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Why the Giants must die


Unlike explaining why I hate the Yankees, explaining why I hate the Giants is not easy to do.

It's a bit like hating Paris Hilton. She's harmless, she's all the way on the other side of the country, she does stupid, but ultimately meaningless things. She should be completely and totally avoidable. Yet I can't avoid her. She keeps showing up, forcing me to pay attention for even a millisecond. It really shouldn't cause me to dislike the woman. But it does.

The Giants are a little bit that way.

Imagine you're a kid in school. You're not the most popular guy. But you do pretty well for yourself. You have some friends. You get adequate grades. You try not to be a jerk.

Most people seem to find you likable, or at least ignorable. You do your pleasant little thing and everything seems ducky.

Then, out of nowhere, you hear that someone hates you. I mean, really, really hates you. And you can't figure out why. You haven't done anything at all to cause this person to hate you, other than the fact that you merely exist. Yet this person continues to hate you.

It's a little unnerving, but you can ignore it most of the time. The person that hates you is all the way on the other side of the building. We'll call it "The N.L. West Basement level." While you're in a section called "N.L. West Contender level." Besides, there's this enormous, loud-mouth jerk-off who calls himself "Yankee" who is consuming all your attention.

Things continue on this way for awhile, until your grades start slipping a little bit and you end up in the same section of the building as the kid who hates you. He's managed to improve himself a little, but really his past is a trainwreck and he has nothing to brag about. But he keeps bringing the hate. You continue to try to ignore him, but then the guy below opens his big mouth:


I don't even remember exactly what Matt Williams said, but it was typically stupid. I believe it was along the lines of "it doesn't matter what else we do as long as we beat the Dodgers."

Genius. That's the kind of crap you hear out of college football. OK, baldy, your team can go 18-144 with all your wins coming against my team. Meanwhile, I desperately hope my team is focused on winning the whole thing, instead of your insane plan for success.

But that kind of crystallized things for me. Williams' statement and Joe Morgan's annoying trot around the bases in 1982 all began to make sense. The Giants hate the Dodgers because they are the Dodgers. They don't have a logical reason for it. They just do it.

I know there's probably more to it than that. There's some jealousy involved. And there's the whole Northern California vs. Southern California thing -- but I don't live there and that means nothing to me. From a distance, I see people with issues in both parts of the state. Besides, liking the Dodgers has more to do with an area of the country. It has to do with the history of the team, Brooklyn included, and all that it means.

But Giants fans -- the few that there are -- have shown me this relationship is not built on logic, so I've stopped being logical about it. Instead of ignoring the Giants, or not even knowing they're there, I decided to hate them back. It doesn't make sense. They really haven't done anything for me to hate them -- except for bowing down to Barry Bonds for about a decade. OK maybe that is a good reason -- but that's me getting all logical again.

The fact is that Giants fans hating the Dodgers was really, really getting on my nerves. So, nice work, Giants, you supplanted the Yankees and have been my least favorite team for several years now, all based on the good vibes put off by your fans and a couple of jerk-off players. Job well done. No chance in selling souvenirs to me.

Congratulations to you: I hate Brian Wilson, who I'm pretty sure if he moved into my neighborhood, I would have a "for sale" sign up the next day. And I hate Aubrey Huff, whose idea of hilarity is wearing thongs and passing them out to teammates. And I hate Bruce Bochy, who pops out of the dugout to minutiae-to-death the umpire approximately 4.13463 times an inning.


And I hate this whining, crying baby, who practically pooped his pants because Chase Utley tossed a ball back to him. Boo-hoo.

Bochy had to take him out of the game to save the NLCS for the Giants. Sanchez was so inferior mentally that the act of flipping a ball to him put him in meltdown mode. Yeah, that's a guy I can get behind, someone doing his best impersonation of Joaquin Andujar in the '85 Series.

Even if I didn't have an issue with the Giants, I couldn't root for them anyway. I don't understand how you can root against a team that has Josh Hamilton and Michael Young and Vladdy Guerrero. That team seems a lot more likable to me.

So, yeah, I'm rooting for the Rangers to win the World Series in a sweep, starting tonight. I really hope that all the people picking them to win doesn't backfire. Because if I see Aubrey Huff dancing around in a red thong in the postgame celebration, then there is no chance of the Yankees returning to my least favorite team for the rest of time.

Oh, and one other thing:


Jinx!

Comments

Wrigley Wax said…
As I was reading, I was mentally changing "Giants" into "Brewers" and "Dodgers" into "Cubs." It's almost the exact same situation (though Thorzul may have a different opinion). But I don't have to worry about the Brewers in the World Series!
Anonymous said…
Can a guy get away with liking both teams from a distance? A Giants fan informed me this was an abomination; I'd like a Dodgers' fan's take.
Jim Q said…
The feeling is mutual.

Not only did I grow up on the Dodgers, I moved to the East Bay and have been a diehard A's fan for 30 years. So I double-detest everything Giants. I work in downtown SF and all the crisp new orange shirts and hats one sees all day long on the legions of bandwagon fans make one want to hurl.

Go Rangers
night owl said…
natscards ~

I think you've gotten me to agree with a Giants fan. Liking both seems impossible to me.

In your terms:

Is liking both the Redskins and the Cowboys possible?
HAHAHA, that was great. I like the unrelenting hatred!!!
Great! Because i know what it's like to have people hate you for no reason and it's exactly the same way with Giants fans. I went to SF last year and they had "Osama is a Dodgers fan" t-shirts and making jokes about LA, what's the deal man?? At least me and the old folks next me had a good laugh when the blue crew thrashed them 9-1
steelehere said…
Night Owl, Once again great post!

Like alot of Dodger fans growing up in LA (and still living in here), I was indifferent to the Giants because they stunk from the mid-1970's to the mid-1980's. My family used to vacation in San Francisco every few years and I looked forward to the city's cool features that didn't exist in LA (an actual downtown where everyone congregated, Cable Cars, BART, Lombard Street, Fisherman's Wharf, Alcatraz and the Golden Gate). I'm assuming that's why many people still romanticize San Francisco today.

With that said, I've lived in San Francisco (the city) as well as the East Bay (Walnut Creek) for short periods of my life and it was interesting to get San Franciscans take on LA.

A lot of San Franciscans believe Los Angeles is overdeveloped, polluted, uses their water and lacks culture. In addition, they believe that Angelenos are self-centered and all-out obsessed with material things.

As a result, they've developed an inferiority complex about Los Angeles because Angelenos don't acknowledge the issues they have with LA and as a result have turned to sports as a way to vent. I'd compare it to a bunch of average looking girls sitting around trying to find faults with a much better looking girl (who doesn't know they exist) just to make each other feel better.

On a personal level, the older I get the more displaced San Franciscans I find who've moved to LA (often times because of SF's crappy weather). I'm at the point where I now know enough of them that I'm forced to hear them rag on LA and the Dodgers. As a result, I take as much pleasure rooting against the Giants as I do rooting for the Dodgers.
Anonymous said…
Haha, oh geez, when you put it that way...yeah it's unfathomable!

But but I like Duke Snider AND Willie McCovey. I don't know what to think.
dayf said…
Dude, you're a Dodger fan. You are required by law to hate the Giants with all your being. Dodgers and Giants fans are lucky. Not too many franchises get that level of hate in a rivalry.

Just so you know, even though the Braves haven't been in the NL West for 17 years, I still hate BOTH the Dodgers and Giants just as much as I did 30 years ago :)

(and why were the Braves and Reds in the West and the Cardinals and the Cubs in the East? WTF?)