The 30th anniversary of the 1989 team

I won’t speak for everybody on this site, but I suspect I’m not alone in the 1989 team being the most important team of my Giants fandom. I was eight years old, Will Clark’s sweet swing was so beautiful that even my A’s fan friends would emulate it or else begrudgingly respect it and the Giants were on their fourth straight season of not being embarrassing.

And then they went to the World Series and had the misfortune of facing the A’s. Then there was the devastating Loma Prieta earthquake and the Giants’ sweep — and what was probably going to be a sweep without the earthquake — didn’t matter quite so much. Then the Giants sort of slid into limbo and nearly moved out of the bay two years later. Then everything changed.

But this 1989 team holds that special place in the hearts of many fans. It’s not rational. There was no history made. No Hall of Famers. But there were personalities, moments, and a general feeling of success, performance, and fun. If there’s an alchemy to team building or entertainment, then this team had the perfect mix of ingredients.

Yes, this was the Giants’ response to the Bash Brothers. It worked out okay. It worked out so well that this team still persists all these years later. Maybe it had as much to do with the market race with the A’s as much as it did the media pervasiveness. Baseball had been on TV for quite some time now, but the eighties had come and gone without the San Francisco baseball team really making a big splash. Here was the first real time when superstar talent could get the marquee treatment.

SFG Productions’ latest episode of “Inside the Clubhouse” focuses on the 1989 just in time for today’s 30th anniversary celebration at Oracle Park. Duane Kuiper hosts it. Check it out.

And we’ve definitely mentioned this on the site before, but the entire World Series video from that year — Champions By the Bay, narrated by Bob Costas — is available in its entirety on YouTube, too.

UPDATE: Oh god yes.