Northern California sports fans just had a memorable year cheering on the hometown boys, though we'll probably forget all about it if the glory years continue.
First it was the Giants last fall beating out the Dodgers in the last games of the season to take the Western Division behind the machinations of manager Gabe Kapler with his Star of David tattoo. How did this happen? I started paying some attention after the all-star break when they were in first place, and started following the progress of the run to the finish with internet updates and sometimes on the radio as the bay area sports channel had been yanked from our area a few years before. I didn't know most of the names of this over-achieving team but by the time they made the playoffs all were familiar, as well as some of their backstories.
Along with the big three remaining from the 2014 Championship team, Crawford, Posey, and Belt, the team was cobbled together by general manager Farhan Zaidi and included career years from the big three and astute acquisitions produced from trades and free agent hirings, like the pitcher Kevin Gausman. (The young ace of the staff, Logan Webb, was very impressive mowing down the batters with his tricky curves and unhittable sliders.)
What did all this mean? It meant the Giants went to the post season! And what did that mean? It meant guys like me had something to be distracted by, spending multiple evenings watching and cheering for these ballplayers, some making tens of millions a year.
What a story the Giants have been in recent years: In 2010 they won the World Series with a couple of late-season additions, including NLCS MVP Cody Ross, excellent starting pitching from Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, and Madison Bumgarner, and superb relieving where almost every pitching change manager Bruce Bochy made worked, then the closer Brian Wilson, The Beard, came in to finish the show. (In 2012 it was the curveball slinger Sergio Romo who came in to close out the Tigers and win the World Series.)
2010 would have done me for a lifetime, my adopted team victorious, then they brought more excitement to our homes and streets winning it all again in 2012 and 2014 when Bumgarner came in with two day's rest to finish out the last five innings in the seventh game of the World Series and beat the Kansas City Royals in an exciting finish.
(Let's not forget “washed up” pitcher Barry Zito's gem of a game beating the Cardinals in the 2012 NLCS with a clutch performance to save that season and championship run.)
I got to see one game in that era, riding to Pac Bell Park on the ferry from Larkspur, looking up as we floated to see the often renamed edifice rise higher before us. It was like going to church and coincidentally our demi-god Timmy was pitching that night.
So last year's team won the division, faced the second place Dodgers in the five game divisional playoff, and lost the deciding fifth game with the final out being a very bad call by the umpire though it probably wouldn't have mattered anyway. I turned off the tube immediately after that check swing called a strike, by the ump impatient to get home or somewhere, and missed all the whining and complaining that followed for hours and days. Three strikes you're out, three outs the game's over, turn off the TV, it was a great run!
(The sports landscape is littered with these “one pitch which meant everything” moments, including the seventh game of the 1997 World Series: It was the last inning, bases loaded, my Indians were winning by one with two outs, two strikes on the batter, and if they could just get that one strike and last out they win! However, Edgar Renteria got a hit, drove in the winning run, and the Marlins won the series.)
Baseball season ended, football started, and the big fast men banged their bodies together out there for millions of dollars, many suffering life-long and even fatal injuries (including Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, CTE, a progressive brain condition thought to be caused by repeated blows to the head and repeated episodes of concussion), doing it for the joy of the game and for us, the fans who didn't miss a play, though I have to ask why do we care so much?
What is it which makes so many of us sports crazy? It's not just Americans with our expensive sports, toss a soccer ball to a group of kids anywhere in the world and a game will break out, even with just a couple of garbage cans for a goal, or two of anything, really. (U.S. sports enthusiasts are tame compared to the expressive, wild, obsessed, and violent soccer fans the world over.)
Maybe our world wide sports obsession started with the Olympics or for me playing catch in the backyard with my father, and driving around rural Indiana looking for reception from tiny Ohio radio stations to catch some of the Indians and Browns games. (Our supreme moment of shared sports glory happened in December, 1964 when we watched the Browns beat the Colts for the NFL championship on the little black and white upstairs, the same TV upon which earlier that summer my mother and I had watched hours of the March on Selma, Alabama.)
Last year the 49ers surged into the playoffs with a series of last minute victories lead by the fantastic receiver/running back Deebo Samuel. They were losing a crucial late season game and I got dressed in my hiking clothes ready to bolt out the door as soon as they had lost and were finally eliminated from the playoffs. They kept holding on, making one more astounding play, drove the game into overtime, and Garoppolo, Samuel, Bosa, Kittle, and company eked out a last second victory to send them to the playoffs.
Once in the post-season they first whipped the Cowboys though they nearly lost in the last seconds as errant passes by our lovably handsome yet erratic quarterback turned into interceptions, but smilin' Jimmy did just enough to keep us in the game. (When the protection in the pocket breaks down and Garoppolo gets turned around he sometimes looks like a flailing rookie desperately flinging the ball wherever.)
Then we went up to freezing Green Bay where our defense stymied the cautious Aaron Rodgers while Garoppolo tried to stick to his Hippocratic Oath, football style: “Quarterback, first do no harm.” Late in the game special teams blocked a kick and ran it in for a touchdown and against all the predictions the 49ers had gone up to Green Bay and left victorious! It was on to Los Angeles and the Rams for the conference championship game to see which team would go to the Superbowl.
Our millionaires battled their millionaires and if one play had gone differently, as we say in the woulda, shoulda, coulda lounge, we would have made it to the Superbowl. Very late in the game, with San Francisco winning and Los Angeles driving for the go-ahead touchdown, Rams quarterback Stafford threw a pass right into the belly of 49ers cornerback Jaquiski Tartt who dropped the ball and is probably still thinking about it.
(The phantom interference call against Eric Wright in the 1983 Conference Championship game against Washington comes to mind, during the “Joe Cool” Montana years, which cost the 49ers another trip to the Superbowl. I watched that one in an empty bar at the Motel Las Palmas on a black and white television set in Matehuala, a Mexico cow town, where thirty-five years later the author Paul Theroux stayed a couple nights while writing his latest book ‘On the Plain of Snakes.’)
Even the Las Vegas Raiders, another one of my teams, made it to the playoffs last year against the upstart Bengals but their playoff run was derailed by a questionable call from the zebras.
Which brings us to the Warriors, who started the season hot, winning eighteen of thir first twenty games, leveled out some, then came on strong in the playoffs. Steph Curry continued to put the rock in the hole from thirty feet out, drove in for layups past guys twice as big, and guarded so tough he got into foul trouble often.
The center Kevon Looney vacuumed up rebounds in the paint and Jordan Poole demonstrated his artistic drives to the hoop as well as making many monster threes. With Draymond Green feeding the cutters, Klay Thompson back from injury for some timely shooting, Gary Payton II playing scrappy defense, Otto Porter Jr coming off the bench for defense and some quick three-pointers, and Andrew Wiggins playing the best basketball of his life battling the boards, swishing mid-range jumpers and playing inspiring defense, the Warriors breezed and sometimes battled through the nearly two-month playoffs, aka “the second season.”
When the Warriors fell behind in a series Steph often showed his greatness by lifting the team with inspired forty-point games during which they came from behind often with third quarter runs to pass the opposing millionaires. The Warriors lost the first game of the Finals in San Francisco against the Celtics and I had to recalculate my desire to win as home court advantage had been given up. Why did I care so much? Why do I want the team to win so much? I relaxed and realized it didn't really matter and began to watch with tempered neutrality—it was just a game.
The experienced and disciplined Golden State Warriors surprised most of the league, and the rest of us, by bringing home the hardware, a fourth ring for Steph, Klay, and Dray, and the first MVP trophy for Wardell Stephen Curry II.
(What will happen next? Well, our Giants fell back to mediocrity this year, the Warriors are gearing up to defend their title, and last night the absolutely amazing Deebo Samuel ran wild through the Ram's defense 53 yards for a touchdown after leaping in the air to snag one of Jimmy G's off-target passes, while the 49ers defense smothered the Rams, sacking their quarterback Matthew Stafford seven times on the way to a decisive 24-9 victory. Onward couch potatoes!)
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