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There will be a season where you're sure the Giants are the best team in baseball or close to it. They'll make the smart moves in the offseason, and you'll spend the wintery days thinking about how the plan is going to come together. The spring will come, and they'll be favorites for the division. They'll start fast. You won't even care if people make fun of you, and you'll loudly announce their Cactus League record means something. May will come, and the lead will grow. By the trading deadline, the team will make a minor move, nothing too nutty. The team looks too good to mess with it. No one will mind. The team will cruise into the playoffs.
That team will get bounced in the playoffs, maybe in the first round. Maybe in the NLCS. It doesn't matter. That team will break your heart. And you'll head into the offseason, feeling like you got kicked out of a helicopter that was almost at the summit. It will hurt. It will hurt so danged bad, even though they didn't get especially close.
You'll think back to this World Series and it will make you feel things. You'll remember how this wasn't the best team, how it was dinged up. And you'll wonder how in the world they did it.
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You'll start over the next season. Maybe the circumstances will be similar. Maybe they're wildly different, but the result is the same. A long, slow trudge toward the top of the summit, only to get thrown down into a heap.
You'll think back to this World Series and it will make you feel things. You'll think about Madison Bumgarner and one of the best postseason performances in baseball history.
That's why this World Series wasn't something to take for granted, why there was no sense in shrugging the ol' shoulders and being grateful that at least it went to a team that had waited a long, long time. That long, long time might be coming for us. But it's going to be long time until we have to care. The Giants won the World Series. The Giants, who blew an NL West lead so quickly, who had one great starting pitcher and a lot of collar-tugging alternatives, won the World Series.
Celebrate.