Exorcising the Demons from the Other Game 6

Hanging out with some SJSU girl, watching the game in her college apt. It was not game 6 that burned, because there was the feeling “well Hell, we have game 7 tomorrow”.

After game 7 is when we went berzerk, and yelled at Dusty for being so quick to pull Ortiz in the 7th.

I was at my elementary schools Halloween celebration, Carnoween. They had a room set up just for watching the game. It started as a great night. I would check in on the game, then go play games and eat candy. I started watching full time around the 7th or 8th inning. My bad.

I never saw that game. Was it bad?

I was with my father, uncle, and grandfather at that cabin for game 6 of the world series. We always went up there this time of the year to watch the World Series and fish. I remember vividly watching Joe Carter hit the game-winning home run in 1993.

Anyways we were in the living room of that cabin when Game 6 happened. After that game was over I’ll always remember my uncle saying they’re not going to win game 7. And sadly he was correct.

I watched 6 & 7 at Yerba Buena Gardens, where they set up a bigscreen. After both games, there was a lot of “fuck Southern California”s just wafting through the empty streets on downtown San Francisco. Went back to a friend’s dorm at USF and did a lot of tequila shots.

I watched Game 1 of the WS that year at Sneakers, this sports bar in San Bruno. The Giants won 4-3. Various things prevented me from going there again until Game 5, when me and my best pal played hooky from community college and went there instead. The Giants won 16-5 and much merriment was had.

My mom was a bit into the Giants that year too and she wanted to watch Game 6 with me, so I said sure, why not. The only condition I had for her was that it had to be at Sneakers and that she had to get there early enough to get us seats. I told her it would be extremely busy there, so there was no way we could just show up at 5 and expect a table. I explained that I had work at my waiter job that afternoon so I would just barely be able to be there by the start of the game, so it’d be up to her to get us the table.

Of course, my sister distracted my mom with shopping and they lost track of time, so she showed up to the restaurant the same time I did, at 4:55. Naturally there were no seats to be had anywhere and we got some food to go and had to watch it at home.

So yes, I still blame mom to this day for the loss.

I wasn’t watching.

I was in law school, and had gotten away from my Giants fandom for awhile. The Kings losing the Western Conference Final to the Lakers that year — which included a different, but also terrible, Game 6 — was what I remember. I know, I am a horrible person. I have no idea where I was or what I was doing during the WS Game 6.

Studying for the bar in the summer of 2004 brought me back to the Giants. I listened to games on the radio while studying, and I swear that Jon Miller and Dave Flemming got me through that horrific summer.

JimBowdenESPNxm JIM BOWDEN
 by Buster_ESPN
The “WE ARE FAMILY” 1979 Pirates were the last road team to win a WS in Game #7

I had just started busing tables at an Outback while going to college and was surprised to find that the owner of the place said it was ok for me to wear my Bonds jersey to work during Giants games. So I wore this jersey to work all through the NLDS, NLCS, and the World Series. Then game 6…

I was working and wearing the jersey as usual when all of the sudden the owner told me I had to take the jersey off because the General Manager of our district was there and was not happy about seeing me working in it. Even after he left I couldn’t put it back on. This was the jinx that did it and I’m still pretty sore about it.

In the 2002 world series, Barry Bonds had a 1.994 OPS

If you added up Miguel Tejada, Brandon Crawford, and Orlando Cabrera’s OPS’s as Giants this year, you’d get 1.69

Link

“I’m out of breath, I just got beat off by 30 guys.”

…Nope…. Still can’t talk about it.

OK, I’ll mention two things: I was visiting my Mom in the Bay Area and watched the game with her. My Dad had passed away 5 months earlier. He loved the Giants, and when the Giants were ahead 5-0, I was getting really excited to raise a glass to him.

After the Giants lost Game 7 the next night, a girl I worked with, who sort-of-somewhat-but-not-really liked the Angels called me on my cell phone to laugh and gloat. She thought she was being cute and funny, but she was not. And that was my birthday.

I was in San Luis Obispo at school. I walked into my Calculus 2 (or was it 3) class, handed the professor my homework, and said “It’s the World Series, so I probably won’t actually be in class much” then walked out.

During game 6, I had a half gallon of orange juice in the fridge and a 5th of Popov vodka in the freezer.

For some reason, the couch would not do for that series, I found myself sitting upright on the coffee table; needing to be that few feet closer.

I was so ready to get my “fucked-up” on.

I really don’t remember much after thinking “I really wish he would leave Ortiz in” I remember thinking that the situation looked manageable, and I had very little faith in our bullpen.

I remember crying silently to myself, and knowing that we had just lost the World Series.

Game 6
Ugh. Mr. Merope and I watched it together, sort of, we watched it while on the phone.
The minute Dusty handed that ball over, the feeling of euphoria went bye-bye and we knew they were too fubar’d to come back in game 7.

I didn’t even watch game 7.

I couldn’t tell you what I did three days ago—what I ate, how my commute was, what I did at work—but I remember the night of Game 6 like it was yesterday.

I went to a friend’s housewarming party in their new apartment on Alamo Square, and I got there super early so I could watch the whole game on their TV (I guess their party didn’t really get underway until about the 6th or 7th inning). Everything was going swimmingly until some disinterested guest walked by, glanced at the 5-0 score and says, “Oh! So I guess the Giants are going to win the World Series then.” I stared daggers at her. “NOTHING IS OVER UNTIL IT’S OVER” I replied, but by then it was too late. I could have killed her.

Once the game was lost, I spent the rest of the party moping around, trying to interact with the other guests but basically wanting to cry. I called my friend, a fellow Giants fan, and he picked up the phone thusly: “Don’t. Don’t even talk about it. I can’t talk about it.”

So yeah, Rangers fans: it completely, utterly sucks to lose a game like last night’s. But it’s character building, somehow, and maybe tonight or years from now you’ll get a sweet reward for the pain that’s been administered to you.

I was in the Philippines.

I was right on my couch, and my 16 year old son had come over. His name is Scott, and he’s named after Scott Garrelts. I had champagne in the fridge, and I was going to allow him his first taste of alcohol after the Giants won. Needless to say he didn’t get his first drink until he was legal. My wife was working late at our daughter’s school, and when I picked her up she gave me a congratulatory kiss because someone told her that the Giants had a 5-0 lead late in the game. Thanks to 2010 I can actually laugh as I write this!

My dad’s company has a trip every other year to Disneyland. Kind of a reward for their hard work every year. My dad was staying in Anaheim during the first game of that series and said he could see the fireworks from his hotel room. He told me he’ll never stay at that hotel again because it was so close to Angels Stadium.

2001’s the first season of baseball I remember.

October 2002 has so many emotions wrapped up in it. It was probably the defining moment of my life. From Game 5 of the NLDS (when I was absolutely certain that they were going to blow the game and the season, but they miraculously held) to the brilliant NLCS, to ads for Gray Davis on TV during Game 1 of the World Series.

My math teacher kept by the whiteboard a running tally of the World Series. On Friday, it showed three tally marks under "Giants" and two under "Angels". That sheet of paper was gone on Monday morning. I never saw it again.

2002 was a great year. I was in second grade, by far the best class I’ve ever had. I found a Walkman with an AM radio, so that I could listen to games away from home. One Tuesday night in August, well after my bedtime, I heard Robb Nen get his 300th save, and I was glad. I went to Pac Bell Park two times that year; the Giants lost both games, but this did not concern me. Everything would sort itself out; it had to, and it did.

That was the year of Bell and Sanders; it was the year Shinjo stood with Santiago and Snow. It was my team, and it still is today.

But then it ended. Félix Rodríguez, the one player we always had unflattering nicknames for, came in. My Walkman’s batteries died, and I lost it. My dad lost his job. I was in third grade now, and it was there that I learned to despise school.

2003, when it arrived, was a faint mockery of 2002. The team was perhaps the best in my life, but Jose Cruz and his kind had taken the spots of Shinjo the Sidearmer and Sanders. I would support them, and I could not bear their losses, but it was not the same. 2003 was the year of fear; I first became politically conscious that year. I was told that the War on Terror was in fact a War on Islam. I looked around, and my senses confirmed it, and I felt it acutely. Gray Davis was replaced by an Austrian bodybuilder I had no respect for, because he was the worst kind of sinner, a Republican. Because my dad was out of work, I could not play baseball. And the Marlins came.

2004 was better. I had learned to adjust. I warmed to the team again; I composed ditties about how great 2003 was, and I beheld the Giants, and they were good. I was playing competitive baseball again. I eagerly followed the presidential election. Surely America would not be so stupid as to elect George Bush, to whom I was sure I was intellectually superior. The Giants were In This Thing, and not just because the team’s marketing division sold it as such. They arrived in Hell for the last series of the season, and won the first game, and would certainly win the second game. Then the bullpen, that cause of so many old woes, melted down for lack of Nen. Steve Finley ended the misery by hitting a ball out of my childhood and into the bleachers. I watched the election returns the next month, but it was just a gesture. I knew who would win.

The ensuing seasons were better. I had time to grow up and discover new things, without the debilitating influence of false hope. In 2005 and 2006, I clung to the team, listening to evey game, but in 2007 I gave up any ideas I may have had early on, and I was nearly free by 2008. In May, I thought that this year would be much the same, but things changed, as they are wont to do. The last month has been nothing but false hope. So the cycle starts again.

My writing was excessively florid back then.

Giants Tegami Video (shameless plug again)

I was watching the game in Yerba Buena on one of those big huge TVs that was set up to watch the game and when the game went to 4-0, a guy who was working for AP as a radio reporter asked me what a win here would mean and so I went on a long speech (which I had mentally prepared when I noticed him) about what it would mean and he thanked me. Soon after that I had a vision of myself being sent around the country on the radio being the Voice of the Giants fan in triumph. And then the 7th inning began.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I didn’t do the fan equivelant of handing Russ Ortiz the game ball

/runs up the stairs crying

I was watching with dad…. We observed the proceedings with quiet acceptance. It had this weird sense of inevitability.

Steve Finely, for some reason, was way worse. That one really burned me. JT Snow and Pudge was also worse.

I know a guy who started drinking heavily when the Giants were up big, blacked out, woke up in Golden Gate Park without his pants on, and staggered back into society only to discover that the Giants had lost. That’s the trump card.

I have completely blocked it out. I know that I watched it with my husband, and I remember rehashing it repeatedly the next day with one of the lawyers I worked with back then, but actually watching the game has escaped my memory.

Sometimes menopause is a blessing.

I mean, hey, teams lose. The reason I’m really upset about 2002 is that that’s the closest Barry ever came to winning a ring.

My mom called once it got to 5-0. “They’re gonna win! They’re gonna win!” I told her she’s gonna jinx it. She jinxed it.

Jameson was consumed.

Game 7…

A shot for every runner left on base. A shot every time the Angels scored.

I don’t know why but I pulled all my clothes off the wooden closet rod and proceeded to bash the rod against the carpet. I hit it so many times it snapped in two pieces. I bashed the pieces until they, too, broke apart.

I slouched on the floor and avoided phone calls. My girlfriend at the time, a Fullerton native, did not think to avoid taunting me, so it was radio silence for 24 hours.

In case you missed it: Joe Posnanski on last night’s game

Amazing how I never saw an Angels fan around until after that series.

My only real memory of the night of Game 6 was calling my sister to discard the VCR recording of the game I had asked her to make. Even though I already knew the series was over, I decided to go to her place to watch Game 7 anyway.

After that game, I remember driving back to my apartment in silence, avoiding all radio/TV/newspaper/internet for the next day or so, then playing a lot of GTA 3 to vent my frustration.

Thankfully, last year brought closure, so I’m over it now. I still have no desire to rewatch that game though.

I love how everyone here thinks that they are the cause of the Giants losing Game 6.

I had gone to the game 5 rout and was watching game 6 at home…I remember asking my Mom the day before if we could go buy sparkling apple cider for later that night. Total jinx.

All i remember after that is crying and crying and crying…

and then thinking we could do it again once they took the lead in game 7 for a little bit (it was a dunston HR maybe?)

and then crying a year later for JT snow vs Ivan Rodriguez

and then crying a year after that for Steve Finley

and then last year as a sophomore in college crying and crying tears of joy.

I can’t believe Mathewson blew game 8.

and when they get hot enough and guys appreciate it, they are offended by it?

Just like Brian’s chalupa. It didn’t fucking happen. I am not going to that dark place and dredging up how I felt just for your amusement, Grant. Fuck you.

(I think I was on the intertubes talking with Crash, actually)

Yancy’s Saloon is the local sports bar on Irving Street in the Inner Sunset. it’s a step up from the Muckey Duck but not as cool as Blackthorn. Yancy’s is 3 blocks from my house.

Between Game 6 and the night the Giants won it all last year, I refused to step into Yancy’s. 8 yrs without going to the fun, easy-going sports bar in my hood. It was totally worth it.

Has anybody already looked this up? I’m looking for something a little more credible than ancient astronauts and golden motorcycles.

I was at parents home in Santa Clara. I do not remember the details.probably due to the shock.

Gus’s walk across that parking lot is one of the most epic things I’ve ever seen.

I was watching with my dormmate. Back then I was just getting back into baseball, while he was a hardcore Giants fan. It was very quiet that night. Somehow 2002 made me a bigger fan rather than repelling me from baseball altogether.

with hubs and our 2 daughters. We left Disneyland early to watch the game at our hotel. I remember the kids crying cause they wanted to go back to Disneyland, and hubs yelling and possibly crying as well. We watched game 7 outside at Downtown Disney – they had set up a large screen. After the final out, we had a long drive back home to the bay area.

For some reason his girlfriend walked past the TV just moments before all the bad stuff went down. I screamed at her to walk back past using the same path, but she had no clue what I was talking about. Then the bad stuff did happen.

I was on a plane back to Singapore while Game 7 was being played; when I got off the plane I didn’t even need to check the score — I knew the G’s had lost.

The starters for the last World Series Game 7 were John Lackey and Livan Hernandez.
cantpredictball Just now

2nd year of law school at Santa Clara. for Game 6 I was at my buddy’s house (other unit in our duplex). I thought we had it won when we went up 5-0. After Spezio’s homer, I knew it was a game and then, of course, we know what happened. I had a good feeling we’d lose game 7. How do you get up after you think you’ve won? it’s really difficult, but I still held out hope, even if it was hopeless.

Anyway, for game 7 I went to a pizza/sports bar place on Monroe St. can’t recall the name. Don’t think it’s there anymore. It was brand new then. I went with an obnoxious A’s fan and there seemed to be quite a lot of Giants/Bonds haters there. The whole mood was dour for the game. I spent the whole time arguing about Bonds. Anyway, the second after the game ended, I took off without a word to my friend (who’s gotten a lot less obnoxious over the years.) I drove home as fast as I could (about 5 minutes) with some evident road rage. I got home, my wife knew what happened and I completely broke down. It was the first time I ever cried after a baseball game (the Dirty no-no and last year being the only other times.) I never thought the Giants lost in any unfair way, it just seemed so unfair to me that they couldn’t win in my lifetime.

That’s basically the reason that last year I couldn’t stand to be around anyone for the games. For the clincher, I chose to be home alone. It was the only way to maintain my sanity.

At which moment did you actually feel worse: Scott Spezio, Steve Finlay or Scott Cousins laying out Buster?

My wife had a friend that wound up being there each game they lost, but wasn’t there for the 3 wins.

I told her she was banned and she thought I was joking and came over anyway. Then Game 6 happened. Then she came over during game 7 and I literally yelled at her to GTFO. She nervously laughed and stayed anyway. Then Game 7 happened.

She showed up for the Raiders Super Bowl loss too.

My Dad won’t come over for Giants games anymore because he thinks if we all watch them there, the Giants will lose. I agree so I don’t invite anybody over anymore.

We watched 2010 Game 6 at my Dad’s

Then THAT Game 6 happened.