That would be, of course, the fifth game of the World Series. So, in advance of the stirring triumph by the Sons of Willie Mays,* here’s a nice bit of baseball reporting and writing, one that captures something of the difference of the game fans watch and that which the players play.
Even a Boston-fan-in-adulthood like me knows the lore. Ted Williams announced on September 26, 1960 that he was going to retire at the end of the season, two days later. That would be it for a major league career that had begun in 1939. (For those who are counting, that’s a career that spans four decades, and includes hiatuses for active duty in two wars.) That season, aged 41, he wasn’t too bad: a .316 batting average, an OPS of 1.096, 29 home runs in 113 games. The numbers are a little down from his career averages (sic!), but you’d have to say that the Splendid Splinter could still play.
But he had decided he was done — and who could blame him — and according to every report I’ve ever read, when Williams set his mind, that was it. So September 28, when the Baltimore Orioles faced the Red Sox at Fenway Park in the last home game of the 1960 season, the crowd knew it would be watching the last of the greatest ball player ever to wear the B on his cap.**
What happened that day is pure Boston sports legend.
John Updike wrote what many think is a classic of baseball writing about that game. For me, it doesn’t re-read well; too much of what Steinbeck called hooptedoodle for my taste. The one truly fascinating fact Updike records is the attendance. On the last occasion to see Ted Williams, all of 10,454 people showed up at a park that could seat over 30,000. Admittedly, the 1960 Boston team sucked, but still…
But most of Updike’s piece is elegant hagiography, utterly focused on Williams…which is fine; Ted was the reason he was there, and Ted gratified the genteel and rabid fan in Updike by delivering the kind of narrative that wouldn’t have been believed had Updike snuck it into a novel. It was a dank, cold day, a lousy one for hitting, and Williams didn’t do much for a while: a walk and a run scored in the first, two fly ball outs in the third and the fifth (that second one had a chance, but fluttered down at the warning track). He came up for what was obviously the last time in the eighth and…well, here’s Updike:
Fisher, after his unsettling wait, was wide with the first pitch. He put the second one over, and Williams swung mightily and missed. The crowd grunted, seeing that classic swing, so long and smooth and quick, exposed, naked in its failure. Fisher threw the third time, Williams swung again, and there it was. The ball climbed on a diagonal line into the vast volume of air over center field. From my angle, behind third base, the ball seemed less an object in flight than the tip of a towering, motionless construct, like the Eiffel Tower or the Tappan Zee Bridge. It was in the books while it was still in the sky. Brandt ran back to the deepest corner of the outfield grass; the ball descended beyond his reach and struck in the crotch where the bullpen met the wall, bounced chunkily, and, as far as I could see, vanished.
Yup. As every baseball fan knows, Williams went out with the stuff of dreams, a home run in his last at bat in the only home stadium he had ever known in a baseball life as long (and now as long ago) as Methuselah’s. As Updike notes, he was even able to allow himself to skip the final series of the 1960 season, away games at Yankee Stadium. A home run, a standing O, no curtain call, and out. That’s the story. Full stop.
Except…s another guy had something to do with the moment, the antagonist to Williams’ hero’s role. That would be Jack Fisher, the pitcher who served up the fateful fastball.
There’s Updike’s tale of heroic inevitability (it’s always necessary after the fact), the literary gloss on that routine confrontation between pitcher and batter. And then there’s the way the guys standing 60 feet 6 inches apart see it. Which is why I found delightful this brief report from the mouth of Mr. Fisher himself, written up by Elon Green for Updike’s venue, The New Yorker, on May 1 of this year. In it, we learn that Fisher didn’t see TED WILLIAMS at the plate. He saw a guy he knew how to pitch to:
One of the sportswriters looked it up, and he said that Williams lifetime was two for thirteen off of me. So I did all right against him.
Here’s how Fisher remembers the crucial at-bat itself:
As you probably heard, it was a very cold, dank day type thing. Williams earlier had hit a ball off of me to right field—a fly ball that our right fielder, Al Pilarcik, caught back close to the warning track. So Williams had hit the ball pretty well that time, and I thought, Uh oh, but it was an out. So, it’s the seventh inning, and he comes up, and Jackie Jensen was their next hitter, right-hand hitter, and with the short left-field wall there, I thought, There’s no way I’m gonna pitch around Williams.
I think the first pitch was a ball. The next pitch—he swung and missed—was another fastball. The next pitch I just went to another fastball and he hit it out. Made the score four to three.
I mean, all I was trying to do was win the ballgame. The fact that he hit the home run wasn’t that big to me because I’d actually had pretty good success against him.
Love it.
Talk about whatever.
*I hope I may be forgiven my partisanship. My first pro sports experience was surviving Candlestick as a nine year old, or so. Saw Mays, McCovey, Marichal, Cepeda, Bonds the elder, even Gaylord Perry. I switched allegiance to the A’s after a bit — East Bay kid and all that — but I earned (though never grabbed) my Croix de Candlestick, and so there you have it. Go Giants!
**Was Babe Ruth a better ball player? Probably. But, of course, that greatness happened mostly in a Yankees uniform. Goddammit.
Image: Artist unknown, Diagram of the Method of Giving the Rotary Motion to the Ball, from Scientific American, The Art of Pitching in Baseball, July 31, 1886, page 71.
Belafon
OT: So the quarantined in NY/NJ is stuck in a tent with no heating and she’s wearing paper scrubs. HEY JOHN, this is the idiocy we’ve been screaming about, because she hasn’t shown any symptoms and has tested negative for Ebola.
Lizzy L
Thanks for this. I moved to the Bay Area 42 years ago. I’ve lived in the city and (now) in the East Bay. Go Giants!! It was truly a gorgeous game last night. Baseball at its finest.
Tree With Water
My favorite Williams story is one the man told himself. His jet was hit by flak in Korea, and while in the process of avoiding a crash landing spoke to God and said, “You sonofabitch, if you ever do anything for me, do it now”. I paraphrase, but that was the gist of it.
Go Giants….
The Dangerman
The best ballplayer is an argument for the ages that can never be resolved (I’d vote for Ruth because he was a helluva pitcher to start his career)…
…but, for me, the first days of spring mean many things, one of them being able to listen to the BEST at his craft there ever was. I mean, of course, Vin Scully.
It was a crime against the Baseball Gods that one of his last years was basically blacked out to most of LA (with said Baseball Gods enacting their retribution in the form of some team from St. Louis).
ETA: Go Royals!
Dcrefugee
More like this, please.
srv
@Belafon: wtf is the ACLU doing? She needs to up the ante and go on a hunger strike. Terrorize Christie.
BobS
@The Dangerman: I don’t know what “craft” Vin Scully may have been the best at — needlepoint? whittling? — but the best ever baseball announcer was Ernie Harwell.
Goblue72
You mean the game involving the washed up QB putting 45 points on the board?
divF
I took up an interest in baseball relatively late in life. The combination of Tony LaRussa’s cerebral approach to managing, the Haas family’s ownership, and Dave Stewart’s deep attachment to his hometown made me an A’s fan in the late 80’s. It’s hard for me to take sides in the WS, though. Pro KC / anti Giants: KC got here with an opening-day payroll below $100M (vs. the $150M and up of the Giants, as well as most WS teams of the last few years), and they haven’t been to the postseason in 29 years. I think that having pitchers bat is ridiculous. Also, I really don’t like AT&T park. The expensive seats are mediocre, and there is a significant chunk of the cheap seats (left field upper deck) where you can see neither the whole field nor the big screen in the outfield. Pro Giants: Posey, Pence, Panik, Bochy. Plus I would like to see Tim Hudson get a WS ring. At the end of the day, though, some baseball is better than no baseball, and there are nearly four months to endure before pitchers and catchers report for spring training. So I’ll take what I can get.
Suffern ACE
@Belafon: gee. I’m sure all the healthcare workers with fevers will just self report.
Shirt
You neglected to mention Williams was a Padre before he Sox’d. I agree with Dcrefugee though.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
It’s important to be aware of when things are going well, especially if you’re prone to chronic depression. So I’m cognizant that this might have been the best week of my life. I’m not joking about that.
Last weekend, the Gopher women’s hockey team, ranked something other than #1 in the country for the first time since early March, 2012, went to Madison and swept the team that had taken over the #1 spot. It included a dominating performance on Friday and a gritty one on Saturday, with the tying goal coming with 1:28 left in regulation and the winning goal with 59.9 seconds left in over time.
On Wednesday, I sent my novel to an editor to begin that process on it. I’m still trying to put the Kickstarter together but I want to go ahead and get started on parts of it.
On Thursday, I spoke with someone about a job. It’s still a temporary position, but a long term one, and it’s a 2 1/2 hour drive from Minneapolis, but it’s in my field and working with people who seem genuinely great. I don’t know if it should feel better that it only came about because I make all of these road trips to watch hockey but it does. People always say that it isn’t what you know; it’s who you know. That generally seems unfair to me, but it does feel good to have it work for me.
And this weekend the Gophers swept North Dakota, the one team I really, truly hate, including a game yesterday in which they made a top ten team look like a bunch of high schoolers, with a 51-7 shot advantage that included 3 shots in the last 3 minutes of the game for the Whioux.
So, it’s been a really, really good week.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Shirt: Williams was a Padre when they were the AA affiliate of the Red Sox. He also spent a year as a Minneapolis Miller before joining the major league club.
kindness
I have two Croix de Candlestick pins. One I earned. Two I got at a sports memorabilia store in San Mateo.
The games, they have been exciting so far.
Shirt
One other thing… I think the Giants won because Jesus was there. Yes sirree bob, had to be! That’s cause there was standing room only in McCovey Cove.
BobS
@divF: The KC payroll is low only because their ex-WalMart CEO owner takes the same approach to running his ballclub as he did his company.
gogol's wife
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
I’m glad!
Go Royals!
patrick II
The picture”Diagram of the method of giving rotary motion to the ball” illustrates something that is unusual in the modern game, but of interest today because Madison Bumgarner, today’s starting picture for the Giants, is one of the few pitchers who still throw this pitch.
The pitch is thrown by sidearm or submarine pitchers. The pitch is thrown by bringing the fingers underneath the ball (similar to the method of a fastpitch softball rise ball) instead of over the top (curve) or to the side (slider). The effect is similar to an upside-down curve ball, the ball breaks up not down. — although without as much movement since the pitch is fighting gravity.
Bumgarner throws the usual assortment pitches for a left handed sidearmer — cut fast balls, slider, and a two seam fastball. But in addition, he has the ability to throw this pitch which usually goes unmentioned by the broadcast team — I think because it is rare enough they do not know what it is. You will be able to tell it by a seeing a letter high fastball that the batter misses by swinging underneath the ball, an unusual event for a sidearm pitch.
Enjoy the game.
skerry
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): I am so glad to hear this. I hope it continues for you.
Corner Stone
@kindness:
I’m not a Monty Python expert, but wouldn’t this be “three” pins?
dr. luba
@Suffern ACE: As a health care worker myself–OF COURSE all HCW exposed to Ebola will self report–because they may need proper medical treatment to avoid death. What, you think they’re just going to sit home and risk dying to avoid what, in hospital quarantine?
The whole point here is that she in NOT febrile and there is no reason to quarantine her, except for political grandstanding. It does not protect anyone. She should not have to sit in a tent in the cold in a paper gown because some Fox/CNN news viewers have been scared shitless.
JMG
Dear Tom: You should read sportswriter Ed Linn’s account of Williams’ last day. He was up close, and it’s an admiring but very unsentimental portrait of Williams. It’s in “The Baseball Reader” edited by Charles Einstein.
jo6pac
Go Giants.
Tom Levenson I was about 9 when I went to Seals Stadium. I do believe Willie Mays is the Greatest player ever.
burnspbesq
Can’t root for the Giants. They broke my grandfather’s heart when they moved. I forgive him for making me a Mets fan; my first MLB game, at age seven, was the first time the (pause, spit on the ground) San Francisco Giants came back to the Polo Grounds in 1962 to play the Mets.
I forgive him because he bequeathed to me my righteous and enduring hatred for all things Yankee and Dodger, and that is a good inheritance indeed.
raven
@dr. luba:
The Ancient Randonneur
Ted Williams: Greatest pure hitter ever.
Ichiro Suzuki: Greatest contact hitter ever.
Willlie Mays: Greatest 5-Tool player ever.
Babe Ruth: Greatest player ever.
Trivia: Which pitcher, with at least 75 career wins, holds the record for most career HR’s? Answer: Babe Ruth
By the by, Ruth had three wins as a Yankee!
burnspbesq
@Shirt:
The youts tend to think that baseball in San Diego began with the late, great Tony Gwynn. Ha. The long list of native San Diegans who had distinguished MLB careers begins, of course, with Williams–but it also includes Ralph Kiner and a host of others. The youts also know Kiner only as the malaprop-spewing Mets broadcaster. No. In his prime, he was the most feared power hitter in the game.
Ned Ludd
@divF: As a fellow A’s fan, the deciding factor for me is the fact that Wally Haas ceded marketing rights to the South Bay to the Giants when they needed out of Candlestick to stay in the Bay Area. Now that the tables are turned and the A’s need a lifeline, does Larry Baer return the favor? No, he threatens to sue the A’s to force them out so he gets the whole Bay Area market to himself.
Fuck the Giants.
Corner Stone
Geno Smith is just awful.
Tree With Water
@The Dangerman: My hatred of the Dodgers was my first, and remains the most assiduously cultivated hatred of my life. Scully is the sole exception to it all. I was in awe of Koufax, despised with every ounce of my smaller self Don Drysdale’s guts, and didn’t really have a problem with Marichal clubbing Johnny Roseboro. And I feel pretty much the same today about the Dodgers as I did as a kid. But I also watched many years of Saturday baseball on NBC as a kid, and then beyond, and have always thought Scully to be in a league of his own. Which, of course, he always has been. Go Giants….
raven
@The Ancient Randonneur: I always liked this even thought it wasn’t true!
raven
@Tree With Water: My brother is born and bred in LA and he hates all things San Francisco.
raven
Them are some stupid Steeler costumes.
JPL
@raven: Christie wants to become president and because of that the nurse will have to just endure her treatment. Cuomo is an assh..le
ruemara
After 3 weeks of effort, I finally have the basic model of a woman in hockey gear, with a stick. Because all 3D props for women in Poser seem to take “Slutty ____” as inspiration. Then there’s passive aggressive ex, who when I saw the initial figure tests in a sundress, I asked if I should be concerned, based on the forwarded information of her being a tomboyish, cold weather loving character, in a cold weather sport. So he went to sulk for a few days. And then sent me a model missing most of the actual skin and face textures.
Took 3 hours to load, 45 minutes to get a base skating posture and hand posture and I have another hour to develop the library of poses for the animation. I can’t tell if animation is patience or insanity. But at this point, I’m rethinking hand puppet theatre.
max
@dr. luba: The whole point here is that she in NOT febrile and there is no reason to quarantine her, except for political grandstanding. It does not protect anyone. She should not have to sit in a tent in the cold in a paper gown because some Fox/CNN news viewers have been scared shitless.
If they were truly worried about exposure, they could just quarantine her in her house, along with her family. (Which obvs, they don’t need to do now.) A rational but hyper-cautious quarantine should be run better than this.
max
[‘Why the fuck are the Steelers wearing bumblebee costumes?’]
JPL
@max: ‘Why the fuck are the Steelers wearing bumblebee costumes?
Halloween.
The Dangerman
@The Ancient Randonneur:
Hank Aaron is on line 2 for you (I think Mays may have had more steals, but Aaron tops him in basically everything else).
Tree With Water
@max: “Why the fuck are the Steelers wearing bumblebee costumes?”
Sports Illustrated or ESPN ran a contest for ugliest team uniforms in the history of American sports, and the bumble bee uni’s were in the running to the very end. They may have even won.
patrick II
@Corner Stone:
At least the Jets aren’t paying him 16 mil a year.
A disgruntled Bears fan.
catclub
@The Dangerman: I was born a Giants fan, but young enough to have only seen Mays once, late. So I do not know how they compared as fielders. Aaron was much quieter getting more home runs, so might have also been as good or better in the field. Mays was in NY and I have heard that the NY press may sometimes overstate the capabilities of the hometown players relative to those from away.
Tree With Water
@raven: Yeah, I know how it is. I’ve always considered everything south of Monterey to be foreign territory. But nowadays- in fact, ever since the state turned blue- that edge of my disdain dulled to the point of disappearing. But it’s still there, alive and well somewhere, and always will be, I guess. Guess, hell, I know.
JPL
@patrick II: Technically Brady will earn a tad less than that this year. hmmmm
rea
hiatuses for active duty in two wars
Actually, WWII and Korea.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@ruemara: Thank you for the work. I’m sure I won’t end up paying you enough.
BobS
@The Ancient Randonneur: You’re right on with most of your list, but not even close with Suzuki — he strikes out way too much to be considered the “Greatest contact hitter ever”. He’s way down the list of career strikeout percentage leaders, behind players who were much better power hitters like Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Stan Musial, George Brett, Ted Williams, Mel Ott, Lou Gehrig, and Al Kaline.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
The Steelers look like they just broke out of prison in the unis.
Tree With Water
@Ned Ludd: But that was the deal Charlie Finley agreed to when the A’s moved to Oakland in ’68. Don’t blame the Giants for the fact the Coliseum is dilapidated, or their insistence the A’s keep their word about moving south. No business in its right mind would do otherwise given a legal leg to stand on.
Schlemazel
I remember the last time Maris & Mantle appeared at the old Met Stadium to play the Minnesota Twins. Given their physical condition it was pretty obvious they were done. Even Twins fans spoke of them in hushed tones, they were well past the peak of their careers but everyone understood they had been something special. Today you could probably find 80 or 90 thousand people who claim to have been there. It seems people had sport in perspective then. Now a mediocre shortstop gets a season long party with gifts and people in attendance who can’t tell a past ball from a balk. My guess is in 50 years there will not be 5,000 people who will claim to have been there.
BobS
@The Dangerman: Hang up on him — Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, and Barry Bonds were all better “5-Tool” players.
Schlemazel
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
HA! the woman dumb enough to marry me just said the same thing about 10 minutes ago. I hope they win so that they think the things are magic & wear them the rest of the season.
BobS
@The Dangerman: Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, and Barry Bonds were all better ‘5 tool’ players than Aaron.
p.a.
@JPL: his wife may make more.
p.a.
@BobS: Joe D: Hit 361 home runs for Yankees, and had 369 strikeouts
Schlemazel
@ruemara:
I’ll admit I have been off-line a lot more than on recently so if you already explained forgive me & explain again. What are you looking for with animated female hockey figures? In their turnout I don’t see much noticeable difference with men unless you put them side by side.
Corner Stone
@p.a.:
There’s no doubt. But I’m not sure on total earnings for endorsements, and etc.
I’ll bet she still makes more $$$.
Corner Stone
Welp, just got banned from the local politics board for discussing the Texas voter ID law.
A local wingnut said if I could find people who didn’t already have the required ID he’d pay for them to get it. Just could not imagine how someone in this modern age didn’t have an ID to cash their welfare checks.
ruemara
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): No one else is using my skills. And the animations I want to do would require actual help. I might as well do something nice with them.
@Schlemazel: I need an animatable female hockey player that would work with my 3D program. I’m better at building sets than people. Unfortunately, all is sluttyslut char.
Schlemazel
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
Good things that couldn’t be happening for a better guy.
There are several girls high school teams that would object to being put in the same category as that Saturday from the green goons. With less than 4 minutes left in the game MN would still have been ahead 5-4 even if they didn’t have a goalie in net. I do not think it is hyperbola to say that if the Gophers could have their old goalie back they would be a lock for the bronze medal. If FInland had her it would be a close thing.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@ruemara: I agree with Schlemazel. Once they are in their gear you can’t tell a female from a male hockey player with the exception of one thing: if you can slap a ponytail on a figure of a male hockey figure, you’ll have it.
That’s true in general but it’s especially true for Phoebe, who is described in the story as being 6′ 2″ tall and about 205 lbs, with a mannish build.
patrick II
@JPL:
Yeah, but on dollars paid per interception the Bears are getting a better deal than the Patriots.
divF
@Ned Ludd:
To add insult to injury, Larry Baer got his start as sports director for KALX (the UC Berkeley campus station) in the late 1970’s (I was a DJ there at the time). He went to Charlie Finley and offered our (then) 10 watt signal and sports department to broadcast A’s games when Finley refused to negotiate an agreement with a commercial station. That lasted a very brief time, since Finley was informed by MLB that such a broadcast outlet was unseemly and forced him to get a real station.
Kathleen
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Glad to hear it! Good luck on the job!
Ned Ludd
@Tree With Water: What are you talking about? The Giants never had any exclusive claim to the South Bay until Haas basically gave it to them in 1990. He did this after then-Giants-owner Bob Lurie couldn’t get SF voters to approve financing for a new park in SF, and he did as a goodwill gesture so that the Giants had an option to stay in the Bay Area. The A’s never promised not to move south, they promised to let the Giants do so if they needed to, rather than move to Florida which is what Lurie was threatening.
I’m not blaming the Giants for the state of the Coliseum, I’m blaming them for being back-stabbing, entitled, I-got-mine-fuck-you assholes. Fuck the Giants.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@The Ancient Randonneur:
You’d better hope that no one reads this in front of Ty Cobb’s mausoleum, because those dusty bones will get up, find a bat, and go hunting for you.
cckids
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
To me they look like toddlers in a home-made bumblebee costume. Pin it!!
mellowjohn
@burnspbesq:
“mr. gambini, what’s a ‘yoot’?”
Tree With Water
@Ned Ludd: “The A’s never promised not to move south, they promised to let the Giants do so if they needed to, rather than move to Florida which is what Lurie was threatening”.
Well, if so, then the A’s fucked up, didn’t they? I mean, can you imagine Al Davis doing that for a competitor? Or any other businessman on the planet for that matter. And as you surely know, the Giants ballpark was built with private funding and tax breaks. That didn’t make them “entitled, I-got-mine-fuck-you assholes”. It made them successful. And that fact burns like fire to A’s fans…
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Tree With Water: Yeah, actually, it does. The only thing preventing the A’s from moving to San Jose is the fact that the Bay Area is the only two team metro area where the territorial rights are split, giving each team a zone that excludes the other. The only reason this came about was because Walter Haas, owner of the A’s, offered the Giants rights to the South Bay area, without receiving any compensation, in order to help the Giants win referendums to build a stadium in San Jose.
In the end, the referendums failed and the Giants got a ballpark in the city. But the grant of rights was never reversed and now the Giants are able to veto the A’s moving to San Jose. Peter Magowan has claimed that when he purchased the Giants it included the territorial rights. Legally, he’s correct, but the whole thing is a rip off. Not only were the rights given to the Giants gratis, Magowan was able to buy the team for well under market value (which had been established by an offer to purchase the Giants by a group in Tampa that was agreed to but that was voted down by the National League) because Bob Lurie basically had no alternative.
So, yes, A’s fans are completely justified in thinking that the Giants stabbed them in the back. Because that’s pretty much what happened. Magowan has his, and fuck the A’s if they want to have a team in San Jose. Here’s a write up of the history, although I come to a different conclusion about the culpability of the Giants. Hanging on to legal rights regardless of whether you actually paid for them (and neither the Giants in 1990 nor Magowan in 1992 really paid for those rights) and heedless of the consequences is the quintessence of Fuck You, I Got Mine.
Tree With Water
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): I can see how an A’s fan might feel that way. I also imagine any hope of you to jumping ship the Giants bandwagon once the A’s move to Las Vegas is out of the question.
Ned Ludd
@Tree With Water: Yeah, dude, doing something magnanimously regardless of whether you profit is totally fucking up. And I guess shitting on the gesture when it’s your turn so you can maximize profit is just good business, right?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Tree With Water: It’s especially unlikely since I’m a Tigers fan.
Darkrose
Of course, if the A’s move to San Jose, then it’s going to be a lot harder to A’s fans to get to games. And they’ll be paying a lot more money for the privilege of making the trek to the South Bay, since Lew Wolffe has made it abundantly clear that he wants to move so he can make money off shiny new luxury boxes and real estate around the new stadium. Right now, the Giants are doing A’s fans a favor by keeping the team in Oakland.
Darkrose
RIP Oscar Taveras. Very sad news.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Darkrose: There’d be less sewage.
Tree With Water
@Darkrose: That’s right. To hear the A’s (and occasional Tiger) fans talk, you’d think the A’s were a do-gooding non-profit. And while it will never happen, speaking as a Giants fan I’d like to see the A’s share that little jewel of a park the Giants call home. I’d also like to see the Raiders share Levi Stadium with the Niners. But the Giants and Niners aren’t non-profits either.
chrome agnomen
@Schlemazel: mediocre shortstop overstates his fielding talent by quite a bit. one of the worst defensive shortstop in the history of the game.