by Tom Austin
A while
back in another publication, I did a little study on the heartbreak quotient of
baseball teams. Very scientifically, I assigned point values to various kinds
of seasons. What I measured was not overall success (wins do a pretty good job
of that) but how much pain is imparted to a fan of a particular team. Pain, in
this study, is not canceled by success. The team that loses the World
Series experiences a lot of joy, but one look at the players and the fans of the
team as the other team dog-piles on the pitcher's mound will tell you that there's
some heartbreak there. However, over the winter that National League Championship
banner eases the hurt some. Therefore, I concluded, the most painful kind of team
to root for is the one that wins enough to get your hopes up, but crashes and
burns and goes home without any meaningful pennant to hang up. The wild card complicates
the calculation, as the buzz of going to the postseason party about cancels the
stupid feeling of hanging a "200X Wild Card Team" banner in your stadium.
Without going into all the numbers, you can guess where the Giants finished. No, not first: the Expos (-6.83 heartbreak points per year) and the Angels (-6.18) had too many crappy teams, and I did add "pain points" for the chronic heartbreak of a crappy club (you have no hope to get you to open your emotional underbelly, but a lot of people laugh at you, particularly subliterate Dodger newsgroup trolls), and the Angels and the Expos, like any respectful expansion club, sucked for the first few decades of their existence. And the Angels and the Expos have had their moments: 1994 for Les Expos, 1986 and 1995 for Les Anges. However, of any non-expansion team, who tops the heartbreak list? Do you need more than one guess? That's right, Our Boys. At -5.37 heartbreak points per year, the Giants inflicted more anginal angst on their fans than any other team, even such sad-sacks as the Mariners (-5.00) and the Brewers (-4.67). For point of reference, the other end of the heartbreak scale was, of course, the smug and superior Yankees, who were lapping the field at +6.95 heartbreak points (yes, plus points equals negative heartbreak) in 1998 before their last two crowns (at plus-fifty points for a World Series champ) pushed them up to 8.95.
And that was without the 2000 Edition, the Punchers of Pac Bell. A grand and glorious season washed up on the beach at Dusty's personal high-water mark: a postseason victory, his first in five tries (counting the Cubs game, and six if you count Salomon Torres' meltdown against the Dodgers -- technically you shouldn't, but I did make a number of manual adjustments to the study for such special cases of heartbreak).
All in all, the 2000 season came in at -5 heartbreak points, actually below the Giants' average heartbreak of 5.37. An improvement on the average, mind you, but not much of one.
Did it really hurt that much? Yes. Yes, it did. C'mon, are you kidding me? Yes, the regular season was great. In terms of wins and losses, the team fell a few short of the 1993 team, although in some ways it was the best Giants team since Willie Mays was hauling down triples at the windy, unsheltered chain-link fence of sixties Candlestick. The team had the best offense in the league by yards and yards, nearly outscoring Coors-aided Colorado while playing their own home games in the league's best park -- for pitchers. That's right, even with the Dusty Rhodesian homers off the right-field pole (did anyone else freak on that when Jater popped one in Game 2 against the Mets? That's exactly where Rhodes hit his pinch-hit homer in the first game of the '54 Series, albeit in the Polo Grounds), Pac Bell park holds down hits and scoring. There's a lot of room out there in center and right-center, and a rangy center fielder (not Marvin) can kill a lot of rallies. Can you imagine what it would be like to watch Willie Mays in his prime patrolling the odd shapes of Pac Bell's center field? Let's all stop for a moment and just...savor that thought. Yeah, okay, High Heat Baseball is getting pretty good at simming it, but...the real thing. Wow.
Okay, that was fun. The sweet thought of Willie's statue coming to life, grabbing a glove, and heading for the locker room will deaden the pain a bit as we get back to a discussion of the season.
Okay, I'm not ready for whiskey, a bullet to bite on, and a sawbones taking my leg just yet. Let's bask in the season some more. The team stumbled out of the gate like a drunk getting thrown out of a bar, losing the first five games ever played in the new park. After that, though, the Giants righted the ship and began winning, not enough to catch the Diamondbacks but enough to forestall panic while the team got to know itself and fine-tune the machine. By the All-Star Break the Giants were in the thick of things, and fans with good memories were bracing for the inevitable post-ASB faceplant, a maneuver that '90s Giants fans are rather distressingly familiar with. The late-July header is as much a part of the landscape on Dusty's Giants as the infamous "June Swoon" was for the Willie Mays Giants, kicking the team in the nuts every time the fog rolled in and annually costing them the pennant by thirteen-thousandths of a game. It's too bad they didn't have recounts back then; Our Boys could have rightfully won a couple of World Series.
And speaking again of the sixties Giants, the more I think about this team the more I think of those guys. I became a Giant fan in the late sixties (Willie, again) but didn't really follow pennant races per se until I turned 10 in the summer of '71. That year Robbie Brown and I, two Giants fans exiled behind the Orange Curtain (still Dodgerland for NL fans, despite the halfhearted presence of the Angels), chewed our nails as the Giants careened, stumbled, and finally fell across the finish line in exhaustion a game ahead of the Dodgers, clinching on the last day of the season.
And, as we all know so well, that was the high-water mark of Giants fandom for quite a while: 90-72, division title, heartbreaking loss to the Pirates. Sure, the 1973 team was fun (88-74, third place) with that Matthews-Maddox-Bonds outfield and a still-powerful McCovey, young Chris Speier, and, um, Dave Rader, and the chubby, run-supported Ron Bryant (24 wins!), and Marichal at the tail end, and Jim "still playing MSBL ball in Sacramento" Barr and of course, how could we forget, ol' Kong Kingman, too young to know what to make of yet but already displaying every endearing quality he would ever have save the live rat bit: gargantuan homers, mighty whiffs, and defensive "brilliance" the likes of which we wouldn't see again until Glenallen "Barney" Hill staggered around the sod. But that was third place, and we still expected them to win. Didn't even touch nose to 90 wins, and it tasted like ashes there at the end. And yeah, the '78 team got us out of our seats with Vida Blue and Jack the Ripper and Darrell Evans and Montefusco and the tail end of Willie Mac and Johnnie "boo" LeMaster for comic relief: 89 wins, again just missing the 90-win mark. But third is third, and when it's third behind the Dodgers, third rhymes with turd. And that was it for the '70s.
Then we woke for a bit in the '80s when Joe Morgan aced the Dodgers out of the postseason dance: 87 wins, only two games out, Morgan and Reggie Smith and '70s holdovers Clark, Evans and (what is he still doing here? God!) LeMaster and the quasi-memorable rotation of Laskey, Hammaker, Gale, Breining, and Martin. Then the Humm-Baby year of '87: 90-72, division title, the emergence of Will Clark, Robby Thompson, Kevin Mitchell, One Flap Down, Brenly, and another ragbag rotation of Downs, LaCoss, Hammaker, Krukow and Dravecky. Did I forget to mention Candy Maldonado? No, I did not.
Then came 1989, and the Gods of Baseball (GOB) were presented with, for once, a joke on them: a matchup between the Giants and one of the very few clubs the GOB hate as much as the G's in the Cubbies. Try as they might, the GOB could not arrange a double loss (though I wish they'd take another crack at it with our two Men Who Would Be King down Florida way) and the Giants were through to the Series, there to take their medicine from the scorned GOB as they made the very earth move to ensure that the Giants, humiliated, would never again dare to proffer a winning team for their perverse pleasures. This team was much the same as the '87 squad at the plate but featuring the oh-so-very significant addition of Big Daddy Rick Reuschel and Scott Garrelts and Don Robinson on the mound. These boys notched 92 wins, more than any Giants team since 1966 -- which is a pretty disheartening thing when you think about it: For 23 years, the Giants lost 70 or more games every year. Their best years, six of them in that span, were when they just made or missed the 90-win barrier. Ninety wins is the mark of a "lucky to be here" playoff team as opposed to the "it's our Series to lose" teams that cruise in with 95 wins or more. And that's how the Giants played in those series: like they knew they'd already overreached their station. At best the Giants stuffed a couple of postseason wins in their belt like souvenir ashtrays before the bouncers grabbed their collar and tossed them out so other teams could have the whole Series dance floor to themselves; 95, 96, 108 wins? That's for other teams, punk.
Then comes the '93 season (don't worry, I'll make it short, like ripping off a Band-Aid). You all know that story too well to tell it here anyway. Suffice to say the GOB must have been on the floor laughing at the new twist on the old joke. The Giants busted up the 90 mark in early September. Trouble is, so did the Braves. I can say with pretty much dead certainty that the Giants will be the last 103-win team to stay home until the universe reaches heat death and fades into warm, brown darkness. Well, it's kind of an honor.
The 1997 season was kind of the palate cleanser of Giant heartbreak seasons: a thrilling pennant race with the Dodgers and one of Those Moments ('ol BJ!) to flavor your savor forever. Then a ritual slaughter injury with the Buy-the-Pennant Marlins being rubbed in your face as the insult. Speaking of There Oughtta Be A Law that, by virtue of all that is right and good with the cosmos, expansion teams Must Suck for the pledge period of 10 years. Seeing players dressed in teal and black celebrating hurt like a bitch at the time, it's true, but on the longer view Giants fans could have taken their moment in the sun when that Brian Johnson laser shot cleared the fence and given the frowning Gods of Baseball that Cool Hand Luke grin that every convict longs to grin, the one that says "You're gonna win in the end 'cause you've got all the cards, but I took this hand off yer ass!" And then you sit back and ride that wave, you ride it all the way over the top like a gonzo bodysurfer, even though you know full well that wave is going to smack you into the sand like a derailed locomotive and make you feel it into next week.
Because life's pleasures are fleeting, and even if you keep fouling 'em off like Richie Ashburn, you're eventually gonna strike out when the Real Big Unit is on the mound. You gotta suck 'em in like life's breath, like you're standing under a Maui waterfall with a Mai Tai in your hand, and Tyra Banks just confessed her secret sexual fantasy to you, and it coincides remarkably with yours.
And I'd trade it for a Giants World Championship in a heartbeat. Okay, two heartbeats with a really long skip in between.
The other reason them 'ol Gods gave us 1997 was a little more sinister, and when we're talking the Gods of Baseball we're talking pretty freakin' sinister. Or there are those who don't see the GOB being that much into planning our tortures. Some believe the GOB aren't all that omnipotent: they see them more like what the Wizard of Oz woulda been if he'd had a rack of Silicon Graphics Minitowers behind that curtain with him. Incredibly powerful but clumsy, kind of a "Bill Gates on Quaaludes" kind of thing. These would have us believe that the GOB just react to events and pitch a fit and start throwing things in your general direction.
If you're one of those arguin' that position, you might have a hard time explaining the 2000 season. I'd say it shows all the evidence of a best-laid plan, and not that choosy mice-and-men kind that gangs all aft agley. The kind that stays in place when you put it down and let the dogs out on it.
The straight narrative of the Giants' loss is fairly conventional: take a new ballpark, add one souped-up offense, five live young arms in the rotation, the best closer in baseball, a Barry Bonds MVP season and throw in a Jeff Kent MVP campaign for free? How is all this going to break the hearts of Giants fans?
They'll find a way. Who? Giants Fans? No, we're back on the GOB. How are they gonna find a way?
I'll admit it's a tough job for them. This team had the horses.
Which is what it takes to get your oft-broke heart into the roller coaster one more time. Think about it. I know I will: I wrote a column for the Big Bad Baseball Annual website that, as the website put it, "liked the Giants chances" of making the Series. I don't think I was alone. I've lived through 30 years of "hey, nice ashtray" and I "like their chances"? You too, huh? Made it hurt just a tad more?
See, and even with all the horses I wouldn't have got my hopes up so high if it weren't for '97. I figured the team had broken some fundamental spell by not only winning 96 games, but cruising to the division title in a limousine. The Giants were not only in the postseason, they were arguably playing better than any other team there. The Giants had hitting, more hitting, pitching, relief pitching, and momentum. They had a right to walk into the party like honored guests instead of courtesy invites. This was gonna be the year Barry shut the pieholes of millions of yahoos around the country with a .500, six-homer performance.
Yeah, the Barry factor. As much as I'm willing to believe that Bonds is a jerk, I'm willing to not care. I don't buy my ticket so Barry and I can bond, I buy it to see him do what I can't do: make jerking a baseball over a fence and into the bay look easy. And he did. Damn. For that I wanted him to smoke the Mets (and the Cards, and the Yanks...) and get the monkey off his back. I bet that would lighten him up a bit.
Didn't happen though, did it? I know, I know, twisting the knife. I, however, have not come to bury Bonds but to praise him.
I think I understand why he can't come through in the postseason. And make no mistake: the man has a problem out there. I watched him take his swings out there, and he looked in pain in the on-deck. The man was twisted up tighter than a Fort Knox safe.
Here's my call on it: Barry is a smart guy. Really smart. And he's been brought up as a modern-day prince: his dad and his godfather showing him how it is done from the time he can put on a glove. The prince treatment also gets under his skin as a person: a kind of Little Lord Fauntleroy smug prissiness. He knows his place in the Monarchy, and he yearns to outdo his dad and then his godfather.
So Barry knows his stats are almost in Mays land, beyond it until you consider the era. He also knows that the weakness in Mays' legacy is also the postseason thing. Willie's career postseason line: 89 at-bats, one (LCS) homer, .247 average, .323 OBP, .337 slugging percentage. A .659 postseason OPS leaves some room for improvement, and that's exactly what Barry wants to do so bad he can taste it. He probably won't top 660 homers (well, maybe...) and his average is likely to drop out of the .280's if he plays long enough to get them. Plus, the left field/center field thing is going to cost him. However, one or three really big postseasons would get him over the top historically, or at least it would in Barry's eyes.
Understand this is not a knock, or intended as one. If I was that good and that sure of it, I'm sure I'd be a pain in the ass too. And probably just as ambitious, and think just as highly of myself. More power to him.
Except that when that kind of intense desire mixes with a really volatile ego, some unpredictable chemical reactions can occur. Like for example, pressing.
Oh, wait. You were expecting another lofty paragraph of insane metaphors, run-on sentences, and twisted grammar? Just biffed one, sorry. Kind of hard to regain the momentum, now.
Yeah, I think it's as simple as that. Barry's pressing. He wants to hit so badly, he wants to hit a nine-run homer every time up. Oh sure, he steps out of the box each pitch and scientifically guesses with the pitcher, but that Mays thing has gotten in his head below the noise level. This tightens him up by a few millionths of a degree, tweaks his swing the sixteenth of an inch necessary to turn a splash shot into a popup to Alfonzo. His strike zone judgment seemed to have fallen off a cliff after that called third strike from Franco. Once again, can't blame a man a bit for that. The right reaction for a ballplayer in that situation is to enlarge the zone to correspond to the ump's larger zone, and hope that he's doing it to the other guy too. However in this case Barry's got the legacy thing happening, and that adds a soupçon of righteous anger to the on-deck mix, and as it will the anger causes the mix to boil a tad too soon, instead of waiting for the right moment, and pitch, to unleash itself.
I don't know what the cure is. He's gotta get that sixteenth of an inch back when he needs it. Just relax, Barry. You done good. Next time you get the chance (oh please, oh please) just go up there and take your rips. Just like BP out there, bud. Atta baby, Barry!
So after that little side trip we come back to the Giants and the GOB (I like the big O, because those Gods are sure full of it) and the aforementioned GOBs' plan to raise the reverse Giants-Fan knife twist to a balletic art.
First of all, you have the setup of '97, which whetted the appetite and took away any lingering satisfaction for the division crown. Then you add a really, really kick-ass team, letting the vapors waft the about the nose like baking bread behind the old Seals Stadium. Throw in an opening win over the Mets, featuring Barry's triple and Burks' three-run shot (and how many of us made sure to taunt the Barry-critics as soon as we could, somehow knowing what came next? Okay, put the hands down).
Then, pull the rug and watch the rubes go base over teakettle. No, it was more painful than slapstick. With Barry getting chance after chance to rope one and watching popup after soft fly after third strike, his doomed quest for a seat beside Mays on Olympus (or Twin Peaks, if you prefer) brings the whole drama up to the level of Shakespearean tragedy. And all being for the benefit of you, Mr. Kite. You paid your ticket, you asked for a show.
Fine. I accept that. But couldn't we just once, like next year for instance, have a comedy?
Oh please?
Writer, musician, and all-around Renaissance man Tom Austin can be reached at taustin@cisco.com.