We never knew you, but we loved you.  We never saw you, but then of course we were crying some of the time and some of the time we were drunk.  

The summer of 2009 summoned our great hopes from somewhere in that hoping place, deep down beneath the heavy, heavy disillusionment place.  Damn, it's dark in the disillusionment place - hard to find the hoping place so you kind of have to keep digging.  Our hoping place told us that from somewhere else, somewhere very much outside of San Francisco (but not so far that Benji Molina wouldn't try to hit that place from the batter's box) we would find you.  You would be our batters and fielders, our run-scoring people - as soon as we did a little wiki research so we could know what the run-scoring people do.  

We found you in Fresno and we bought you a ticket to our little hopefest where pitchers pitch and batters pitch too.  You were going to be the ones that combine with our pitchers to field one entire baseball team.  We would pitch, and field, and when the pitching and fielding was done?  Oh, my, when the fielding was done we would bat the ball.  And when the ball was batted it would leave the infield, a place we learned was just outside the batter's box - but not so far outside that Benji Molina wouldn't swing at it.  We even gave you uniforms.

And, oh, you thought those uniforms were for playing.  For playing!  For playing the game with the batted ball, but you must have understood after we pinch hitted for pitchers with pitchers that something was wrong.  You were so sharp, we loved that about you.  And I confess, we fans thought something was wrong too - and we whined and we cried.  We gesticulated, we genuflected, and in our spare time we merrily rosterbated.  We LOL'd, we bitched, we moaned with great moans, we may have self-medicated a little.  We and you were together, all of us wondering why you were here - batting ball people - if the ball you were never to bat.

Now we know, surely we know why you were here.  Now we know, surely we know you were here to bring fear.  Fear to the Molinas and Winns and Rowands.  Fear to the Rents and the 'Kawas and the non-Panda pwn-ends.  Fear to those swingers of bats at non-baseball objects.  Fear to non-fair-bunting, non-pitch-taking fail-jects.   You were fear for the gamers to get into gamer-type shape, to dive and run (though not past the plate).  To say that "we're in this" and hit the air with a punch, to wear some eye-black and play pepper and such.  To not suck, to not suck, to not suck to not suck.  But a-sucking they would do, with gusto and defensive tones they told us that we - with our hoping places - could all go to hell with our non-gamer faces.  

Oh.  We also rhymed, because we knew you were too - in the dugout in new uniforms.  With nothing to do.