Recently, Grizzlie Antagonist did a great job of point out the levels of hypocrisy Grant has sunk to in his neverending quest to suck up to the Giants. What some of you may not know is that the feud between Grant and GA goes back many years - all the way back, in fact, to the fateful season of 1995, when Matt Williams went down to injury and was replaced by an unlikely candidate - one Mike Benjamin, who responded by going on an offensive tear that set all-time records. Posting on alt.sports.baseball.sf-giants, a young Grant clung to his defense of Williams as the "best #5 hitter in baseball," despite the incredible accomplishments of Benjamin. Grizzlie Antagonist - then posting as "Firebird Flambé" - took grave offense, calling Grant a sycophant and Bob Quinn apologist who had "lost his edge." After copying and pasting Grant's legendary mid-1994 screed, "Todd Benzinger: Super-star or Stupid-star?" GA ripped Grant to shreds on the Williams/Benjamin issue. For those of you whose Internet Giants fandom doesn't go back this far, I've taken the liberty of digging up GA's legendary takedown. Here you go:

asbsfg: Obviously, Matt Williams (masturbates furiously) is the Best 5th Hitter in the Game today. He’s (sign of the cross) our best third baseman since Chris Brown. He is worth (eating own boogers) 600 At--bats Per Season. OK, he’s overpaid. He’s owed millions of dollars - we're talking Howard Johnson money here. But that’s all the more reason why the Giants can’t let him go.

Voice of Sanity: Well…

asbsfg: And this topic is not open for discussion. If you make trouble by saying anything bad -- anything bad at all against Our Baldy -- I will call upon my Dick Armey to cut a fart in your general direction. I will have them taunt you a second time. Or better still, we’ll all treat you like someone who talks about "points" and "overtime" in the context of a baseball setting.

Sanity: Matt Williams…

asbsfg: Isn’t he WONDERFUL? He’s (gargles unintelligibly) the Best 5th Hitter in the Game today! He’s (touching scrotum)A Proven Winner. And he is worth (fingering rosary) 600 At Bats Per Season! And he’s owed enough money to sign Joe Orsulak and David Segui!

Sanity: Mike Benjamin…

asbsfg: You see, you’re making trouble!!!! You’re using the M Word! You’re using the B Word! Troops! Troops! We have a "MB" troublemaker on our hands!

Sanity: But Benjamin…

asbsfg: I’ll bet you think that he’s a good hitter, don’t you?

Sanity: I don’t know, but…

asbsfg: Hey everybody! Stupid here thinks that He Whose Pointed Chin Shall Not Be Mentioned is a good hitter.

Don’t you realize that…that HITTER you’re talking about is the beneficiary of a "Small Sample Size"? Small Sample Size! Small Sample Size! Don’t you realize that "Small Sample Sizes" are worthless?

Sanity: OK, but are you completely discounting his performance against the Expos and Cubs the last three days? I mean, absolutely completely discounting the fact that he set an ALL TIME MAJOR LEAGUE RECORD with 14 hits in just three games? I mean, do you think it even remotely possible that Matt Williams in 1995 could start 3 games and get 14 hits in given an infinite number of chances in a sequence of alternative universes? Do you even know how many games before he got hurt it took Matt Williams to get 14 hits? Nine.

asbsfg: That...ruggedly handsome utility infielder...was the beneficiary of a Small Sample Size! A Small Sample Size! The B-Boy‘s name must be blotted out entirely! He’s creating a "third base controversy" where there shouldn’t be any! Matt Williams(pees himself) is the Best 5th Hitter in the Game today. He’s (touching prostate) possibly even better than Chris Brown. He is worth(viciously self-flagellating) 600 At Bats Per Season. And he’s owed enough money to bring Manny Trillo out of retirement!

And Williams is NOT EVIL! He’s NOT EVIL! I don’t care what you say! Matt Williams had NOTHING TO DO with John Hinkley shooting Ronald Reagan. He had NOTHING TO DO with the renewal of the Geraldo Rivera show! Hey everybody, I’ve got some troll here who’s accusing Williams of crimes against humanity!

Sanity: Technically speaking, Williams has never actually reached 600 at bats since 1990, and he couldn’t possibly reach it this year because of his having been on the DL. He missed 600 innings last year by virtue of the strike ending the season.

But really, that 600 at bats per year thing is a deception that you’ve fallen for. Those at bats are going to be filled by SOMEONE.

At least, conceivably, they could come from outside. If Benjamin doesn’t pan out or doesn’t stay healthy, the Giants might find another Dave Martinez from somewhere. Or they could even conceivably come from within the organization. John Patterson could be converted from second base, or Steve Scarsone could be a fantastic choice as well. Something. Essentially, the Giants could do the same things that other teams do at crunch time when looking for more banger studs. But those 600 at bats are going to be filled by SOMEONE. Would you rather have the Giants aspire to have them be filled by a player with a demonstrable history of getting 14 hits in in 3 games?

asbsfg: You're blowing my mind, you magnificent bastard!

Sanity: 14 hits. Because 14 hits in 18 at bats is better than anything Matt Williams has ever done. And would you rather pay "Chris Sabo in his prime" money and get Chris Sabo in his prime, or get Chris Sabo now, with his sports goggles fogged up?

asbsfg: I know! I know! Chris Sabo in his prime!

Sanity: Good. Because, as three HyperCard presentations would demonstrate, you’re going to pay Bo Jackson money regardless. So you might as well find a guy who was good for his last three games than a guy who wasn't.

asbsfg: But Barry Williams (swaddles self) is the Best 5th Hitter in the Game today. He’s (licks own left tit erotically) like Chris Brown on steroids. He is worth (fingering rectum) 600 At Bats Per Season. And he’s owed enough money to bring Ron Fairly and Wayne Hagin back to the KNBR broadcast booth! And the topic is not open for discussion!

Sanity: You realize, don’t you, that Mike Benjamin is out of options? So when Williams comes off the DL, the Giants would likely lose Benjamin if they tried to demote him in order to make room for Williams, because lord knows every team in baseball is practically falling over themselves to sign some utility infielder with no history of Major League success except for three games? If Benjamin continues to mash the ball, are you suggesting that the Giants should still just cut Benjamin loose to make room for Williams?

asbsfg: Yes! Well, maybe! Maybe that…that person you keep talking about could go back to the bench or something. But the thing is, we don’t need a 5th Hitter Controversy. Matt Williams (sodomizes farm animals) is the Best 5th Hitter in the Game today. He’s (touching small boys in their special area) practically Chris Brown's pagan god. He is worth (sniffing used jock straps) 600 At Bats Per Season.

Sanity: Look, none of that is true, based on the last three whole games he played in before going on the DL! I mean, if you really want the 4 hits he got in those games instead of the 14 Mike Benjamin just got in three games, you're never going to end up with the .778 batting average Mike Benjamin now projects to hit for the remainder of his career!

asbsfg: 18 At Bats! Small Sample Size! Small Sample Size!

Sanity: OK. But he's had a solid career on the basis of being great last year, and horrible from 1987-1989. Which of those do you think I'm choosing to believe is the real Matt Williams, considering that I've already decided that he sucks?

asbsfg: This is utterly moronic! I’m the guy who posted that awesome ASCII art of a chick blowing a centaur, and you're just some troll posting from CompuServe! Only a troll could possibly think that there's any room for improvement in the 5th hitter position.

But OK! OK! Since you're writing this weird screed that you somehow seem to think demonstrates your argumentative prowess, I’m going to suddenly and for no reason switch tactics and make a magnanimous concession here. Maybe a little 5th hitter controversy isn’t such a bad thing. Maybe we can even consider keeping that…that…B Creature around for as long as he’s hitting .778. Though a TRUE Giants fan would have rooted for that B Creature to suddenly fall to the ground, clutching himself and crying out for mommy so as not to embarrass the great, handsome, and magnificently well-hung Matt Williams during his recovery.

Sanity: (sighs) OK. Then assuming that Benjamin continues to suddenly be the best hitter in baseball history, whom on the Giants roster would you demote -- and possibly lose to the waiver wire altogether -- in order to make room for Zito?

asbsfg: No, stupid! That’s not the question. The question is, why are you so powerful and almighty, and able to dispatch my sycophantic tendencies with the mighty, mighty power of your humble newsreader?

Well, not really, of course. But pretty awesome. Good for a laugh.

It's game 4 in Arlington, and things are looking good for the blue-and-red-and-horn clad clan. It's the bottom of the 9th, and the Giants are up 4-0. There's already one out. Madison Bumgarner dominated the Rangers for eight innings, allowing just three hits and no runs, and Brian Wilson appears to be well on his way to shutting down the heart of the Rangers' lineup to close it out. A hush has fallen on the ballpark.

A hush punctuated by one person, that is. One fan can't hold her feelings back any longer. She lets loose and loses her shit - and, amazingly, it's all caught on camera and broadcasted live to the world.

My alleged RAGE has been a McCoven meme for years, but I can never hold a candle to this amazing woman. I give to you RAGE: A Play in Six Acts

Amazing.

Last year I came up with an idea for a Fanpost: predicting where the following season's Top 10 prospects would look. Well, we don't quite have our top ten list yet, but Chuckie Jones seems destined to win #8, and Ehire Adrianza and Jorge Bucardo are well ahead of the pack for the last two spots in the top ten, so I'm assuming they'll win. So, I figured it would be a good time to revisit last year's predictions and make our own for next year year.

First of all, nobody got more than 5 out of 10 - which isn't quite as bad as it sounds, since two of this year's draft picks will make the MCC Top 10. Everyone got Zack Wheeler, and almost everyone got Thomas Neal (a couple of people thought he would be in the Majors and ineligible by now). Beyond that, it was rough going.

The best, with 5/10 each, were Smotheredinhugs and henwo.

The LOL YOU award, with just 2/10, was won by tedfordfan and myself (my list: 1) Wheeler 2) Neal 3) Joseph 4) Rodriguez 5) Kieschnick 6) Sanchez 7) Matt Graham 8) First Round Pick 9) Nick Noonan 10) Jason Stoffel).

The Predicted We Would Take Gary Brown award goes to wilriv21, although he thought we'd take him in the second round, and predicted our first pick would be Stefan Sabol, who ended up going to the Braves in the 17th round.

The LOL POSEY award goes to Cody_ransom, who had him on his list at #2. Honorable mentions go to Grant and kennv who had him at #1. kennv also had Madison Bumgarner at #2.

NOBODY predicted Brandon Belt anywhere in the Top 10, let alone #1. NOBODY picked Charlie Culberson.

The Bucardo Brothers Award goes to Roger and Smotheredinhugs, the only two to have Jorge Bucardo in their top ten, at #9 and #10 respectively.

So, now it's time to make your predictions for next year's list. If you want to predict who we'll draft, feel free to include a name; otherwise, you can include a placeholder for (draft pick).

My mother recently cleaned out her basement, and found a bunch of my old baseball books and paraphernalia. One that particularly caught my eye is this book:

via www.yu-burnett.com

Therein you can find THE FUTURE OF THE SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS!!!! Such as:

via www.yu-burnett.com

Charlie Hayes! (Total WAR as a Giant: 0.4. He did get us one-third of Steve Bedrosian, though)

The one guy who was pretty good for us:

via www.yu-burnett.com

Kirt Manwaring! (Total WAR as a Giant: 9.2; then he was traded for Rick Wilkins)

via www.yu-burnett.com

via www.yu-burnett.com

Trevor Wilson! (4.5 WAR for the Giants - spread across seven seasons, 1988-1995)

There are some other future Giants in here, too. One is a personal favorite of mine:

via www.yu-burnett.com

Mark Carreon! (WAR for the Giants: 3.1; before Aubrey Huff, that was good enough to make him the second best Giants first baseman post-Will Clark)

via www.yu-burnett.com

Darryl Hamilton! (3.8 WAR for the Giants, then got us Ellis Burks)

via www.yu-burnett.com

Damon Berryhill! (who I randomly remember was one of xanthan's favorite backup catchers in an article he once wrote for his spamblog)

And, finally, the piece de resistance:

via www.yu-burnett.com

INEXPLICABLY RIGHT HANDED AND VERY BLUE RANDY JOHNSON!

This is all fairly pointless, though I wish the quality was better so y'all could read the text, but I got a kick out of it and I hope you do too.

When last we spoke, I left off the tale of past postseason woe with the anti-climax of 1997. 1998 is next in line, which might confuse some people: the Giants didn't make the postseason in1998. That's technically true, but they sort of did. In 1998, there were no pennat races - except for the Wild Card. In the East, the Braves won by an 18 game margin. In the Central, it was the Astros by 12.5 games. In the West, the San Diego Padres - who went on to be swept by the Yankees in Bruce Bochy's first World Series appearance - beat the Giants by a relatively narrow 9.5 games. But the Wild Card, that was a race. It was mostly a three-way affair (TWSS) between the Giants, Cubs, and Mets, with the Cardinals and the Dodgers lurking about the periphery. As the stretch run began, the Cubs and the Mets had the advantage over the Giants, who appeared dead in the water. In the last week or so of the season, however, something amazing happened. The Mets collapsed, losing their last 5 games. The Cubs scuffled, losing 5 of their last 7 going into the last game of the season. The Giants, though, went batshit: going into the season's last day, they won 6 in a row, and 9 of 10. As the last day of the season dawned, the Giants and Cubs were tied with 89 wins apiece, while the Mets were on the edge of elimination with 88. The Mets sealed their own fate by losing badly to Atlanta, giving the Braves their 106th win of the season. Those 1990s Braves teams were ridiculous, for those of you too young to remember - that they only won one World Series is baffling. So, it came down to the Giants and the Cubs. The Cubs had already given the Giants new life a few days earlier when they blew a 7-6 lead over Milwaukee. With Rod Beck pitching, the bases were loaded and there were two outs. Geoff Jenkins hit a routine fly ball to outfielder Brant Brown - who promptly dropped the ball, allowing the tying and winning runs to score. On the final game, another defensive miscue helped the Giants' chances - in the 11th, after Rod Beck had already pitched 2 2/3 innings, Sammy Sosa misplayed a Carl Everett shot into a triple, allowing the Astros to score the winning run in the next at-bat on a sacrifice fly. The Giants suddenly controlled their own destiny, and the Cubs were reduced to scoreboard watching.

Fortunately, the Giants were playing the sub-.500 Colorado Rockies that day. Unfortunately, the game was held in a pre-humidor Coors Field. In typical 1990s Coors fashion, the Giants took an early 7-0 lead- and then blew it, allowing 6 runs in the 5th and 2 more in the 7th. They tied in back up in the 8th, but in the 9th...well. You may have noticed how much a lot of long-time fans hate Neifi Perez. One reason is his horrible play with the team, and that Brian Sabean, in his infinite wisdom, gave the man a multi-year contract after he'd just had one of the worst seasons ever for the Royals (-3.2 WAR in 2002 - after he'd posted negative WARs in 1996, 1998 and 1999, and sub-1.0 WARs in 1997 and 2000). The other reason is this game. Perez lead off the ninth, and Robb Nen came in to preserve the tie. It should've been one of the great mismatches in history, especially considering how dominant Nen was in 1998. He posted a 1.52 ERA, 2.12 FIP, and 40 Saves. He had only given up 3 home runs all year - but goddamned if he didn't give up a home run to Neifi Fucking Perez then and there. Unbelievable. Fuck Coors.

But there was still hope, in the form of a one-game playoff. Unfortunately, the Giants had gone 3-6 against the Cubs that year, so it was in Wrigley. They had Mark Gardner pitching, and he wasn't dominant or anything, but he was as solid a pitcher as the team had in those days, and was one of those veteran-grit-knows-how-to-win types, supposedly, with a 13-5 record despite a thoroughly unremarkable 4.33 ERA. He'd gone 6-1 in the second half, too, with an ERA down around 3.00. The Cubs countered with the ever-aggravating Steve Trachsel, who was pretty much the same dude as Mark Gardner. The Giants had Bonds, Kent, and an about-to-retire but  inexplicably resurgent Joe Carter at the heart of their lineup, versus the relatively one-dimensional (that is to say, Sosa-centric) Cubs' lineup. It was going to be a tough game, especially in Wrigley, but definitely winnable.

Well. Needless to say, things didn't work out so well. After 4 1/2 scoreless innings, the Cubs scored 2 in the bottom of the 5th, and 2 more in the bottom of the 6th, all on Gardner's record. After Felix Rodriguez allowed an inherited runner to score (the Cubs' 4th of the day), the bullpen held the line - even Russ Ortiz came in for two-thirds of an inning. Until, that is, the 8th, when noted Omar Vizquel hater Jose Mesa gave up two hits - including a booming double to Mark Grace - and a wild pitch leading to a run, making it 5-0 Cubbies. The Giants' bats, silent all day, finally came alive in the 9th against Kevin Tapani and then Terry Mulholland, who combined for just 1 out in the inning while facing 5 batters. Mayne and Mueller lead off with singles, and then Stan Javier made it 3 and drove in the first run of the day. Ellis Burks then walked to load the bases - still nobody out. Barry Bonds coming up. Barry fucking Bonds. Bases loaded, down four runs. The perfect story started unfolding in the imagination of every Giants fan. And Bonds swung, and Bonds hit it high, and Bonds hit it deep - and Sosa caught it on the track. Mueller scored, making it 5-2, but suddenly, the wind was out of our sails. Still, Kent was up next: another chance. Rod Beck, just one year removed from his Giants tenure, came in for the final two outs - and the Giants went out with a wimper. Groundout from Kent, and a foul popup from Carter in what would prove to be the final at bat of his career. In the end, the one-game playoff was a microcosm of the whole season: the Giants fell behind and seemed out of it early, and they clawed back and fought like hell, but in the end, it just wasn't enough. The Cubs made it back to the postseason for the first time since they faced the Giants in the 1989 NLCS - and, of course, being the Cubs, the got swept in 3 games, being outscored by the Braves by a combined score of 15-4.

1999, too, ended in disappointment, though it was more of a foregone conclusion that time - they finished in second place, but 14 games behind the Diamondbacks and 11 games behind the Wild Card-winning Mets. It was a letdown, but it wasn't torture because the Giants were never REALLY in the race.

2000, though. It's hard to overstate just how good that team was. Maybe even better than the 1993 team which won 103 but fell one short of the playoffs. In 2000 they won 97. They went wire-to-wire, never falling out of first place in the NL West and finishing 11 games ahead of the Dodgers. They posted the best run differential in the majors - +178, with the next best team (the White Sox) being almost 40 runs behind them at +139. The lineup was ridiculous, with three guys posting an OPS+ of over 160 (Bonds 188, Burks 163, Kent 162). J.T. Snow had one of his good years, and even the catcher, Bobby Estalella, posted an OPS+ of 113 and 14 home runs. All told, the starting 8 posted 181 home runs - with another 41 coming off the bench and 4 hit by the pitching staff. The weakest links in the lineup were Marvin Benard (92 OPS+) and Bill Mueller in an off-year (87 OPS+). Off the bench, they had two major weapons in Armando Rios (.266 / .347 / .502 with 10 HR and a 118 OPS+ in 269 PA) and Ramon Martinez in a career year (.302 / .354 / .487 at a 117 OPS+ in 210 PA). The main concern most of us had with the lineup was how to get Rios and Martinez at bats. The pitching staff wasn't as good, but it featured solid performers in Livan Hernandez (3.75 ERA, Shawn Estes (4.26 ERA), Kirk Rueter (3.96 ERA), and Mark Gardner (4.05 ERA). The bullpen looked great, with Robb Nen (1.50 ERA, 41 SV, 92 K in 66 IP) and Felix Rodriguez (2.64 ERA, 95 K in 81 2/3 IP) both having monster years.

Better yet, the Giants were going up against the weakest NL playoff team, the Wild Card-winning Mets, in the first round. The Giants won easily in Game 1, coasting to a 5-1 victory on the strength of a great start by Livan Hernandez (how it pains me to say that now...) and a home run by Ellis Burks. Game 2, in San Francisco, was rougher. Al Leiter pitched great for the Mets, who lead 2-1 most of the night. In the 9th, noted future shitty Giant Edgardo Alfonzo hit a seemingly back-breaking home run in the top of the 9th, making it 4-1. Noted never-was-never-will-be Timo Perez was also a horrible best, going 3-5 with 2 RBIs. In the bottom of the 9th, though, the Giants rallied. Barry lead off with a double, and - wait for it - ARMANDO BENITEZ came in to relieve Al Leiter. This may shock you, but he didn't do very well. Jeff Kent hit a single, but it didn't look like it would drop, so Bonds wasn't able to advance - cue tall tales of the legendary postseason choker. Ellis Burks then flied out, and J.T. Snow came up as a pinch hitter - he'd sat the game out against the tough lefty. J.T. Snow came up. I remember the whole at bat so well. I was in college at the time, going to school in Downtown Manhattan and commuting to school from a basement in central New Jersey because I was on the waiting list for student housing. New York and New Jersey were, of course, more Yankees territory than Mets, but still, there were Mets fans all around. Before game 1, I showed up in class as a classmate boasted how the series would be an easy win for the Mets. I cleared my throat conspicuously and pointed to my Giants hat. Every day, when I walked to the train station, I passed by a house flying a gigantic Mets flag in the front yard. I was the only person I ever saw with a Giants hat. I wanted so badly for the Giants to win, and was so sure they were - they were such a good team, and so much better than the Mets. So, J.T. Snow came up, and I watched from Highland Park, New Jersey, standing behind the couch in fear, my knuckles deathly pale. The count went to 2-1  - yeah, it was Benitez - I said to myself, "Man, it would be so fucking awesome if he hit one out here." And then, the pitch - a fat one - and Snow CRUSHED it to right. Not into the water, I don't think, but he hit it high, and there was no doubt. I jumped up and down, literally, and screamed, all alone in the living room. Amazing. A classic moment. A part of Giants' lore. But it wasn't to be. After two quick outs in the top of the 10th, ex-Giant Darryl Hamilton doubled, and Jay Payton drove him in with a single. In the bottom of the 10th with a single. The Giants went down with a wimper in the 10th.

And then, game 3. If game 2 wasn't quite heartbreaking enough for you, just wait. Early 2-0 lead for the Giants. Mets score one in the 6th, tie it in the 8th. And then 0, 0, 0, 0, and on into the 13th inning, still tied 2-2. In the 13th, the Giants blew a chance to go ahead in front of the Shea faithful: with two on and two, Bonds popped out and ended the inning. Aaron Fultz, a back-of-the-bullpen lefty who'd already thrown a scoreless 12th, came back for one more: he was, after all, already the fifth reliever used by the Giants that night. After falling behind Robin Ventura 2-0, he got him to ground out. And then, BENNY FUCKING AGBAYANI. Agabyani, the original shit-eating-grin-Hawaiian-outfielder who tormented the Giants, came up. Ball one. And then the pitch - he hit it high and deep to left - and it's gone. The crowd at Shea went batshit. They lost game 1, and could just as easily have lost 2 and 3 for the sweep, but somehow, unbelievably, they were now up 2-1 in the series.

Game 4 is another one I can't say much about. They gave up 2 runs in the first, and that was all they had to give up, though they added 2 more later. Didn't matter. The Mets' fourth starter, Bobby Jones, he of the 5.06 ERA and near-0 WAR, allowed just one hit all night - a double to Jeff Kent. This below average pitcher somehow completely shut down the best offense in the league. Another exit with a whimper. In the end, it was the two worst teams in the postseason, the Yankees (87 wins, +57 run differential) and the Mets (94 wins, +69 run differential) who made the World Series, and a sad Series it was, with the Yankees sweeping.

2001, in terms of the playoff race, ended on a bittersweet note: the Giants lost and were officially eliminated the same day Barry Bonds broke Mark McGwire's single season home run record. They finished two games behind the eventual World Series winning Arizona Diamondbacks in a year when they lost a 1-0 18 inning game against the DBacks themselves.

2002, in a way, was a retread of 2000. The lineup wasn't quite as good, though they did have as good a lineup, they did now have a true ace in Jason Schmidt, and Barry Bonds having one of the best seasons in modern history (.370 / .582 / .799 - with a 268 OPS+ and a mind-boggling 13 WAR. Like 2000, it was never really in doubt they would make the playoffs. They finished 2 1/2 games behind the Diamondbacks in the West, but 3 1/2 games ahead of the Dodgers for the Wild Card - the only time to date the Giants have won the Wild Card. They also finished with the best run differential in the league, and the third best in baseball - +167. As the Wild Card winner, though, they had a tough path through October, first facing the Braves (101 wins), then the Diamondbacks (98 wins) or Cardinals (97 wins). The early returns didn't look too promising, either. After winning a wild 8-5 contest in game one, the Giants dropped two straight to the Braves, 7-3 and 10-2. The pitching was getting battered, and the only bright spot appeared to be Barry Bonds, who was finally disproving the postseason choker reputation with 2 home runs in the first 3 games. So, they had to win two straight - one in San Francisco, and then one in Atlanta. They came up huge in game 4, scoring 7 in the first 3 innings off of Tom Glavine and cruising to an easy 8-3 victory. In game 5, Russ Ortiz took the mound and gave the Giants 5 1/3 innings, allowing 1 run - and then the bullpen shut the Braves down with 3 2/3 scoreless. Barry hit a third home run to lead off the 4th, and the Giants lead all night. Finally, for the first time since the 1989 NLCS, the Giants had won a postseason series.

Next up were the St. Louis Cardinals, fresh off sweeping the defending World Series champs in the NLDS. The Cardinals were considered the favorite, and definitely the sentimental choice as well. Both their ace starting pitcher, Darryl Kile, and their long-time play-by-play man, Jack Buck (a fine announcer despite his son) had died during the season. Fox, in its infinite wisdom, assigned to the series the two broadcasters who nobody could possibly expect to be neutral in such an emotionally charged situation: longtime ex-Cardinal Tim McCarver and Joe Buck, still mourning his father. They also showed endless video montages of Kile's young son, Kannon Kile, playing and cavorting and looking sad, all set to sappy string music. Clearly, Win One For Kannon was the narrative Fox wanted to push, and push it they did. Over. And over. Again. Hey, look, it's Kannon Kile. He lost his father. And now on the field is cute little raggamuffin Kannon Kile. Did we mention his FATHER is DEAD and he is SAD, and he wants the Cardinals to WIN a WORLD SERIES? Over and over again. Nonstop. It got so bad that I ended up writing a furious email to Fox Sports, ripping them for exploiting the sad situation. I never got around to sending it, but I did save it with the file name "Die in the ass, McCarver," and I'll quote part of it here:

Tim McCarver and Joe Buck, who seems to have no qualifications as an announcer beyond his famous parentage, have been using Kannon Kile and the death of Darryl Kile to manipulate the loyalties of viewers. Throughout the series, they have been implying to viewers that to root against the Cardinals is the crush the dream of a young child who has just lost his father. Aside from being a disgusting and shameless tactic, this type of blatant bias has no place in a national broadcast, in which announcers are expected to be impartial.

Furthermore, Fox Sports’ decision to use Tim McCarver as one of its main announcers is, to say the least, unfortunate. I have spoken to many other baseball fans, and I have yet to find one who considers McCarver to be anything other than terrible as an announcer. It amazes me that he still manages to find employment in the broadcasting field, let alone on a national playoff broadcast.

Unfortunately for Fox, and fortunately for the Giants and basic decency, the Sad Kannon Kile narrative was denied them: the Giants jumped out to a 5-1 lead in the first game, and, but for a few bumps in the road, they never looked back. Benito Santiago hit a key tie-breaking home run in ninth inning of game 4, earning himself the NLCS MVP award and the Giants a 3-1 series lead. The next day, they clinched their first trip to the World Series since 1989 in front of the home crowd, beating the Cardinals 2-1 thanks to a brilliant start from Kirk Ruter and a ninth-inning, run-scoring single from deadline acquisition Kenny Lofton. And at the moment the Giants shut the door on the Cardinals and eliminated them from contention, what did Fox show? A replay of Santiago's home run, or Barry Bonds's many key hits? A montage of Kirk Rueter's excellent game 5 start, shutting down the amazing Cardinals lineup? No, of course not. THEY SHOWED A VIDEO TRIBUTE TO JACK BUCK. Which, you know, has its time and place. He was a Hall of Famer who was the voice of the Cardinals for decades. But THE OTHER TEAM JUST CLINCHED and THAT'S what you show first!? Ridiculous and shameless.

But never mind: on to the World Series. And I believed so much that they would win. I was, from the moment the Giants came back to beat the Braves, a true believer that this was the year. So when the Giants won game one on the strength of home runs from Barry Bonds, Reggie Sanders, and J.T. Snow, I was ecstatic. In game 2, they hit even better, with home runs from Sanders, Bonds, David Bell, and Jeff Kent, but Russ Ortiz shit his pants, allowing 7 earned runs in 1 2/3 innings, and the bullpen was weak, too - Felix Rodriguez gave up 2 in just a third of an inning. The Giants lost a sloppy 11-10 squeaker. It was back to San Francisco, though, it was back to...to....aw, shit. Livan "I Don't Lose in the Postseason" Hernandez starting. 6 runs, 5 earned, in 3 2/3. 5 hits, 5 walks, so it could've been even worse. A 10-4 drubbing in front of the home crowd. Down 2-1. Not looking good. And then, Game 3, Rueter seemed to offer up more of the same, giving up 3 runs in 3 innings. But then he settled down for 3 scoreless innings, and the Giants tied it back up. In the 8th, they broke through: a solid single, a passed ball, and a David Bell RBI single. Nen shut them down in the 9th, and the series was tied.

And then game 5. Oh, game 5. Before game 2 of the 2010 World Series, I would have a hard time describing it to today's Giants fans, because it was a game we don't see much of now. But it was not unlike the first two games of this World Series: 6 runs in the first two innings, 3 home runs, 16 hits, 2 Angels errors, and a final score of 16-4 Giants. Chad Zerbe - probably the last man in our bullpen depth chart, but a personal favorite of mine - got the victory, one of the biggest highlights of his solid but unspectacular career.

Back in the mid-90s - post-1993, pre-1997 - I lived with my family in Central New Jersey, and I was the only Giants fan I knew. The team was in disorder those years, and it wasn't even like the disorder they were in from 2005-2007, when they at least had baseball's best ballpark to fall back on. They were still in the 'Stick at this point, drawing about 15,000 fans to most of their games and nearly forgotten by the league. But when I discovered WFAN, New York's sports radio station, I found one other Giants fan - Chris Russo. He was a buffoon - I knew that, even then - but, aside from my father, he was the only person in my east coast world who gave a damn about the Giants, and he loved them as much as I did. So I listened. Well, by 2002, the Yankees had started their YES Network, and they carried a tv broadcast of Russo's show with Mike Francesa's radio show. I watched it a couple of times, just out of nostalgia. After game 5, I caught a few minutes, where Francesa tried to needle Chris Russo into actually SAYING that the Giants were about to finally win the World Series. Russo squirmed for a bit before finally saying it: yes. Yes. They would win. Definitely. They would win one of the next two games.

He wasn't alone. Back then, here's what I wrote for my personal website following Game 5:

The Miracle at Coogan's Bluff, only in California this time

October 26, 2002 1:36 AM Connecticut

And then, game 6. We all know game 6. We remember the big 5-0 lead, but it's easy to forget now that that lead was a relative blip. It was very close for most of the game - scoreless through 4, then 3 in the 5th, 1 in the 6th, and 1 in the seventh. And then. And then. And then. Ortiz suddenly hittable after being dominant all night. Pulled. Game Ball. Felix Rodriguez. The pitch to Scott Spezio: the three run home run from Scott Spezio. It's 5-3, and the Angels fans in the ballpark are absolutely insane off the hook. I'm livid, of course. I start screaming at the television: "YOU'RE STILL LOSING, MOTHERFUCKERS! YOU'RE STILL MOTHERFUCKING LOSING! SHUT THE FUCK UP!" I was still a college student in New York, but I wasn't in New York for the game. I was in Connecticut, visiting my girlfriend - now my wife - for the weekend. I scared her then. We'd been together for just over a year, and she had never seen me like that before. I had to leave the room when the inning ended, try to collect myself. It didn't work.

And then, of course, the ninth. Home run for Erstad. 5-4. Single, and a single, and then Glaus's double, and the unthinkable has happened: it's 6-5 Angels. The Giants went down 1-2-3 in the 9th, and I was dead silent and dead inside, a little. My girlfriend wasn't scared anymore: she was pissed at me. We barely said a word to each other all night. She wasn't a baseball fan, though we'd gone to a game together and had a great time, and there was nothing in her life that obsessed her and tormented her in quite the way that baseball did for me. She didn't understand, and I was in no mood to help explain.

"They can still win tomorrow," she told me. I shook my head. "You don't come back after a loss like that. The Red Sox didn't come back after Bill Buckner. You just don't do it. It's over." 

Game 7 followed, of course. I watched it. I hardly remember it, though. I remember that Livan Hernandez was terrible, and that I hated him forevermore, and I remember the last at bat. It was Kenny Lofton, and he was the potential tying run. I remember that he popped out to center field, and it was pretty routine, but off the bat, for just a second, I thought it had a chance. I lept to my feet, ready to believe all over again, and then there was Darin Erstad, catching it, no problem, and it was all over. So close. So close. So motherfucking close. I had believed completely and truly, and they had broken my heart worse than ever before. I would never believe quite so completely again. I didn't have it in me anymore.

I didn't write anything for my website after game 6 or after game 7. I did say, "Told you so," to my girlfriend after the game 7 loss. She said, a day or two later, still mad at my horrible mood and my anger and my depression, "No offense, but I kind of hope the Giants don't make the playoffs next year."

They did, of course. They won 100 games. They won game 1 of the NLDS against the Marlins. Jason Schmidt was incredible. And game 2 they lost. And game 3, they killed me again. You all know the story. 11th inning. They take the lead on an error, 3-2. A routine fly ball to Jose Cruz in right field, and it should've been an out and nobody on, but he dropped it. He fucking dropped it. A walk. A bunt. An intentional walk. And then the back-breaker, a two-run single to left field, and the Giants are down 2 games to 1. It's funny how memory works, though. I don't remember Cruz's error as being the first play of the inning. I remember it as being the play that scored the runs, and I remember it coming with two outs instead of none. As bad as it was, I've made it even worse in my memory.

And game 4. Comeback from a 4-0 deficit, and then a 7-6 loss, after an aborted comeback in the 9th. To be honest, I don't even remember the game. Another anti-climax.

Of course, it wasn't the end of the world: the Giants had made the postseason 3 of the last 4 years. They'd just won 100 games. They'd be back. They had Barry, and they had Schmidt, and they had a good supporting cast. Of course, we all know how that turned out: no trip back to the postseason until this year.

And now here we are, up 2-0 in the postseason, and heading to Arlington full of confidence. But if we've been around long enough, we've been here before. We can't just assume we're going to win. We know better, or we should. I'm not encouraging fatalism - I'm very optimistic right now, myself - but if  there's one lesson to learn as a Giants fan, it's to never, ever, ever declare victory before it's 100% done. Do that now, and if the Giants find a way to lose, you'll feel like I did in 2002: like you're going to die. it ain't worth it. If they win, there'll be plenty of time to celebrate when it's done.

As we approach the Giants' first trip to the World Series in eight years, and their third in my lifetime, I thought it would be a good chance to look back on postseasons past. Personally, I'm qualified to go back about a quarter century, to 1987. I was seven years old then, and it had been sixteen years since the team's last trip to October, way back in 1971, so I supposed I could just as easily call this "Third of a Century," but it doesn't quite have the same ring.

Anyway...

I was born in Berkeley's Alta Bates Hospital on March 23, 1980, and was a Giants fan almost immediately thereafter. My father, a native of Laurel, Montana, and my father's father, a native of Sumatra, Montana, a town which no longer exists, took me to my first game at Candlestick Park just a few months after my birth. Since I was born in the East Bay, have always considered the East Bay Home, and since I have both lived and worked in Oakland and will defend that city's charms far past the point at which it becomes obnoxious, I'm often asked why I'm not an A's fan. I have two answers, depending on the circumstance. If I'm feeling flip, I'll say that it's just common sense. Clearly, the Giants, for all their foibles, are the only team to root for, and the choice of all good-hearted people, whether they're from The City or the East Bay or the east coast, or Sumatra, Indonesia, for that matter. If I'm feeling kinder, though, I'll tell them that my father's family moved down from Montana to Vallejo in the 1960s, in the heyday of Willie Mays, and when the Oakland A's were still the Kansas City Athletics, and so he became a Giants fan, and so he passed it down to me.

The 1980 team was a thoroughly mediocre one. The year was notable for being Willie McCovey's swansong and one of Jack Clark's best years. But the team itself was forgettable, and soon to get worse. The first teams I really remember at all were from 1984 and 1985, when I was four and five years old. Their rosters featured names like Brad Wellman and Manny Trillo, Frank Williams and Jim Gott. The 1984 team was bad, and lost 96 games. The 1985 team was worse, and became the only team in organization history to hit the 100 loss plateau. The postseason wasn't even a thought in any Giants' fans mind, back then. It had been so long that most fans couldn't remember a single game in the NLCS - the NLDS, of course, still being a decade away.

That changed in 1986 with Will Clark and Robby Thompson - and, though he's mostly forgotten now, and mostly reviled when he's remembered, the team's young third baseman, Chris Brown, who was hyped as a rising star with his .317 batting average. And also Roger Craig, the manager. Craig had pitched for the Dodgers and the expansion Mets, along with a few other teams, and was somewhat famous for once saying that you had to be a good pitcher to get 20 losses - a feat he himself accomplished in back-to-back years in the 60s for the Mets, one of the worst teams in baseball history (in 1962, Craig lost 24; the Mets lost 120). His reasoning was that, if you were losing that many games and you WEREN'T a good pitcher, the team wouldn't keep sending you out. Craig gained a reputation for being a great manager of young players like Clark and Thompson, and was also something of a visionary on the pitching side of the equation. He was famous for calling pitches from the dugout, and also taught all of his pitchers the then-relatively unfamiliar split-finger fastball. At the time, he took a lot of heat for this: many critics believed the split-finger would destroy his pitchers' arms and ruin their careers. It's a complaint I haven't heard in decades now, which leads me to suspect it was probably bullshit, though I don't know for sure. With all these new pieces, the 1986 Giants went from 100 losses to a very respectable third place finish, winning 83 games. It was a modest finish to be sure, but it was already clear that the organization had turned a corner, and 1987 could be the year it all came together. They even had another great young player in the organization: a shortstop named Matt Williams, a rare combination of power, fine defense, and the most incredible case of premature baldness you'll ever see.

1987, the year of Humm Baby (Roger Craig's nonsensical but strangely alluring catchphrase), didn't disappoint. Well, Matt Williams did: he came up, played in 84 games, and crapped his pants worse than anything you can imagine. He posted a line of .188 / .240 / .339 - and he also struck out 68 times and walked just 16 times in 266 plate appearances. He ended up back with the Phoenix Firebirds, the Giants' AAA affiliate at the time. Actually, this pattern repeated for a few years before Williams stuck in the majors: he was truly awful for a long time. One wonders if he would've survived at all nowadays. But while Matt Williams flailed, the Giants flourished. Just two years removed from losing 100, they won 90 and easily won the weak NL West, finishing six games ahead of the Cincinnati Reds, the only other team in the division to finish above .500. They also pulled off a very bold move midseason, trading the now struggling Chris Brown along with young pitchers Mark Davis, Mark Grant, and Keith Comstock for starting pitcher Dave Dravecky, reliever Craig Lefferts, and third baseman Kevin Mitchell. Mitchell had been a role player for the World Series winning Mets in 1986, and my family had lived in New Jersey that year, so my father and I were familiar with him and excited by his raw power potential - and, actually, I still remember his first game as a Giant. He was so new to the organization that his jersey didn't even have a name on the back yet. But really, the trade was all about Dave Dravecky, who was in his sixth year as a consistently above-average starting pitcher. He had been an All-Star in 1983, although that was actually probably his worst season.

So now, six paragraphs into this monstrosity, we finally come to the first playoffs in my Giants' lifetime. The Giants went up as underdogs against the more experienced Cardinals. Back then, Busch Stadium was known as one of the most extreme pitchers' parks in baseball, and aside from ex-Giant Jack Clark, the Cardinals had built their team around getting on base and extreme speed. They featured players like future Giant Willie McGee, Ozzie Smith, Terry Pendleton, and perhaps their best-known player, Vince Coleman, who wasn't much of a hitter, but who stole 109 bases that year, 107 the year before, and 110 the year before that. The Giants fell in Game One, with veteran ace Rick "Big Daddy" Reuschel taking the loss, but in game two, Dave Dravecky came through huge, tossing a complete game, two-hit shutout. Will Clark and Jeffrey "Hac Man" Leonard both hit huge home runs in the win. The Giants and Cardinals split close contests in games 3 and 4, and in game 5, the Giants won a huge game, giving themselves a 3-2 series lead before heading back to St. Louis. Kevin Mitchell was the offensive star there, hitting a home run and tying the game early, after Reuschel faltered again, with an RBI single. Joe Price, who'd had a very nice season for the Giants after struggling for years with the Reds, picked up Reuschel by pitching five shutout innings in relief, only allowing one hit. Unfortunately, Price later proved to be something of a one-year wonder for the Giants, and they released him in early 1989.

Game 6 at Busch Stadium was the single biggest Giants game in decades. They were on enemy turf (literally - Busch Stadium didn't convert back to grass until years later), and the Cardinals had a reputation of being very tough to beat in their home park, which played to their strengths in terms of pitching, defense, and speedy slap-hitters. Both teams had arguably their best pitchers going (Dave Dravecky and John Tudor). It seemed inevitable that the game would be a pitchers' duel, and indeed it was. In fact, while the two teams combined for 11 hits, there was only one piece of offense that mattered, and it came in the bottom of the second inning.

You know all the moments we wish we could forget? Benny Agbayani's tenth inning home run, Jose Cruz's dropped fly ball, the collapse in game 6, the disaster of game 7? Well, for me, the first of those moments, and the one that remains perhaps the most painful (only game 6 can compete, really) is the second inning of game 6 of the 1987 NLCS.

The thing is, Candy Maldonado was a good player. I'll say it again: CANDY MALDONADO WAS A GOOD PLAYER. I have to repeat it because I have to convince myself of it. I'll never believe it, not really. Because, to me, Candy Maldonado will always be defined by that second inning. I can't think of him without thinking of that.

Maldonado, you see, had this annoying tendency to go into feet-first slides on catches. Every now and then it worked, and when it did it looked great, but this time, well, it didn't. Tony Pena hit a ball to right, and it wasn't even all that well-hit. It was shallow. Maldonado got a bad break and then charged in, and then he went into that feet-first slide, and BOOM! It bounced right next to him, and it took one of those huge artificial tuf bounces, and it went all the way to the wall. Maldonado went stumbling after it, and eventually the ball was recovered, but the play was so badly botched even Pena, a veteran catcher at age 30, was able to leg out a triple. And then Jose Oquendo, goddamn Jose Oquendo, who still makes lifelong Giants fans of my generation glower for his role in a bench-clearing brawl the next year, Jose Oquendo hit a sacrifice fly, and Pena came in to score. And it was the second inning, but that was it: 1-0. Dave Dravecky was, perhaps, the original Matt Cain, at least for my generation: 6 innings, 5 hits, 0 walks, 8 K, and the loss.

Game 7, after all that, was one of those games that you sort of know will be an anticlimax, because all the wind's already been take out of your sails - like our game 7 in 2002, or like the Red Sox's game 7 in 1986, after the ball went between Buckner's legs. And it was. The Cardinals scored 4 runs off of fading golden boy Atlee Hammaker in the second inning; the Giants scored no runs all day. Nothing more to say about that.

They came back, though. 1988 was a middling year: the team slogan in '88 was, "Humm Baby, Let's Do It Again!" and after an 83 win, tied-for-third-with-the-sorry-ass-Padres season, I asked my dad what he thought would be the slogan for '89. "Humm Baby, Let's Get Better Again," he suggested. And 1989 was an incredible year: Will Clark did his best imitation of God, posting a 175 OPS+ - the best of his career. Kevin Mitchell was the first Giants MVP in recent memory, leading the majors with 47 home runs, 125 RBIs (I know, LOL RIBEYES - but the stat mattered to almost every fan back then), a .635 SLG, a 1.023 OPS, a 192 OPS+, and 345 total bases. While Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco, perhaps more hyped across the Bay (as hard as it is to believe now, in those days it was the A's who got the lion's share of media attention), were called the "Bash Brothers," Clark and Mitchell earned their own moniker: the "Pacific Sock Exchange." Not exactly my favorite nickname, but oh well. Matt Williams, after yet another wretched start, finally started to show some inklings of his promise, posting a .500 SLG and 16 home runs in the second half - although his OBP was still horrible.

In 1989, a whole 'nother kind of drama unfolded, too. Dave Dravecky, who should by all rights have been the hero of the 1987 NLCS, was diagnosed with cancer in 1988, and was limited to just 7 starts. Worst of all, the problem was in his left arm, his throwing arm, and his career appeared to be over. In August 1989, however, he defied the odds and made it all the way back. His comeback game came at Candlestick, against the Reds, then managed by Pete Rose, who was just weeks away from being banned from the game for life. I was at that comeback game with my father and his coworker, and along with the NLDS game I attended in Atlanta this year, it remains one of my most incredible memories as a baseball fan. I still remember driving across the Bay Bridge, listening to KNBR, where callers were pledging to donate x amount of money to a child suffering from leukemia who Dravecky had befriended if certain events happened in the game. $20 if Dravecky gets the win, $15 if Will Clark hits a home run, and so on. The one I'll always remember, though, was $100 if Pete Rose gets kicked out of the game. At age nine, that seemed like an impossibly huge sum of money to me. And, as it happens, Rose DID get tossed out. But that's beside the point. Dravecky went out on the field, and stepped up on the mound, and he pitched his heart out. From the moment he began warming up in the bullpen before the game, the atmosphere was charged. Reporters had come from all over the country, flash bulbs popping left and right, and fans were on their feet, cheering and crying all at once, for everything Dravecky did. It's hard to explain how much the man had come to mean to The City and its baseball fans. He was such a good pitcher, but he was such a good man, too. He was a conservative, a born-again Christian; I once heard his personal politics described as being to the right of Ronald Reagan. In other words, he couldn't have been more out of step politically with the community, but nobody cared. He was just such a good man. Such a huge heart, such a giving spirit, such an inspiration through all the suffering that everybody knew he was going through every day. Never a bad word to say of anyone. And the fans loved him, and when he came back, it seemed like such an impossibly happy ending. Especially when that first game back went so well: he pitched eight strong innings, allowing 3 runs on 4 hits and 1 walk, before giving way to the Giants' closer at the time, Steve "Bedrock" Bedrosian. He got the win, and the whole ballpark was on his feet for him. And then, five days later, it ended just like that. He was pitching in Montreal, had thrown five innings when his arm snapped. He fell over on the mound, clutching his arm and screaming: I remember him saying later that he grabbed his arm because if felt like someone had chopped it off with an axe. His arm, so weak from his ordeal with cancer, had broken right in two mid-rotation. He never pitched again. Dravecky was with the Giants down the stretch run, though. In fact, maybe he shouldn't have: when the Giants clinched the Western Division late in the year, he got crushed in a celebratory dogpile and his left arm was broken again. In October, the news broke that his cancer had returned. He lost his arm. He lost his arm: it had to be amputated to prevent the cancer from spreading. The child Dravecky had sponsored died the next year. There was no happy ending in the end. Twenty-one years later, I still can't think of it without tearing up.

But the Giants went on. They played the Cubs in the NLCS. They crushed the Cubs. Hardly a spoiler, of course. In Game 1, Will Clark set the tone, crushing a grand slam off of a young Greg Maddux. That began one of the great postseason offensive performances of all-time. In the five games of the NLCS, Clark posted a line of .650 / .682 / .1.200, with 2 home runs, 3 doubles, and a triple. Suck it, Derek Jeter. In the end, the Cubs only managed one win, a 9-5 romp in Game 2, a game that was never in doubt after Rick Reuschel again collapsed in the postseason, allowing 6 runs in the first inning. The game ended 9-5. But in games 3, 4, and 5, the Giants won close games, and the Cubs had to wait another year (or century, as the case may be).

And then the World Series. What can I say about the 1989 World Series? About the actual games, almost nothing. They were wretched. They played the A's - the Bay Bridge Series, it was dubbed - a dominant team a year removed from a shocking 4-1 World Series defeat to the Dodgers (yes, it was the year of Kirk Goddamn Gibson, and fuck him) and a year away from a shocking 4-0 sweep at the hands of the underdog Reds, but in 1989 they could do no wrong. They not only swept the Giants, they never fell behind in any of the four games. In the composite box score, the A's outscored the Giants 32 to 14 and outhit them 44 to 28. It was lopsided and, if you were a Giants fan, it was embarrassing as hell.

It was also, of course, the year of Loma Prieta, the year of the earthquake. It came, if you're young as hell and don't know the story, in the pregame warmup to Game 3, the first at Candlestick. Tim McCarver, then a younger man but already a jackass, was narrating some footage from the first two games. And then static, a few sounds of panic, the words, "I'll tell you what, we're having an earth..." and then a test signal. My family had moved 3000 east to Princeton, New Jersey, just a few months earlier, and we watched it, horrified, on our little tv screen. And I went back to school the next day, to the fourth grade, and everyone was talking about it, but nobody understood. It was just a cool story or a big joke to them. Not to me: we still hadn't gotten in touch with our family back home, because the phone lines were tied up, and it was very, very real to us. Not to them. I couldn't have felt less at home.

After the 1989 World Series, another long postseason drought began. It was almost broken in 1993, a magical year, when the Giants almost moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, but then were saved, and pulled Barry Bonds out of their hat, and all of a sudden put together a 103-win year. But we know how that ended, too: the final game of the season, Fred McGriff hitting the crap out of the ball for the Braves, Salomon Torres and then Dave Burba giving up hit after hit after hit. The best team since the beginning of divisional play not to make the postseason. And the next year, Will Clark was gone, the magic was gone and there was no postseason, anyway.

And then, an awful 1995 and a worse 1996. And then Sabean took over, and he traded Matt Williams, and he traded for the worst-hitting first baseman in the majors (J.T. Snow), and everyone hated him, and everything seemed hopeless - until the games were played. And then, somehow, they were GOOD. So inexplicably good that they became known as "the team of Dustiny." Barry Bonds was Barry Bonds, but J.T. Snow and Jeff Kent magically turned into a good supporting cast, and the pitching was as good as it needed to be - Shawn Estes looked like an ace for years to come - and, for the first time since 1989, the Giants won the NL West. They faced the Marlins, who were not the Marlins we know now. They were a big-budget team, built on big-name players like Gary Sheffield and Bobby Bonilla, as well as a high-priced Cuban defector of our later acquaintance, Livan Hernandez. Unfortunately, again, I can't tell you too much about the games in this one either, for two reasons: first, there were only three, and second, I more or less missed all of them. It was my senior year of high school, and I had my first job at Black Oak Books in Berkeley, and all the games happened while I was working. The owners turned KNBR on in the office, and I caught the odd snippet, but ti was always bad news. In this series, the Giants took the lead at least once in each game: in the seventh inning of game one, in the first and third innings of game 2, and in the fourth inning of game 3. In the first two games, they blew their lead the very next half inning each time. In game 3, they held the lead for an inning and a half, and then got around to blowing it. And then, after eight years of waiting, they were gone just like that. It couldn't have been more of a let-down.

Well. I had hoped to write this all at one go, but it it's already long as hell, and it's 1 AM in the eastern time zone, and I still have 1998, 2000, 2002, and 2003 to cover. I'll try to find time tomorrow, but I probably won't: I teach in the morning/early afternoon, I have class in the afternoon, I'm going over to a friend's for dinner, and then, well, it's game 1 of the World Series. So, tell you what: we'll have a game off on Friday, right? That's a pretty quick day for me: I teach, but I'm done by about 1 o'clock, and home by 2. I'll try to write part two then, if people enjoy this and would like to hear more.

So, now that we're glowing in the glory that was Game One of the NLDS, it's finally time for me to tell the epic tale of my trip to Atlanta for Game Three of the NLDS.

I had never been to a Giants postseason game before. Once, when I was eight years old, my dad took me to an ALCS game at the Oakland Coliseum, but I remember nothing about it aside from that I went. I don't remember the game. I don't remember who won. I don't even remember, without Googling, who the A's were playing.  We occasionally went to A's games because we lived in Albany and the Coliseum was so much closer than Candlestick, and so easily accessible by BART, but neither the A's nor American League baseball ever really meant that much to me.

The sad truth is, I've almost never even been in California when the Giants were in the postseason. In 1987, we were there, but we didn't get the chance to go to a game. In 1989, my family had just moved to Princeton, New Jersey, a couple of months before the NLCS. My dad and I watched the games and the earthquake on television from our seventh floor apartment in Princeton. In 1997, I was back in California, in my senior year of high school, but that was only three games, only one of them in San Francisco. I didn't even get to watch or listen to any of those games, really: during each of the three games, I was working at my after-school job at a bookstore in Berkeley. The owners turned on the games on the radio in the office in the back and store, so I heard snippets. It was never good news. In 2000, like 1989, I had just moved away a couple of months earlier, but this time it was to New York City for college. I could've gone out to Shea for a game, I guess, but I was a college student and ridiculously broke and living in the nation's most expensive city. It was never really an option. They'd only have broken my heart anyway. And then, of course, 2002: still in New York. Watched Game 6 and stewed and screamed from my girlfriend's house in Connecticut, scared the hell out of her with how angry I got. In a year of being together, she'd never seen me like that. 2003, I'd graduated, and we were in Amherst, Massachusetts. The UMass students rioted and flipped over cars when the Red Sox won the ALDS, but nobody but me cared about the Giants.

The one thing I always did, though, was make it to at least one Giants game every year. The last time I didn't was in 1986 - for me, the last months of kindergarten and the first months of first grade. My parents were grad students, and we didn't make it back home from New Jersey that summer. But after that, every year, I got back at least for a little bit and I made it to at least one game, first at the 'Stick and then at Pac Bell SBC AT&T Park. In 1993 I also saw the Giants play at Shea Stadium, took the commuter train to Manhattan and the subway out to Flushing, and saw a wild game, a game with four doubles and six home runs, a way-too-close game against a ridiculously overpaid and truly wretched Mets game (the more things change...), but, in the end, a winning game.

2010 was about to be a milestone on two fronts: first year since 1986 where I never once set foot in California, and first year since 1986 where I didn't make it to even one Giants game. Well, I'm still not going to make it back to California this year.

But Game 3. It only occurred to me that maybe we could go in the last week of the season, before the Padres series. "I don't know how it would work logistically," I told my wife, "but it would mean a tremendous amount to me if I could go." I bought our tickets as soon as the Braves and the Giants both clinched. It being a Braves game, there were numerous tickets still available, but we're grad students had to buy three tickets (for myself, my wife, and my son - my daughter is a few months under two, so she gets in free), so I stuck to Upper Box seats at $20 a pop, plus Ticketmaster fees. Put 'em in Will Call.

It's about a 5 hour drive from Tallahassee to Atlanta. We left around 9:30 for a game time of 4:37, which should be plenty of time, but of course it wasn't quite so simple. We had to stop for lunch, stop for gas, stop for snacks, stop for my son to go to the bathroom. We passed through cotton fields, through the small towns of cotton country where every front lawn is covered with a light dusting of little cotton balls, through the woods, through a town called Omega.  At one point, about 30 or 45 minutes south of Atlanta, we stopped at a gas station that also sold hunting supplies, where customers came in wearing full camouflage or with Confederate flag neck tattoos. My wife said she felt very not white; I felt very not southern. And then, finally, we got into Atlanta, and we got lost. Our directions for the hotel were wrong: we'd just put "Pine Street" into Google Maps instead of "Pine Street NE," so the directions lead us to the airport, not the hotel, which was in the downtown area. So finally, with only an hour to go until first pitch, we decided to skip checking into the hotel and head straight for the ballpark.

And a good thing we did, too, because the traffic hit the second we took the freeway exit for Turner Field. Getting just a few blocks took a good half hour. As we creeped closer to the ballpark, we started passing by houses where local residents were selling parking spaces in their driveways and on their lawns for large fees. Finally, 20 minutes to game time, we pulled into a convenience store a block or two from the park, where they were jamming cars into every nook and cranny and charging $30 for the pleasure. At that point, we still had to pick up our tickets from will call and find our seats, and traffic was still brutal and we had no way of knowing if there even was any official parking left. So we took it and we paid through the nose.

It took a hike halfway around the ballpark to find will call, and when I turned the corner and got in line for the machines, Braves fans waiting to get through the turnstyle responded by an impromptu tomahawk chop: the first of approximately eleventy billion. "You constipated?" I asked and picked up my ticket. At the turnstyle, ballpark employees handed out foam tomahawks. An older man held one out for me, then saw my Tim Lincecum shirt (my son was wearing my hat at this point), and then pulled it back and mock-chopped off my arm with it. "I think I can make do without one," I told him. Our seats were another halfway across the park, and by the time we sat down, the game was two at-bats old. Andres Torres stood on second, Freddy Sanchez on first.

Turner Field isn't an ugly ballpark, but it isn't especially beautiful, either. It's larger than AT&T Park, but nothing like as cavernous as Candlestick. We were in the upper deck, fifteenth row, along the third base line but still on the infield. The seats weren't bad: we could see the whole field, had a nice angle on the pitching mound, and weren't exactly up close, but we weren't too far away, either.

As we settled in, the crowd was restless at the early baserunners, but very much into the game. This continued for most of the afternoon. The tomahawk chops barely stopped. Runner for the Braves on first and one out? Tomahawk chop. A Giants hitter pops out? Tomahawk chop. Giants have a couple of runners on and nobody out, and Tim Hudson throws a strike? Tomahawk chop. The fans were on their feet, too, at the slightest cause, and I respect that, but those goddamn tomahawk chops just made me want to stab them all in the face.

Then again, as the game progressed, there was a guy who wanted to stab me in the face. In front of my wife, my son, my daughter, and me was an older couple. "Older" being a relatie term: old enough that they were both white haired, young enough so that he was quite burly and not fragile in the slightest. My son, early on, sat behind him, which became a problem. My son, I should say, is four years old, and although he's very big for his age, he's very much a four year old. He's terribly friendly, terribly energetic, and stubborn as hell. Won't listen to anyone if he doesn't want to. But a good kid, and incredibly sweet. Anyway, being a four year old boy, he didn't stay still the whole time. Being a four year old boy, he sometimes squirmed and bounced around. And, being a four year old boy, his legs weren't long enough for his feet to reach the floor when he sat in his seat, or for his knees to reach the edge of the seat when he sat with his back and against the back of the chair. So, when he moved, his legs kicked up: not much to do about that, really. Unfortunately, there was also very little space between his seat and the seats in front of us, and often, when his legs kicked up, his feet bumped the back fo the man in front of him. We did the best we could, of course: tried to get him to sit still, talked to him about how he was kicking the man in front of him and that wasn't okay, tried to distract him. There's only so much you can do with a four year old, though, and every now and then he bumped into the man.

He did it a couple of times in a row around the third inning, and I turned to my son, put my hands on his shoulders, and told him that if he couldn't sit still, we would have to get up and go wait outside. At that point, the man turned to me, red-faced, and growled, "Yeah, I think that's a real good idea. You guys need to get out of here, 'cause if he keeps up with that shit, I'm gonna take you down and kick your ass."

Needless to say, I wasn't quite sure how to respond at first. After a pause, I answered, "I'm not going to fight you, because I know how to behave like a civilized human being, but you're welcome to hit me if you really want to go to prison." More tense words were exchanged; his wife got in on it too, as did mine. He made some derisive remarks about how we obviously had no idea to raise our child and obviously had no character whatsoever - after, of course, he threatened to start a fistfight with a family at the ballpark, because lord knows THAT screams excellent character and strong family values. And, you know, I can understand being annoyed, I can understand getting angry if we were just letting him kick the guy and not doing anything about it, but we were trying our best - and, really, you're going to threaten physical violence because my four year old doesn't always sit perfectly still? Really? Really!?

Fortunately, there was an empty seat next to ours, and another empty seat in front of that one (LOL SELLOUT CROWD), and it had become clear that they weren't going to fill in by this point in the game, so we moved my son over there, and I propped my leg up between my son and the man's wife, so he couldn't possibly make contact with her without me being able to block him. That seemed to do the trick, finally.

At around the fifth or the sixth inning, the man and his wife got up and left. Apparently, they were the same caliber of fans as they were human beings. Good riddance. The ballpark was much more pleasant without them.

Oh, and the kicker? The (adult) Braves fan behind me kept putting his feet up on the back of my chair. I never said a word. There wasn't much space, it wasn't such a big deal, and I'm capable of behaving like a civilized human being. Suck it, old man.

The other fans around us weren't nearly so obnoxious, aside from the constant tomahawk chops - and there was actually a middle-aged woman sitting behind me who was rooting for the Braves, but hated the chop and refused to do it. I did have a bit of a tiff with the guy behind me at one point, but it was more good-natured. When Omar Infante was retired early in the game, I yelled, "Sit down, undeserving All-Star!"

"Uh, he hit .330!" the guy said.

I smirked a little. "He was given the last spot on the All-Star Team over JOEY VOTTO. Are you saying he's better than the guy who should probably be the National League MVP?" He didn't have a really good answer for that.

In any case, the game went on, and Jonathan Sanchez dominated. I don't have to tell you guys this: his pitches were just as nasty on tv as they were from the upper deck. The Giants kept pissing away scoring opportunities, and every now and then I turned to my wife, groaned, and said, "Classic Giants baseball!" But I believed. I believed Sanchez could do the seemingly impossible and turn in the NLDS's second no-hitter. He looked that good. When Tim Hudson of all people broke it up, it was crushing: but not for long. Sanchez got out of the inning and the Giants still had the lead.

And then, the 8th inning. The fucking 8th inning. Eric Hinske comes up, and of course I can't not think about that dumb factoid of three years, three teams, three World Series appearances. Romo came in, and he threw a bad pitch to Hinske. I heard the contact, but I didn't see the ball off the bat at all. Lost it right away. I only knew it was a home run from the crowd's response. And from that response, it sounded like it had been gone all the way, like it went into the upper deck, or out of the stadium, or into low earth orbit. The replay on the big screen showed differently, of course: just over the fence, just inside the foul pole. But no matter: it scored two runs all the same. I often joked, in the lean years of the mid-to-late-aughts, that I should start bringing paper bags to the ballpark so I can put them over my head at appropriate moments of awfulness. That was one of them. I wanted to crawl into a crack in the stadium, and for a minute, I thought there were going to be cracks in the stadium. The whole upper deck seemed to jump up and down with one rhythm, shoes pounding into the concrete below. For several seconds, maybe a minute, the whole upper deck started to shake - not like a major earthquake, but like a little one, when some stress has built up along a fault-line and then is quickly released. For a moment I imagined the stadium collapsing in a heap, and then, when the shaking slowed and ceased, all I could imagine was the Game 2 collapse and now this seeming Game 3 collapse taking their place alongside Game 6 in 1987, the last game of the year in 1993, the extra innings of Game 2 in 2000, Game 6 in 2002, and Jose Cruz's dropped fly ball in 2003 in the long line of Giants postseason nightmares. I couldn't help it: I've been a Giants fan for too long and it fit too well into that narrative of spectacular collapse, of getting right up to the edge of winning and then watching it all fall apart all at once. Especially facing elimination in Turner Field, where the Braves could seemingly do no wrong. It was hard to see a way out at that point.

But I kept the faith. When the Braves were finally retired, I turned my Giants cap inside out for a rally cap, I got up to my feet with my daughter in my arms, and I continued my quest to singlehandedly drown out 45,000-odd goddamn Braves fans. Cody Ross - he could be the hero! He'd come through so many times already in the NLDS. He could lead off with - no. A ground out. And then a pinch hitter: Travis Ishikawa. "C'MON ISHI, LAST OF HIS TRIBE!" I called out. A two-strike count quickly. Not looking good, even with Wagner on the shelf. The Braves' bullpen was just too good. But a few good takes to work the count full. Every time a pitch was called a ball, the entire stadium groaned and screamed indignantly, as though it had been right down the middle, even if it was actually a foot off the plate. "JUST 'CAUSE A BRAVE THROWS IT DOESN'T MEAN IT'S A STRIKE!" And BALL FOUR! We have a baserunner. The crowd, so raucous with that quick out and that quick two-strike count, started quieting down just a little. Then, the top of the lineup. "ANDRES THE GIANT!" Two strikes and - what!? Strike three!? That looked way off the plate. Oh well, can't really tell from up here. Freddy Sanchez: not my first choice for a last chance, but please, Freddy, please...BASE HIT! And a pitching change. Cox dragging his feet on his way out to the mound. Aubrey Huff coming up. I was about to shout, "AUBREY, GET A HIT AND I'LL HAVE YOUR BABY!" but then I remembered I was in the South.

And then, of course, Buster. The ground ball straight through Conrad's wickets. The crowd was brutal on him. I didn't quite get it: we hadn't gotten to our seats in time to see his first inning error, and his second error was a really tough play. Should've been Heyward's ball, really.  So, from my perspective, it was Conrad's first major fuckup of the day. And a major fuckup it was, but even so, the response seemed strangely beyond the pale. I get it now, though I really just feel sorry for the guy.

Needless to say, we were on our feet through the bottom of the ninth, screaming for Brian (except when Brian McCann came up - then, we were screaming for Wilson). The only reason I didn't jump up and down with my fists in the air at the third out was because I was holding my almost-two-year-old daughter.

The foot traffic getting out was ridiculous. We moved about a foot per minute for quite a while there. At one point, an older man with a thick southern accent asked me if we'd flown "down from Frisco" for the game. I bit my tongue. The highlight of the walk out of the park, though, was seeing bits and pieces of those fucking foam tomahawks strewn everywhere, as if torn up in absolute, unmitigated disgust. Never has litter been so beautiful a sight.

The neighborhood around Turner Field, I noticed as we left, is pretty iffy. I mentioned long ago that we parked in the lot of a convenience store. We were hoping it would still be open: we hadn't eaten anything but popcorn since lunch, and were famished. Cotton-mouth thirsty, too. As we approached the store, though it appeared closed, with bars on the windows and doors. When we got up close, though, it was open: they just have bars and windows on the doors all the time. And two panes of bullet-proof glass separating customers from the cash register, too. Okay.

We got lost again driving back to the hotel, of course. So lost that, after about 45 minutes, we ended up BACK AT THE BALLPARK. Finally, we found the hotel about an hour and a half after the game ended.

The next morning, before hitting the freeway, we stopped at a CVS to pick up snacks and drinks for the road. I ran into the store while my wife and kids waited in the car. As I was walking to the cash register, I heard a woman's voice behind me. "Still wearing your Giants hat, eh?"

I turned around. "I saw you leaving the park last night, with your kids in Lincecum shirts," she said. "'At least one family's leaving the park happy,' I told my husband." I smiled. We smiled. It was a nice counterpoint to the asshole sitting in front of us: a classy fan. Gracious in defeat.

We hit the road. Back down the interstate, back through the cotton fields, back through the approximately ten million counties of Georgia. Seriously, the state has 159 counties. More than any other, except for Texas. There were times when we passed through three counties in less than five minutes. Back to the Florida state line, back to Tallahassee. My only regret was that we couldn't stay another night.

I'm presently reading one of MCC's favorite books - Catch-22. I have about 90-100 pages left, I think, and I'm hoping to finish it today. Actually, after I'm done writing this I'm going to go read a little. I'm really enjoying it - it's one of those books that manages to be hilarious and horrific all at once. I've always liked that style.

After that, I'm reading The Souls of Black Folks by W.E.B. du Bois, which I've been meaning to read for a while. And then, on Monday, I'm starting TA training for the PhD program I'm starting in the fall, so I probably won't have much time to read.

What are y'all reading?

If I'm known for any one thing on McCovey Chronicles (other than the rage meme), it's probably my fascination with/fixation on one Kim Batiste, member of the 1996 Giants, and before that a member of the Phillies. Of course, there are other things I'm obsessed with that come up here: Will Clark, for example, or music, or literature. But Batiste draws the most attention and LOLs because it's so damned random. Most any Giants fan of my generation is obsessed with Will Clark, but Batiste? He was a backup player for the Giants for just one season nearly fifteen years ago. He didn't even reach 150 plate appearances with the Giants. I've said a thing or two from time to time about why his Giants tenure still sticks in my craw, but now, finally, I want to tell the whole tale in convenient fanpost form.

First, some quick background on our friend Kimothy. Prior to his season with the Giants, he had played for parts of four seasons with the Phillies. In 1993, he had a career year of sorts - a whopping .282 batting average being the highlight (his full line - .282 / .298 / .436 - was quite poor, as was his 29 strikeouts and 3 walks in 161 plate appearances - but this was still the relative dark ages of stats, so it was easy just to notice the decent BA and think he'd had a good year). In 1994, however, he was incredibly terrible - one of the worst seasons you're ever likely to see. He posted a 34 OPS+ in 214 plate appearances. His line was an anemic .234 / .239 / .278. He struck out 32 times and walked just once. He managed just seven extra base hits - six of them doubles - all year. After that, the Phillies seemed to pretty much give up on him - he spent 1995 in AAA, and he lost his 40-man roster spot. Midway through 1995, he was released and resurfaced in the Orioles organization.

After the 1995 season, the Giants' front office dropped some hints that they had their eyes on someone in the Rule 5 Draft. A real diamond in the rough, reports said. Not some low-minors guy who wouldn't make it past spring training, but someone who could contribute right away. The news was welcome, because the team was in a sorry state. They had Matt Williams and Barry Bonds, but that was about it. Robby Thompson was breaking down from injuries. Will Clark's void had been filled with such immortal legends as Todd Benzinger, J.R. Phillips, and Steve Scarsone. The pitching was dreadful - the previous year, the team signed Terry Mulholland, coming off 6.49 ERA year with the Yankees, as their "ace." It was bleak, and the team felt a million years away from the 103 win season of 1993. The Giants needed all the help they could get, and if they could grab a useful player for next-to-nothing via Rule 5, it would certainly be welcome.

And then - Kimothy. This was their diamond in the rough. A man with, to that point, 87 major league strike outs and 9 walks. A man whose Major League OBP hadn't exceeded .300 in four partial Major League season. A man who was coming off a year, split between AA and two AAA teams, had posted a line of .283 / .309 / .407 - as a 27 year old. And, what's more, he was mainly a third baseman - one of the few positions where the Giants didn't have a pressing need. THIS was the diamond in the rough!?

Now, 1996, Batiste's season with the Giants, was a big year for me. My family moved from the East Bay to New Jersey in August of 1989, and we'd been there ever since. We missed the Loma Prieta earthquake - saw it happen on tv from 3,000 miles away - and the Bay Bridge World Series. Saw that on tv too, of course, but back in those days there was no Gameday Audio, no mlb.tv, no millions of games on cable. If you were an out-of-town fan, you got to see your team a few times a year, either when they were playing the team local to where you lived, or when network tv decided to carry them. Otherwise, you just got the box score the next day. And if you were a Giants fan on the east coast, you often didn't even get that - a west coast night game on Monday wouldn't make it into the paper until Wednesday. But in January of 1996, at long last, I moved back to the Bay Area. Suddenly, I could suddenly listen to every Giants game on KNBR and watch many of them on Channel 2 (at the time, others were only televised on SportsChannel, which was premium). And, while my family had visited the Bay Area each summer during the New Jersey exile, and I'd made it to at least one game per season, I now got to go to a lot more. It meant a long BART trip and then a long bus ride to Candlestick, but compared to being 3000 miles away, it was paradise.

Except for the team being terrible. As I mentioned, 1994 and 1995 were bad years, but 1996 took the cake. The Giants were outscored by 110 points and came within six losses of reaching the 100 loss plateau for just the second time in over a century of organizational history. They were overshadowed somewhat by the historically bad Detroit Tigers, who lost 109 and gave up 1103 runs - that's nearly seven runs per game. But still, it was bleak.

As the season progressed, Kim Batiste's numbers were bleak, too. He made the team out of spring training - and went on to post a .139 / .184 / .222 line in the first half. What's more, he was an absolute butcher defensively. It doesn't matter how you measure defense - fielding percentage, new-fangled stats, or just eyeball observation - all agreed that he was brutally bad at third base. Now, these days we often like to say Eugenio Velez is a player who isn't good at anything. Can't hit, can't field, is fast but can't run the bases. With Batiste, take that and multiply it by about thirty. Velez is actually a decent measuring stick for Batiste, because they have about the same number of Major League plate appearances at this point - 684 for Batiste, 662 for Velez. Batiste in 1996 was also pretty much the exact same age as Velez is now.

Think Velez lacks patience? He's walked 37 times so far - Batiste had 14. Think he strikes out too much? Velez has 105 strike outs - Batiste had 120. Batting average? Velez .259, Batiste .234. Power? Velez has an ISO of 135 - Batiste's was 115. Fielding Percentage and Total Zone as have Batiste as a much worse defender than Velez. So if you haven't been around long enough to remember Batiste, think of Velez - and imagine someone worse in every measurable way.

By May, his performance was so terrible that the Giants cut their losses on him and took him off the 25-man roster. Now, as a Rule 5 pick, Batiste had to clear waivers, and then be offered back to his previous team for half the money the Giants originally paid for him. He did, indeed, clear waivers - LOL Bocock - and the Orioles took one look and him and said, "You know, just keep him." He went to the Phoenix Firebirds - the Giants' AAA affiliate at the time.

And, for some reason, he came back up. He was a bit better in the second half - he got that line up to a heart .234 / .255 / .362. But yeah.

Now, one random thing to know about baseball in 1996 is that teams had actual webpages - they weren't just subdivisions of mlb.com yet. At one point during the season, they had a special offer - fill out a survey and you'd get a free Giants mousepad and vouchers for two free tickets. So I did, and I decided to use one of my vouchers for a doubleheader at the 'Stick against the Pirates, because hey, two games for the price of (n)one!

I lived to regret it. Put it this way: I've left three games early in my life. The first was a night game at Yankee Stadium when I was five or so. The game went on forever, and we had a long drive back to Princeton afterwards. After about four hours of baseball, we headed out - and when we got back to Princeton, the game was still going on. The second was a Giants-Dodgers doubleheader at the 'Stick in, I believe, 1988. The Giants lost both games, and the crowd got drunk and rowdy to the point of near-riot - by the second game, dozens of brawlers were being thrown out, and some bleacher fans were trying to climb onto the field to go after Dodgers players. We left partway through game two because we felt unsafe. Anyway, both of those games, leaving early wasn't my decision: it was my dad's call. But this doubleheader in 1996 was the only game I have ever chosen to leave early.

The first game was terribly dull. The Pirates went up 4-0 after three innings, and the Giants were never really in the game. Despite 10 hits, they only score one run. The second game, though, that was what killed me.  It featured an almost Opening Day 2008-esque lineup of horrors, save for Bonds:

1) Dax Jones CF

2) Bill Mueller 2B

3) Glenallen Hill RF

4) Barry Bonds LF

5) Dave McCarty 1B

6) Steve Scarsone 3B

7) Marcus Jensen C

8) Jay Canizaro SS

9) Steve Bourgeios RHP

Bourgeios was something of an interesting story - in 1994, he was a replacement player. Generally, replacement guys were blackballed the next year - the Giants had called one up earlier in the season, but he never played because several Giants threatened to walk out on the team if he was allowed to take the field. Bourgeios was an exception, though - he had some sort of family situation (an ill mother or something like this), and had to take the work as a replacement player to support his family) - so his teammates accepted him. At the time, he was something of a favorite on alt.sports.baseball.sf-giants, though he didn't work out in the end.

Anyway. This game, unlike the first, was absolutely crushing. It was close most of the way - the Giants trailed 1-0, 2-1, and then 4-1 and 5-1. In the bottom of the ninth, however, the Giants rallied and scored four runs to tie it up. The crowd, while typically mid-90s-Candlestick-small, and had been quiet all day, but after that ninth, the place was rocking...

...and then the top of the tenth inning happened. One run. Two runs. Four runs. SIX RUNS. All of a sudden, this game the Giants had rallied to tie at 5-5 was 11-5, with 4 runs charged to Jim Poole and 2 to Rich DeLucia. Finally, DeLucia induced a 5-4-3 double play to end the misery. At that point, the crowd was just shellshocked. After sitting through nearly seven hours of horrible baseball between two abysmal teams, after getting our hopes raised by the ninth inning rally, it was beyond crushing. I stood up and, for the first and only time in my life, chose to leave a game early.

But I couldn't escape. I had to take a Ballpark Express bus back to Balboa Park BART, and since it was specifically a ballpark bus, it couldn't leave until the game was over. So I sat down and commiserated with a number of other horrified diehard fans. One of them - an older woman wearing a Giants cap covered in dozens of pins - turned on a portable radio to listen to the miserable end. But then something happened: another magical rally started taking shape. Marvin Benard hit a single. Rick Wilkins walked. Bill Mueller walked. Bases loaded, nobody out, and Barry Bonds on deck!

They scored a couple of runs, but were still down by three with two outs. Rich Aurilia, then a struggling but promising player - think John Bowker - came up. "This'll be it," the woman with the radio said. "He's gonna ground out." But no: he hit a line drive single, and all of a sudden, the Giants were within two runs with runners on first and third. Jay Canizaro was due up, but he was a sub-.200 rookie, so Dusty Baker went to the bench - for Mr. Kimothy Batiste. Of  course, Batiste was also hitting about .200, and he had gone 0-4 in the first game of the doubleheader, but after eighteen innings of baseball, the bench was awfully thin. We all sat at the edge of our seats in the bus, waiting, hoping.

Strike one. Strike two. Ball one. And then, the pitch - strike three, swinging, at a pitch far out of the zone. After all that, the game was over with the potential tying runs on base and the potential winning run at the plate. he flailed at a crap pitch - a pitch nobody could have hit, a pitch that never would have been called a strike, with the game on the line.

Something inside of me broke, sitting on that bus. I stewed the whole way back to Balboa Park BART, and then the whole way back to Orinda, where I lived at the time, on the train. I hadn't been fond of Batiste before that - what with him being terrible and all - but that one at bat did it. That was when Kim Batiste entered my psyche and never really left.

Eleven days later, Batiste played his last game as a Giant. He went 1-5 with a home run - but then, it was Coors Field. It was just his third home run of the year and the tenth of his career. He finished the year with a line of .208 / .235 / .323 in 136 plate appearances.

He never played in the Major Leagues again. The Giants released him unconditionally over the offseason, and he didn't even manage to land a Minor League gig in 1997. He returned for a tour of the independent leagues from 1998-2001, but no Major League team ever signed him again.

I still remember him, though. I don't have any real enmity against the man - he could be the greatest guy you'll ever meet for all I know - but he was the single worst ballplayer I've ever seen in the Major Leagues. He was measurably and obviously bad at everything, but he managed to play in the Major Leagues for 251 games and 684 plate appearances over the course of four seasons - as well as playing in the Minors from 1987-1992 and 1995-1996, and the independent leagues from 1998-2001. In a way, I suppose, I admire him for that - despite all his struggles as a ballplayer, he persevered and kept chasing the dream for fifteen years. There's something very impressive about that.

But I'm glad I don't have to watch him play baseball anymore.

As a companion piece to the Where Did You Grow Up fanpost, where part of the question is how you became a fan, I wanted to ask folks who their first favorite Giant was. It doesn't even have to be a player - it can be an announcer, a manager, etc. Whoever you first really, really loved in association with the Giants.

My answer will be a very common one: Will Clark. I also loved Robby Thompson, Dave Dravecky, Kevin Mitchell, and, less commonly, Mike Aldrete, but I was all about Will Clark as a kid. For later generations, I think it's probably hard to understand just how amazing Will was to Giants fans at the time. He was a great player, and a player who helped transform the Giants from an awful joke to a real contender, but aside from that, he was just the definition of COOL. The game face, the eye black, the batting stance, that sweetest of all sweet swings. He was amazing. Also, his middle name was (still is, I guess!) Nuschler, so he had that going for him, too.

Actually, if you ask my dad, he'll tell you my first favorite Giant was Jack Clark, back when I was really little. But Jack Clark was traded to the Cardinals when I was four, so my only memories of him are as a Cardinal. So he hardly seems to count.

So. Where are you? Obviously, many McCoven are in the Bay Area, a lot are elsewhere in California, and some of us are spread across the rest of the country. A few are overseas as well. Being a nerd, I'd be interested to see how widely we're distributed.

I've tried to include every possible location, but I accidentally deleted the poll the first time I tried to make it and reconstructed it hastily. So I've probably neglected a few options. Sorry!

Just a reminder for those of you who signed up for the POKEMONZ Fantasy League - we're all set to draft today at 10 AM Pacific (1 PM Eastern). If you want to not end up with a team full of Dodgers and Shane Victorino, you should try to be there if possible - and get ready for the nerdiest day of the baseball year!

/drafts Bengie #1 overall

/drafts Aubrey Huff #2

OMG RIB EYEZ!!!

As I mentioned previously, my wife and I went to see an FSU vs. Virginia baseball game on Saturday. It was a pretty big matchup - in Baseball America's Top 25, Virginia was #1 and FSU was #5, while in USA Today's rankings, FSU was #2 and Virginia was #4. Coming into the series, FSU was undefeated - 12-0 - but they lost the first game of the series 5-0. So game two was a pretty big game for FSU, trying to come back after being shut out.

The last game we went to was a day game, and they had a big setup selling barbecue by the entrance to the bleachers. We didn't eat at the ballpark then, but my wife was excited to try the barbecue. But when we got there, well, it wasn't there. We sadly wandered back to the stand selling crappy ballpark food, and learned from them that they only have that on Sundays. Oops. So we decided we would get something to tide us over, and then pick up barbecue after the game was over. I got a grilled chicken sandwich and french fries - the grilled chicken sandwich consisted of a slab of chicken breast on a bun. Nothing else. Whoo. And the fries were kind of stale. It was a sad, sad state of affairs, especially since I'm spoiled by the excellent food at AT&T Park.

Anyway, the game got off to an exciting start - after Virginia went down 1-2-3 in the top of the first, FSU scored three in the bottom of the first thanks to doubles by FSU's two All-American outfielders, Tyler Holt and Mike McGee, and an error.

Speaking of Holt, I'm not sure what to make of him - who I hear is projected as a second or third rounder. He looks like a very good defensive center fielder. Before the game, he was presented with a college Gold Glove Award. He's just the second FSU player to win a Gold Glove - the other being Buster Posey. As a hitter, he doesn't have much power, but he can work the count and draws a lot of walks, and when I've seen him make contact, he hits nice, crisp line drives. On the other hand, in two games, I've seen him make three first-pitch outs, which isn't such a good thing for that type of guy - a hitter who doesn't have a lot of power and relies on plate discipline for his value as a hitter. Both he and McGee are off to slow starts, so if they don't get going, they could fall in the draft - and I love when the Giants pick up that sort of player in the fourth or fifth round a la Brandon Crawford or Jason Stoffel.

Holt and McGee in the field after Holt made a nice running catch:

They then scored two more in the third inning, and FSU's pitcher, a lefty junior named John Gast, looked impressive. I'm not sure he's considered a prospect at all, and he only ended up pitching four innings, but I liked him. He didn't throw too hard, but he had pretty good stuff. Got some nasty swing-throughs. He got out Virginia's First Team All-American, Jarrett Parker, twice, including a strike out on a really nice curveball. Parker had a pretty lousy game for someone who's a potential first-round pick - 0-5 with three strike outs. What's more, he looked overmatched at the plate. If I hadn't already known he was an All-American, I wouldn't have guessed. By the way, Virginia's other All-American, Danny Hultzen, wasn't playing - he was only used as a pinch-hitter. I have no idea why. Overall, Gast got five strike outs and three walks in five innings. He also gave up seven hits, so he wasn't exactly cruising. Here he is mid-pitch:

However, after being up 5-2 after three, FSU did their best Giants impression by failing to capitalize on several opportunities to blow the game wide open. One thing I noticed - and I don't know if this is an FSU thing or a college baseball thing - they LOVED to sacrifice bunt. At one point, for two innings in a row, they got runners on first and second with nobody out, and both times, they sacrifice bunted the runners over. One time, it was their #2 hitter who they had bunt! And one of those times, the next two hitters both struck out. Oops. Way to throw away an out, guys.

Meanwhile, Virginia's starting pitcher, Robert Morey, was maddening to watch. He wasn't very effective - lots of loud contact from FSU, multiple baserunners on every inning. When there were baserunners, he became the slowest pitcher in the history of the game. I swear to god he seemed to step off the mound and throw to first at least twice as often as he actually pitched. He was also one of several pitchers in the game who had seriously weird-looking mechanics. My wife got a great shot of him mid-rotation, where he looks like he's celebrating good times, come on!:

After the two teams combined for seven runs in the first three innings (which took an hour and a half to get through), the game sped up quite a bit, and by the ninth it looked like the game would take just over three hours, and like FSU would get the easy win. In the eighth, their right fielder an #2 hitter (the same guy they had sacrifice bunt earlier) hit a 2-run homer to give FSU an 8-3 lead. FSU's players were all lined up at the dugout's top step, anticipating the big win:

However, well, uh...things didn't go quite as expected. Daniel Bennett, who had pitched a scoreless eighth, returned to pitch the ninth for FSU. He was interesting pitcher - a big, tall, somewhat heavyset sidearmer. He's listed at 6'4", 220 pounds, which seems awfully big for a sidearmer. He looked good in the eighth, though - again, lots of swing-throughs on nasty-looking pitches. In the ninth, though, things quickly started falling apart. The inning opened with an error, then a strike out. Then a single, another single, and then Bennett was gone. Then...well, I won't give you the play-by-play or anything, but suffice to say that lots more hits followed. The inning started 8-3; it ended 9-8. FSU's bullpen just completely melted down and couldn't seem to make that one big pitch to get an out. At one point, with two outs and two strikes, the pitcher threw a pitch that looked to be right down the middle at the knees, and probably should've ended the game - but it was called a ball. The home plate ump, it should be said, had a pretty tiny strike zone all night. Anyway, the next pitch was an RBI single. By the end of the inning, FSU had gone through three pitching changes, lost its starting catcher to injury:

It was the most spectacular ninth inning collapse I've ever seen. Also, one of the longest innings I've ever seen - it went on for almost an hour. All of a sudden, instead of the game taking three hours, we were getting close to four. One of their relievers - I don't remember which one, but this guy reminded me of someone who should be in the Giants system, because he threw really hard and got swing-throughs, but his control was very suspect:

In the bottom of the ninth, there was still hope for FSU - they were only down one run, and their offense is as good as you'll find in college baseball. After a leadoff strike out, Justin Gonzalez, the second baseman, got a single. After that, however, the pinch-hitter, Sean Gilmartin, hit what looked like a potential double play ball. FSU got a break, though - after Gonzalez was retired at second, the ball was thrown away. Gilmartin rounded first wildly - and was promptly caught in a run-down and easily tagged out trying to get back to first. Game over.

Overall, it was a very exciting game. I wouldn't exactly cal it a GOOD game - too sloppy. The teams combined for five errors, and there was a lot of really bad pitching. Still, it was a lot of fun.

By the time we got out of there, it was almost 10 o'clock. We tried driving by two barbecue places - both of which were closing up shop just as we got there. Woe. We found a Mexican place that was open and got food to go. It was, I'm sad (but not surprised) to report, thoroughly mediocre. My mole poblano didn't really taste like mole poblano, the chips were bland, and the salsa was watery. Also, it came with flour tortillas instead of corn. Boo. The photos are all by my wife, incidentally.

For those of you who signed up for the POKEMONZ fantasy league (aka the first MCC league started about a month back), the draft is scheduled to take place in less than a week - next Saturday, March 20th, and 10 AM Pacific time (1 PM Eastern). Be there or be square stuck with Yahoo's auto-picks.

Also, if anyone has any questions about the draft or anything else related to the league, post 'em here!

It's really a guessing game, but just for shits and giggles, let's try predicting who'll be on next year's top ten organizational prospects list. There are a number of things to take into account: who will no longer be eligible? If we're remotely close to contention, who will Sabean trade for a shitty veteran? Who will have a breakout season, and who will fall off the map?

Predicting draft pick's is just silly at this point, so you can use (first round pick), etc., as a placeholder. I suppose you can also use (international signing) as a placeholder, too.

If we get a sufficient number of 'll revisit this post in a year's time, and (imaginary) awards will be given to the most accurate prediction, the least accurate prediction, and the best out-of-left-field pick. So be bold!

I just went ahead and created a MCC Fantasy Baseball league for the upcoming season. I copied the settings from last year's DINGERZ.EXE League, but this time it's going by the name POKEMONZ. Basically, it's a rotisserie league, 5x5 stats with OPS instead of AVG, an 14 teams max. Keep it simple and all. We'll have a live online draft - for now I scheduled it on Saturday, March 20 at 10 AM Pacific, but that's just a placeholder. I expect we'll have to reschedule to fit people's needs.

To join the league, go to Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball and choose the link to join an custom league. The league ID is 243855 and the password is ilikebocock.

I'm on as the Tallahassee Exiles. That makes thirteen slots left!