When the San Francisco Giants won the 2010 World Series and were crowned kings of Major League Baseball, their fans were too ecstatic to pay much attention to what the outside world was saying. We were too busy enjoying the franchise's first title in over 50 years and The City's first ever of the baseball variety.
Eventually, however, the smiles and confetti subsided—that's when initial reports began trickling through that all was not right outside the Bay Area.
While we were reveling in our band of baseball brothers, drenched in the euphoria produced by a combination of spectacular pitching, solid defense and timely hitting, it seems the rest of the country had settled on a more nefarious explanation.
Much of the baseball-watching populace decided that the Gents had gotten lucky.
The argument seems to have its origins with a certain four-letter network and radiated out from there until "band of castoffs and misfits" seems to have become code for "Cash Warren lucky."
Well, the 2011 MLB season is out of the gates and that means the clock is officially ticking on San Francisco's improbable reign as world champs...according to popular opinion.
But what if those voices that are dismissing SF in '11—many of them echoing eerily similar dismissals from '10—are wrong again? What if this apparently pathological need to overlook the impact of an elite pitching staff is really behind the "they got hot" refrain?
An objective assessment of the club certainly leaves that possibility wide open.
- Login to post comments