The Glow Continues

Well, it has been eight days or so now since the Giants won the World Series and I'm still floating. Also thinking about the other years since moving to SF that they made the Series and lost, and the people, events, and person I was that went with all of them.

1962, high school, smuggling transistor radios into class to follow the games, my parents only 40 and 41 years old, Chuck Hiller (an even more improbable personage than Edgar Renteria) hitting a grand slam to win game 4 in New York, the deluge that postponed game six for three days, scarcely aware of the Cuban missile crisis building, so intent was I on the Giants, and then the heartbreak of game seven captured best in the Peanuts strip where Charlie Brown laments, "Why couldn't McCovey have hit the ball just three feet higher?", or to the right or left of Bobby Richardson.

1989, after two games in which the offense produced all of 1 run in Oakland, I was watching the start of game 3 in our den in VA when the earthquake hit, the kids were 14, 11 and 4, we'd been back from Argentina for just over a year. The Giants never had a chance. Everyone else remembers it as the Earthquake Series, for Dana Dee it was the Series when I tried to kill her. Game 1 was on her birthday and instead of watching, my priorities right at least, I took her to dinner to a Thai place that came highly reviewed by the Washington Post and she ordered lemon grass chicken, which turned out to be the most fiery dish of her life (and hotter than any lemon grass chicken since).

1993, doesn't really count since they lost the pennant to the Braves by one game on the final game of the season, but still, the heartbreak element was huge. I watched in San Salvador as Salomon Torres put them in an immediate early hole from which they never came close to recovering, 12-1 final. I turned it off and jumped in the swimming pool. They'd swept the first three games of a four game season finale in LA. But would it have been too much to ask for the newly minted Colorado Rockies to win one, one, one frigging game from the Braves in the course of the whole season. Apparently so, you can look it up. The last true pennant race, the last season before wild card.

2002, the real killer. I flew to Brazil on the night of game 4 and asked the Embassy to have the result for me as soon as I arrived. 4-3 Giants tie the series and then I ended my working dinner early the next night to go back to the hotel room in Brasilia to revel in the 16-5 rout. Day off, flew home, dear Annie calls in the midst of the 7th inning of game 6, saying, "They're finally going to do it." I parried, feeling jinxed, Dusty gave Ortiz the game ball in removing him and minutes later Scott Spiezio hits the 3 run shot and the Angles are off. Larry M. invites me to watch game 7 with him, but Livan is pitching so the result is preordained. I tell him I have no intention of watching. 4-1 Angels. Livan is still around, thankfully not with the Giants.

All that is gone now in the sweet November of 2010.