Sporadic

The San Francisco Baseball giants are in the pennant race.

I have to admit to you that I was not a baseball fan for much of my life. Sure, when the pirates got good back in ’79 I tuned in. I picked some favorites.

Burt Blylevin, Willie Stargell, closer Kent Tekulve

These names still ring a bell, but honestly, I can’t say I was more than a fair weather fan.

That all changed out here in the city by the bay, I am friends with people who like baseball, who talk about baseball, who discuss baseball and who go to baseball games. So I decided about 5 years ago that I was going to be a baseball fan.

It’s taken a few years and I’ve learned something new each year:

• That black crap on batter’s helmets is Pine tar
• A balk is when the pitcher is into the wind up and then throws at the runner
• The in field fly rule means that even if you drop the ball the runner is still out and it prevents people getting unfair double plays
• I can actually see what pitch is being thrown (usually only on TV- but sometimes at the game)

Seriously, I actually know something. And my knowledge is being rewarded this year. The Giants are playing well and they have advanced to the NLCS and I am able to put allthe knowledge I’ve picked up to good use.

I’d like to thank Giant’s announcers Mike Krukow and Duane Kyper, without whom I wouldn’t know all of the bullets above, along with tons of other useless trivia.

And it couldn’t come at a better time.

See, my beloved Steelers have got me conflicted. For years I enjoyed being sanctimonious about the Steelers. The Rooneys were a class act and they demanded classiness from their players. People who played for the Rooneys were held to a higher standard. They were expected to stay on the right side of the law and to behave in a manor befitting the Rooneys.

So I spent years getting to make jokes about all the felons on the other teams. Then our superbowl winning star quarterback acted exactly like the hillbilly that I have said that he is. No it doesn’t matter that he wasn’t charged. The very fact that he put himself in that situation, the fact that he was drunk in public, buying drinks for underage women, acting like he was a stupid 19 year old at 28. Why do that?

I’ll tell you why: he’s a hillbilly with too much money.

Enter Buster Posey, solid hitter, rookie star…married his high school sweetheart, bought a house 2 miles from the house he grew up in, spends the off season with his family and friends in the town he’s lived his whole life.

Ahhhhhhhhh….it’s like a warm bath. It’s like Peyton Manning is on the team I like. He’s not banging models. He’s not involved in “an incident outside a nightclub”. He’s not arraigned for gun possession.

He’s just hitting well into the gap and that makes me happier than 4 and 1.

Go Giants!