I was lucky enough to born in a bona-fide major league city, San Francisco, and even luckier to have been born in a place which has been rarely uninteresting to follow baseball in. I was 4 years old when the Giants and the Athletics played a cross-bay World Series, the home plates being a mere 10.247 miles away from each other (I had to estimate that myself). Of course the most interesting thing about that World Series was the fact only an enormous earthquake could stop the unholy ass-whipping the overmatched Giants received that year, an event that regrettably did not happen while I was watching the game (I was watching Alanis Morrissette get slimed on You Can't Do That On Television). Four years later the Giants seemingly were mere days from being moved to Tampa - ironic that just a few years after a World Series appearance in a dilapidated stadium built for baseball but better for football that a team would move (hello angry New Yorkers) - when Peter Magowan and Friends saved the team and oh, just happened to sign the best player in baseball... and WHOSE GODFATHER WAS WILLIE MAYS.
That 1993 Giants team probably had as much effect on me as any baseball event of my lifetime, at least before the 2004 Red Sox. My dad was going back to school after his business failed, and so for the summer he was doing decoration for previous clients, which still left him quite a bit of free time. Giants tickets were pretty cheap at the ol' Stick, and so pop and I ended up going to a lot of baseball games that year, mostly in the upper deck or bleachers, which wasn't too bad at Candlestick, especially since Magowan had wisely decided to schedule as many day games as feasible in order to neutralize the awful weather for night games. So I was going to be going to a lot of games anyway; what made it even better was that the Giants had one of the best one year turnarounds ever, winning a mere 31 more games than they had the previous season. That they did so in one of the greatest pennant races of all time against a team in the middle of what at a minimum is one of the best year to year runs of form and results in the history of the game was icing on the cake. San Francisco was at the tail end of football mania in 1993, and to see baseball of that quality and excitement in front of your eyes would make any kid love baseball.
But I'm not a Giants fan. Or, more accurately, the Giants aren't my favorite team. My parents are from New England, and the scarlet letter my dad wore before 2004 was that he was a Red Sox fan. I'll try and keep the sob stories to a minimum, but my dad lived in Boston in 1978 and in San Francisco in 1993, and he was young in '78 and in school in '93, so quite simply he had the time to get wrapped up in baseball. To see two epic collapses like that basically first-hand must have been a baseball version of just happening to have been at Dealey Plaza and the Ambassador Hotel, and no doubt this heavily influenced the epic pessimism he had about both teams before 2004. To top it all off, I'm pretty sure he had tickets for himself and me for the one-game playoff at Candlestick Park that was to happen had the Giants won. At least Rafael Belliard didn't lift one into the famous wind and see it creep over the left field wall...
But he imparted his love to the Red Sox to me. It's fair to say I was still a Giants fan as a kid, and in some ways I remain a Giants fan - I never had the pessimism some Red Sox fans had (I remember getting yelled at by a guy for saying "It's in the bag!" when Pedro was getting smacked around in Game 7 in '04). But I cherished my Wade Boggs cards just as much as my Kevin Mitchell cards, and the Rocket was on the pantheon of Flynn's sporting Gods with Larry Bird and Joe Montana. Add that basic understanding with a good press by some other family members (including a book containing a buildable model of Fenway Park - I trace my stadium love to here) and annual summer trips as a kid to New England, which invariably took in a game at Fenway and often one at McCoy or Beehive Field as well and the habit grew on me.
This love was no doubt influenced by Fenway Park, which as a stadium is only mere light years ahead of the dump that was Candlestick. I've always been a fan of the game's history, and the comparatively light history of the Giants (at least in their San Francisco incarnation) pales in comparison to the oodles of Red Sox history. And the arrival of a guy named Pedro sure helped.
That's the start of my story, and the start of this blog. The reason I have this blog is to indulge myself in writing about all the things about baseball (and on occasion another sport) that I like, particularly things like its tradition, its culture, and its current events. It's therapeutic as well, living overseas and being..well, maybe not homesick, but wanting to just soak up the Americana for a while. And I've written all my life, and could use an outlet for more writing beyond posting on the Sons of Sam Horn all the time. I'll also use this blog to focus on the attempts by baseball to grow overseas, particularly in the UK, where I live. Baseball is very much to British people what cricket is to America - the sport that no one understands - and the ones who have developed a passion are frequently pretty interesting people! I also live in the epicenter of UK baseball - London, naturally - and will report on the goings on of London's two baseball teams, the Mets and the Croydon Pirates. I'll also explore the stadiums of baseball, the uniforms of baseball, and the what I like to call the soap opera of baseball, the hubbub of talk radio, blogs and the printed press that really feed the 24/7 fascination with the game for the average fan. I hope you come along.
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