What’s Cooler Than Being Cool? (This Team is) ICE COLD!

I CAN’T HEAR YOU, I said, WHAT’S COOLER THAN … oh, never mind.

It’s a pretty helpless feeling, sitting at home, watching this team flail away at hittable pitches, booting balls, misreading easy plays, crushing the ball directly at the defense, making Ruben Rivera-style base running mistakes, wasting quality starts, and generally playing less like a championship team and more like the Twins.

Not the Minnesota Twins, mind you; the Little League team I played on when I was nine, when I got a total of three hits the whole year, won the “Coach’s Choice” trophy (everybody had to win a trophy), and my crowning achievement was striking out my friend (looking), the friend whose house I visited for several hours a day to play Curse of Monkey Island.

Sure, feeling like I’m single-handedly responsible for breaking my team’s slump may be putting a bit too much on myself, and may indicate just a weeee bit of pyschosis, but as you can see, we’re way past that. My hair is turning more dark-brown than black, my sentences are becoming more run-on, and my metaphors are making even less sense. WE NEED SOME WINS.

But let’s take a deeeeep breath, and examine what’s going on here.

The offense sucks. Yeah, okay. We lost our best hitter not named Aaron Rowand, and the rest of the defending champs look pretty bad. I’ve had more conversations that I can count in the last few days about the flailing offense, the wasted pitching, and the blah blah blah that makes this team so blah.

So I’m over it. It’s May, and even though everything looks like it’s falling apart, we’re going to start winning.

Why? Because it’s my birthday, and we’re going to win, dammit.

On my birthday, May 4, 1987, the Giants beat the Cardinals 10-7, spurred by a 5-run 8th inning and 2-run 9th, after trailing most of the game 7-1. The Giants finished with 10 runs on 21 hits (and 2 errors), including 4-hit days from Jeffrey Leonard and Candy Maldonado, and home runs from Chili Davis and Maldonado. Maldonado, who never in his life made it into the All-Star Game, hit for the cycle in this game, on his way to a .292/.346/.509 season with 20 HR.

Mike Krukow, starting pitcher, gave up 7 runs (4 earned) in 4.2 innings, only to be picked up by 3.1 perfect innings from the bullpen, including Jeff Robinson‘s 5th save.

It was a pretty exciting game, from the looks of it.

What does May 4th matter in the 162-game grind of a baseball season? Nothing really, but it’s as good a marker as any.

Nothing about the skill of this team has actually disappeared since last year, and they’re playing at a level far lower than the sum of its parts. May 4th will come, and they’ll win, and they’ll continue winning. I believe.

For those of you confused by the title… I envy you.