Cruel Fate Taunts the Giants Yet Again

(or, We Come not to Praise Livan Hernandez, but to Bury Him)

by Richard Booroojian, EEEEEE! Contributing Editor

The sad fate of a San Francisco Giants fan is that even the best of times come with punishment in the end.

Let's look back, shall we, at the following interesting prognostication, written after the end of the 2000 baseball season regarding your San Francisco Giants:

This insightful and bitter rant, written by yours truly after the stinging disappointment of the four-game stumble against the Mets in October 2000, proved to be spectacularly mistaken, as most of my rants usually are. From August 19, when the clown prince of the Giants' rotation, Livan Hernandez, shut out former Giants court jester Julian Tavarez and the Florida Marlins to rescue their dying playoff hopes, through to the seventh inning of Game 6 of the 2002 World Series, the Giants, unbelievably, became a hotter team, a better team, a luckier team than any other in baseball. For two glorious months, it had never been so wonderful to be a Giants fan. Never.

Then, of course, reality reasserted itself and the Anaheim Angels suddenly became the hotter, better, luckier team, leaving the Giants and their fans with what is probably the most galling, saddening collapse by any team in World Series history. True, one really can't graciously complain about how things worked out; the 2002 Giants season (and especially the postseason) was a wonderful ride and a fine reward to Giants fans for their many years of suffering. The fact that the championship for which we have all yearned was so close we could taste it, only to be maliciously yanked away by the Cruel Fates whom we have always known hate us, does not take away from the wonderful ride we did get to experience. As far as years go for Giant fans, 2002 was one of the great ones.

Still, how can it be denied that the last 12 innings of 2002 are further proof that the San Francisco Giants will never, ever win a World Series in my lifetime? I would love to quote this and laugh at myself in a future EEEEEE! recap, but I suspect we all know that I'll never have to.

The 2002 Season in Perspective

Beyond the joys of a thrilling postseason run, the 2002 Giants also continued an ongoing run of success unmatched since the start of divisional play. The team's 95 regular-season wins (tied for fourth highest in San Francisco Giants history) led to a sixth consecutive winning season, their longest such streak of winning seasons since a 14-year streak that commenced with their arrival in San Francisco in 1958 was snapped in 1972. Since 1997 the Giants have gone 547-425, a .563 winning percentage. That's the highest winning percentage over a six-year stretch since the three M's anchored the team from 1962-67. It's also been since 1967 since the Giants had won at least 90 games in three consecutive seasons. Love Brian Sabean or hate him, love Barry Bonds or revile him, love Dusty Baker or disdain him, but clearly these gentlemen did a lot of things right over the last six years.

The Giants finished second in the NL West, the sixth straight year that the team finished either first or second in the Western division. Here is something to wrap your mind around: this hasn't happened for the Giants since a nine-year run from 1917 through 1925. Only one other team, the 1972-79 Reds, has ever had a longer such run in the NL West. There is also the always pleasurable experience of finishing ahead of the Dodgers; this is the sixth consecutive year for that as well. Previously that hadn't happened since before the start of World War II.

Finally, the Giants' excellent playoff run went a ways towards rehabilitating the team's admittedly poor postseason record since their move west. The Giants' record in official postseason games (i.e., not including the three-game playoff against the Dodgers in 1962 or the Wild Card playoff in 1998) is now 22-29, a .431 win percentage that looks better when you consider that it was .353 prior to this season. We will leave it to others to make the obvious observation that 51 postseason games is a pretty thin yield for 45 years of baseball in San Francisco.

We also note with some glee that after three different occasions in which the concept of the Wild Card bit the Giants in the ass (specifically 1997 and 2000, in which the Wild Card entrant dumped them out of the playoffs, and 1998, when they lost that Wild Card playoff game to the Cubs), this year's magic wouldn't have been possible had it not been for the Wild Card. Traditionalists will just have to deal with it.

Finally, a word about Barry Bonds. To say we are happy he re-upped with the Giants through to the end of his career should not be any surprise. What was a surprise is that he somehow managed to top his monumental 2001 season with an even better one in 2002, and then he added on one of the better sustained postseason performances in history (take that, oh foolish prognosticator of the year 2000). The Giants are now 840-715, a .540 win percentage, in the Barry Bonds era. It's pretty hard to imagine them being even a .500 team over that period of time without him, and it's getting to the point where you would have to at least ponder the concept that he is the best overall player in Giants history.

Nine Games To Remember

This is where I would usually begin a lengthy recap of the season just ended, reliving all the peaks and valleys that had occurred. For those three of you out there who get off on that stuff, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but no recap follows. I don't want to agonize over those valleys again this year.

However, a few regular season games did stand out as particularly memorable. Obviously, almost all of the postseason games will stay with us for years, but since the details of those will be easy to track down in the future, let's instead recall some of what came before.

• Memorable Game #1: Jason Schmidt started the year on the DL, and his first few starts after returning were not very encouraging. His third start, on May 4 against the Reds in Pac Bell Park, was downright chilling, as he lasted just two-thirds of an inning (walking two) before his shoulder acted up again and he was pulled. However, Ryan Jensen, whose turn in the rotation had been skipped, came in and carried a team no-hitter into the eighth inning, ending up allowing only one hit in 6.1 innings with five strikeouts. This was easily the best relief performance by a Giant in 2002 (and maybe for a long, long time). Bonds also hit his 400th home run as a Giant, and San Francisco won 3-0, the third of seven consecutive wins that would carry the Giants into first place for what proved to be the last time in the season.
  
  
• Memorable Game #2: Every year, it seems as though there is one game in which the umpires throw the game to the opposition, and on May 21 in Arizona, the crew of Bill Hohn, Larry Young, Fieldin Culbreth, and Bill Miller blatantly favored the Diamondbacks to the point where you would wonder how they could go to sleep that night. The odds of Livan Hernandez beating Randy Johnson were long in the best of circumstances, but Hernandez left after five innings with the game tied 3-3 before the umpires took over. The most obvious miscall, a phantom home run for Erubiel Durazo that Young somehow managed not to notice was foul by yards, allowed the Diamondbacks to tie the game in the fifth. In the seventh, an amazing sequence ensued in which David Bell was called out on a steal of second where he was easily safe, while simultaneously Bonds was called out on strikes on a pitch that wasn't even close to the plate. By the end, Baker and Benito Santiago had been tossed from the game, the latter for arguing balls and strikes with an obviously befuddled Hohn. The Giants might have lost this game anyway (Aaron Fultz did his best to make sure of that), but the men in blue guaranteed it, and by the end of the season, this game was almost all of the difference between the two teams in the standings.
  
  Did it matter? Obviously not, in retrospect. However, why is it that this type of game happens at least once every year, and it is never the Giants who benefit?
  
  
• Memorable Game #3: As unpleasant as that game was, one regular season game that will probably always be remembered from the 2002 season took place in San Diego on June 25 and was, if anything, even more unpleasant. The lasting visual image is one of Bonds and Jeff Kent scuffling in the dugout (the ramifications of which were far reaching and probably had something to do with the Giants' eventual lack of enthusiasm for resigning Kent). However, the game story was even worse; after Russ Ortiz had spotted the Padres an early 5-0 lead, the two dugout warriors combined for three home runs (two by Bonds) as the Giants came back to take an improbable 7-5 lead. However, Felix Rodriguez, who hid a finger injury during the first half of the season that ultimately really harmed the team's chances, allowed five straight base runners in the seventh inning, and by the time he was done, the Giants were en route to a galling 10-7 defeat.
  
  
• Memorable Game #4: Just seven days later on July 2, a much happier result. On a day when major league baseball set a single-day record for most home runs with 62, the Giants contributed seven, led by their noted "sluggers" Tsuyoshi Shinjo, who went 5-for-6 with two homers (one a grand slam), and Damon Minor, who also hit a pair and went 4-for-6. For one day, at least, these two could bask in the illusion that they were indeed effective major league hitters. Reggie Sanders (two) and David Bell also went long and the Giants took advantage of the cozy confines of Coors Field in drubbing the Rockies 18-5, one of 19 times the Giants scored in double digits in the 2002 regular season. Their 23 hits was also a team season high. Ryan Jensen posted his first major league complete game in this one.
  
  
• Memorable Game #5: No season is complete without a satisfying win over the Dodgers, and the 6-4 win in Los Angeles on July 21 happily filled that bill. Ortiz kept the Giants close through eight innings, and a Reggie Sanders home run in the top of the eighth tied the game 4-4. That set the stage for Tom Goodwin, who was in left field in place of the injured Barry Bonds and who was still for the most part being paid by the Dodgers, to hit a one out, two run homer off Giovanni Carrara in the top of the ninth to win it for San Francisco.
  
  The Giants moved into second place with this win and were just one game behind Arizona in the NL West. Unfortunately, an onslaught of outfield injuries contributed to a 3-8 stretch over the next two weeks, by which point the Giants were 6.5 games out and never really in a position to challenge for the division title again.
  
  
• Memorable Game #6: On August 9, with Pittsburgh in town, Barry Bonds hit his 600th career home run off the Pirates' Kip Wells. However, unlike his 500th career home run back in April 2001, this one was not enough to fuel a Giants victory. Aramis Ramirez went 4-for-4 with a home run while driving in all four Pirate runs to keep the game out of reach.
  
  As has been well documented, it took Bonds just 264 of his team's games to hit the 100 home runs leading up to number 600.
  
  
• Memorable Game #7: The annual Atlanta/Florida road trip is a predictable horror show for the Giants, and this year was no exception. On August 15, in the rubber game of a three-game series against the Braves, the Giants entrusted a 3-1 lead to Robb Nen in the bottom of the ninth. However, with two outs and Rafael Furcal on second, Nen walked Gary Sheffield, then ignored the base runners long enough to allow them both to steal their way into scoring position. Chipper Jones then singled in the tying runs. The game was then rained out in the tenth after a long delay, leaving the Giants with a 3-3 tie, their first such tie since 1968.
  
  Nen had some really poor outings to go along with his 43 saves this year, including one against Pittsburgh in which he had two outs and two strikes on three consecutive batters in the bottom of the ninth and lost all three of them and the game, but this was a killer. The team, exhausted from the red-eye flight that resulted from their waiting in vain for the next several hours for this game to resume, lost their first three games in Florida to put them a season high four games out in the Wild Card hunt, and the possibility of having to replay this game after the last date of the season complicated the Giants' rotation calculations for the next month and a half.
  
  
• Memorable Game #8: By September 6, things were starting to click for the Giants, who had won 12 of 17 games and were closing in on the Dodgers for the Wild Card lead. Kirk Rueter was brilliant against the visiting Diamondbacks, who got a solid outing of their own from Miguel Batista. Rueter pitched eight shutout innings (bringing his consecutive shutout inning string against Arizona to 23), and then after the Giants bullpen held its ground in the top of the ninth, Reggie Sanders' one-out bloop single in the bottom of the ninth drove Rich Aurilia home with the winning run.
  
  This was Dusty Baker's 824th win for the Giants, putting him ahead of Bill Terry for second most ever by a Giants manager. As we now know, he won't get the 2,700 or so additional wins that would have been necessary for him to take over the top spot in that category.
  
  
• Memorable Game #9: Any clincher, even a Wild Card one, is worth remembering and celebrating, and the September 28 victory over Houston at Pac Bell eliminated the Dodgers from the playoffs on the same day as the slumping Arizona Diamondbacks finally sucked it up and won the division title. Barry Bonds' bay shot in the fifth broke a 2-2 tie, and then Tom Goodwin's two-run double in the seventh iced the game for the Giants. Robb Nen struck out Brian Hunter to end the game. Worth noting is that the Giants, after Rueter pitched five serviceable innings, used seven relievers to get the final 12 outs, and because the Astros also used eight pitchers, the two teams set a major league record for most pitchers used in a nine-inning game.

The Envelopes, Please...

In any successful season, there are a number of individual accomplishments to celebrate. The 2002 sason is, of course, no exception. However, there is also the little matter of one Giant who, both in the regular season and the postseason, made things more complicated than they should have been, and fairness dictates that we recognize that too. This we will do, with all the evenhandedness and dignity that one has rightfully come to expect from this author in these season retrospectives.

• Big Fat Pig Award: To Livan Hernandez, whose disgraceful training habits and lack of any ambition to keep himself in decent shape has clearly caused a significant decline in his career prospects. Unfortunately for the Giants, all of this is coming home to roost here in San Francisco and will likely continue to do so for at least one more year.
  
  
• Best Pitched Game Award -- Starter Division: Jason Schmidt had two brilliant complete-game shutouts, but his August 20 domination of the Mets was beyond brilliant. Schmidt struck out the first six Mets in the game, and then after surrendering just five hits and no walks, he preserved a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the ninth by fanning Mike Piazza with the tying run on third, his 13th strikeout of the game. This was one game after Livan Hernandez's own complete game shutout of the Marlins at the end of the disastrous road trip from hell, of which more will be said a bit later.
  
  
• Best Pitched Game -- Reliever Division: As discussed above, the 6.1 brilliant innings thrown by Ryan Jensen on May 4.
  
  
• Atlee Hammaker Memorial Award: Certainly to Livan Hernandez for his disgraceful Game 7 start in the World Series after his preceding and even more disgraceful start in Game 3, almost exactly mirroring Hammaker's fabulous choke jobs from the 1987 playoffs. However, an honorable mention for this award has to go to Dusty Baker for letting this happen. The parallels between the two events are eerie, right down to the mistaken decision to start Hammaker/Hernandez over the more stable and successful Mike Krukow/Kirk Rueter in each series' deciding Game 7 against all common sense and reason. Especially galling this year was that the stated reason (Rueter couldn't handle starting with just three days rest) was pretty much exposed as nonsense when Rueter threw four innings of shutout relief after Hernandez had been knocked out early.
  
  
• Most Disappointing Player: There were definitely some candidates for this, and we won't even include the anemic Shawon Dunston, since he never should have been on a major league roster this year in the first place. (Plus, frankly, his World Series Game 6 home run was wonderful enough to wipe out a lot of the bitterness we might otherwise have felt towards him.) Aaron Fultz, Felix Rodriguez, and the injured Jason Christianson were disasters out of the bullpen, but Rodriguez eventually owned up to an injury and partially salvaged his season, while the other two were sidelined or shipped out early enough to minimize the damage they caused.
  
  It would be incorrect to give this award to Livan Hernandez, since he was also pretty bad in 2001 and was sort of beyond any positive expectations by this point. Plus, he will be earning a lot more hardware before we are done here in any event.
  
  One possibility is Rich Aurilia, who followed up a MVP-caliber season last year with a disappointing one this year. However, in fairness to him, he was injured for much of the season and in any event should not be held completely accountable for having to follow up on a career year. Plus, he was solid in the postseason. Likewise J.T. Snow was really bad, but he was really bad last year and he too performed well in the postseason.
  
  In the end, this award has to go to Tsuyoshi Shinjo, who was presented as the answer for the Giants' center field and leadoff woes, but who, despite a good glove, is pretty clearly not a major-league-caliber player. Again, it isn't his fault that he was overhyped by the Giants when they first obtained him, but he never even lived up to the fairly low standards he set for himself in 2001, and that hurt the team to the point where they finally had to trade for Kenny Lofton to replace him.
  
  
• Least Surprising Offseason Development: Come on, we all knew Dusty Baker was leaving after this year. In truth, the only real surprise was that it didn't happen two years ago.
  
  This may not exactly belong here, but it's also worth noting that probably very few Giants fans were surprised by the fact that Shawn Estes was a big bust for the Mets in 2002 after being dealt to them by the Giants prior to the start of this season.
  
  
• Big Fat Head Award: Come on back up here, Livan, for being so caught up in your own hype and inflated sense of self-worth that you wouldn't even listen to your pitching coach.
  
  Let's try to put Livan Hernandez's performances over the last two years into some kind of context. In 2001, Livan's record was 13-15 with a 5.24 ERA, and the Giants went 16-18 in his starts while finishing two games behind the Diamondbacks and one game out of the playoffs. The team was lucky with that won-loss record in his starts; if you run those games through a Pythagorean calculation, the expected result was more like 14-20. All of that was easily the worst of any starter on the team except for part-time starter Mark Gardner, who was in the process of being retired. Considering that Livan entered the year having been proclaimed the team's ace, it's not all that hard to make the case that his performance was the single greatest reason for the Giants missing the playoffs in 2001.
  
  Now, any reasonable pitcher coming off a season like that might be expected to look for some way to elevate his game, or maybe even contemplate trying to rejuvenate a floundering career. Not so with Livan, who butted heads with pitching coach Dave Righetti over his approach and pitch selection all season. The result: the Giants went 14-19 in his starts, the only such losing record for a starter on the team in 2002. In tying for the league lead in losses with 16, he became the first pitcher ever to lead the league in losses for a team that went on to the postseason. One might think that perhaps listening to Righetti a little more wouldn't have hurt.
  
  Dollars to donuts he'll do the same thing next year. Once a big fat head, always a big fat head.
  
  
• Third-Most Valuable Player Award: This is actually pretty hard to determine, especially if you exclude pitchers, as we are wont to do. After Bonds (1.381 OPS) and Kent (.933 OPS), the picking were pretty slim, as no other regular managed an OPS over .800.
  
  (By the way, we do indeed honor Kent as the second-most valuable player on the team despite all of his strange off-the-field adventures during the course of the year and his disappointing postseason performance. After he and Bonds switched places in the lineup in late June, Kent once again started posing numbers very similar to those of his MVP season of 2000, and the Giants would have gone nowhere this year if he hadn't.)
  
  One might be tempted to pick David Bell for the TMVP award for generally grittiness and professionalism, but despite his 73 RBIs, he only generated a .762 OPS and a .333 OBP, none of which is exactly gangbusters for a third baseman. Reggie Sanders wasn't terrible, but he wasn't all that good either, as his .779 OPS was weak enough to eventually get him dropped out of the fifth spot in the order. In the end, the TMVP of the team probably was All-Star Benito Santiago, who eventually manned the fifth spot in the order and did contribute a .765 OPS out of the catcher's spot. He even got one ninth-place vote in the league MVP race (although why is kind of hard to imagine), which maybe sort of validates this. Still, one year after the Giants really only had three effective bats amongst their eight starters, the team's lineup was even more polarized in 2002.
  
  
• Best Pitcher Award: Kirk Rueter was surprisingly effective in 2002, as his 14-8 record, 3.23 ERA, career high 203.2 innings pitched and the team's fabulous 25-8 record in his starts will attest. However, Jason Schmidt, despite starting off the year injured, was more valuable down the stretch, and he contributed a 13-8 record, a 3.45 ERA, 196 strikeouts and two complete-game shutouts in 185.1 innings. He was also the Giants' best starter in the postseason, as his performance against the Cardinals in Game 2 of the NLCS was a revelation to the entire baseball world. Schmidt was the best starter for the Giants this year.
  
  Robb Nen once again contributed some gaudy numbers (6-2, 43 saves, a 2.20 ERA in 73.2 innings), but he also blew eight saves and he was really shaky at times. Todd Worrell (8-2, 2.25 ERA in 72 innings) was steadier and more consistent, and I think he was the best out of the bullpen this year. (At least until Game 6 of the World Series, that is.)
  
  
• Worst Pitched Game: Ryan Jensen had some pretty bad starts and Russ Ortiz had one particularly galling one against the Dodgers, but this award has to go to Livan Hernandez for his 1.2-inning nightmare against the Rockies in Colorado on July 3. In that one, Livan gave up seven hits and seven runs in the second inning before getting the earliest hook of his illustrious career. He also became the first Giant pitcher to ever lose 10 games before the All-Star break. Lest you be tempted to make excuses based on the venue, bear in mind that rookie Ryan Jensen had thrown a complete game against the Rockies the day before.
  
  (We do need to award at least an honorable mention in this category to Manny Aybar, who managed to allow five runs to score with just two pitches in the third game of the divisional playoff series against Atlanta. I'm not expecting to see him in a Giants uniform again, unlike Livan, who seems likely to stick around like gum on the bottom of the teams' spikes for at least another year or so.)
  
  
• Best Barry Bonds Moment: There were so many good ones, as Bonds moved up to fourth place on the home run list, passed 600 for his career, set a number of new records, hit a number of bombs and bay shots, and contributed a fabulous postseason performance, including a memorable 485-foot home run off Francisco Rodriguez, the Angel's hard throwing rookie phenom (who should never have been allowed on the Angels' postseason roster in the first place, but I digress) in the second game of the Series. One that might otherwise get lost in the shuffle, though, was his walk-off two-run home run in the tenth inning of the fourth game of the season against the Padres. Bonds hit it off Alan Embree, who had done such good work for Arizona while occupying a spot on the Giants' roster in early 2001. The combination of drama and payback puts this one over the top.
  
  
• Best Moment That Nevertheless Doomed the Season Award: Okay, I promise, this is the last direct shot at Livan Hernandez, at least for this year. After Hernandez threw a complete game shutout against the Marlins on August 19, which halted a nasty late-season slide and launched the Giants' surging 29-10 finish to the season, the CEO of one of my clients noted that as great a moment as this was, it would undoubtedly come back to haunt the team at some point, because it would fool Dusty Baker into thinking he could trust Livan after all. Sure enough....
  
  If there is anything positive that can be taken out of this year's World Series anguish, it's that we should never again have to hear about what a big-game pitcher Livan Hernandez is or how fabulous his undefeated postseason record was. That record is now 6-2, and nobody on the Giants was more responsible for their World Series defeat than Livan Hernandez. Nobody.
  
  
• Cruelest Irony: Regular readers of my over the top rants know how much I hate Marvin Benard. I think Marvin Benard is an idiot with even less of an understanding of his extreme lack of value than the big, fat-headed pitcher who must remain nameless since I promised not to talk about him anymore. So, it would stand to figure that, when Marvin suffered what proved to be a more-or-less season-ending injury in early August, this author would have been relieved that he wouldn't have to watch any more of Benard's anemic at-bats or horrible outfield play in 2002.
  
  Except that, a couple of weeks later, the Giants suddenly found themselves without Bonds, Sanders, Shinjo, and even Dunston due to injuries of varying severity and duration, and they were forced in one game to use minor league call-ups Tom Goodwin and Tony Torcato and infielder Ramon Martinez as their outfielders. And there on the sidelines, in the one circumstance and at the exact moment when he might actually have been useful, was Marvin Benard. As a result, he also wins the....
  
  
• Rey Sanchez Memorial Award: ... for actually forcing me to bemoan his lack of availability, something I never, ever want to have to do
  
  And also for his classic, and patented, boneheaded at bat on May 30 against Arizona, when as a pinch-hitter he grounded into an inning-ending double play in the eighth inning to kill the team's best scoring chance in a 1-0 loss.
  
  (Just to put this important award into context, Rey Sanchez was an infielder for the Giants who, in one amazing year in 1998, did more stupid things to hurt the Giants than any player I have ever seen. Mind you, other players have played worse and cost the team more, but that was usually more the result of a lack of talent and not so thoroughly caused by the player's abject stupidity. Rey, as a point of reference, may have made more bad decisions on the field in that one season than my nine-year-old son will pony up in his entire remaining lifetime.)
  
  
• Silver Lining Award: Many will bemoan the parting of the ways between the Giants and Dusty Baker, but it should be noted that at least he took third-base coach Sonny Jackson with him. This was not Sonny's worst season ever for the Giants, but that is only a relative accomplishment; he still made a lot of questionable decisions and was routinely ignored by several of the veteran base runners (especially Bonds), an indication of the relatively low regard in which he was held. It's also worth noting that he will not coach third for the Cubs. Apparently, the joy of watching Sonny Jackson flounder around in the third-base coach's box is destined to have been uniquely ours.

A Closing Thought

Here is something you can drop into future conversations as living proof that the Baseball Gods really, truly do hate the San Francisco Giants. (Be warned, however, that people will look at you strangely when you mention this insight, or at least they have to me.)

Starting in 1935, it was a firm fact that the National League champion would host the extra World Series game in even numbered years and the American League champion would get that advantage in odd years. Naturally, the San Francisco Giants historically would only make it into the postseason in odd-numbered years. Those years included 1971, 1987, 1989 and what should have been a playoff team in 1993.

The one exception to this was in 1962, when the San Francisco Giants did indeed have the home field advantage against the Yankees in that year's World Series. The Baseball Gods countered this by delivering torrential rains prior to what was supposed to be Game 6 of that Series, and as we all remember, the Giants lost Game 7 when a Willie Mays double down the right-field line in the bottom of the ninth was slowed up enough by the resulting wet grass that Roger Maris was able to track it down and keep Matty Alou from scoring from first. Alou was then stranded at third when Willie McCovey lined out to end the game. Thus, even the home-field advantage that year was twisted and perverted so as to deal maximum damage to the Giants' franchise.

Now, the even/odd trend held true all the way through until the strike of 1994, which cancelled that year's World Series, so that once the Series was resumed in 1995, the National League got the home-field advantage that it would have had in 1994. From that point on, of course, the Giants best results have come in even-numbered years. We refer to the 2000 club, which had the NL's best regular-season record, and, of course, this year's entry. (We'll leave the "just happy to be here" 1997 team out of this discussion, as the Baseball Gods had other devices, including the pitching mound, on hand to bedevil them that time around.) It is likely that the Giants would have had a much better chance of winning the Series this year had they had the home-field advantage. The Angels outside of Anaheim were not nearly as impressive, except of course when Livan Hernandez was pitching.

And that is the final piece of proof in my mind why we will never see a World Series Championship banner raised in San Francisco. Be it earthquakes or typhoons or the evil Donald Fehr, the Baseball Gods are always planning ahead and looking to use any and all available means to counter the Giants' hopes and dreams for a championship team. The second half of the 2002 season was a wonderful thing to experience and behold, and yet we were left with empty, aching hearts and a wistful yearning for just eight more outs. The Giants and their fans are always left with the empty, aching hearts and wistful yearnings for things that were not meant to be.

Not even the so-called curse of the Angels was strong enough to out-trump ours. The sad fate of a San Francisco Giants fan is that even the best of times come with punishment in the end. The Cruel Fates let us believe our moment had finally arrived, and they are laughing at us now. It was a glorious season, and there are a lot of wonderful memories that we will always have of it. But the pain will always be there too.

Richard Booroojian blames himself for Game 6, because he was just too damned happy before the start of the seventh inning, and of course such happiness can never be allowed to transpire. With a heavy heart, he has turned back to his financial consulting practice after being shamefully distracted from it for large chunks of October.

Copyright ©2002 by Richard Booroojian

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