Kuzul

Five years ago when I was still living in sunny San Diego, I once sat in a bar watching Josh Hamilton hit like 124 home runs in the All-Star Home Run Derby. It was a pretty awesome thing to see, and it ended up keeping me around well after I finished sipping my Vanilla Coke. 

Seated two stools next to me was a man who was unmistakably from Boston. The Patriots tattoo, the missing R’s in his sentences and his insistence that Pedro Martinez did nothing wrong by brawling with 104-year-old man—all easily identifiable characteristics. But the most distinguishable trait of all was his cynical outlook on sports fans in California, and for that matter, the entire west coast. Besides our mutual dislike of AJ Piersynzki and Jon Voight, there wasn‘t a single thing we could agree on, especially on the topic of Barry Bonds and his Hall of Fame candidacy. 

He sneered at my suggestion that Bonds should be a first ballot Hall of Famer, and then nearly round-kicked me when I pointed out his hypocrisy in supporting Bill Belichick all throughout Spygate. His reasoning: Bill’s a good guy who didn’t think there was anything wrong with videotaping the signals of the opposing team, while Barry was a world-class jackass who shot up three times a week so he could turn into a bull shark and steal a bunch of baseball records. 

Yes, that’s right. Bill was such a great guy that he ran up the score, refused to shake hands with coaches at the end of games and made his players play through their own concussions. But I digress.

Anyway, the electorate has apparently agreed with my bar pal (who I haven’t spoken to ever since I refilled his beer glass in the restroom), as Bonds’ and about 20 other guys were blacklisted from baseball’s holiest shrine.  

The only thing that surprised me about the vote was that for the first time, Barry wasn‘t singled out for cheating. 

Just so we’re clear, I’m not one of those sycophants who believes that Barry Bonds is innocent of using performance-enhancing drugs. I know the reason Bonds hit 73 home runs wasn‘t because he suddenly started seeing the ball better (well actually he did, since PEDs improve hand-eye coordination as well as muscle buildup). Barry took steroids. So did hundreds and hundreds of other players, several of whom were also on the same Hall of Fame Ballot. 

Some of them, like Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro, won’t EVER get into Cooperstown. 

So what’s the deal? What makes Bonds different from any of the other proven cheaters on this list? Personality? Please. Bonds was only slightly nicer (or more accurately, less loathsome) than most of the other ticks that he finds his name next to on this ballot. He was helluva a lot nicer than Roger Clemens (which is like being a better speaker than Rocky Balboa), a far greater teammate than Sam-Me Sosa and next to Curt Schilling, you could probably make him a star on his own reality charity show. Simply put, Barry was arrogant and unapproachable and believed the sport and the media was still stuck in a 1960s mindset.   

The only thing that set his attitude apart from everyone else was his honesty. If you weren‘t a Giants fan you hated Barry, and that made rooting for him even easier.  Some say he was a guilty pleasure, others say he was just fun to watch.  All I know is there’s something cool about having a guy on your team that could bring out the worst in every stadium across America. 

Barry said it once himself: They wouldn’t boo you if you weren’t any good.

And Barry was good. Very good. 

Good enough to be a first-ballot inductee. He actually punched his ticket to the Hall well before he started taking steroids, back when he was 150-pound leadoff hitter for the Pittsburgh Pirates. There he was a two-time MVP and indisputably the best player in the game. He stole 32 bases or more six times, led the league in walks, on-base percentage, slugging percentage and OPS+ in 1992, and finished with 30 home runs and 30 stolen bases twice in 1990 and 1992. 

Then Barry decided to “take his talents” to San Francisco where he won his second straight MVP (and third overall) and became the second player in baseball to hit 40 home runs and steal 40 bases (though he should have been the first because of a chump named Jose Canseco, more on him later). He led the league in walks four times from 1994 to 1997, and hit more than 34 home runs in seven straight seasons despite an injury-riddled campaign in 1999 where he blew out his elbow trying to pick Charlie Hayes off the ground. 

In 1998, Barry became the first player in the major leagues to hit 400 home runs and steal 400 bases, and no one outside of San Francisco noticed or cared. Thousands of miles away in the Midwest, two juiced-up sluggers were chasing the most sacred record in sports, and Bonds’ achievements became almost as irrelevant as an episode of House. 

Like so many before him (not just athletes, mind you), Barry decided nothing good came out of playing by the rules when no one else around him was doing the same. 

So he cheated. It was the wrong thing to do. 

But man it felt so right.

In 2000, Barry hit a career-high 49 home runs and finished second in MVP voting to teammate Jeff Kent. The next year he broke the single-season home run record and led the majors in on-base percentage, slugging and OPS from 2001-2004. He walked 232 times in 2004 (120 of which were intentional) and had an absurd on-base average of .609. He finished his career as the all-time home runs and walks leader, stole over 500 bases and won eight Gold Gloves. He was intentionally walked 43 times in his final season, sixth all-time behind Willie McCovey, Albert Pujols and himself three times. 

Barry Bonds was the second best player in baseball history, and it’s a safe bet that had he stayed clean, he would have finished somewhere in the top 20.

Not so with Mark McGwire, who began cheating during his early days with the Oakland Athletics when fellow bash brother (let’s call them the “rash brothers”), Jose Canseco, was injecting him with steroids in the bathroom stalls at the Oakland Coliseum. 

There was only one thing McGwire could do in his career, and that was hit home runs. Take away the one thing that was helping him do that (a sleazy Cro-magnon with a mullet and a syringe) and he becomes about as useful as a speedstick in Tony LaRussa’s locker. 

Then we have Sammy Sosa. What is there really to say? America fell for that phony smile until that fateful day in 2003 when his bat splintered and cork spilled out onto the grass. Everyone suddenly saw Sammy for what he was: a lying, sneaky muscle-headed fraud. His career was on the same trajectory as Shawon Dunston until 1998, when he arrived to spring camp looking like he had trained for the UFC. He won the MVP that year and went on to become the first player in major league history to hit 60 home runs in a season three times.  

The best thing you can say about Sosa is that, like Bonds, he managed to perform incredibly when he cheated. But, unlike Barry, who was a Hall of Fame player before he started taking steroids, Sammy wasn’t even good enough replace a squirrel in right field. 

It’s funny how many sportswriters are saying that Bonds and Roger Clemens should have been inducted into the Hall of Fame, but both candidates finished with under 38 percent of the vote. 

So who’s doing all the voting? Surprisingly, people who have absolutely no knowledge of the game. The BBWAA is comprised of writers who haven’t written a word about baseball since the Reagan administration. It wouldn’t surprise me if they thought Joe Theismann was supposed to be on the ballot. Seeing as how no single player reached the required 75 percent of votes for induction, it’s clear that the writers sought to make this less about achievement and more about justice.

Given that Barry Bonds is the chief supervillain in the modern steroid era, it’s likely he won’t make the Hall until the human race abandons currency. 

The Hall of Fame is not a place for activist voters. While integrity shouldn’t be ignored, the attempt to purge an entire generation of players to make a public statement to that effect is ludicrous. We’re not choosing anyone for sainthood here; the point is to celebrate individual glory and Bonds’ achievements (before and after Balco) speak louder to that than anyone over the last quarter century. 

If the voting was really based on character and integrity, Ty Cobb and all the rest of the racists and hooligans would have had their membership revoked 60 years ago. 

The prestige and importance of the game’s highest honor is immediately questioned every time the best players are filibustered because of character concerns, and it may take a big step from the Hall itself to insure that greatness is recognized in its full context. 

Bonds may have disgraced the game with his actions, but he was not the first, nor will he be the last flawed superstar to grace the walls of history. 

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It was a fun time at good old Wrigley Field earlier this week. The Giants scored two week’s worth of runs in one afternoon. Barry Zito won his first game since Ronald Reagen was elected to his second term, and Ryan Dempster figured out that there’s a team in the National League that he can pitch well against.

Splitting a four-game series on the road isn’t such a bad thing, but when the opposing team is as bad as the Cubs, you’re left with the same feeling of dread that occurs after being on the losing end of a sweep.    

I have only one thing to say about Thursday. Don’t blame Brian Wilson. The Giants blew too many chances to add an insurance run, and it cost them in the ninth. The team Bruce Bochy fielded that afternoon was full of hapless hitters that couldn’t manage a single hit in nine innings against the Cubs’ horrific bullpen. Given their production in the doubleheader, it’s a miracle if the Giants aren’t a hit before the All-Star break.

As usual, it was a poor game for everyone except the guy who started on the mound. Emmanuel Burris bunted into two more outs, Bill Hall inexplicably played in another game and Cody Ross blew a chance to nail the final out at home when he threw the ball 30 feet above the plate.

It’s hard to believe that the Giants are four games better than they were at this point last season.

I know this sounds crazy, but isn’t it plausible that if Buster hadn’t gotten injured and Brian Sabean didn’t signed Miguel Tejada in the offseason, the Giants might have won 100 games by now?

Aye me.

********

Speaking of Cody Ross, while he hasn’t been that great so far in this road trip hitting .190 and grounding into a rally killing double play, he showed the world the proper way of reacting to one of the most frustrating occurrences in baseball.

In the sixth inning of last week’s game against the Minnesota Twins, Ross chased a foul ball down the left field line and sprinted into the stands. Just as he appeared to make a circus catch, a fan reached out in front of his glove and caught it.

It was a play that brought back a flood of memories from Game 6 of the 2003 NLCS.

Except Cody didn’t make like Moises Alou and throw a tantrum. He simply scooted back to his position in right field with barely a glance over his shoulder. Vogelsong retired the next two batters and the inning was over.

The same thing may have happened eight years ago if Alou had done something similar. Screaming at somebody won’t change the amount of outs on the scoreboard. Slamming your hands into the turf isn’t going to help your pitcher retire the next batter. What transpired was one of the most hilarious meltdowns in the history of professional sports.

It’s not funny really. I despised the Cubs for several years after they hired Dusty Baker along with a few other ex-Giants which included Kenny Lofton, Ramon Martinez and Tom Goodwin. More loathsome than Dusty, cheatin’ Sammy or screamin’ Carlos Zambrano however, was the presence of the Ostrich-sized douche bag Mark Prior.

But even as I gleefully taunted Prior with a pair of middle fingers directed at the television screen, I found it disheartening the way Fox kept zooming in on the tearful Steve Bartman for what felt like two hours. A diehard Cubs fan, whose greatest dream was to see his team play in the World Series, suddenly found himself clumped together with guys like Steve Garvey, Will Clark and an immigrant farm owner from Greece.

There was no justice in making this kid the poster boy for a century’s worth of failure.

I’ve continually maintained that Bartman wasn’t to blame for the Cubs’ demise as they were closing in on that oh so elusive National League pennant. Although Alou certainly had a shot at making the play, there’s no guarantee that the result would have been different without Bartman’s intervention. This was not Jeffrey Mauer reaching into the field of play and corralling the ball over the fence for a home run.

This was a strange happening with an unusual set of circumstances that could have produced any outcome.  

Whatever the result, Alou didn’t help the situation by screaming at the fans and blaming Bartman again during a postgame interview.

Let that be a lesson learned.

Never follow any example set by the Cubs.

*******

The Giants continue to allow their bullpen to walk the tightrope in the every game. For the second straight day, Brian Wilson squandered away a 1-0 lead, and it took a miraculous rally and a couple of crazy plays in the ninth to avoid another late-game collapse.

Cameras caught Wilson in the dugout where he cussed out the helmet rack, threw a Gatorade bucket into the wall, then smacked around the same bucket with a baseball bat.

While Brian was probably reacting to his fourth blown save, I’m sure he’s also peeved that Alex Smith is coming back as the starting QB for the 49ers next year. 

Pretty f#@$ing stupid, I know.

*******

Over the last three games, Giants starters have allowed two runs in 21-and-a-third innings, striking out 24 and walking four.

And they have no wins to show for it.

Bumgarner was unhittable again on just four days of rest. He might actually win a game if he comes out of his hitting slide.

Snap out of it kid, you’re the best hitter on the team. Now is not the time for slumps.

********

You just have to love Brandon Crawford. He walked three times and saved the game when he caught Brennan Boesch’s soft liner as it was heading toward center field. Biggest double play of the season so far.

Still he’s only batting .198 for the year. But he also has one home run. That’s good enough to be hitting cleanup in this lineup. 

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It seems like only yesterday when Canadians were running wildly around the streets of Vancouver screaming hysterically and climbing up street signs in order to get above the shaking ground. 

The city had just experienced its first major earthquake in over 64 years. The epicenter was located about 800 miles south of the border in a small American city where 90 percent of the population stood watching their television screens with wobbling knees.

Brian Wilson zinged a fastball past Nelson Cruz for the final out of the World Series, and Giants fans screamed and stampeded the streets of San Francisco with such ferocity that even their neighbors to the north knew who was now the best team on the planet.

For a night, there was nothing else that mattered in the hearts and minds of Bay Area sports fans who longed to see a World Series celebration take place in their jeweled city by the bay.

It would be nice to see the same thing happen again without having to wait another 50 years. The Red Sox waited all of three years after 2004, and they did it convincingly by sweeping a very good Colorado Rockies team in the World Series.

No longer could the casual baseball fan equate their amazing 3-0 series comeback against their arch rival New York Yankees to a good episode of Two and a Half Men, because they proved that even with the decline of tenured players like Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz and Curt Schilling, they had a team good enough to be winning championships long after Charlie Sheen passes a sobriety test.

After doing the improbable last season, the Giants seem focused in on another championship run. Normally, this is the time of year when Giants fans throw chairs across the room every time Brian Sabean signs a washed-up athlete to a ridiculously absurd contract.

The worst thing I did after hearing that Miguel Tejada signed a one-year $6 million deal was peel off the scab that my girlfriend gave me the week before.

Eww.

Most of us have grown accustomed to Brian’s habit of picking up players at National League yard sales. With the results that it produced last year, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Giants try replacing Cody Ross in left field with a two-legged chair, a turntable and a used game of Monopoly.

But this offseason has given Giants fans a reason to hope, as the franchise has retained most of the key players on their championship roster sans Juan Uribe and Edgar Renteria (who’ll probably be telling his kids that his three-run homer off Cliff Lee in Game 5 was the last at-bat in his career before he flew to Cincinnati to take a job as Dusty Baker’s locker room therapist).          

There were a few players at the top of my wish list that I projected would turn the Giants into a 110-win team, but as it is, I’m pretty happy with the 98-win squad Sabean put together since Buster Posey caught the biggest pitch in the Giants’ 117-year history.

As I look closely at the Giants this spring and reflect back on last year’s championship run, I can’t help but notice a few similarities between this team and the ’96 Yankees squad that won the World Series in one of the most bizarre postseasons in the twentieth century.

It was also a fun one to watch if you weren’t named Marquis Grissom or Andy Benes.

Any postseason that has the Dodgers getting swept, the Cardinals blowing a 3-1 series lead and the Braves choking away another World Series title makes the $29.99 monthly Tivo subscription worth it.                        

The Yankees were in the unlikely position of underdogs that year. They hadn’t been to the World Series since 1978 (which can feel like 170 years if you’re a New York baseball fan) and like the Giants, they also had to endure a brilliant Fox announcing crew explaining why the other team was going to win before every game.

That was also Joe Buck and Tim McCarver’s first World Series together. For some reason, Tim’s hair seems to get redder every year.

Someone could easily make the point that the only reason I’m comparing the Giants to the ’96 Yankees is because I want to see three more championship parades in San Francisco. I’d also like to see Natalie Portman in my living room, but looking at pictures of Josie Maran isn’t going to make that happen.

Each team had the same regular season record (92-70), went 11-4 in the postseason and outpitched their opponents in every series.

Even the road that both teams took getting through the October gauntlet was similar, squeezing out one-run victories in games that would often give their fans (like me) a stomach ulceration.

The Yankees were tested in every inning of their divisional series against the Texas Rangers. After dropping the first game at home, they came back from a three-run deficit in Game 2 and won in the 12^th inning on third baseman Dean Palmer’s throwing error.

In Game 3, the Yankees trailed the Rangers 2-1 in the ninth before staging a two-run game-winning rally off Darren Oliver. They went on to close out the series in Texas.  

The Giants faced a similar grind against the Atlanta Braves in the opening round last season. With the series tied 1-1, the Braves were one strike away from winning Game 3 before the Giants rallied to take the lead behind a pair of clutch singles and the third error of the game by second basemen Brooks Conrad. They completed the road sweep with another comeback win in Game 4.

Both teams also caught breaks from inept officiating and timely screw-ups from the opposition. I’ve always believed that it’s usually more satisfying knowing that your team won games with good hitting and good pitching rather than because the other team blew it with bad defense and awful managing.

Then I remembered Dusty Baker used to coach the Giants.

If Karma was measured by how many years Dusty remained in San Francisco, then the Giants should win 10 more championships and go a regular season undefeated.

But they got their mulligan’s worth when the umpires blew three calls against the Braves in the LDS, and in the World Series when Ian Kinsler’s 400-foot blast inexplicably bounced off the top of the center-field wall for a double. 

The Yankees probably wouldn’t have made it anywhere in ’96 without the umpires driving Bobby Cox and Hal Westbrook up the crazy tree.

The funniest memory of the ALCS that year will always be Jeffrey Mauer pulling a fly ball over Tony Tarasco’s head for a home run. Shouldn’t have gotten in the way of the kid’s glove, said umpire Rich Garcia.

And who could forget Tim Welke hilariously backpedaling into Jermaine Dye in Game 3 of the World Series, prolonging the inning for Bernie Williams to hit a two-run homer?   

There is one final thing to remember. While the Yankees had Jim Leyrtiz, the Giants had Cody Ross. But unlike Leyritz who made just one good swing against the Braves in the World Series, Cody was outstanding throughout the entire postseason for the Giants.

As a Giants fan, you never expect your team to be defending something as monumental as a World Series title. They started off slow with a forgettable series against the repellent Dodgers, but there were several encouraging signs outside the fact that their defense forgot how to catch.

Tim Lincecum tossed seven dominant innings in his first start, allowing just three hits and no walks. Tim’s also got his own personalized logo for merchandising, so that’s pretty cool. I still think this one would have looked a whole lot better.

The first baseman on everybody’s radar, Brandon Belt, went 1-for-3 with a walk in his first big league game, and despite making the last out, showed a lot of poise in a gritty eight-pitch at-bat against the Dodgers’ 375-pound closer, Jonathan Broxton.

The next night, Belt sent the fourth pitch he saw from Chad Billingsley over the center-field wall for a three-run homer. He’s already seen more pitches than anyone in the majors and he’s only 22. Brandon will be hearing a lot of boos at the Old Septic Tank for many years to come.

Pablo Sandoval has also started looking closer to his old form. And by that, I don’t mean I’ve seen him hanging around my neighborhood Subways. He went 4-12 in the series and deposited a Hiroki Kuroda pitch into the 20^th row of the right-field bleachers.

Although his defense still needs improving, he’s demonstrated his 2009 ability to field groundballs cleanly. Now all he has to do is keep himself from heaving the ball into the stands.

Despite making an error that ended up costing the Giants the game, Jonathan Sanchez was mostly brilliant throughout his first outing, striking out eight Dodgers in 5.2 innings of work, often abusing hitters with an unhittable slider that disappears two inches away from the plate. This could finally be Jonathan’s breakout year if he can retain command of his fastball and shave his goatee evenly on both sides.

I’m not going to make any excuses for the offense against Kershaw in the opener because they weren’t just bad—they were horrific. But the Giants were able to stage several rallies against Billingsley and Kuroda and they also did a much better job of working the count. They just need to regain some of the timely hitting that they used to ambush their opponents so efficiently in last year’s playoffs.  

The national media still hasn’t learned anything. They’re still stubbornly picking the Phillies to win the World Series even after spending an entire offseason trying to surgically remove the foot that was wedged up their keisters last November.   

We know it’s because they think Cliff Lee is going to steamroll every offense in the National League and the Phillies won’t have to score more than three runs to win games. That strategy works fine as long as Ryan Howard homers twice in every game.

Even though the media won’t admit it, the Phillies offense stinks. Chase Utley’s spent more time on the DL than Chris Brown in anger management therapy (neither one is really working out), and the departure of Jason Werth left a pair corpses (Jimmy Rollins and Raul Ibanez) to protect Ryan Howard in the lineup.  

Their bullpen’s still shaky and the Phillies hitters won’t leave them much room for error during the regular season. Brad Lidge will probably be blowing his 15th save of the season sometime in early June.  

He should probably bring an umbrella to home games just in case it starts raining batteries during his trip to the mound in the late innings.  

No, the Giants didn’t sign Carl Crawford or Adrian Beltre. That’s not what they’re about. And this might surprise you, but it wasn’t what the Yankees were about during their success in the late 90s. They discovered in ’96 that they already had the best team. So they just left it alone.

Two seasons later, they won 114 games and another World Series title.

The Giants may not be perfect (as the experts over at SI and Yahoo! Sports keep reminding us every day on Twitter and Facebook), but they’re good. Good enough to win.

They proved last year that ignorance in the media is synonymous with baseball and that the Bay Area will always be the main target of the superiority complex felt by the East Coast for the last two centuries.  

That’s all fine, of course. We learned to stop caring a long time ago. Take the first four games and recycle them. 2011 is the year of the Giant repeat.

I like their chances, just like I liked New York’s chances against New England in the Super Bowl, the Warrior’s chances against the Mavericks in the ’07 playoffs and Apollo’s chances against Ivan Drago in Rocky IV.

Well, scratch the last one, but you get the idea.

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Two weeks ago, the sun shone brightly on Market Street where streams of orange confetti rained down from the skies as the city of San Francisco celebrated its first World Series Title. It was a party the likes of which had never been seen in the golden city by the bay, as thousands of fans (with crowd estimates reaching as high as one million) jam packed the streets to welcome home their world champion San Francisco Giants.

They say moments like these are made for the kids. And while there were plenty of adorable looking five year olds with premature beards and shaggy long hair flowing from underneath their caps, adults front and center could barely hide the droopy boyish grins on their faces as they waved their rally thongs and screamed UUURRIIIBE at the top of their lungs.

They had dreamed of this moment ever since Willie Mays was tracking down fly balls in the tundra that was Candlestick Park. Their Giants had previously participated in three extraordinary World Series and came up empty handed in each one of them – six outs away in 2002, and two inches (that’s how much higher Willie Mac’s line drive had to be to escape the glove of Bobby Richardson) away in 1962.

It was a pair of heart wrenching losses which added to a legacy of futility overshadowed by an 86 year championship drought for the Boston Red Sox.

The story of an ancient curse had earned the obsession of the national media in 2004, and fans across the country (and overseas) immediately jumped on to the Red Sox bandwagon, hoping to see an embattled group of underdogs overcome the October boogeyman which had plagued them for nearly a century.

Curses sell a lot better than beards you see.

But the underdog label was a huge conundrum. What was it that made the Red Sox underdogs? It certainly wasn’t their payroll, which was the second highest in the majors after assembling a cache of superstars that included Manny Ramirez, Keith Foulk, Curt Schilling, Johnny Damon, and Pedro Martinez.

If you lived outside the New England area, there really wasn’t much of a reason to root for the Red Sox apart from the fact that they were playing the hated Yankees.

Not so with this Giants team, which had grown deeper and hairier with each month during the regular season and had accepted the torch of destiny bestowed onto them by the White Sox and Red Sox teams of the early aughts. Shortly before winning their division against the San Diego Padres, Ken Burn’s documentary “The Tenth Inning” highlighted the collapse of 2002 and its close proximity to the Balco debacle which hung over the franchise like a thick blanket of Bay Area fog during the years Barry Bonds remained on the roster.

The documentary concluded with the Red Sox ending their plight, and Giants fans were the ones left waiting for an elusive championship that seemed nowhere in sight.

Three days later, the Giants won the NL West and karma seemed to have finally found its way into the torture chambers of AT&T Park. This new group of players was not only easy to root for (and more importantly, free of suspicion and doubt), but they started to look a lot like the band of schmucks destined to overcome any obstacle in order to bring home the ultimate prize.

 It was a team that embodied the cult like characteristics that make a World Series run legendary. The images from the Red Sox’s 2004 championship run forever engrained into postseason lore was Johnny Damon’s mangy “Neanderthal” beard and Curt Schilling’s bloody sock. Years from now, fans will still be waving around orange rally thongs (the origin of which should make interesting conversation at the ballpark for some time) coloring their faces with black markers, and singing Ashkon’s version of “Don’t Stop Believing”

The Giants were finally likable now in the eyes of the national media, which had vilified the organization throughout the 2002 postseason and during the long and dark years of baseball’s biggest steroids scandal. Remember how Fox kept showing clips of Barry Bonds and Jeff Kent’s push fight in the dugout? Don’t forget Sports Illustrated Jeff Pearlman, who whined that the Giants defeat of the Cardinals in the 2002 NLCS proved that God didn’t exist. After all, how could a kind and merciful God allow a team with perennial douchbags like Barry Bonds and Kenny Lofton to beat the saintly Cardinals headed by Tony LaRussa?

Giants’ fans also earned the media’s wrath for cheering Bonds during his pursuit of Hank Aaron’s hallowed home-run record, and for recently applauding his appearance during the championship series against the Phillies.

Yahoo’s Dan Wetzel ripped Giants fans for having the audacity to give Bonds a standing ovation when he returned from a four month stint on the disabled list back in 2005. Wetzel sanctimoniously wrote:

“Perhaps San Francisco is full of the most naive bumpkins in America, people who actually believe BALCO Barry’s parsed-word explanation that while, yes, he did use the cream and the clear – which federal prosecutors said contained steroids – he did it unknowingly. We certainly forgive those people.”

“Politically correct that we are, we have nothing against imbeciles. But anyone else should be ashamed for lovingly hailing the return of their pathetic slugger in hopes of getting back into the pathetic NL West race.“

That’s right, San Francisco is a nesting ground for some of the dumbest Kool-Aid drinkers in professional sports. But then again, no dumber than the sheep in Chicago who cheered Sammy Sosa one day after cork spilled out of his shattered bat, or the simpletons in New England who wholeheartedly continue to support Bill Belichick after Spy Gate.

John Gonzalez of the Philadelphia Inquirer had things in much better perspective:

“Some people think the natives are numb or maybe clueless to what Bonds represents. They aren’t. They know full well how Bonds is perceived outside the Bay Area, and they’re equally aware of how supporting him makes them look. They understand that he was chemically enhanced and then accused of lying about his conduct to a grand jury. They get it. They just don’t care.”

Personally I don’t like or hate Barry Bonds. When I’m at a game and his name gets called for some kind of special acknowledgment, I clap my hands for a second or two before getting back to my garlic fries. According to Gonzales that makes me guilty of rooting for the devil:

“Aside from being comical, there’s something tragic and ugly about Bonds – defiant and smug, even in the face of an ongoing perjury prosecution – being the game’s all-time home run leader. Of all the inmates hypothetically housed in Baseball’s Alcatraz, Bonds is among the most infamous – right up there with the Black Sox, Pete Rose, and the rest of the cons on Cell Block D (for disgraced). And yet even the wicked have loyal supporters. If Bonds ever ends up on the inside for real, he’ll have no trouble finding someone to bake a cake with a file in it.”

You hear that? It doesn’t matter that almost every big name superstar (Alex Rodriguez, Mark McGuire, Roger Clemens, etc…) were as much of a cheater as Bonds was, Barry’s reputation as the de facto syringe user makes Giants fans guiltier of ignorance and idiocy than the millions across the country who display the same level of enthusiasm for their disgraced athletes.    

The media’s loathing of Bonds is a fascinating thing. He was someone they loved to hate ever since his early days in Pittsburgh when his cap (unlike his ego) was four sizes smaller. Giants’ fans eager to see a winning team were forced to endure the toxic publicity that trailed their slugger on the field and in the locker room. Defiant to the end, the running tragedy that was Bond’s career would plague the Giants in print for over a decade.  

This year has been different to varying degrees. While San Francisco still had to put up with the insufferable commentary of Joe Buck and Tim McCarver throughout the postseason, the scornful indifference once tied with Giants fandom had been dispelled, lost in a sea of beards and funny catch phrases.

And a city rich with legends that included Mays, McCovey, Cepeda, and Marichal, finally had a World Series title to add to its nonpareil history.

They won it the way you’re taught in little league – with stingy defense, timely hitting, team execution – and a pitching corps that often produced seven or eight goose eggs a game. The Giants held the Ranger’s league leading offense to a .190 batting average and went a stretch of eighteen innings without allowing a single run. They never relinquished a lead once in the series.

It was a fitting conclusion for a franchise whose greatness was defined more by failure than by winning more games than any other team in the majors.

While The Red Sox had Bill Buckner, Bob Gibson, and Bucky Dent, the Giants had Loma Prieta, Dusty Baker, Scott Spezio, and Felix Rodriguez.   

Their fans had known heartache and frustration better than anyone while they were shivering through night games at Candlestick Park, hoping that a new stadium would save their team and bring their city a new form of excitement and glory that could only be achieved by getting the final out of a World Series.

With the way things looked at the beginning of the season, no one could have ever scripted an ending like this.

It’s part of the reason why on a surprisingly warm November afternoon when even the sky was orange, the sidewalks were giddy with excitement as the Giants rode through the streets in cable car trolleys, waving to the sea of rally towels that had boosted them through every playoff home game.

For a city which had seen their 49ers bring home five Super Bowls, they would have gladly traded any one of them to see this day.

It was a surreal atmosphere that seemed frighteningly like a dream with the ultra bright colors and the smell of marijuana wafting across the city hall lawn.

But after pinching themselves ever since Brian Wilson struck out Nelson Cruz in the bottom of the ninth inning in game five, and nearly screaming their voices into extinction during a wild celebration that permeated across the Bay, it finally sunk in for Giants fans. After 52 years of waiting, the most sacred object in baseball (a big golden trophy with a circle of flags) was gleaming brightly under the clear blue sky as a grinning Bruce Bochy held it high for San Francisco to admire.

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So now that we’ve regained our voices, nursed our bruises, and convinced our girlfriends that they’re more important to us than a Giants World Series, it’s time to look ahead to the next challenge. Beating the Philadelphia Phillies isn’t an easy task, especially when the national media has already started talking about a Philadelphia – New York World Series rematch.  

They can’t comprehend how the Giants scrappy hitters can keep up with the Phillies offense. They might have conveniently overlooked the fact that the Phillies batted .212 in their division series against the Reds. Hardly the work of an offensive juggernaut.

But that doesn’t matter to these folks. They keep telling us over and over again that the Giants can’t hit H2o.

But as we take a close look at how these two teams match up overall, things don’t quite add up.

Oh and by the way, water sucks.   

Andres Torres vs. Shane Victorino

These two guys have a lot in common. They both have speed and power, can hit from either side of the plate, and risk their lives everyday chasing balls into the centerfield wall. They also come from sunny states, though I prefer to live in Hawaii instead of Florida. The water there is cleaner, and the girls wear skimpier…wait, what were we talking about again?   

Victorino hit two more homers and stole eight more bases, but Andres has a higher OPS and OBP, which are huge in determining the overall effectiveness of a leadoff hitter.  Shane strikes out less but Andres is a better contact hitter and has a trimmer go-tee.

Edge: Even

Placido Polanco  vs. Freddy Sanchez

Freddy finished strong in the second half of the season, and although he batted awful in the division series against the Braves (.125) he came up with some big at-bats that factored into the Giants’ sweep in Atlanta. I have a feeling he’s due for a lot of hits in a seven game series, though most of them probably won’t leave the infield.

Polanco’s been an upgrade over the strikeout happy Pedro Feliz at third base, but that’s not saying  much. The Philllies would have been a better team if they replaced Pedro with a cardboard cutout since it could actually work out a walk.

Like Sanchez, Polanco had a forgetful series division series against Cincinnati. Add that to his back, shoulder, and elbow troubles and the Phillies might want to think about bringing Mike Schmidt out of retirement.     

Edge: Giants

Aubrey Huff vs. Chase Utley

Don’t be fooled by Huff’s slow start against the Braves. He chose the best time to drive in his only run of and was involved in almost every big inning the Giants put together. He’s enjoying every at bat in his first postseason, and appears to love hitting in front of obnoxious rowdy fans. With that in mind, he’ll probably bat .500 and smack six home-runs in the first two games of this series.

Chase Utley’s a good second basemen but he’s had an underachieving year. Maybe it’s because he hasn’t fully recovered from spending a day with Jack Bauer.

Edge: Giants

Buster posey vs. Ryan Howard

Last year Howard batted .207 against lefties. This year he’s batting .264. So…that’s a good thing right? Well, no not really. Howard’s overall .BA is still three points less than it was in 2009, he’s hit 15 fewer home runs, and he struck out 157 times while only drawing 59 walks. And the Phillies think that’s worth one hundred million?

Buster has a better .OPS, .BA, .OBP, strikeout to walk ratio, and can hit the ball to either side of the field. Ryan’s a better athlete though. We all saw how fast he got out of the way of Butch’s car in Pulp Fiction.

I still like Buster in this one.

Edge: Giants

Pat Burrell vs. Jayson Werth

This is a match-up between a former Philly and a guy who spells his first name“Jay-son.” Seriously what’s with the “Jay?” I’m guessing the Werth family sucked at scrabble.

Anyway, back to thoughtful,mathematical analysis. Werth hit 27 homers during the regular season, Burrell hit 20. Jay-son batted .296, Pat batted .252. Jay-son stole 13 bases this year, Pat stole two in 2009. Jay-son loves to fish, Pat loves to golf.

I guess Burrell had to be better at something.

Edge: Phillies

Juan Uribe vs. Raul Ibanez

We’ll be hearing a lot “uuuuu” chants for these two over the next week and a half. But more of it will be coming from the orange and black crew. Juan’s been a streaky hitter all year, so given his performance against the Braves, he’ll homer three times in an inning in two separate games. One of them will come in game six when the Giants wrap up the series.

Ibanez’s numbers have been down from last season when he hit 34 home runs. He’s still productive at the plate hitting .302 with runners in scoring position, but he only batted .200 against the Giants lights out starting rotation.

Edge: Giants

Cody Ross vs. Jimmy Rollins

I love everything Ross has to offer. Affordable clothes, cheap silverware, and awesome hitting in the clutch.

Brian Sabean purchased Cody at a Florida yard sale and his value has skyrocketed in the playoffs. Since joining the Giants, he’s batted .288 with a .354 OBP and a .819 OPS. He had two game-deciding hits in the LDS, and plays solid defense in right field.

Jimmy Rollins won an MVP in 2007, and his numbers have been in a steady decline ever since. He’s still a versatile shortstop that can steal bases and hit home-runs, but he’s been MIA for most of the year with a strained calf.

Even though I love Duane Kuiper’s “torture,” label to describe Giants baseball, the “dress for less” catch phrase isn’t sounding too bad.   

Edge: Giants

Pablo Sandoval vs. Carlos Ruiz

Bruce has to play Sandoval in this series. Sure he hits into a lot of double plays (26, guh ) but replacing him with Mike Fontenot doesn’t make the Giants any better offensively. It’s like substituting Mark Grace for Ken Rosenthal.    

Carlos Ruiz batted a career high .302 this season, pretty impressive for a catcher. But he has no speed, no power, and has a highly inappropriate nickname.

Edge: Giants  

Pitching Match-ups

Tim Lincecum vs. Roy Halladay

Tim finally returned to form in the month of September, and he remained dominant with a complete game 14 strikeout performance against the Braves. Halladay was even better, pitching a no hitter against the best offense in the national league. Both will take the mound in game one with nearly ten days of rest.

Between the two of them, we could be witnessing a 40 strikeout game on Saturday. The Giants beat the Braves in Game 4 with six hits. Can they beat the Phillies with three?

Gulp.

Edge: Phillies

Jonathan Sanchez vs. Roy Oswalt

During the last two months of the regular season, Jonathan Sanchez was the second best pitcher in the majors after Carlos Zambrano. But where Carlos had a lot of help from his anger management counselor, Jonathan relied on nothing but his mechanics. His slider was an unhittable nightmare for the Braves in the LDS, which is why he’s pitching in game two instead of Cain. I really don’t mind as long as both pitchers get two starts.

Oswalt struggled against the Reds in the division series, lasting only five innings as the Phillies offense (or more accurately, the Cincinnati defense) would eventually bail him out. He’s a good pitcher with nasty stuff, but the Giants hit him well during the regular season.

Looks like we got a stalemate with Oswalt winning Game 1 and Sanchez pitching a no-hitter in Game 6.

Cole Hamels vs. Matt Cain

Both of these guys were unhittable in their last starts, with Cain going 6 2/3 innings allowing no earned runs and Hamels pitching a complete game shutout.

The last time the Giants saw Hamels he didn’t last five innings. This time I’m guessing he goes seven, same for Cain.

It looks like this one’s going to be decided by the bullpens, which is a very good thing for the Giants.

Edge: Even

Madison Bumgarner vs. Joe Blanton

What’s not to like about Bumgarner? He can throw fastballs up to 96 mph, has a six-syllable name, and he was born around the time I was watching my first World Series.

Normally rookies don’t fare well pitching in the playoffs for the first time, but Madison closed out the Braves to become the youngest Giants pitcher ever to record a postseason win.

Blanton’s fat.

Edge: Giants

Brad Lidge vs Brian Wilson

Lidge blew five saves in 32 opportunities, Wilson blew five saves in 53 opportunities.

One tortures you and one kills you.

Edge: Giants

Bullpen

Javier Lopez, Sergio Romo, Santiago Castilla, Jeremy Affeldt, Dan Runzler, Ramon Ramirez  vs. Antonio Bastardo, vs. Chad Durbin, Jose Contreras, Ryan Madson, J.C. Romero

If the Giants can get past the starters with the lead or an even score, the Phillies are doomed. Wilson is a master of the five out save, and Giants bullpen has frequently demonstrated an ability (most recently in the season clincher against the Padres) to preserve leads for as long as five innings.     

The Phillies might as well scratch the bullpen off their roster and go with three pitchers for the entire series.

Edge: Giants

Bench

Travis Ishikawa, Nate Schieholtz,  Eli Whiteside, Edgar Renteria, Mike Fontenot vs Mike Sweeney, Ross Gload, Ben Francisco, Greg Dobbs, Wilson Valdez, Domonic Brown, Brian Schneider

I don’t mean to be rude or condescending (so prepare for something very rude and very condescending) but let’s look at the facts. Sitting on the Giants bench is a former member of the 2008 Olympic team, a shortstop who makes more money than all the starters combined (ugh), a guy named Eli, and the first little leaguer to ever play professional sports.

On the Phillies side, you have a former cable news anchor who fears his Latino teammates, a comedian who’s secretly a Giants fan, and another guy named Ross who came from the Marlins.

Our Ross is cheaper and better.

Edge: Giants

Managers

Bruce Bochy vs. Charlie Manuel

Two guys as tough as nails. Manuel led his team to impressive postseason runs over the last two years, winning a World Series in 2008. Bochy inherited a mess when he took over for Felipe Alou in 2006, and has managed the Giants back to success without the benefit of having a steroid driven superstar in his prime.  

Both managers have done a great job steering their team to the top of their division after trailing throughout most of the season. Here’s the major difference. Manuel was given the two best pitchers on the market, while Bochy was given a bunch of players purchased from the eighty nine cent store.

Edge: Giants

And that’s the breakdown. So for all of you who keep saying the Phillies are a better team on paper, I’m sure you feel pretty stupid right about now.

That’s how I always feel.

But I trust my heart more than my brain. That’s why I flunked Calculus, and that’s why the Giants are going to the World Series.

Giants in six.

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Such is the masochistic pleasure of being a Giants fan. The only thing we enjoy doing more is pouring liquid rooter on ourselves or watching old reruns of “How I Met Your Mother.”

I love me some pain.  

The way the Giants played last night wasn’t uncharacteristic of what we’ve seen throughout much of this season—rally killing double plays, questionable pitching decisions, and shaky defense by Pablo Sandoval over at third base. Pablo might want to consider changing his nickname from the Kung Fu Panda to “Bone” from Kung Fu Hustle.   

The best part about Game 2’s late inning collapse is that there isn’t just one guy you can throw under the bus. Even Buster Posey gets some of the blame for Friday night’s loss.

Everything seemed to be going right in the tenth inning when the Braves replaced their dominant closer Billy Wagner with the extremely permeable and ineffective Kyle Farnsworth. Edgar Renteria had finally stopped trying to win the game with one swing and laid down a perfect bunt single. Torres sacrificed him over to second and the 75-year-old Wagner injured himself throwing Andre out at first.

Bobby Cox (yes you heard me correctly, Cox was watching the game and making the calls from the locker room using his IPOD touch) signals for Farnsworth, and I’m thinking the Giants don’t even need a hit to win this one. The Braves would have been better off asking Rick Ankiel to try and be a pitcher again for one inning (more on Ankiel later). So Farnsworth comes in and starts out by hitting Freddy Sanchez and walking Aubrey Huff to load the bases.

Posey’s up and the crowd can smell the win. All Buster had to do was stand in the batter’s box and wait for Farnsworth to throw one past McCann so Renteria could score from third. Instead he comes swinging out of his shoes and grounds into the Giants’ 162nd double play of the year. 

The failed opportunity appeared to carry over into the next inning when Ankiel homered into the Bay off Ramon Ramirez. There might be one or two guys in the Braves lineup that can beat you (actually just one, Troy Glaus when he used to be good) but Rick Ankiel? I know that Mike Krukow likes him but really, that’s no reason to surrender a home run on what should be a guaranteed out..

It was a bad night for everyone all around. After Pat Burrell’s big home run in the first, the Giants couldn’t get anything done offensively.

Aubrey Huff went 0 for 4 and struck out three times. The top three hitters in the lineup are now 3-for-23 in the series (good for a .130 BA.)  Burrell misplayed a routine single in the sixth allowing Derek Lee to move into scoring position. Lee would go on to score later in the inning.

In the bottom of the seventh, the Giants had runners on the corners with only one out and failed to score what would have been a huge insurance run. Don’t forget last night when Posey tripled to lead off the sixth inning and was left standing on third. The Giants have now stranded 26 base runners through the first two games of the series.

But the thing that will stand out the most in everyone’s mind was Bruce Bochy’s decision to bring Brian Wilson into the eighth inning with two out and nobody on. Yes, Wilson’s an effective multi inning closure (8 for 10 during the regular season), but there’s a reason why you have seven guys in the bullpen. If there’s trouble, then there’s more than one of them who can clean up the mess. 

The time to bring Wilson in the game was still one or two outs away. We can only hope Bochy’s Dusty Baker impersonation won’t continue on into the weekend.  

The Giants now find themselves facing the same situation as the Barry Bonds led teams faced in the 2000 and 2003 NLDS—win on the road or go home. They failed to do it in either one of those years.

What‘s the difference? The clubs they were playing against were better than they were. The Braves may have had the best home-record in the regular season, but they’re not a very good baseball team. Instead they’re a scrappy bunch of overachievers trying to win a World Series for their manager before he walks off into the sunset. That’s not going to happen, but we would rather see Bobby say his final goodbye at AT&T Park rather than Citizen’s Bank.  

If you’ve watched the Giants for the last half century, you’ll know by now that nothing ever comes easy. When they were leading 4-1 going into the eighth, I was confident, but I never thought it was a guaranteed win. Maybe if you were a Yankees fan and Mariano Rivera was on the mound, but we’re Giants fans. This is how they win series. Deal with it.

Tomorrow should be fun. We’ll be near cardiac arrest no matter what the score is. And really what’s wrong with that? We’ve spent the last two postseasons rooting for the Phillies when they were playing against the Dodgers in the NLCS. And though we enjoyed the outcome, this year we’ll have a chance to root against Philadelphia if the Giants make it that far.  

Two wins isn’t easy. But the Giants can do it. In the meantime, sit back on the couch and enjoy the throbbing headaches, the clammy hands, and the wobbly legs. This is what baseball in San Francisco is all about.  

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