Giants Fan's Burning Question: Why Do I Do This To Myself?
Categories: Sports
Out the window, across the channel, the parking lot is filling up. The percentage of orange-clad people is hitting a critical point. Barbecues are smoking and fans, giddy at the prospect of being out of doors on a gorgeous Friday afternoon -- let alone attending a Giants playoff game -- are awkwardly chasing down errant baseballs on the blacktop.
As a long-suffering Giants fan, your humble narrator ought to feel a wave of camaraderie. But, oddly, that's not exactly how it goes. Somehow, I only feel alone around people.
Our chilly, miserable excuse for a summer was my 25th rooting for the baseball team that plays its games in the city of my birth. I am now older than all but a handful of the players. So I've had a lot of time to think about just what it is to be a Giants fan. But it's hard to make yourself think hard -- because the answers aren't always so comforting.
Just as Jonathan Sanchez can be effectively wild, fans can be rationally irrational. It doesn't make sense to carry the weight of this team's failures, to fade off in the middle of a meeting and suddenly see Reggie Sanders backpedaling and looking up as Scott Spiezio's homer sails into the right field bleachers. But we do. It doesn't make sense to invest so much of one's time, energy, or even identity in, frankly, a business. But we do. And, when it comes to the level of pain that sometimes leads to, I can only say that it bothers me how much it bothers me.
It's a bit bizarre to think that a great deal of the justification for years of following one of the league's most mercurial baseball teams is the moment -- a split second, really -- when the Giants finally win that World Series. In this blink of an eye, the decades of pain, futility, and heartache will all be shunted to an internal memory file marked "BEFORE." At this moment, as the stadium erupts, the bar room explodes, or Civic Center Plaza bursts, cognition will kick in. There'll be some manner of dénouement, a moment of clarity, and a transcendent explanation of what it was all about. Everything will make sense. The anxiety will be gone. And every day thereafter will be just a little bit sweeter.
And then we'll get on with our lives. Hey, it's just baseball.
Follow us on Twitter at @TheSnitchSF and @SFWeekly
As a long-suffering Giants fan, your humble narrator ought to feel a wave of camaraderie. But, oddly, that's not exactly how it goes. Somehow, I only feel alone around people.
Our chilly, miserable excuse for a summer was my 25th rooting for the baseball team that plays its games in the city of my birth. I am now older than all but a handful of the players. So I've had a lot of time to think about just what it is to be a Giants fan. But it's hard to make yourself think hard -- because the answers aren't always so comforting.
Just as Jonathan Sanchez can be effectively wild, fans can be rationally irrational. It doesn't make sense to carry the weight of this team's failures, to fade off in the middle of a meeting and suddenly see Reggie Sanders backpedaling and looking up as Scott Spiezio's homer sails into the right field bleachers. But we do. It doesn't make sense to invest so much of one's time, energy, or even identity in, frankly, a business. But we do. And, when it comes to the level of pain that sometimes leads to, I can only say that it bothers me how much it bothers me.
It's a bit bizarre to think that a great deal of the justification for years of following one of the league's most mercurial baseball teams is the moment -- a split second, really -- when the Giants finally win that World Series. In this blink of an eye, the decades of pain, futility, and heartache will all be shunted to an internal memory file marked "BEFORE." At this moment, as the stadium erupts, the bar room explodes, or Civic Center Plaza bursts, cognition will kick in. There'll be some manner of dénouement, a moment of clarity, and a transcendent explanation of what it was all about. Everything will make sense. The anxiety will be gone. And every day thereafter will be just a little bit sweeter.
And then we'll get on with our lives. Hey, it's just baseball.
Follow us on Twitter at @TheSnitchSF and @SFWeekly
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