Orange and black waving against a pale blue sky: Those were the colors I'll remember for a long time, the purest be-here-now moment of today's festivities. Brian Wilson's dyed-black termite mound of a beard bobbed up and down as the closer hoisted the championship flag up a pole above the arcade. "Should a guy recovering from an oblique strain be pulleying a flag 100 feet into the air?" I asked Papa Malo.
Four hours later, he was torquing 95-MPH fastballs toward the Cardinals in a ninth inning that provided the other indelible if not quite symmetrical bookend to the day.
The literal bookend came later, of course, when Albert Pujols' error extended the Giants' 12th inning and afforded Aaron Rowand the chance to crank a ball to the wall in the left-center field notch for a game-winning "single." I was shocked it didn't go out, then I was shocked that Colby Rasmus didn't catch it. I think he got AT&T'ed.
But Wilson's ninth was the most memorable chapter of the day, if only for the piles of chewed fingernails left afterwards in the stands. Two outs, bases clear, then a walk to Baby Molina, a perfectly placed infield single, a hit batter, then the epic 12-pitch battle with Ryan Theriot, of whom Bip Roberts once said, "I don't know about any Theriot, but this 'The Riot' guy seems like a hell of a ballplayer." Or something like that. My man Elbo likes to tell that story, and he's got a mind like a steel trap. If he saw it, it happened.
The bottom line was that Wilson didn't have swing-and-miss stuff today, and he wasn't getting the close calls. Theriot fouled off a lot of tough pitches, finally got a cutter in the middle of the plate, and grounded it where no one was, through the 5.5 hole into left field. The chirpy guy sitting behind me, who until that point had proffered an unrelenting stream of heckling material and decent out-loud commentary, decided that Brian Wilson sucked and blamed his off-season talk show appearances for, apparently, a newly acquired indifference to playing well. "If you were as interested in closing ballgames as you were in making Sportscenter commercials, we'd have won by now!" Things like that.
I turned around and asked how long he'd been a Giants fan. Since the parade? Was he watching in, say, October last year? Or during the season when Wilson, once in a while, didn't have a good game? I couldn't take the whining. It was also everything I feared this off-season: Unrelenting expectations + social-media attention span + a roaringly snotty sense of entitlement = stupid backlash.
If Wilson blows a couple more saves this month, mark it: Bruce Jenkins or Scott Ostler or Lowell Cohn will weigh in with the "tired act" column. (In fact, "I'm getting tired of your act" was one complaint of the guy behind me.) I have my own thoughts on this, which I hope came across a bit more nuanced in this post. I'm a little tired of the act, but I'm a tough crowd. I have cranky and unconventional comic standards (Seinfeld? Not funny. Eddie Murphy in Bowfinger? Fucking brilliant.)
More important, I don't think Weezy's act is interfering with the on-field performance or off-field work. I think today he was a little extra amped and was missing up, hence the non-calls of the pitches at the belt from an umpire who hadn't called many strikes there all game. Wilson's best when he can locate at the knees, go in and out, then use the high fastball for sight-line contrast. He's not a pure power pitcher. I'm not worried. He can raise my championship banner any day.
A few other observations from the 1-3-8: Gavin Newsom sat a few rows behind me for the first half of the game. If you ever want to wind me up and watch me rant til my eyes pop out, buy me a beer and ask me what I think about our former mayor...Brandon Belt looked off-balance all day...Unsung bullpen heroes: Ramon Ramirez, who came in to clean up Wilson's mess in the ninth, retiring Albert Pujols with the bases loaded to end the inning. Pujols could easily have put the game out of reach; Guillermo Mota, a beautiful sixth after Dirty ran out of gas; Dan Runzler, who kept his control and scythed through the middle of the order, starting with Pujols, in the 12th. Affeldt and Lopez, more than one inning each. Pat Burrell, on pace to .174 with 69 home runs. I'll take it.
Oh, and that guy behind me? After Rowand's hit to end the game, he tapped my shoulder and hugged me as I turned. "Sorry, I got a little worked up," I said. "Me too, buddy," he replied, his cheek scruff tickling my ear. "Me too."
