Here's Tendown 49.
First: The Giants Win the Pennant.
The worst day of my life, to that point, was in September of 1989. I had two lifelong goals - to go to USC to study broadcasting and to become the play by play announcer for the San Francisco Giants. Were you to have asked me, really from the age of 8, but certainly since junior high, what I wanted to do when I grew up, I would have given you those twin answers.
I was able to transfer to USC after my freshman year of college in Ohio; I started college when I was 17, and my process of selection left a little to be desired. But by Christmas I had applied to USC and was on my way out the door by spring. I burned as many bridges on my way out as a person who had told everyone he met since moving to Ohio when he was 11 that he was getting the hell out of there at his soonest opportunity would. I packed everything I was taking with me in a couple of bags and set off across the country for the start of my real life.
I was only there a week. I lost my scholarship in some type of snafu that I'm not sure I still entirely understand; I think I missed a deadline somehow. It was one of a handful of glaring examples of a "really not all that I thought I was" narrative the could be constructed about my young life. I came back home, tail tucked between my legs, firm in the belief that I had blown both halves of that dream.
A month later, the San Francisco Giants won the pennant for the first time in my life. I was at the very lowest point in my life to that date and the Giants won the pennant. It felt very real to me, in a way that it could only feel to a solipsistic 19 year old, that my baseball team was helping me through. I'm not proud of that level of magical thinking, but I was only four years removed from wearing parachute pants, so I cut myself a bit of a break.
Two months later, the San Francisco Giants won the pennant for the second time in my life. I was now 32 and didn't think of it as related to me in any way - but I was energized by it nonethless. A couple years previous, I was in a tremendous financial hole, really without any hope of emerging, and my knowledge of the Giants won me some television money that gave my life a foothold - it wasn't magic, I caught a break and was prepared to take advantage of it - but to win money because of the Giants, the study of which had occupied so much of my life, was doubly nourishing. That the Giants provided me some joy at a very difficult time just two years removed from that really filled me with a sense of optimism for the future.
It's 2010. I've had a hard year. I've lost every dollar I had in the financial crisis; I've spent most of the year negotiating a sale of my house back to the bank. My workload has risen exponentially, partially by need (I've had to add more classes to pay my bills) and partially because I live in the United States in 2010, and those of us lucky enough to have work have found the conditions at our jobs stretched beyond previous recognition. I need to work every day of every month to pay the bills, and there is no visible end to that circumstance.
And my dad died a few months ago, right at the beginning of the season, actually. It feels a little greasy to mention it here. I don't want it to be part of any narrative; it's not a device to tell this baseball story; it's my dad and I tear up every time I think about him. But it's true; it just is. The last time the Giants won a World Series game was Game 5 against the Angels - 8 years ago to this very day - we won 16-4 in just the most delirious explosion of "we're gonna win the by god World Series" you could ever imagine. I watched the game alone with my dad; it was the last baseball game we ever watched alone together; it was the only Giants playoff game we ever watched alone together. I'm not gonna tell you a Field of Dreams story; it doesn't fit my life particularly neatly and more than that, I just don't want to. My dad is bigger than my blog, bigger than my lifelong devotion to this baseball team.
But it's been a hard, hard year.
And for the third time in my life - we're going to the World Series. When Brian Wilson struck out Ryan Howard last night, I burst into tears. The Giants aren't magically related to me in any way; their winning their third pennant of my lifetime doesn't really make my life better in any tangible way, and were we, almost inexplicably, to be able to win 4 more games, it wouldn't in any way foreshadow my prospects of future success. It's just a game and not my life, despite my having spent the better part of that life devoted to that game.
But I'm grateful nonetheless.
The Giants won the pennant. In 2010 of all things. Who could have seen that coming?
After the jump - the rest of the Tendown:
