and I'm not sorry ... SF is too big for me. But at times like this, we are all San Franciscans.
ReplyDeleteWhat? You'll only post once after the last game and keep it to a minimum? You waited 5 decades for this and you're keeping it to a minimum? Really???
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