Tuesday, April 12, 2011

The Early Season Report

Nobody liked The Mystery of the Sad Bike? Man, you people are cold fucking automatons.

Anyway. Went to my first Giants game of the year last night. Got a couple of thoughts on that topic:

1. Fucking ENOUGH with the World Series We Are the Champions Yay Look at Us Let's Cheer for Us Again World Series World Series shit. I KNOW it's a big deal. I've been a Giants fan for 20 years. But really, you know that expression "Act like you've been there before?"[*] That's actually kind of spot-on. I mean, you don't see the Yankees - or even the fucking Marlins, for that matter - wearing caps and jerseys with fucking GOLD LETTERING on them when they present their WS rings in a FIVE-HOUR ONFIELD CEREMONY which includes Carlos from the Doggie Diner behind section 128 getting a ring and Duane Kuiper babbling incoherently and crying and Lou Seal borne aloft by a Choir of Angels while the organ player kicks in with Ave Maria, do you? No, you don't. OK. WE WON. NOW LET'S GET ON WITH THIS SEASON WHICH, IF YOU HAVEN'T NOTICED, ISN'T GOING SO SWIMMINGLY.

[*] In case you don't know, it means that when you achieve a goal, typically in an athletic event, such as scoring a touchdown or, in this case, winning a championship, there is a school of thought that teaches that one should affect a sort of blasé mien, as if to announce to the world "Achieving this means very little to me, because I often achieve my goals, so I will refrain from jumping around and behaving like a 5-year-old who just won a stuffed zebra at the county fair and instead will walk away with a studied calmness." This is highly regarded and shows that you are a Winner who is Used to Winning and not some yokel who accidentally pushed the right button and fell ass-backwards into a victory. This school of thought is summed up by the phrase "Act like you've been there before."

2. That being said, I like the fact that Lou Seal is wearing a big pimp-style WS ring.

You think Lou Seal doesn't get mad tail? (Photo courtesy of, inevitably, Lou Seal's Facebook page.)


3. Oh yeah, there was a game being played, the less said about the better. It was around the time that Pat Burrell charged the ball and it went past him like he was a bloated copier salesman at a company BBQ that I decided defense may be an issue for this team.

4. Also: for all the hue and cry about not beating up on Dodger fans in the wake of the horrible beatdown in LA last week, nothing really happened that I saw. Well, before the game, there was one guy wearing Dodgers gear and another guy walking behind him wearing Giants gear kept yelling, inexplicably, "The Botox section is back here! Go back to the Botox section!" I guess, because people in LA use Botox? Or something? If that's the best heckle we've got, we need to convene a Heckle Roundtable and brainstorm this shit.

5. Cold? FUCKING FREEZING.

6. Ended up a 6-1 loss. Bumgarner gave up, like, 20 consecutive hits in the 5th but finished the inning and then CAME TO BAT because you CANNOT SACRIFICE BUMGARNER'S BAT. Seriously, he's one of the best hitters on the team. I'm not joking.

7 comments:

amy.leblanc said...

i'm so glad i have you to tell me what's going on with baseball and prime time television. it's like Cliff's notes. awesome!

and i did care about the sad bike. i can barely bring myself to leave my bike locked up anywhere i can't see it/check on it for more than an hour anywhere in SF. so yeah, that this girl left it there for weeks? i assume she really doesn't care about/need it (mine is my commute vehicle, so it is IMPORTANT TO MY LIFE) and if she comes back and it's gone...so what? i had a bike like that in college. never rode it. it got stolen. i didn't care.

TK said...

I may have anthropomorphized the bike in my head a little. You should have seen it out there in the rain, shivering, alone, wondering if its owner would ever return or if it would one day face the saw of the DPT Street Cleaning crew. Sad.

Julie said...

I don't give a shit about baseball, but I really did like the sad bike post. My daughter has lived in the Bay Area for 10+ years and had many bikes stolen or vandalized. I imagined that the sad bike was one of hers -- that someone just took it and locked it to that post as a prank. Except she would never ride a red bike.

Dusty Modern said...

The Italians have a word for acting like you've been there before: "sprezzatura." Basically, a nonchalant self-dismissiveness of how completely awesome you are.

Ryan said...

It amazes me how many fair weather fans have come out of the woodwork and are now cheering the team on. I mean, the Giants have been middle-of-the-pack in terms of attendance for years and now everyone in town has a panda hat? Please.

hotstuff said...

TK, what kind of schmuck are you to disagree with how long a TRUE Giants fan gets high on the 2010 WS? I strongly disagree with you on this, but then again, I was born with orange blood, it wasn't transfused and half a$$ed claimed 20 years ago...
xoxo
Pat the Bat's Beeyotch

Tamagosan said...

So I'd been on vacation (during which I saw a baseball game in Japan OMG I'm so blogging about that as soon as I get caught up on the 1,000 work-related items that got ignored) and briefly checked in at one point by reading the Saipan Tribune where they had a pic of a crippled Zito and mentioned something about a 4-game winning streak. I put the paper down and didn't check online after that since I was thinking maybe not looking would help...

Although I may have employed "Act like you've been there before" once or twice (perhaps or perhaps not during a drunken accidental pool win), I just have to say that I'm still giddy about the WS and my fist game when I get back home will be full of ridiculous cheering. By that time, everyone will actually be over it and I'll look like an even bigger idiot...

In re: "sprezzatura": I'm surprised that the Italian sports world even has a clue what non-chalance what with their footballers rolling around on the ground every time someone stubs a toe AND YES I'M STILL PISSED ABOUT THE MATARAZZI-ZIDAINE DRAMA OF 2006 so you shouldn't listen to my views on Italians...