It has always been somewhat irksome to me that all of my posts except for the first one appear on the same page. Try as I might, I could never find a way to get my first article on the home page. Now, you can see my other ten posts, but you have to search through cyberspace to find post #1. So I am now going to post the first article again. If you haven't read it, do not be thrown by the unchronological order. If you have, just ignore this post.
But everything will finally be in one place.
Reflections 10.30.2011
Let me begin by addressing Cardinals fans. Congratulations. That's about all I have to say to you. For me, the most significant thing about the redbirds winning the 2011 World Series is not about them. As a Giants fan, the thing I focus on most is, after Allen Craig caught that last fly ball with two outs in the top of the ninth inning, that the Giants are no longer the reigning champions. It is not so much that I am upset about this, though I am not exactly happy. I had come to terms with this over a month ago, when San Francisco was officially eliminated for the playoffs. The feeling I get from the Cardinals' victory seems almost like something a buddhist monk would experience. After the years of angst and disappointment I got year of euphoria, and I am now returning to earth. It seems almost satisfying, in some weird way. Let me try to explain why.
Winning the World Series was amazing. Even though I am young, the concept of the Giants being the champions of baseball seemed impossible. I followed the 2010 season and run to the playoffs with more devotion and obsession that I care to admit. But even with all the celebration and happiness, San Francisco's first MLB championship made me consider baseball from a completely different angle. There are thousands of quotes to the effect of 'the journey is what counts, the destination is not the true whatever…' I don't feel the need to pick one out right now. But it seemed true. I have never once entertained the notion that it would be preferable had the Giants not won it all, but being in the position of a fan of the World Series Champions made me look at things very differently. When, as a fan, it seems that EVERYTHING- every hit, every strikeout, every comeback, every win- goes towards the ultimate goal of winning the World Series, baseball can seem kind of insignificant after winning it all. It's not that my favorite team winning the championship isn't so great. I mean, "THE RIGHT HANDER FOR THE GIANTS THROWS… SWING AND A MISS! AND THAT'S IT!" is pretty much constantly replaying in my head. But think about it. Why do we cheer when our team wins? Why do we love it so much when a player on our team hits 30 home runs or has an ERA under 3.00? Why do we bask in the optimism of the spring and hang at the edge of our seats come September? Its all about winning the World Series. When the Giants did just that, there were twangs of sadness. Is this all baseball will ever mean to me as a fan? No matter what, will they ever be able to top this? And know everybody across the country (and Japan, for that matter) knew then about Andres Torres and Cody Ross and all of the players that we seemed to think knowing about put us in a special position, like connected to the team in some way. And what about all these bandwagon fans who will clog up the lines at AT&T Park and cheer for Brian Wilson, who I avidly cheered pre-beard. Worse, will people think I am a bandwagon fan? What is the point of it all?
I had all these feelings after the San Francisco Giants won the last professional baseball game of 2010. But as the 2011 season progressed, and people from San Diego to Boston forgot about the Giants (Although this was pretty @#$% annoying), I began to realize that the Giants were not special. Like every other team (but the Cubs) they would bask in their moment of glory and take their rings and move on. The tireless pursuit for domination would continue as always, and we will still cheer home runs and wins and laud our stars and run towards the pinnacle of baseball. There will always be records to set and records to break. This is the true greatness of the game, and of all sports. People like to deride sports fans as pathetic failures who consider themselves part of team that has nothing to do with them and are obsessed to an unhealthy level. But the feeling that anything can happen, the amazement, happiness, sadness, crushing defeat, eternal optimism, and irrefutable successes and failures of sports- these are all as important to life as anything else. George Mallory expresses it best in perhaps my favorite quote ever, "if you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this… and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life." Our jobs our not the most important things in the world. We live to seek happiness and to experience vast ranges of emotions. Nothing is more existential than baseball. That is why I am not ashamed to call myself a big Giants fan. That is why I'll sit against the hot stove through the winter and eagerly anticipate spring training 2012. Opening Day is 152 days away.
Life begins when the season starts.
