A Retrospective View of the 2010 World Series Champion SF Giants

Disappointment, grief, and immeasurable heartbreak penetrated the very souls of Giants' faithful on a direct, non-stop flight to the bowels of failure, churning out sparks, extreme altitude climbs, and death defying nose-dives.  Engines lost power and started smoking.  Wings lost their panels.  In the rear of the plane, a baby could be heard crying.  Someone get that baby his goddamn bottle, the Giants are trying to get to the playoffs here!  Oh, but it mattered not, as the pilot was drunk, the navigator was an inanimate stone golem, and the plane was hit by lightning 37 times before takeoff.

This, my dear reader, was the flight itinerary we had in place for more or less every season that I can remember, including a game with Ralph Barbieri sneering and jeering at my family and friends for passing sandwiches and drinks back and forth to each other at Candlestick Park.  As a quick side note for those unfortunate enough to not experience watching a baseball game in a windy, trash-filled football stadium, you can still go watch the A's across the bay.  They maaaay have a few seats still available for their upcoming series against [insert weak AL West team].

Now, far be it from me to stake a claim for more sympathy than I am due.  These Giants teams did, in fact, make a few playoff appearances in my lifetime, most notably of which was a trip to the World Series against the Anaheim Angels in 2002.  I blacked out after Game 6, and unfortunately, never learned the result of that series.  I assume it was canceled on the basis of gross misuse of a spider monkey.  In addition, I was not alive during 1957, when the New York Giants moved across the country to San Francisco, so I am trumped by those fans stuck in a drought for twice as long.  But we, as Giants fans, young and old, were united by a minty string of hope that kind of lost its flavor as time went on, but everyone thought the same thing: Whether it be by reverse osmosis or pure luck, we would walk into a World Series and get a win for the City of San Francisco.  I personally thought that a grizzly bear would run for president and be elected into office before we won a World Series, but that grizzly bear felt that the timing wasn't right, and on November 1, 2010, the Giants required neither of those methods to dispatch the Texas Rangers in 6 games, and brought home with them a beacon of pride, shattering all those years of being in the basement of Major League Baseball.

The Big Name sports syndicates didn't want to talk about us, but they were finally forced to. They got names, positions, and history wrong, but boy... was it a beautiful thing.  "The San Francisco Giants?" they clamored.  "Can't we just get the Yankees and Red Sox to play exhibition games through October and November?" they'd blurted over their breakfast of elderberry juice and eagle eggs.  No, no, this was our moment, and there was no denying it was going to happen.  For every 3-2 count in the bottom of the 9th inning where you just knew we weren't going to make a come-back.  For every off-season where a minor move here and small shuffle there got you no less excited than it did aggravated, but it was all you could cling on to.  For every Scott Spiezio and Jose Cruz Jr.  For every dropped fly ball in right field, every grounded into double play, every lackluster pitching performance, and every step closer to apathy, these 2010 Giants kneaded it up into an unstable ball of failure and launched into out into McCovey Cove with a whirlwind of passion, skill, and unmistakable drive to win one for themselves and their fans.

Vindication, peace, immortality...and now, defenders.