GiantsWalk: Snap!

On Thursday morning, before the last game of a three-game series between “your” San Francisco Giants and the Florida Marlins, I went to #spanishrevolution on Twitter to catch up with what was going on in Madrid. As I read about people taking over the Puerta del Sol and plazas in cities across Europe, Twitter informed me that the topic then trending number one in San Francisco was #posey.

Run Over

For those who missed it, here is clip of Scott Cousins barreling into Buster Posey to score the winning run on Wednesday night. Posey suffered torn ligaments in his left ankle that probably will require surgery, along with a broken bone in his lower left leg. Nothing official, but he’s most likely out for the rest of this season, and there is some doubt about his career as a catcher.

Before the Marlins got here, the Giants pumped up their fans with a three-game sweep of Oakland, performing a variation on last year’s championship post-season: two low-scoring, one-run walk-off nailbiters, and a complete game shutout from Mr. Lincecum. Seeing a timely hit from Aubrey Huff was like seeing the first wildflower of the year on Mt. Tam, a sight that brings spring to the heart — and Emmanuel Burris home with the winning run on Friday night. Sunday, Burris reversed his role, driving home the extra-innings walk-off run.

Moxie, grit and good pitching can carry the day against a troubled team, but if runs are the currency of baseball, despite inflated ticket and food prices, “your” Giants lead the league in poverty.

Gloom on a Gorgeous Day

On a bright, though mottled, Thursday afternoon, 40,000 souls gathered on the banks of Mission Creek to watch a game flow past as quickly and quietly as water, a season, a life. Yes, I’ve seen dreadful games before, games where the Giants couldn’t hit the ball no matter how or where the pitcher threw it; I’ve been to heartbreakers and letdowns, but I’ve never been to a game that felt more like a funeral. A huge hush hung over the field, as if the game were being played in a thick wet fog that had nothing to do with the weather.

All sentences, spoken sotto voce, began with Buster and ended with Posey; worry wrinkled faces from the parapalegic usher to the big guy wearing a 28 jersey next to me, spilling beer on his girlfriend, to the older man who looked like a transplant from a heavy Russian novel. That the Giants lost 1-0, blowing another excellent outing by new Giant pitcher Ryan Vogelsong, only seemed fitting.

Just before Andres Torres grounded into another Giant double play to end the eighth inning, I contrasted the mood at the ballpark with the mood at Puerta del Sol in Madrid, where tens of thousands have turned out in a carnival of protest to denounce the machinations of their political class and economic elites. It’s an outpouring of outrage, patterned on the Arab Spring, combining social media with social indignation and a demand for dignity: to be treated as citizens, not ciphers on a spreadsheet or commodities that can be bought, sold and discarded. More than that, it’s a civic festival — young, old, poor, middle-class — a giant party. And it’s already spread to other cities in Europe.

Party Time?

San Francisco had a Giant party to celebrate the World Series.

The path to another Series just got rockier. Getting to the playoffs will be, to use Bruce Bochy’s favorite word, a “grind.” Expect more low-scoring games won by one run; more Bochyean liquid lineups, changing every which way every other day; more scintillating climaxes (“torture”) as long as the pitching endures, a couple bats wake up and a Panda soon returns to the playground.

In the ninth inning I remembered a sign in Puerta del Sol reading, “The French and the Greek fight while the Spanish win in soccer.” Can we let it be said that “the Arabs and the Europeans fight while San Francisco watches Aubrey Huff and Cody Ross weakly strand Freddy Sanchez on third?”