Memories From My Youth……
Rough Trade’s post seems to be winning the poll. I voted for it, it brought me back to a very special time in my life. The late 70’s were a trip for me. I was 8, my parents had just gotten divorced, my whole life seemed to be falling apart and in an effort to fix the family stuff my dad was incessantly dragging me to Giants baseball games. I wasn’t complaining. Baseball was new to me and this was the one thing we could do together where we didn’t have *life* interrupt us—come to think of it, baseball is still that way for me today….
Anyway, he took me to the *Ivie game* in May of ’78 and that’s why I voted for Rough Trade’s post. We were sitting a million miles away from the game. I remember being almost scared by the number of people I saw. The stadium was packed and the energy was electric. In the 3rd or 4th inning the crowd was properly juiced on the beers they were buying from the isle and a chant of “Fuck the DODG-ers” broke out. It was mostly just in our section, my dad didn’t partake, but this chant thing seemed like a fun thing. It died down after about a minute and as soon as it did I decided to start my own chant so I started yelling “Kill Don SUTTON!!!” in that rhythmic chant tone that crowds d0. I yelled it twice, you know, to get the chant going. The response was swift and negative. Everyone in front of me turned around in horror and my dad, born and raised in Virginia, gave me a look that said “Shut the fuck up immediately”. Of course, I did. I bowed my head in my hands and I remember feeling a great sense of remorse about saying what I said. But to this day I don’t understand why it was ok for the crowd to be screaming the word “fuck” over and over in front of children……
Just a random memory as we all continue to walk the earth…….
A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
Meditation on Statistical Method
By J. V. Cunningham
Plato, despair!
We prove by norms
How numbers bear
Empiric forms,
How random wrong
Will average right
If time be long
And error slight,
But in our hearts
Hyperbole
Curves and departs
To infinity.
Error is boundless.
Nor hope nor doubt,
Though both be groundless,
Will average out.
You want average? A lot of baseball franchises sit around around average, historically. (E.g., Braves 9,950/9,961). They’re the gold standard, the epitome of average. A lot of franchises are way under average. But only three are well over: Yankees (.568), Giants (.538) and Dodgers (.524).
I think any post that can be titled “when I worked at the ‘stick” should probably get POTD and anyone who has a second post like that should wait at least until the next day to post it, so they can all be POTD.
Next is “my lifelong love of baseball” then “amateur, college, coaching, umpire” stories.Of course, these are supplemental posts to timely SF Giants news, insight, signposting and banter.
great story, by the way, I always new you were a killer. 8)
I voted for RT’s post, too, no hesitation. The anecdote itself would’ve won my admiration no matter how he’d written it. But his style impressed me.
I became a Giants fan in the middle of the 78 season (radio mainly), and went to my first Giants/Dodgers game in early August. Ivie came up with the bases loaded and everyone went wild. He struck out. It struck me as a temporary set back. I was in it for the long haul.
Secondly, for me, Wednesday’s game was aces. I watched Comcast from inning 4 and like snarrk I, too have found a great bit of ‘what’s not to like’ in Prince Linc, our beloved Seabiscuit.
First as a baseball player, he is every bit like us and more.
Second as a leader of a team that just won the world series: I wonder why America can love a Doc so much easier than a Freak.
and last but not least as a pitcher.
Watched the Mets game thursday against the Rox (the one after the private clubhouse tirade) not bad. I have always like the announcers; but not as much as our two.
anyway, breakfast and a bong and it is TGIF work-a-day.
Flav, the proper response from your dad should have been, “Yeah, Kill Don Sutton!”
Would have changed your whole experience.
We were at RFK I guess 4 years ago sitting near home plate and the Giants dugout and out comes Ray Durham to pinch hit. My oldest, 7 at the time, says out loud as a 7 year old would, “Ray Durham sucks.” Durham was probaby close enough to hear and all the Giants fans around us start laughing, so shrug my shoulders and say, “Yeah, he does suck.”
I was at a game with my kids a few years ago when some little guy shouts out “Ray Durham sucks!” They turned to me in confusion, and I reassured them “Robbie Thompson never had to listen to that. Ray Durham is as good, if not a better player, than he ever was. Look at the numbers.”
The difference being Robby came up through the Giants system. With Will Clark.
They endeared themselves to Giants fans with their grit, hustle, and hard-nosed play. Ray got here late in his career and by the end, was shot.
Unfair? Sure, but it was a different time, and most of Ray’s good years were somewhere else.
Well, no. Durham’s OPS in his last year w/ SF was 799 at the time he was traded. He played 5 and half years for SF, and was a very good player for most of that time. I would admire Robbie more if he had refused to lay down a few of those 18 sacrifices for that nitwit manager of his in ’86 — now that would have shown some grit!