The Giants suck. So do the A's. But it could be a fun season.
By A.J. Hayes
How’s this for sunny spring time forecast: for the first time since the mid-1980s, both the Giants and A’s will enter the major league season without a sliver of a hope of contending for a playoff slot.
Sad face?
In fact, it will take a minor miracle for both clubs to finish higher than last place.
But that doesn’t mean that the 2008 baseball campaign has to be a snooze-fest. There’s something appealing about a losing baseball team. Football and basketball are just unwatchable when they’re performed shabbily, but bad baseball can be a hoot.
The train-wreck 1962 expansion New York Mets who went 40-120 turned the bumbling Marv Throneberry and Choo Choo Coleman into flannel uniformed folk heroes. The Chicago Cubs and the Boston Red Sox (until their recent World Series success) built up the most loyal fan bases in the game with their lovable losers flying in the wind like a prop-plane banner.
49ers fans, on the other hand, would just as soon forget this past splotchy season.
It’s something about the daily intimacy of baseball and the fact they the players have traditionally resembled normal humans – discounting the steroids era – that allows us to empathize. Baseball players are not covered up with helmets and pads, so we see the embarrassment when they bobble a pop-up the same way we might drop a jar of bread-and-butter pickles on our foot.
But baseball fans are not suckers, and not every lousy club is in a position to be celebrated.
A few criteria must be checked off first before we embrace the horrific.
First off, losing clubs have to be humble. It’s easy to embrace a losing club of nobodies, as long as they hustle and display real frustration when they cough up a game. It also helps if the club has a few self-effacing characters like the Giants of the mid-‘80s had with Bob Brenly, Greg Minton and Duane Kuiper.
It’s another story altogether when the losers are pompous, well-paid and robotic.
So lets take a look at what kind of losing clubs the Giants and A’s will have to offer.
With an ownership that has consistently cried “poor me” the past decade, Oakland fans (all 10,000 die hard versions) have become all too well versed in this routine. Just when the A’s start to sport established big leaguers (think Jason Giambi, Tim Hudson, Miguel Tejada, etc.) the A’s trade them or let them walk via free agency.
It happened again this off-season when the green and gold swapped Nick Swisher and Dan Haren, their top hitter and pitcher respectively, for a bunch of unproven bush leaguers.
Luckily for the oft-dumped-upon Oakland fans, general manager Billy Beane and his staff have exceptional vision when it comes to spotting talent. In a season or so, the current crop of green A’s could be back contending for the AL West. So when the club loses this season, A’s fans can rest comfortably on their Joe Rudi flannel sheet sets knowing they are watching a bunch of youngsters with a world of potential. That will make it much easier to get behind them while stomaching the losses.
Giants fans on the other hand – at least the one who started following the club after Barry Bonds joined in 1993 – are not the least bit familiar with a team that knows its end game on opening day.
If the Giants were not contending for a playoff spot the last 15 seasons, at least San Francisco fans knew they were made relevant by Bonds presence in the room.
This season, the Giants’ marquee player will be the hustling Aaron Rowand – a goateed dude most famously known for rearranging his face after kissing an outfield fence.
The Giants hope to infuse the unavoidable losses with the kind of plucky attitude Rowand offers. The club also promises speed, defense, (cross your fingers that Omar Vizquel, baseball’s Baryshnikov, returns from knee surgery sooner than later) and top-drawer starting pitching.
That spirit could be enough to hold Giants fans attention for a season of rebuilding, while some intriguing minor leaguers mature.
The other thing the Giants have going for them is their absolutely sterling broadcasting crew. The interplay between Jon Miller, Kuiper, Mike Krukow and Dave Fleming is priceless.
Whether they are talking baseball, movies or food – losing never sounded so good as when this quartet is behind the mike.
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