Aaron Rowand |
Ryan Garko |
| Aubrey Huff | Jose Castillo |
| Miguel Tejada | Dave Roberts |
| Freddy Sanchez | Ryan Klesko |
| Carlos Beltran | Mark Sweeney |
| Mark DeRosa | Steve Finley |
| Benji Molina | Moises Alou |
| Edgar Renteria | Omar Vizquel |
| Juan Uribe | Jose Viscaiano |
| Jose Guillen | Eliezer Alfonso |
| Rich Aurilia | Mike Matheny |
| Randy Winn | Barry Bonds |
The average baseball career is 6 years; a generation if you will. 2011 marks the end of the generation from 2006 to 2011. Those 24 players were all signed as free agents or traded for by the Giants to be starters, and each of them was paid $ Millions to do so. Other than Bonds, can you find a player there who was not over-the-hill and/or beat-up when the Giants signed/re-signed them?
Just to point out the obvious, these are Giants rankings in On Base Percentage, Slugging, OPS and Runs scored during those years followed by their pitching rankings below.
2006 - 28/22/25 - Runs Scored - 24th
2007 - 27/30/30 - Runs Scored - 29th
2008 - 24/28/28 - Runs Scored - 29th
2009 - 30/28/30 - Runs Scored - 26th
2010 - 19/13/17 - Runs Scored - 17th
2011 - 29/27/28 - Runs Scored - 29th
During this same period, Giants pitching rankings in ERA, Runs Allowed and OPS against.
2006 - 9/15/10
2007 - 9/6/10
2008 - 17/17/17
2009 - 2/1/2
2010 - 1/2/2
2011 - 2/2/1
The disconnect between hitting and pitching is dumbfounding. This disparity makes it impossible to believe that the same people responsible for building this pitching staff are the same people responsible for consistently assembling one of the worst hitting teams in the Major Leagues, year in and year out.
Whether it's as a pitcher who has his pockets picked every time he goes to the mound, or a position player who is on welfare while picking the pitchers' pockets, it is no fun managing/coaching a team like this. Remember, this is a pitching staff that has had the carcass of Barry Zito and his $126 Million contract run out to the mound every fifth day for the past four years to overcome while posting those numbers. That doesn't make it any easier to swallow if you're one of the guys doing all the lifting.
This is not a healthy situation for the long term. This is Marilyn Monroe's face on Roseanne Barr's body.
If the Giants were not matching up well against the Phils then there might be concern. But though they lost, the Giants still forced the Phils other number one guy to throw a shutout.
From the Phils perspective, I have to believe that my guy needs to throw a shut-out against the Giants to have a chance to win. When you factor in the Zito exception, this is a pretty accurate assessment of Giants pitchers dominating Phillies hitters.
That is a lot of weight for Phils pitchers. Most of the entire careers of Lincecum, Cain, Bumgarner and Sanchez have been pitched under those difficult circumstances. Not the Phils, though. The Phillies score about 25 percent more runs than the Giants. This year the Phils are at 4.4 vs the Giants 3.5 runs per game. And that is not insignificant. While this may seem like a big disadvantage during the season, and it is, the post-season really comes down to pitching under a lot of pressure when you know your hitters are in for a rough time. For Giants pitchers, this is an everyday thing, game-in, game-out, season-in, season-out. Last year, the Braves, Phils, and Rangers' pitchers were not up to the task. Though the scoring was close, the Giants were never really challenged except for the third inning of game 5 against the Phils.
The Phils position players have the big reputations, but they have built those reputations against the "Not-Giants". Except for Victorino, they have been pretty much helpless at worst, and sporadic at best against the Giants.
Its easy to fall into the trap of putting too much emphasis on the standings when evaluating a team's relative strength. We forget that by its very nature, baseball really is specific batters against specific pitchers, (yet one more reason for accurate strike-zone calls) and the Giants continue to match up well against Philadelphia.
I was reminded of that basic element of baseball, when reading Joe Posnanski's piece contrasting the careers of Matt Stairs and Randy Moss on the occasion of their mutual retirements.
Stairs owned David Cone and Roy Halladay , but couldn't hit Rick Helling. Matt Stairs, at age 40, came off the bench for these same Phils in Game 4 of the NLCS against the Dodgers' Jonathan Broxton in the 8th inning with a man on, score at 5-5. He promptly launched one into the cheap seats. Its not that Stairs was great or even having a great year. He was at exactly league average in OPS+ for the season. He just happened to hit a ball he picked up well out of Broxton's release point. It was no more complicated than that.
Drysdale owned Mays. McCovey owned Drysdale. Individual matchups. As a fan, I tend to overlook them, because I simply do not follow the game from that standpoint anymore. But matchups, and I do not mean the brain-dead absolutist approach to L vs R, are as integral to the game as the strikezone. Stats are certainly one element of evaluating matchups. But just as important if not more so, is observation and determining how well a hitter is picking up the pitcher's pitches and how deep in the zone he can let a pitch go before committing.
That takes a lot of eyeballing over a lot of years and some guys never do acquire that skill. Bochy has been pretty adept at this. Dusty Baker, Joe Girardi, Kirk Gibson and others seem to be very good at this. As a matter of speculation, I believe this to be a big element in the D-Backs success. Gibson's ability to determine favorable matchups based upon his years of experience measuring up pitchers. I have no empirical evidence to support that, but it is certainly a plausible explanation, at least in part, for the D-Backs current run.
As Giants fans, one can only hope that I am dead wrong and that the D-backs are smoke, mirrors, and paper-clips.
One of my favorite writers over at Giants watch, Steve Harmon was recapping the ambush of Matt Cain by the homeplate umpires' wandering, kaleidoscopic strike zone. Two innings of bad strike calls that could very well be the difference between a 1 game lead and a 3 game lead over Arizona. And I got to thinking about the strike zone and some of the lore that surrounds it. This posted as a comment but was a little long to be a comment so its reposted with some editing here
Umpire strike zones have a disproportionate and inappropriate impact on game outcomes. You cited several questionable calls in just two innings that probably dictated the final results.
Much of baseball lore emanates from the bottom of the cliche bin, and the following makes me want to break large pieces of furniture.
"Pitchers and hitters don't care what the strike zone is as long as it is consistent".
No! No! Helllllllll NOOOOOOOOO!
I believe the mindless repetition of this concept is something so harmful to the real integrity of the game as to be a canard of the highest order. Baseball is predicated upon a strike zone. Without a strikezone, baseball does not exist. So it seems to me that the best strike zone is the most accurate one, not a wrong one that is declared acceptable because somebody subjectively deems it to be "consistent".
What the game needs and is entitled to is a strike zone as it is written in the rulebook without impeding the flow of the game such as the use of instant replay. The means to do this electronically and visually have been in place and available to TV viewers for years.
The process is simple. Add an electronic voice to the process and run it into the homeplate umpires' ear bud. Run it through an ipod if need be for goodness sakes. This simple process removes the single biggest flaw in sports officiating; the inevitable disasters that turn a game around because of bad strike zone calls.
What the rulebook clearly spells out to be an objective measurement (the strike zone) has been relegated to the same subjective judgment methods as ice dancing competitions. The only thing baseball is missing are the three East German judges.
And unlike replay, the game never misses a beat with the aural-prompted strikezone. It is invisible to fan and player alike, and makes for 99.999 percent accuracy, allowing for the inevitable equipment failures along the way.
A collateral benefit would be the re-training of the eye by the electronic strike zone, so in the event of equipment failure, the ump's strike zone would have been retooled so that his strike zone would more likely replicate the electronic one.
It makes the game fairer, by far. And if there was ever a game that is meant to be measured objectively, it is baseball. Because it is in fact a game of inches, fairness demands as much accuracy as possible.
There is nothing fair about bad strike zone calls at all. Bad strike zones ruin innings, ruin games, ruin seasons, ruin careers. I see nothing endearing, whatsoever in any of that.
More tension and animosity have been created by bad strike zone calls than any other fixable officiating deficiency that I can recall. If you have your own favorite, speak up and we can debate it.
Refusing to change is not maintaining tradition. Using a rusty scalpel to render living flesh under General Anesthesia is not tradition either, particularly when arthroscopic surgery with a local is indicated.
And after far too many bad strike zone calls, I sometimes feel like I've been put under by General Anesthesia.
I would have thought that the World Series and the ongoing failure and embarrassment of Zito and Rowand would have given the Giants front office enough cover to permit them to drop the charade. It doesn’t help the Giants cause and it doesn’t help Rowand nor Zito except in their personal piggybanks. Maybe in better times, that would have been enough. But Americans are too well aware that unchecked greed and selfishness by the few have ruined the economic lives of millions of hard-working folks. And baseball fans are no different
Watching Mays stumble around in the '73 series was bad enough, but the Mets didn’t have anybody less useless. It was embarrassing and humiliating for him and his fans, even though he eked out 3 singles in the postseason.
Willie had the good grace to go home after the 73 season and call it a career after 23 years in centerfield. A 644 OPS was just not up to his standards. Aaron Rowand gets paid in one month to come off the bench and back up a centerfielder who has been a career minor leaguer, what Mays made in his entire career. Barry Zito makes more in about 24 innings of 4.50 to 6.00 ERA ball than Mays made in an entire career. There is no fraction small enough to express the ratio of DiMaggio's earnings to Rowand and Zito. Here's what Joe DiMaggio said when he announced his retirement in 1951, following the conclusion of the Yankees-Giants World Series. This was Mays rookie year and it would be the only time these two hall of fame centerfielders would ever oppose each other:
"I feel like I have reached the stage where I can no longer produce for my club, my manager, and my teammates. I had a poor year, but even if I had hit .350, this would have been my last year. I was full of aches an pains and it had become a chore for me to play. When baseball is no longer fun, it's no longer a game."
Former Giants pitcher and current Giants good guy broadcaster, Mike Krukow said it best when he spoke about why ballplayers play the game with the intensity that they do. He said, and I paraphrase: "Ballplayers play to be remembered. They want to be remembered by their peers as a competitor who played for the betterment of the team, and they want to play to be remembered by the fans as a good guy."
Again. Joe DiMaggio when asked why he dove hard for a ball possibly risking injury in a lopsided game:
"There is always some kid who may be seeing me for the first or last time, I owe him my best."
Aaron Rowand and Barry Zito have earned more money than they will ever need to live comfortably and lavishly for the rest of their lives. There really is not much left for them to accomplish that they are capable of accomplishing. Just the opposite really. They harm their team more than they help; on the field and on the budget.
Zito is mentally done because he simply does not have the velocity or control necessary to avoid catastrophic mistakes on the pitching mound. Every batter who digs in against him is like a circling shark in bloody water. Conversely, every pitcher in the Bigs, knows that Rowand has no chance against a slider because he can no longer catch up to a major league fastball. His bat speed is too slow against the fastball to allow him to let a ball get deep into the zone before hitting. So he has to look fastball on every pitch. It sounds easy to change, but it is impossible once the hand speed is gone. Ask Mays. When you can't hit the fastball anymore, you're done, no matter how hard you try.
It happened to Mays. It happened to DiMaggio. They were hall-of-famers and everybody knew it years before they retired. They also knew that they were going to have to get a job to support themselves afterward. And they finally said good bye and are remembered fondly for their retirement in dignity and style.
Rowand and Zito could help themselves by taking the unusual step of retiring out of a lucrative contract, and take home more in buy-out money than what the typical neighborhood earns a year, but I doubt that they will.
They are still young guys in a world that is isolated from the rest of humanity. They are part of the upper 10 percent of MLB's wage earners, whose contracts dictate that they are different than other players. They have the money to insulate themselves from criticism and from true confrontation of their shortcomings.
Fans see them as horrible disappointments at best, and selfish hangers-on at worst. It does not matter. They travel in the company of limos, bodyguards when needed, have preferred access to fine eating establishments, clubs, and other destination spots of the rich and famous.They are surrounded like all privileged people with sycophants who will say and do anything to curry favor with the privileged, otherwise known as jock sniffers and celebrity sluts. What we think does not matter right now. But in the end it will. Selfish people are not remembered well.
Rowand and Zito could both settle out for mutually acceptable cents on the dollar with Giants management and call it a career. They would be remembered for that for a long time. They would be good guys. They would be fixtures around AT&T on old-timers days and Giants Good Guys days. The MLPA (Major League Players Association) wouldn't like it much, and certainly Scott Boras (Zito's agent} and Craig Landis (Rowand's agent} would be upset.
In case anybody has forgotten, the Giants are under contract to pay Barry Zito $18.5 million in 2011.They are under contract to give Barry Zito a $500,000 raise to $19.0 million in 2012. Starting in 2013, Barry Zito will be owed an additional $20.0 Million. And that is not the end. In the year 2014, in the highly unlikely event that the Giants want Barry Zito to stick around, it will cost them $18.0 Million. If they decide to send him home, it will cost them only $7.0 Million to have him clean out his locker.
That is four more years including this season. The Giants are scheduled to play 648 games during that time not counting Spring Training and/or the Post-Season.
That is somewhere between $64 and $75 Million of fan money paying a guy to keep a younger better player off the major league roster. So think about that the next time you roll your eyes when a beer vendor wants a $20 bill for a couple of tepid beers and $30.00 to park your ride in a dirt pit.
That is money that could be used to upgrade the roster and replace older players who are retiring or should be. These two who no longer can play are scheduled to make $32 Million this year, and $33 Million in 2012. Guys who have actually made it possible for fans to witness last year's team win a division, an LDS the NLCS, and the World Series ate up precious payroll dollars this year. Pat Burrell and Aubrey Huff. Cody Ross and Andres Torres were arbitration eligible. That's four of your eight starters who had to have their contracts negotiated for this year or they would have been gone.The Giants are going to have some very serious and hard decisions to make.
This post season fantasy is evaporating rapidly in the wake of the beatings they took at the hands of Dusty Baker this weekend, with Zito adding the period by losing the game in the bottom of the first inning. Just like he did against San Diego last October.
Lots of money can make a man lazy intellectually.He is prey to all kinds of wolves in sheep's clothing. They're the ones who will do everything and anything to make sure your agenda matches theirs. It makes it easy to surround one's self with only those who tell you what you want to hear. And sometimes they themselves are not even aware of it, such is the allure of the riches of a young guy. That was the moral of the story "The Natural". Money and fame changes the way folks see themselves.
The gutters, jails and bankruptcy courts are filled with former athletes. Like this poor wretch
Its pretty easy to sit here and hand out advice. It's not my millions to be forfeited in the interest of legacy preservation. I don't know. I've seen Mike Hampton go down this road. I have no idea what he thinks about what people think about him. Whenever I see him, he always looks so unhappy at what he is doing. Lenny Dykstra is going to prison. I really think, that if some of these guys, not all of them, had to do it all over again, it would have been done differently. Mays did. DiMaggio did.
Barry Zito by all accounts is a really good human being with a big heart, but not much direction right now. He could be in the forefront of the Wounded Warrior Project. (Ian Lennon is the current featured wounded vet) here. Barry Zito is a terrific and incredible trusted spokesmen for heroes like Ian Lennon who need our help. This goes back to his days with the A's in his "strikeout for troops" campaign when he was a real strikeout pitcher.
He is in fact the best spokesman they could ever have.It is the one unique thing that Barry Zito can do that no other ballplayer can do. Nobody hates Wounded Warriors. They of all are the forgotten Americans. And so many are hidden from view in plain sight. Wounded Warriors in the face of shrinking revenues from government and other sources needs an ever present spokesman now, more than ever. Those that can afford it the least are amongst the first to be forgotten in hard times.
He could do this.He has it in him. He has proved it before. He can be a good guy.
Steve Harmon, who as a professional journalist for Bay Area News Group/Contra Costa Times, covers the comings and goings of California's trusted public servants in Sacramento, shares his not unsubstantial critical thinking process in his baseball blog Giant Watch. Which you can surf to by hitting the link on the right side of this page. He concludes this morning's column (July 24) with the following opinion.
"This game should have room for colorful, offbeat characters, who, yes, can incite outrage but also back it up with exciting baseball."
There is one more thing that I want to add, and that is that guys like Morgan, have an uncanny ability to "laugh at themselves", and smile a lot. Even if it's grating sometimes. But Nyjer Morgan's style is just that. Its just about style and individualism. Something as American as apple pie. Morgan is a ballplayer first, foremost and always. He might even tell you that himself, I suspect.
Baseball is a craft that is apprenticed starting at around age ten I am sad to say. And despite the spin from Little League, Inc. there is almost zero-tolerance for individual expression, and sometimes not much fun. If you don't believe me, go by the typical practice where one kid at a time stands at the plate, while a poorly dressed grown-up throws unhittable pitches to a scared or frustrated kid while 10 other kids stand around the field like so many tumble weeds, bored out of their skulls waiting their turn. This is followed by a day of highly controlled games or "Game Day". Game days generally include unhealthy snacks, overpriced poisonous energy drinks, a 50/50 raffle, topped off by plaintive and sometimes combative parents blathering or texting on their i-phones when not yelling at some kid, whether their own or another's. The outcome of said game is too-often determined by 6 innings comprised of 384,003 walks and 36 strike-outs, umpired by frustrated Joe West wannabees. And then its all supposed to be made good by declaring "We don't keep score, we just want the kids to have fun." Right.
So guys like Nyjer Morgan are rare indeed. It is no accident that most of the so-called "fun guys" are from Latin America, where they learn how to throw and run and swing a bat in the streets and empty lots supervised by each other, and the older kids, not in manicured miniature stadiums, with MLB Properties-sanctioned replica uniforms, designer batting gloves, $500.00 titanium bats, customized wrist bands, and all the other fashion accouterments more in keeping with a costume party than honing skills, developing baseball instincts, and learning the fine line between ragging and clever, good-natured heckling and personal attacks, and other forms of inciteful behavior. But thats what happens when you have too many grown ups taking the fun out of the game when their own personal agendas borne of some sort of frustration, become enmeshed with teaching kids and spoiling the party for everyone for no reason at all.
Occasionally, its as if a bunch of disillusioned little leaguers and their Klingon-like mentors appear in the bleachers when a guy like Morgan, or Shane Victorino plays in AT&T. They just don't know where that line that shall not be crossed lies. Because a guy like Morgan plays with flair and elan, it doesn't mean he is being disrespectful in the slightest. He's not spiking the ball like a Chad Qualls, or mocking Brian Wilson's cross like Casey Blake. He's enthusiastic like Rickey was, and Pete Rose was and doesn't deserve to be subjected to the kinds of personal attacks that spewed from the mouths of the few on Saturday night. Its at rare times like that, that the Giants' bleachers sound more like Philadelphia or New York than San Francisco.
Baseball is as much about razzing and ragging, as it is about cheering and high-fiving, while having a good time in the process. Fans can help themselves if they realize the old saw of "what-goes-around, comes around" is particularly true in MLB. The stakes are too high, the caliber of opposition too great for any one player to defy the laws of cosmic equilibrium.
If a player insists on drawing attention to himself, like all guys with individual styles do, eventually the baseball deities will have their way, as they did with Morgan last night. That's why most guys won't let loose. They know the game levels things out. Its a hard and difficult game pitting strong and skilled men against other strong and skilled men. Most do not want the additional burden of being a showman.
As for me, I'll take a Nyjer Morgan, and Rickey Henderson, and Reggie Jackson and Jeff Leonard and Gary Sheffield and Barry Bonds all who liked to play to the crowd andl defy the baseball gods in the process. The same way Al Hrabosky and Turk Wendell and Rob Dibble did.They are risk-takers, and showmen. And when fans behave within the construct of common decency, the game is better off because of them. All of those guys including Morgan had a great respect for the game, for their opponents and for their talents. And when the game bit them back, they had a great way of accepting the consequences.
We ought not forget that
I must be losing it; scribbling about a television series that I haven't watched with any regularity since the first season, some five years ago. I wasn't quite sure what the fascination was. Just like millions of others my age, I'd been to high school, played some ball, goofed off, chased girls, and graduated about the time Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys were releasing their third album. Nothing special about that. A lot of time has passed since then. Like most, I had my own family including a son who went to high school, played some ball, goofed off, chased girls, and grew up. Just like millions of others his age.
So what was so special in this moving, but ratings-crippled TV series? At first it reminded me more of the old Friday night soaps, Dallas and Falcon Crest that featured preposterous characters with two-dimensional personalities, but little emotional investment required from the audience from their plastic characters and implausible storyline. Those series were not serious. Friday Night Lights, while still having to adhere to the requirements of serial television, was serious. The title suggested it was about the religion of Texas High School football. Many folks said it was not. Actually it really was and before you get mad, let me explain.
Friday Night Lights ran its last episode this season, and like any TV series that comes to an end, much of the character resolution remains unrevealed, while a lot of the audience experiences the bittersweet sadness that comes at the end of something special and shared. But so did graduation day in real life. Followers must imagine the rest of the characters lives for themselves. And that’s what a lot of high school was about as I recall. Imagining what life was like afterward. For myself as well as former teammates.
After high school and college and turning in my glove and cleats, helmet and pads for wings and a log book, and eventually those for a suit and tie, I didn't have much time nor interest for reflection. Later in life, after some very short-lived curiosity, I had to admit I really had not cared what life had held in store for former mates, and I felt bad about that. At the time, when the lights go out one last time, you swear that you will be there for each other forever. But it rarely if ever turns out that way. Life and you move on.
Looking back, I think leaving high school was a bit like going to a funeral. (Graduation parties notwithstanding) And despite mutually assuring words to the contrary, I was acutely aware that before 12 months would pass, I would relegate most of my teammates, friends and neighbors to the bins of selective recall and time-altered memory. And that thought disturbed me greatly because, even though, many were not my friends, they were part of the familiar landscape of routine and stability that the school day brings, no matter how stressful at times. Their presence provided a shared familiarity and acceptance that as high-schoolers, we seemed to possess so little. And there was comfort in that. But in the end, the 800 pound gorilla had its way, and we parted strangers.
The years passed. Some good, some bad, some eventful, and others not so much. Like you. Like everybody. Then a funny thing happened. Through a conflation of events and being in the wrong place at the wrong time, I ended up back in high school at the age of forty-something. Only this time as a head coach. Mostly it felt weird having my own mail slot in the school office and a parking sticker that said "faculty" on it. Consider if you will, Ricky Vaughn sitting in the principle's chair, this time behind the desk, with his feet propped up on an ink blotter and you get the idea.
They gave me a lanyard full of keys marked gym, locker-room, faculty lounge, copier machine, equipment shed, field lights, and several others I never did figure out. I never understood why schools have so many different locks and keys. I'll bet that if you could melt them all down for scrap, you could pay off the federal debt. But after a period of several years of re-enmeshment in high-school follies, I turned in my keys and confined myself to the fringes of college and semi-pro ball for the next several years, as life and circumstances changed yet again. But before the high school lights went out for the second and last time, I came to appreciate and understand what so many were trying to tell me all those years ago.
As the title of this suggests, Friday Night Lights was about a shining ideal of "Clear Eyes. Full Heart. Can’t Lose". And for some reason when I heard it and saw it played out on the screen, it struck something in the way-back machine. It was really a vague feeling at first, then as the weeks went by and the characters were revealed, often in a very pointed and melancholy way, it became clear that much of what FNL ("Friday Night Lights") tried to convey was the depiction of the ideals of brotherhood, and sisterhood and the failures of betrayal and selfishness.
As much as it was about heroes and villains, it was just as often about really good people doing harmful things to themselves and it was about marginal personalities redeeming themselves in spite of their instincts. It was about forgiveness and perpetration and cash-register honesty walking in hand with self-seeking deception, and virtue and vice and just about everything else in life that we mortals struggle with on a daily basis. It was about noble and brave and silly acts done by imperfect, yet striven people, all just trying for their own little slice of happiness and acceptance.
Clear Eyes, Full Heart, Can't Lose. That's how you aspired to play. How you put yourself to work. How you went about your day. What you wanted to believe about life. That it was good. That it was honorable. And things would always turn out for the best, not matter what. It was like hearing an old familiar hymn, but not being sure why it was special. Perhaps there are more antiquated clichés. Or less evocative ones for that matter. But for anybody who believes in believing in something, a lot of us need that creed. It is six words to hang onto when life presents danger and fear and the abyss stares back at us in black emptiness. Six words to still the heart stir the soul and fire the imagination.
Fictional characters like Rocky Balboa, Roy Hobbs, and Jake Taylor. Real life stories like Brian Piccolo, Lou Gehrig, and Jack Robinson. When I think of them, "Clear eyes, Full heart, Can't Lose doesn't seem quite so childish or naive or un-tough. And for every one of those publicly celebrated guys, there are a million others who we do not know, who have lived their lives with the same commitment to exceptionalism. Some of them in the fictional town of Dillon, Texas. That is when we begin to see things in a different, much brighter light. And it's not so much self-reflective, as it is a beacon turned outward to the bigger world around us.
Now I am away from the game as a part of the game, I can reflect upon the simple honor and an overwhelming sense of humility and gratitude experienced when I watched those whom I had helped in some small way along their journey from adolescence to adulthood. To see them as young adults, actualize the dreams you had promised them if only they would choose to believe in what you believed. Work smart. Play against the game. Respect yourself. Respect your teammates. Respect your opponents. Respect the game. Appreciate and share everything good in life, on and off the field, with those who do not have what you have. And most of all, remember to smile and laugh and not to be afraid of the occasional tear, and if you do all these things all the time, you will win at life. You cannot lose.
"Clear Eyes, Full Heart, Can't Lose. To have been even a small part of instilling that belief in another leaves an indelible mark on one's character I think. And I think this is why Giants fans love their team so much. They're relationship with them is personal. With each other. It is the belief that the team believes in them as much as they believe in the team though we know that to be mostly untrue in the long term when it comes to individual players. No matter. That part of the Giants that belongs to the fans is a manifestation of so much of what dreams are made of. The spirit of 2010 was not Clear eyes and full heart, but it was the same. "Don't stop believing"
Believing is an act of faith and an act of hope when you love your team. It is something seldom mentioned in public. It is a passionate virtue.
And whoever thought the simple act of being a baller or a beer-drinking fan could be a virtue?
"Clear Eyes, Full Heart, Can't Lose"? Believe it.
