by David Beck
We've been San Francisco Giants fans forever. Well, forever to us is when we first realized as toddlers that we were true residents of Giants country. It is also forever because we've been Giants fans for so long -- mostly witnessing futility -- that it definitely has that forever feel.
But each of us has been a true following fan since 1970, when we reached the age when baseball cards became something more than spoke motors for our bicycles. We were following fans in the sense that we paid attention to how Our Boys did, and it meant something to us. Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Chris Speier, Tito Fuentes, even nominal players (tweaks of their time?) Hal Lanier and Al Gallagher became people who really mattered, even though they knew squat about us.
Hey. They were on our team. They played ball just to make us happy. They dirtied their uniforms sliding, they cut their hands making the tag, they slammed into walls making the catch -- for us. They did everything true heroes do. They were Our Boys.
This was such a neat deal that through the '70s we became familiar with all the Giants -- my goodness, the tweaks from those years could fill half the Hall -- and we still cared little that there were tweaks on the team. Indeed we knew that the Giants of the mid-'70s were really bad, but in a sense we forgave them because our enchantment with the Mays-McCovey-Marichal Giantsness was still very captivating. We were still kids who didn't know better.
In 1978 the Giants played way over their heads and under Joe Altobelli they were in first place much of the year. Players like Jack Clark and Darrell Evans gave us that feeling again -- the Giants can be a good team: wow! -- but when in '79 and '80 they started sucking again, we started getting a little wiser.
We came around to the understanding that some of these guys in Giants uniforms were yankin' our chains. When some Giants ballplayer bozo continued his destruction with unabashed latitude, we got a little peeved. We had bestowed upon him the special mantle of Giantshood, and he'd profaned it.
We began to discover that even on our beloved team, there did exist tweaks.
When it comes to baseball, our priorities are as follows:
To most fans, even many Giants fans, sad to say, these are in inverse order. Too many fans go to the ballpark to "see a good game"; we go to a ballgame to see the Giants kick ass. Everyone else is thrilled if the opposing pitcher throws a perfect game in a tough-fought 1-0 loss; we leave the park ticked off. Everyone else is disappointed if the Giants win 28-0 after scoring 19 runs in the first inning; we have a marvelous time.
It is because of this that we feel wholly qualified to make unerring definitive pronouncements about what is right about Our Boys and what isn't.
Some will say, "Well why don't you run the team, then?"
First of all, note that I said what is right about the team, not what is right for it. We make no claim to know more about what the Giants are doing than those playing and working for the team. As players we'd be the tweaks of the tweaks. Now, yes, of course, it is each of our dreams to be playing in the outfield of the San Francisco Giants, and we will always feel that way even when we're 80. But we know better, and this further qualifies us to assess the team as we do.
Secondly, one does not need a doctorate to make the valuations that we do. It is very simple. If a guy is a tweak, he's a tweak. If he's a Triple-A tweak who has to be on the team because the Giants have no one else, well, he's still a tweak. But we take that into consideration.
The guys that stir our wrath big-time are the tweaks who simply should not be tweaks. It's the first-round draft pick or the free agent to whom we shelled out big bucks who continues to stink up the ballpark. It's not just that he plays poorly for a reasonable time period but that he persists in being miserable and doing damage to our cause.
The bane of professional sports that is one of the chief contributors to the condition of interminable tweakness is player free agency. All teams have the misfortune of being forced to keep full-blooded tweaks on their ballclubs because they have to pay them too damn much money. If I were elected commissioner of all sports I'd ban free agency forever.
People always yap, "Oh, but that goes so much against the principles of the free enterprise economy!"
No it doesn't. It's simple. Here's major league baseball. You play it or you don't. No one is forcing you to play it -- anyone has the free-enterprise choice to not play it.
"Oh, but the players will make so little money!"
What a bunch of crap. The ballplayers have brainwashed the fans into this thinking so they'll continue to believe that what the players are doing is so noble and honorable. From the day they got paid for playing the game at the turn of the century to the time free agency started, the ballplayers got paid eight times what the average Arnerican worker did.
"Oh, but the best players should make the most money."
This is another boneheaded reply, with regards to free agency, because the best players always did make the most money before free agency. Indeed, if the money is there for players to have, then they should get their cut, I wholly agree. But does there need to be free agency -- and all the acrimony and the strikes and the lockouts and the ripping apart of franchises that go with it -- just so a ballplayer can make $2 million instead of $1 million?
Why digress so much about free agency? It is simply because we believe in baseball and its pure character, and a big part of character is the challenge of major league clubs to build their teams through two things and two things only: drafting and trading.
Drafting involves teams finding, signing, and working with young players within their respective organizations. Trading means making the best deal with another club that will benefit the team. If your team makes a good deal, great for you. If you're the 1920 Red Sox and trade Babe Ruth to the Yankees for theater tickets, then you're screwed for life. The whole principle of drafting and trading demonstrates the true mettle of your team.
So then, if a player is in the commission of the team for the benefit of the team, and he is a tweak, then it is the team that takes the hit and rectifies the problem -- the team is ultimately responsible. With free agency? The player is in the game for himself, and if he is a tweak, then he takes the fall and all that follows from it. Therefore we apologize to no one for proclaiming these goofballs for what they are. If they say they're worth a thousand times more than they actually are, then they are free game to be blasted when they're exposed. Much of what we're doing here is an impassioned response to what free agency has done to our game.
Our problem as Giants fans? We are devoted to the team that is made up of individuals who are in the whole free agent world as much as any other major leaguer. In a profound way we seek to protect ourselves by claiming that the Giants are above it, and that whatever modicum of honor and nobility in being true-to-the-team that is left in baseball certainly applies to Our Boys and how each player feels about the Giants.
The whole "Humm-Baby" attitude of the late '80s is a terrific example of this kind of pride. Indeed there is a real sacrosanct place in the heart given to any player who was a true Humm-Baby during the Roger Craig years. Even the worst ballplayers are practically exempt from Tweakdom if they demonstrated how in the depths of their spirits they were fully given to the Giants.
But as orange-and-black-blooded Giants fans, we firmly feel it is our duty, in defending the honor of what the San Francisco Giants are all about, to reveal to the world in all the abhorrent splendor of his tweakosity, each and every major leaguer who has deigned to put on a Giants uniform and who has been a thoroughly abject, wretchedly miserable, enormously worthless excuse of a baseball player heretofore to be known not just as a tweak, but as a tweak worthy of the Giants Tweaks Hall of Fame.
The question arises, why are we engaging in such an endeavor? What is the point?
Most importantly it lies in our devotion to the team and our entrustment with securing and upholding the integrity of the San Francisco Giants, and disclosing the cases of supreme tweakitude in the ranks that serves that purpose. It's not as if we are sharing anything that would be a surprise. These clowns are gazillions of light years away from Cooperstown, and simply because of their overwhelming ineptitude it is a given that they be unmasked.
Much of this undertaking involves the great satisfaction of knowing that these wink-wanks are not on the team any more. Yes, we do lament the damage they did to the Giants when they were with the team, and in a real sense that is another very justifiable reason for establishing the Tweaks Hall of Fame: punishment.
An extra measure of notoriety should be given them for being so bad. With a Giants Tweaks Hall of Fame induction they get paid back for befouling Candlestick, and all of professional baseball, for that matter.
A very reasonable question may be, "What about these players themselves? They really tried hard for the team, they really did. I mean, they are real people. Wouldn't you be just insulting them?"
Well to put it sympathetically, tough darts. Too bad. A great thing about all this is that we're not paid sportswriters who must toady to even the worst tweak on the planet so they won't offend all the other egos they've got to get interviews from.
We're fans. True, loyal fans who really, really hate shelling out $20 for a seat to pay the salary of a $2 million-a-year tweak even if he is a Giant. We're not bandwagon-jumping fans who just go to see the latest mega-superstar or join the cause of the latest winner. We are wholly through-and-through Giants fans. And if you're a Giants player, you better be good.
Which leads to another important point. To be a Giant means one has been given something special to respect and esteem -- a privilege and distinction like no other in all of baseballdom. Indeed it is a dominion of rank and position that is set apart, that rises above the base and ordinary complexion of what baseball has largely become. If a player messes that up, he's dust. If he really messes it up, he's in the Hall.
We can hear it now. "Oh how egocentric that is! What arrogant gall, all this 'dominion' and 'privilege' and 'special' stuff! Any team in the major leagues can claim that stuff!"
The fact is, we don't give a damn about any other team, so it doesn't apply to them. Well, wait a minute. We do care about other teams. To the extent that we can get a really good player in a trade for some tweak, then we do care. And also I should say that to the extent that another team is kicking the pants off the Dodgers in any given game, then we do care about that, too.
The Giants do have a storied tradition. Certainly in New York, but even in San Francisco where we admittedly have not won a World Series title, there is a true, distinct character to Our Boys. We have enjoyed genuinely good teams many times and reveled in wonderfully great Giants moments. It is a history that is unique and extraordinary, and it is because of the pride we have in the Giants that we can further the cause of Giants tweak recognition without impugning that eminent standing.
This baseball season of 1996 has been, however, a miserable one for Our Boys. Injuries have devastated them and for the better part of the last half of the season they have literally fielded a Triple-A team and Barry Bonds. Another legacy of free agency is a condition that Gregg projected about three years ago when he said, "Soon enough you are going to see teams with a Barry Bonds and a bunch of Mike Benjamins." I cringed at this thought -- I'd heard it shared by others in different ways -- but we both knew that it would come to pass.
And sure enough, it has for the Giants. My heart gets ripped when I see that while other teams are now putting Budweiser ads for the TV audience behind home plate, the Giants are the only team to put an ad about how tickets for kids were free. Last year I watched a game on TV and the ad didn't change the entire game. We don't deserve what the establishment, the media, and free agency have done to Our Boys.
I make this point because in enduring the season this year, establishing the Giants Tweaks Hall of Fame for all to see and enjoy makes it all more bearable.
With all seriousness put aside, then, we move to make our nominations for entry into the Giants Tweaks Hall of Fame and in doing so close with the main reason we are doing it...
It is so much fun!
An important point needs to be made about Tweakdom. In the grand scale of things, any ballplayer who is not a Humm-Baby, or at least a decent ballplayer, is a tweak. Naturally this is why we are doing all the criterion stuff. The main question is this: what is it exactly that makes a tweak worthy of Hall-of-Fame consideration, even in the most remote sense? Clearly most if indeed not all of those sung about in the tweak songs merit at least some consideration. It is just that the Giants Tweaks Hall of Fame -- like the one for very non-tweak players in Cooperstown -- should be reserved as a shrine for those who've distinguished themselves in abject tweakosity. This must be kept foremost in our thinking.
To start, let me personally give my thoughts on each of the individuals mentioned in the "My Giants, My Tweaks" piece. This is mostly so that we can clarify what the criteria are; some of our thoughts may differ, but for the most part the difference is indeed little.
Also note that the individuals mentioned in that piece were simply used for example's sake, but since they are there for me to unmercifully skewer, I will address them (but exclude the non-tweaks):
Now, to finish, I've got three guys that I think merit real consideration as first-time inductees. They are:
I really want to add Jose Bautista to this list, but because of the John Burkett criterion we have to wait (as if Bautista would do anything better for us -- yes, you can stop clutching your gut now), but he's a future first-balloter, no question. There may very well be others we want to consider, and yeah, I think there should be six, seven, maybe eight first-time inductees. We'll see.
Oh, this is so much fun!
Don't forget the Top Ten Giants Tweaks of All Time.