Basebrawl -- We Hate Other Teams For Reasons We Can't Remember and Reasons We Can't Forget
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It'd take a fairly cynical person to rip the Giants too hard for their overachieving -- yet still deeply disappointing -- season. Yet the oft-repeated Tom Hanks refrain is incorrect: There is crying in baseball. But there is no tying in baseball. You win or you lose. Moral victories are for losers. The Giants, mathematically eliminated from the postseason last night, haven't finished on top since the Eisenhower administration. And them's the facts.
So, as is all too often the case, the playoff races force Giants fans to play the game "Who do I hate least?" For supporters with long memories, this is an exercise eerily similar to the conversation my colleague Benjamin Wachs had with a woman in Scotland. Sure, she could let go of the hatred for those who'd wronged her people through the generations, and even forgive the death and horror wrought by Bonnie Prince Charlie's vain attempt to wrest away the English crown. But, she said, she would never forgive nor forget the Massacre of Glencoe. Never, do you hear me? Never!
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| We remember how you failed in 1993, Armando Reynoso. We remember it well. |
The Braves, for their part, won approximately 37 consecutive division titles in the 1990s and beyond, and have only one World Series win to show for it -- a riveting 1995 triumph over a Cleveland team everyone outside of Georgia was pulling for. The Braves were on national television so much that the team's annoying tics became unbearable; if we could have reached into the TV and smacked coach Leo Mazzone for his compulsive rocking back and forth or bellowed at manager Bobby Cox to empty the diaper that must be inducing his waddling walk, we'd have done so.
This is the team that also unleashed the "Tomahawk Chop" on the nation and, even worse, gave John Rocker national relevance and the ability to open his mouth and tell the world the way things ought to be (Imagine Larry the Cable guy, but not funny. Ah, crap, sorry, let me rephrase that...).
Finally, the Braves are the team that beat out the Giants in 1993 by winning 104 games to the Giants' 103; if I was truly bitter I'd mention something about Atlanta picking up Fred McGriff in a patently unfair, one-sided cost-cutting trade from San Diego that any proper commissioner of baseball would have overruled. But, suffice to say, it was a great team that outplayed a not-quite-as-great San Francisco squad.
And then there's the Rockies. Our colleagues at The Westword in Denver felt threatened when we brought up the team's commitment to become the most Christian organization in all of sports -- to the point of scouting Christian players. This paternalistic banning of men's magazines and damn-near compulsory prayer group in the showers was all the doing of departed manager Clint Hurdle, they said. Of course, that conveniently ignores the fact that general manager Dan O'Dowd and CEO Charlie Monfort are still firmly ensconced; these men have attributed the will of the almighty for Colorado's success and have trumpeted that the team's adherence to the ways of Jesus makes it morally superior to other ballclubs. Very un-Dude.
And then there's the real reason a burning ember of Rockie-hatred burns within. In that fateful year of 1993 -- the Rox inaugural season -- the team played Atlanta 13 times. It lost all 13 games. Had Colorado gone even 1-12, it would have meant everything for San Francisco. But on the last day of the season, when Salomon Torres (SALOMON TORRES!) couldn't propel the Giants to a four-game, season-ending sweep at Dodger Stadium, losing 12-1, Colorado lost for the 13th time to Atlanta, 5-3.
We will never forgive you for the Massacre of Glencoe, Rockies. Never!
Unless you play the Dodgers in the postseason.
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