The Zong

Is it possible, nay probable, that the San Francisco Giants are the worst franchise in Major League Baseball? I was definitely getting my hopes up that they weren’t so bad after a brief stretch of great pitching and timely hitting, and then the Giants did what they always do to my hopes when they’re up: They bring them right the fuck back down again.

It’s not time to chastise ownership and the front office for their ridiculous method of fielding a team each year; it was time to do that four years ago. How many times do I have to listen to fans calling into talk radio after the Giants get beat despite great pitching performances, saying the team has been too old for years now, that the farm system is thin on position players, and that nothing is going to change until Bonds is gone? I’ve been hearing it for as long as I can remember, and now that the Giants are in DEAD LAST in the National League West, maybe it’s time to realize that if all the writers, fans and bloggers knew about it before the season began, then how the fuck did it get past the owner and general manager?

The answer isn’t so simple. It would be easy to say they don’t know anything about baseball, if only that were true. It would be even easier to say they have a strategy that didn’t work, which is only half true. They have a strategy, and it has worked exactly the way they wanted it to.

Until now, I would have been willing to hear that the dipshits who run this team really want to win, that they’re willing to put time and money and personnel into achieving that goal, that they’ve just been hamstrung by injuries or larger market teams. I wouldn’t have agreed outritght, but I would listen to someone telling me that without resorting to violence. Now, the gloves come right the fuck off. I mean, I’m a terrible fighter, but if someone tries to tell me that the Giants’ strategy has had anything to do with winning for the last 5 seasons, I’ll punch them in the fucking face, I swear.

But their strategy has worked! The reality is that anyone who thought re-signing Bonds was anything but a ploy to sell tickets to corporate idiots who don’t know anything about baseball was just another reason the plan worked.

Wanna know why people in San Francisco still cheer for Barry? It’s because everyone who actually cares about baseball in this city has stopped going to games on a regular basis. Your everyday season-ticket holder isn’t a person but a corporation, and the people in the seats are there to eat, be seen with their fellow suck-ups, and to get home in time to watch American Idol. This is what Seat Licenses do to a team, but that’s a different post.

Still, the Giants are selling a lot of tickets, so the strategy is working. The last game I went to was a sellout with a third of the seats empty. The money continues to come in, the ballpark is a beautiful place to see a game, and so it doesn’t really matter what the end result is. The thing is, even people who don’t know anything about baseball can enjoy it, if their team wins. The Giants are not going to be doing any of that for awhile, and maybe Peter Magowan and all the people he’s about to fire will realize how fucking stupid their strategy really is in the long term when even the businesses stop buying tickets to see a worthless team get shut out twice a week.

- M.G.