As gorgeous as is the view from the summit, the sweetest thing
about winning a championship is the memories, the snapshots of a
triumphant postseason, from the crucial plays to the final out to
the Champagne showers and the victory parade. These images of
October and early November not only carried the Giants and their
fans through the winter but seemed to expunge the innumerable
anxieties that clung to them through last spring and summer.
As gorgeous as is the view from the summit, the sweetest thing about winning a championship is the memories, the snapshots of a triumphant postseason, from the crucial plays to the final out to the Champagne showers and the victory parade.
These images of October and early November not only carried the Giants and their fans through the winter but seemed to expunge the innumerable anxieties that clung to them through last spring and summer.
And now, one week into 2011, those anxieties are back. Of course they are. That’s the sweet cruelty, if not the torture, of baseball.
Though the 2010 World Champion Giants return home Friday to a welcome sure to warm hearts and raise goose bumps, embraced as the champions and conquering heroes of autumn, their having lost four of their first six games this season serves as a reminder that glory is as fleeting as it is beautiful.
As invincible as they seemed last postseason, bottling the wind to win 11 of 15 games and earn the trophy, the Giants now are very similar to the unimposing club that had so few true believers last April and May.
Remember the rampant misgivings?
Some wondered whether the veteran general manager, Brian Sabean, was capable of building a champion. He hadn’t in 13 years on the job, so would he ever?
There were questions that the manager, Bruce Bochy, unable to let go of fading veterans such as Edgar Renteria and Bengie Molina, might be too stodgy to sufficiently light the necessary fire.
Pablo Sandoval was too heavy and Molina was too old — though still batting cleanup, for crying out loud. Barry Zito and Aaron Rowand were too overpaid, the offense collectively too light — so lacking, you’ll recall, there were broad and persistent pleas for Sabean to trade for a quality bat, even if it mean trading left-hander Jonathan Sanchez.
Skepticism is the companion of those who follow a fourth-place team, and fourth in the N.L. West is where San Francisco spent much of the first half. The Giants couldn’t solve San Diego, losing nine of their first 11 games to the Padres, who held a tight grip on the division for all but the final month.
Yeah, you remember.
All the daily uncertainty, the journey of constant peril, seemed to make the championship exponentially more pleasurable than it otherwise might have been. After so many dog days of insecurity and doubt, the climax was absolute euphoria.
Well, good. There’s more to come.
These Giants should be marginally better than those Giants. They’ve made significant changes from who they were a year ago and slight changes from who they were six months ago, when they began their magical postseason run.
Buster Posey, who arrived last May and became a lifeline to their postseason hopes, was in the lineup from the start. Young first baseman Brandon Belt, identified as a pillar of the future, is on the roster. Confidence has replaced qualms about whether Aubrey Huff can produce in the heart of the order. Tim Lincecum looks sharp. So does right-hander Matt Cain, who was 6-8 at the 2010 All-Star break.
Yet the 2-4 start is very indicative of what kind of the team the Giants have and what kind of challenges they face.
They’re not a post-the-lineup-and-put-your-feet-up kind of team. They conceivably could question the decision to keep Belt, which forces Huff to the outfield, which changes the dynamics of the defense. The shortcomings already have become evident.
Ground balls to either side of new shortstop Miguel Tejada more likely will be hits because Miggy no longer has the range to turn them into outs.
So these Giants, despite their pitching, are destined to go through a few more periods when they lose four of six. They will lose seven of 11 and maybe 11 of 17. It’s the nature of playing a 162-game schedule and of the extensive air travel that comes with flying out of San Francisco.
Repeating in the Major Leagues is far more difficult than doing so in the NBA or even the NFL and NHL. There are reasons no N.L. team has done it since 1976.
The magic of last autumn was a fabulous deodorant applied to a team that played just well enough for six months, before bottling the wind for 30 days.
There always will be the 2010 Giants, with their unheralded lineup and their fantastic pitching and their remarkable resilience. They provided a year for the ages, leaving themselves and their fans with priceless and eternal sources of emotional wealth.
But this is another year. And six games in, we already see it blending moments of sheer brilliance with those of maddening deficiency.
For beauty in baseball rarely ages well, making it all the more interesting.
— Column by Monte Poole, The Oakland Tribune
