I recall sitting at Candlestick Park behind the Giants’ dugout a few minutes before an evening game was going to begin.  This was a couple of decades ago, exactly which season I don’t recall, but I was staring at the trio of Will Clark, Kevin Mitchell, and Matt Williams standing together, probably at least a couple of them with bats on their shoulders, chatting and joking.  I realised then that I was looking at three men with a collective worth of some multiple of millions of dollars, modest by today’s baseball standards but by any other an obscene amount of money for grown men to make playing a game.  So I understand that the fortunes of a group of men, utter strangers to me, possibly indifferent to the city of my birth and the baseball team of that city except as an employer, are not the same as my fortunes.  Their success is not my success.

Unfortunately, their failures have felt like mine.  After 2002 I made myself understand that it is unreasonable to act so, and thereafter I tried to distance myself somewhat from the experiences of any of my favorites sports teams.  But allegiances die hard, and so I will not feel any twinge of inconsistency if I acknowledge that THE SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS HAVE WON THE FREAKIN’ WORLD SERIES.

I had 1989 and 2002, and my father had 1962 as well.  For all that thought this, or this, it’s finally over.

From my annual trip to see the Giants this summer, here is a superb action shot of Matt Cain, the hero of Game Two: