The Giants

This is it; as good as it gets. If you are a Giants fan and a live chances are life couldn’t be better right now: the Giants have won The World Series.
I am not the person who can’t stop pinching himself; I’m not the guy who wakes himself up in the middle of the night smiling, thanking God that the orange and black are now the royal colors of victory. In any case I, like many of my fellow Giants fans, cannot really believe that some hours ago on a field in Texas our team clinched their destiny.
For me though it’s a little different; I live a world away where the closest baseball fans are across an East Asian sea, and fans eat noodles at baseball games—not hot dogs. Shanghai is not a baseball city.
In thinking about what my team has done this year I want to go back a few steps, to the beginning of the year—the beginning of spring training. I remember reading the headlines of who the front office was signing. Mark DeRosa, then Aubrey Huff and then I think it was the resigning of Bengie Molina. Pitching was excellent, but in terms of hitting the only destiny that fans could foresee was that the team’s bats would be asleep at the plate.
Pathetic as the team was, some glimmer of hope was shinning in my soul. I knew back in early spring that this was going to be the year the Giants would take the World Series. I knew this because I was planning on spending the following academic year abroad—here in China.
I told my friends and my family—mainly my Dad—about my prophesy and of course I was received with laughs and taunts. My hope began to dwindle away when the Giants lost their first place in the Western Division to San Diego. Still I was back to my nine year-old self, watching every game I could, memorizing every player’s stats and analyzing my team’s chances of success. Then I left the home of the greatest national pastime and crossed an ocean.
During my first few weeks in China I kept up with how los Gigantes were doing and wore my baseball cap on the weekends. Being outside of the culture of baseball one finds that no one really cares about the sport at all, but that didn’t deter me from bringing up my team’s chances of success in October at ex-pat parties.
I read the Chronicle online and watched my team’s playoff chances go from possible, to probable, to an almost mathematical assurance, to just barely making the playoffs, to the playoffs. Then when the Giants faced off with the Braves in their first game I felt the dire need to be a part of the cultural baseball movement that was rumbling deep beneath the San Andreas fault. I read the play-by-play in the mornings before my Chinese class and once I was home again I would look at the game’s pictures and read the recap.
As the Giants did exceedingly better in the playoffs it seemed as if Californian hope was snowballing into something productive. I read articles detailing how fanatical Giants fans had become with their Mr. disguiseo beards, panda hats and rally thongs. Whenever I read the play-by-play I would have my facebook page open and read my friends’ comments. The chat seemed as filling as what one would hear on any color commentary.
Then it was game six of the NLCS with Philadelphia. I woke up on a late Sunday morning poked around my email and facebook then remembered the game was on. I immediately bolted out of my groggy state and caught up with what was happening on most TV sets in the Bay Area. The Giants had squeezed a lead out of nowhere with Uribe’s homerun and it was now the eighth inning. My cell phone rings and my dad is on the other side. “Do you want me to put the game on?” he asks without saying hello.
I pace up and down my room with my Giants cap on and my phone in my ear. With so much static, I can barely make out what John Miller is saying during Brian Wilson’s rollercoaster of a ninth inning. With two outs and one of baseball’s most productive hitters is at the plate with two strikes on him, the static clears and all I can hear is “STRIKE THREE CALLED!” The Giants were in the World Series and I was as happy as can be.
When I woke up on Tuesday morning it was Monday night in the States. I called my parents to chat and almost forgot that there was a game on. I got online and soon I was reading the game pitch by pitch. As Cliff Lee and The Freak battled it out I did my Chinese homework and glanced at my computer every thirty seconds or so. I watched as Uribe and Ross got on and were bumped to scoring position by Huff’s first career sac bunt. I watched to see what Burrell could do, then Rentaria got up. Right as the Afro Colombian launched the ball over the awestruck Texan outfielders the play-by-play cuts to a commercial. I switch over to facebook to see if there are any updates and all I can remember is “RENTARIA…HR!!!
My cheers woke up my roommates and now that the game was just starting to get interesting I had to go to class. I took my laptop to class and read my play-by-plays but my teacher interrupted me to kick me out of the room. I made a deal that after the morning quiz I could take all the time I needed but I would get an F on attendance for the day. “Whatever you gotta do, I don’t care, this game is too important.”
Back in my room I call my dad and I he puts the phone to the radio again. The airwaves are clear over the Pacific Ocean and I get every word out of Kruk and Kuip’s microphone. I am now pacing back and forth in my room, my Californian flag draped over my shoulders and the phone in my ear. My heart thumps and tears well up in my eyes as I realize what is about to happen. I listen to the ninth; it was a one, two, three with Wilson’s signature strike-out closing out the game.
It’s unreal. I guess it all happened but how do I know—I could only read about it. Facebook lights up with my friends’ posts from all over Nor Cal. Everyone is pumped. My sister calls me and I talk to her as I listen to KNBR’s patter in one ear. Soon enough I realize I have to get back to the alternate reality—the one that I am in, the reality of the country that I live in and the Chinese class that I am missing.
I enter in the classroom all smiles. “They won!” My Chinese teacher and the other American girl who came to class today couldn’t care less. “I don’t understand” my Chinese teacher said. “Let me explain: my family has been in California for over 80 years, in that time the Giants have only been a part of California for some 50 odd years, and in those 50 odd years, none of my family has ever seen the Giants win the World Series.” She giggles and says, “No, I don’t understand baseball.”