FanPost

Giants Baseball... Torture? Yeah, it's torture.

So I was over at the Dbacks blog after last night’s game, skimming the GDT (I was bored), and I stumbled upon an interesting discussion. Arizona fans were agreeing that the Giants’ "meme" of "torture" was grossly overstated. "The Giants win their games. They won the World Series. They don’t have late inning blow-ups like we did last year." That sort of thing.

My initial reaction was annoyance: Diamondbacks fans are just bitter because we’re in first place. However, I’m not writing this to condemn fans of opposing teams, because there was actually some merit in what they said. Certainly, it’s easy for me to claim that being a Giants fan is torturous, as all baseball fans are tortured by their team to a certain degree over a 162 game season and it was sort of a rallying point for us last season. But is being a Giants fan really any more tormenting than being a fan of any other team?

I’m not a big stats guru, so sorry if there is some sort of stat that measures torture and the Giants aren’t number one. I’m just trying to explain, from my point of view, why being a Giants fan is so torturous.

I think that there are three types of basic mentalities baseball fans possess when rooting for their team:
1. Depression at how poorly the team is playing. Currently, Athletics fans are experiencing this, as well as Cubs and Twins fans. We are not unfamiliar to that feeling ourselves. No team is.
2. Exuberance at how well the team is playing. This could be caused by a team performing to its expected level, like the Yankees/Red Sox, or when the team is performing above expected, such as the Diamondbacks are currently.
3. Incredulity at how awful or well a team is performing. I believe the Giants fall into that category most of the time. When our team is performing well, it almost always feels like they shouldn’t be. Perhaps this shouldn’t be included as a general mentality, but for the sake of this topic, I’m including it.

The first reason that "tortured" has become most of our middle names lies here: We have come to expect the worst. During the heat of a close game, most of us tend to swear at the management and swear at the players and swear at the management, no matter which team we’re pulling for. Before last year, Brian Sabean had not made many moves that paid off, and Bruce Bochy’s extension felt unjustified. Certainly we are not the only team to experience bad ownership (LOL Dodgers!), bad general management (Mets), or bad managers (A’s), which is worth noting.

Additionally, the Giants style of play does not make it any easier to fully put our faith in them. Here is another reason for our tortured state: We are afraid to put our faith too deeply into our team. Every time Brian Wilson throws 15 pitches to a hitter with the bases loaded with two outs in the ninth inning of a one-run ball game (he’s only done that once?), every time the Giants fight back from four runs down, and every time we win a one-run game on an error or a perfectly executed "steal" of home, it’s harder and harder to believe we can continue to pull through.

This season, we have a –2 run differential. We are the only team above .500 with a negative run differential. We seem to score runs only when we need them, except for the occasional yearly blowout. Based on our production thus far, our Expected W-L (though a fairly meaningless stat) is 33-34. Why is it that the team with the fourth best record in the majors is "supposed" to have the 15th best? The answer to that is simple. The Giants win close and lose "less close."

This parallels another common misconception about torture in sports. If torture could be measured, it would not be indirectly proportional to success, like some people seem to think. In fact, the act of physically torturing someone is meant to hurt him or her beyond what killing them could do. Therein lies the proof. If you’re losing, you’re not being tortured. Yes, getting blown out 10-2 is painful, but not once in the GDT on that day did anyone yell, "WTF GIANTS WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?!!! FUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!" Nope. You get shot, you die. However, when you are tortured, you are either hoping for death to come quickly, or you are hoping to just escape with your life. When we are ahead by a run going into the ninth inning, it’s almost easier if the hitter hits a leadoff homer. It’s not fun, but at least there weren’t any teeth grinding, mind-wrenching, walks or wild pitches or "should’ve been called out miscalls." But that never seems to happen. Sure this happens to other teams too, which again is worth noting.

However, for the Giants, the torture does not only occur in the ninth, like for many teams. Because of the Giants’ fantastic pitching and mediocre hitting, it often feels like one run early on can decide the game. This puts incredible pressure on the pitchers and even more on the hitters to score that one run. And because the Giants are tied with the Brewers and the Twins for the most games decided by one run, that run often decides the outcome. Add to that the fact that the Giants are on pace to break the single-season walkoff record by four, and it makes the "closeness" factor of their wins all that more reliant on that one run.

For some reason, the Giants hitters seem to have more fight in them when behind. Perhaps it’s desperation. But whatever the reason, this causes there to always be that lingering thought of, "Can they do it?" And when they do come back, the Giants rarely storm past the other team, leaving them in the dust. No, the comebacks they make tend to end right about at a run differential of zero. Great, more close games, when it could have been a loss without much commitment on my part. When the Giants pull in close, it just makes it all the more joyful when they win and all the more painful when they lose.

It’s almost like playing poker. I’ve got two nines; should I fold? Or should I take the chance? My commitment to the Giants is the same way. The team plays a lot of close games, many of which end in wins and the joy that comes with it. However, that feeling when they lose a close game (like that one against the Marlins:( ) is incredibly disappointing. But it’s not that feeling of intense frustration that’s torturous, it’s the process of getting there. Whether it’s a win or a loss, the process of getting there during a close game is the same.

The performance of the team so far suggests that they shouldn’t be able to keep this pace up, yet they have been for about a year now (I’m discounting the beginning of 2010, because we lost a lot of close games to one particular team back then). Nevertheless, whether they win or lose, nothing can change the fact that the closeness of the game brings torture along with it. And the only way to obtain that unbridled ecstasy that a win brings along with it is to dive straight in.

Because of this, the argument that our recent success (TGWTWS) should disallow the phrases "San Francisco Giants" and "Torture" to be used in the same sentence is invalid. Yes, TGWTWS, but that is in the past. Our constant agony does not lie in whether we win or lose. It lies in the path it takes to get there. After climbing Mt. Everest, you’re going to tell other people what a hard journey it was. After failing to climb Mt. Everest, no one will listen when you explain how hard it was for you not to climb it or how difficult it would plausibly be if you were to climb it. Because of this, Giants fans are much more tortured than the fans of the Astros or the Orioles (not meant to undervalue the disappointment fans of a struggling team experience).

So therein lies the torture. The dynamic of the team’s offense and pitching/defense is successful yet torturous. Giants fans’ mentality brought on by often incompetent management causes us to feel tortured. The closeness of the games that we play causes torture. And there apparent room for regression causes torture. Nowhere in baseball is there a team that has these four characteristics stand out as much as the San Francisco Giants do.

Perhaps Matt Cain would be a good comparison. He gives up a lot of fly balls, and seems to be over-performing. However, he’s been doing it for six years now, and he’s not likely to regress anytime soon. And Cain is fun to watch. For that reason, Giants, keep the torture coming. It sure is painful, but I’ve never had this much fun as a baseball fan.

Giants baseball. Torture.

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