Matt Cain explains what it meant to be a San Francisco Giant for life

It has been a spectacularly awful day on several fronts, and I’m hesitant to tell you that you should focus your energies on caring about baseball right now. There are other things to care about. But if you need something to help you take a mental break for a few moments, Matt Cain has your back with a farewell article on The Players’ Tribune. It starts at the beginning, and it goes through this weekend. You’ll feel things.

At the risk of spoiling some of the surprises, Cain praises some of his former teammates, but he goes out of his way to praise someone surprising. That would be a record-holding should-be Hall of Famer with a reputation as being one of the surliest players in baseball history, but I’m not going to reveal exactly who. It’s a touching paragraph.

All of it’s touching, really. Cain starts with an anecdote of his father, and he moves to the story of how he found out the Giants drafted him. I’m pretty sure it was ghostwritten by Jon Bois:

And we’re all sitting there together, just trying to get the dang dial-up internet to work so we could watch it online.

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Anyway, it’s a reminder that it wasn’t just a treat for us to watch Cain, but that he realizes he landed in a pretty good spot at an amazing time in the franchise’s history. He’s right to point out how everything changed when Tim Lincecum called up, but he has to know it all started with him.

Read the article if you’re in the mood to think about something different for a little bit. I know that I was, and I’m glad that Cain reminded us of just how special he was to this organization and the fans, as well as how special the organization was to him. I miss him already.

Here, have some random Matt Cain highlights: