by Todd Hawley
Charles
Dickens penned those words in A Tale of Two Cities, and somehow they
seem appropriate when describing this 2000 Giants season. The best of times:
late September when the Giants had won the West and were cruising towards the
best record in baseball; the song "Who Let the Dogs Out" blasting over the loudspeakers
at Pac Bell Park and in our collective minds; how we had left the hated "Snakes"
and the overpaid "Doggers" in the dust and were on our way to the World Series.
The worst of times? The final out of Game 4 of the League Division Series. Once again, Our Boys fell far short of their goal of reaching the World Series. How Dusty "choked" in his on-the-field decisions during the playoff series with the Mets, that "asshole" Barry Bonds "choking" once again in the postseason (and never mind that he had led the players back on the field to celebrate the division title with the fans, he was still a choker; yeah, right), and so forth.
Well, maybe by next spring, the hurt, the anger, and the resentment of falling too far short once again will subside. And then again maybe not. In the meantime, however, I have been asked to do my annual Postmortem article, and do it I will, trying to recall in my mind what I remember about this past season.
And it's actually quite a lot. For the first time in years, I actually followed the team closely. I suspect that had a lot to do with the new ballpark. I remember attending "The Walk in the Park" in early April to check out Pac Bell. It was a slightly cool, gray day and the music was blaring on the loudspeakers. First some really cool big-band stuff, then a "disco-reggae" tune, then some Van Morrison, then something else. A nice wide variety of tunes. I was of course thoroughly blown away by the beauty of the place. I even had a nice chat with an usher who had played in the Giants' farm system briefly in the late 1930s. (Hiya Paulie!) I thought it might be one of the very few times I'd get to see the place. As it turned out, I got in to see eight games this year and, if nothing else, have yet to see the Giants lose a game at Pac Bell when I'm inside the park.
I remember Opening Day against the hated Doggers. I got there midway through the game, having an appointment in the Marina that day. Lots of people hung around outside at the "knothole," including one guy in a Giants jacket who played hooky to watch the game. He brought along a milk crate to stand on, even let me watch part of an inning from up there. Never did get his name, but if you're reading this, dude, thanks again! Quite an event that it was, in spite of Kevin Elster hitting three out that day and the Giants losing. They lost their first six at the new park, of course, and everybody on the Giants newsgroup (myself included) thought it was going to be a long season. I remember the joy I felt watching the first victory at Pac Bell Park. I remember all the griping in the newsgroup about how Dusty "sucked" as a manager. How Benard needed to be benched in favor of Calvin Murray (and the sportswriters are still saying that!). They went to Arizona and swept the Snakes when they desperately needed to. There seemed to be hope the season was salvageable.
In May, the Giants ran hot and cold. They strung together one or two impressive winning steaks, then would go ice cold once they hit the road. I saw a couple games during this stretch, where the starting pitching was good and the middle relief awful. It was almost to the point where you covered your eyes when Johnstone, Fultz or Embree came in. Even Nen and Rodriguez were having problems.
And the defense seemed spotty, along with Benard and Mueller not hitting. And yet the Giants would lose two heartbreakers to a team, then come back and annihilate them. Witness the 18-0 game against Montreal where Shawn Estes hit that grand slam!
June came along and suddenly it seemed like the team was starting to come together. The relief pitching, defense, and hitting slowly started getting better. The Giants were still behind in the West, but they were creeping up on Arizona. This trend continued in July. I still remember watching Marvin's "walk-off" home run that July Sunday night against the Dodgers. I was there with an old junior high acquaintance. Both of us had grown up in LA as Dodger fans but were now both diehard Giants fans. Both of us screamed and yelled as the ball flew out into the night time sky. I also got into one of the July 4 games for next to nothing and got to see the fireworks after the game. Very cool.
July, of course, turned into August, as we all waited nervously for the "post-All-Star-Game swoon" for which the Giants had become famous the last two seasons. This time it didn't happen. The team was gaining momentum, and yet the Snakes were poised for a run of their own. They weren't going to give up the lead that easily, and then they made the trade for Curt Schilling.
The Giants were unfazed and kept going about their business: winning games. As the summer wound down, they were gaining ground on Arizona. The Snakes faltered even with their magical duo of Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling, and suddenly the G-men were in first! Even so, we waited, wondering if this would last. By now, Pac Bell had become an incredibly friendly place for our guys and that helped build our lead.
September became more of a "magic number" race as the Giants built and maintained their lead, clinching the division with about 10 days left in the season. While I was delirious with joy, it was tempered with the realization that this was only one step. Then they got home field advantage the last day of the season. And yet I was still cautious -- unfortunately, I had good reason to be.
It seems funny somehow to say that the Giants had a great season when there was such a disappointing post-season finish. It seems that as Giants' fans, we are consigned to watching other teams go on in the postseason every year and saying "What if?" I think of long-suffering fans of other teams, like the Cubs and the Red Sox. Several generations of fans may come and go and never see them win the big one. Do they also say "What if?" Or do they say "That's cool. We'll get em next year... or some year," and walk away with a shrug?
And now it's World Series time, and Dusty has been re-signed for two years, giving the hope that next year will be different, that Our Boys will get farther than the first round of the playoffs. In talking with a couple of "armchair athletes" at the local sports bar the night Baker re-signed with the Giants, I got a sense that he gets an incredible amount out of his talent, that the Giants' current team are really a bunch of "overachievers" who run out of steam in the playoffs, and that may be in fact a shortcoming. Because Dusty is so good at doing this, the Giants management feels no need to pursue that free agent catcher or pitcher that might help us over the hump or upgrade a particular position. I fear if that isn't done soon, Baker will forever be known as a manager who is great in the regular season, lousy in the postseason. It truly isn't his fault.
In any event, one hopes our karma has become incredibly good and the Baseball Gods will smile on us some season and allow us to realize our dream of a World Championship for our Giants. Hope is somehow the only thing that keeps us going and keeps us warm all those long and rainy winter nights.