Life of a Giants fan

Not many people have two birthdays. Well, I do. My second birthday was Sunday, July 29, 1990. That’s when my mom took me to my first baseball game.

I still remember seeing the field at  Candlestick Park for the very first time. There’s absolutely nothing like seeing a baseball field. The clean cut green grass, the nice infield, the warning track, fences, the music beaming from the stadium speakers. I could go on and on about its beauty.

The Giants played the Cincinnati Reds that afternoon. The Reds were a good team, a great team. In fact, they were so great they won the World Series in 1990 over the A’s. But for that one day, the Giants were better.

Scott Garrelts was the starting pitcher and he was as good as, if not better than Tim Lincecum was last night. Through 8 innings, he had a no-hitter. My first baseball game ever, and I was three outs away from seeing a no-hitter. In the 9^th inning, he got the first two outs, and then stepped to the plate Paul O’Neill. I will never forget Paul O’Neill.

O’Neill took a swing and lined a solid single up the middle into centerfield for a base hit. Just like that, the no-hitter was no more.

Garrelts got the next batter and the Giants went on to win that game 4-0. But from that point on, I was hooked into Giants baseball.

Giants baseball was always on the brink of something special. But in the end, you’d always suspect something would go wrong.

Take the first game I ever went to as an example. Garrelts would’ve thrown the first no-hitter in Giants history since 1976 and came up one out short. In 1993, they won 103 games and still came up one win short of the playoffs. In 1997, they won their division only to get swept out of the playoffs in three games. 1998, they had a lead in their final game of the year and gave up a home run in the bottom of the ninth to lose that game, setting up a one game playoff the next day in Chicago, which they lost.

In 2000, their first day in the new ballpark, then called Pacific Bell Park, was ruined when the Dodgers beat them behind three home runs from a guy named Kevin Elster. Who is Kevin Elster?

They made the playoffs in 2000, led 1-0 against the Mets and J.T. Snow hit one of the most memorable home runs in the bottom of the ninth inning to tie the game, only to see the bullpen blow it the next inning. The Giants lost the next three games to end their season.

2001, Barry Bonds broke the single season home run record on the same night they were eliminated from the playoffs, and eliminated by the Dodgers.

2002, up 5-0 in Game 6 of the World Series, only to see a collapse of epic proportion. They lose Game 6 by a score of 6-5 to the Angels and lost Game 7.

2003, they have the best record in the Major Leagues, and yet again, lose to the Florida Marlins in four games.

See a pattern here?

It’s heartbreak after heartbreak and a heart can only take so much break. Seven years after their last playoff appearance in 2003, they clinched the National League West title on the final day of the year against the Padres. They beat the Braves in round one, took care of the Phillies in Round 2 when nobody thought they could, and then they find themselves up 3-1 in the World Series going into last night’s Game 5.

When Edgar Renteria’s ball just went over the left-center field wall in Arlington, I was ecstatic. But as a Giants fan, you feared the worse.

Tim Lincecum gave up a home run to Nelson Cruz the next inning and I couldn’t help but panic. Would this game be added to the list of catastrophes?

Timmy settled down and breezed through the rest of the seventh, easily took care of the eighth and handed the ball over to Brian Wilson. The Giants were three outs away from something that I almost didn’t think I’d ever see.

And when Nelson Cruz swung through Wilson’s fastball to end the game, all the heart ache, all the suffering, all the torture was gone. For that one moment, nothing mattered. It’s an indescribable feeling that I have never felt before. The phrase, “San Francisco Giants, World Series Champions,” was no longer something that was attainable through only my dreams or a video game. It actually happened. My Giants are World Champions.

Words still cannot describe the joy I am still feeling 24 hours after one of the best moments of my life. Every time I think about it, I get goose bumps. In my lifetime, this moment will be hard to top.

Yesterday morning, a radio host, read this excerpt from a book that I will definitely read, called “Fever Pitch.” The book is about a fan of European soccer, who followed the team Arsenal like how I, like many others, followed the Giants. So I found this so fitting.

“There is then, literally, nothing to describe it. I have exhausted all the available options. I can recall nothing else that I coveted for two decades (what else is there that can be reasonably coveted for that long?), nor can I recall anything else that I have desired as both man and boy. So please, be tolerant of those who describe a sporting moment as their best ever. We do not lack imagination, nor have we had sad and barren lives; it is just that real life is paler, duller, and contains less potential for unexpected delirium.”