by Gregg Pearlman
June 19, 1987
Let's look at the Cubs: The last time they showed up in a World Series was 1945. Here it is, 1987, and the Cubs have been pathetic -- with almost unerring consistency -- ever since. Along comes 1969, the year of Don Young, and the Cubs fans are thrown into a very false sense of victory. Young's misfortunes are (a) to drop a game-losing fly ball, and (b) to be awarded the credit for the Cubs' abject pennant-failure by manager Leo Durocher (and, hence, Cub fans themselves). Young played exactly zero major league games after 1969, mostly due, no doubt, to those miserable few seconds which saw the ball happily elude his glove. (Can you imagine what it's like to be Don Young? I can see the poor guy going into a bar for a quick pop and hearing someone say to a friend, "Hey, remember 1969?" "Yeah, that's the year Don Young lost us the pennant." This man has to live with that.)
Thanks to George Orwell, no one is really surprised at what a strange year 1984 really was. The lowlight of the year is the Cubs' major failure against the San Diego Padres, the strongest team in the world's weakest baseball division. What with the Tigers cleaning up in the American League, what fan (once his or her team had already been eliminated in the pennant race) didn't root for the Cubs to win the NL East? How could any fan (except Padre fans, I guess) not root for a replay of 1945: the Cubs and Tigers meeting in the World Series? The sense of impending history was incredible, and, true to form, the Cubs completely ruined the entire year by thoroughly, utterly, overwhelmingly buying the farm of farms, committing the ultimate choke (which no Heimlich maneuver could alleviate), totally caving in in the playoffs against the Padres -- who themselves were too incredibly stupid and shallow to accept their ordained place in baseball history as the idiot child of the National League. The Padres had nary a prayer of winning the playoffs, yet the Cubs wrested a spectacular (and typical) defeat from the jaws of victory. Absolutely ridiculous.
How many true baseball lovers boycotted the 1984 World Series, simply out of contempt for the Cubs' failure?
Give credit where credit is due, you might say. But where is the credit due? To the Padres? Be serious. The Padres have at times been a winning team -- but never a good team. The Cubs simply refused to win. They couldn't handle the pressure of actually being a good team, so they characteristically gagged.
So on this basis it can be argued that you Cub fans must suffer more than fans of any other team. Please! I have no pity whatsoever for you.
What about the fans of the aforementioned Padres? Well, with few exceptions, the Padres draw the most hypocritical fans I've ever seen. In the year I attended San Diego State University, I can't tell you how many Padres games I saw or listened to in which the fans would be deathly silent if the Padres were two or more runs behind (which was frequent). Oh, they'd moan about how bad their team was, but if the Pads suddenly went ahead, they'd become very loud, taunting the opposition -- instead of rooting for the Padres. They'd maintain that level of volume until it appeared as though their Padres even began to consider approaching a situation in which the lead could even remotely conceivably be endangered. (Also, in close games with the Pads behind and the opposition had the remotest chance of widening the gap, the Padre fans headed for the exits.)
I remember a game in early 1981 where some clown in the stands blasted away on a trumpet and screamed, in a hoarse, screamed-out voice, "Hey, who's that pitching for the Giants? It's Vida Booooooooo!" Naturally the Padre partisans would join in, which is reasonable, but it was interesting to watch them shut up, practically in unison, when the Giants took a two-run lead. Even two runs down -- and two runs down is not a dire situation if you can get just one batter to reach base safely and bring up the tying run -- these fans clammed up, obviously concluding that there was no point in rooting for their team.
They were right, as it happens, but don't you think the Padres themselves might have appreciated a little encouragement? Whatever happened to the "tenth man" theory? Then, at least, it was unheard of in San Diego. The few real Padre supporters were almost voiceless, lost as they were in that sea of indifference. To you heavenly-weather Padre fans: take a hike. I have even less pity for you than for Cub fans (for whom I have none). The difference is that Cub fans do all they can to help their team, and they live and die with the Cubs. The Padre fans don't care, and in those rare instances when the Pads make a move, the fans suddenly don their SD hats and pretend they never lost faith.
Of course, if you're going to talk about the 1984 Cubs in any context, you can't leave out the 1986 Red Sox, who allowed the Angels to choke them into the Series -- and passed that karma on to the Mets. Sox fans have waited 70 years for a World Championship. In that respect I have a little pity for them, but not much.
And then there are Dodger fans. If my wife had turned out to be a Dodger fan, I'd never have married her -- the philosophical differences would be too great. Dodger fans don't speak American. They say, "At least I identify with a winner." Well, that's why TV was invented: so you could come home and watch stories about people who have happier, more successful lives than you do. You don't want to come home and watch people who have it just as bad as you. Therefore, in effect, rooting for the Dodgers is like rooting for Hollywood: home of the most vain, shallow, immature and self-centered industry (and mindset) in the world. Loving the Dodgers is tantamount to loving vanity, shallowness, immaturity and self-centeredness. Dodger fans who love and are extremely knowledgeable about the game of baseball are tolerable in small doses, but they're a tiny, tiny minority -- lost among the front-runners and imbeciles who think that the Dodgers' "patriotic" uniforms make them America's team. "We love America's team," they reason. "Therefore we are America. America is the world. Therefore we are the world."
It's sickeningly naive. People like this see America as consisting of Los Angeles and New York -- because that's where most of the TV shows take place. Everything else is wasteland.
In October 1982, the Braves, Dodgers and Giants were fighting for a pennant. The latter two played a season-ending two-game series. The Dodgers needed two victories for a title; the Giants needed a sweep. Because of the premise of this piece, which I hope will become apparent eventually, it is needless to say that the Giants didn't sweep the Dodgers.
Game 1 saw Rick Monday's grand slam beat the Giants and Fred Breining -- who pitched very well and was not pulled early enough by Frank Robinson (yes, I know: it's easy to second-guess). Every Giants fan in the park knew the ball was gone as soon as it left the bat. We were stunned -- but unbowed. We continued to pull for our team.
My friends and I had the misfortune of sitting near a Dodger fan we called Puff (because of his hairstyle -- n.b. Graig Nettles), who said clever things like "In your face!" He made a pretty big deal of the Dodgers' "greatness" and of how terrible the Giants were. In our arguments with him, we beat the hell out of him logically, and that drove him nuts. We -- and the other Giants fans in that section -- showed him the meaning of quiet grace and dignity, both in triumph and agony, throughout the game. Puff, on the other hand, was self-centered, immature, unburdened with incredible intelligence either for baseball or life in general, and incredibly obnoxious.
Our Giants lost that game, and it saddened us as much as it did the team. But we went out the next day and cheered them on to a spectacular defeat by a score of something like 15-1. The Giants didn't play this one to win. Frank Robinson rested many of his regulars, and we Giants fans were treated to Scott Garrelts' first major league inning -- and three consecutive, overpowering strikeouts. We also saw extra-base hits by the extremely green rookies John Rabb (who tripled) and Brad Wellman (who didn't). We hated seeing our team lose to begin with, and we loathed the score, but we still had fun -- with quiet grace and dignity.
The next day the Giants gave the Dodgers the biggest "In your face!" in 20 years when Joe Morgan blasted a seventh-inning home run off reliever Terry Forster -- who relieved Fernando Valenzuela, who, to our delight, was denied his 20th victory of the season. When Morgan homered, I wondered how Puff was doing -- and I hoped for the worst.
That day was the greatest day for Giants fans since before divisional play -- greater even than the 1971 closing-day victory against the Padres that ensured a divisional title. Because in 1982, not only did we knock the Dodgers out of the playoffs, but we knocked their fans out as well.
More beauty occurred at the end of 1985 when (ex-Giant) Jack Clark smashed a pennant-winning home run against Tom Niedenfuer. Even though the Giants had played abysmally all year, the LA Choke Factor was out in force when Giants fans needed it most.
Almost as good as the 1982 Fan Appreciation Day victory was the 1986 Fan Appreciation Day victory. Both teams were out of the race by then, but that LA loss ensured their worst record in quite a while. The 16-inning game saw pitchers pinch-hitting for non-pitchers, playing the outfield and getting crucial base hits. The Giants blew a million scoring opportunities, but they held the Dodgers in check. The Dodgers had the game in the bag, 3-1, in the ninth, but the Giants tied it up. LA went ahead again in the 14th, 5-3, but we tied it again. Greg Minton, unmercifully booed on sight since 1983, got two hits and a five-inning victory in relief -- having scored the winning run in the 16th. The game was incredible, unbelievable and unforgettable. A book could be written about it.
Giants fans pulled together and screamed themselves hoarse for their team -- and a lot of us actually have respectable jobs and are perfectly reasonable, intelligent, rational human beings. The game wasn't even important in terms of the standings, but people who'd never met before in their lives were hugging each other. Life was wonderful that day, and for whoever won the Fan Appreciation Day car, it was just spangles on the icing on the cake.
Here it is, June 19, 1987, and it's far from unreasonable to expect great things from our Giants this year. But they're determined, apparently to bask in mediocrity. Why? We, the Giants lovers of the world, deserve a 108-win season from our team. We deserve a thrilling playoff victory. We deserve a riveting, spine-tingling Series culminating in World Championship for our Giants.
The Giants are like a child: once in a great while, they'll do something so dumbfoundingly wonderful that you'll get a lump in your throat. Most of the time, however, it's one disappointment after another. But you love them unconditionally and will never stop -- and they'll take years off your life.