The doors opened at 11:00 am, and by 11:46 they started turning away fans because the park was full.
Hey everyone! As mentioned in our recent podcast, we here at GiantsPod Corporate headed down to Fanfest 2011 at AT&T park last Saturday morning. It was quite a spectacle and, thanks to Bill Zarchy, here’s a slideshow of what we saw there.
Check out the full slideshow, and we’ll keep a rotating slideshow in the sidebar or on this post after the jump.
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In the offseason after the 2006 season, the Giants were reeling. Only 3 years after a wire-to-wire season ending in playoff humiliation, they finished just 76-85, good enough for 3rd place, and just half a game above the 4th and 5th place teams. Their ace pitcher Jason Schmidt was leaving for the hated LA Dodgers, leaving the team without a strong pitcher to lead their staff. Noah Lowry, the Giants’ rookie phenom, had spent the year fighting injuries, and his future looked uncertain. Matt Cain and Jonathan Sanchez were years away from hitting their stride as starting pitchers, and Brian Wilson was an unknown quantity, playing 7th-fiddle to a bullpen led by closer Armando Benitez, who needs no introduction to fans who remember those dark years.
Meanwhile, the front office was facing the unwelcome but inevitable retirement of Barry Bonds, the greatest baseball player of the modern era, who had yet to get himself a World Series ring. Bonds had just come off his first full season without being in the top of MVP voting in 16 seasons (he sat out injured most of 2005), and his mortality was starting to show itself.
For those of you who have already listened to Episode 6 of the podcast, yes, I know that konnichiwa means “good afternoon,” and not “thank you for listening to our podcast.” Language has never been Thomas’ strong suit, so please forgive him. We felt a shout out to our Japanese listeners was in order after seeing this, a Japanese language podcast directory listing our podcast, and about 88.8% of our podcast’s total downloads have come from Japan, so I guess there’s nothing I can say except for “ãƒãƒƒãƒ‰ã‚ャストをèžã„ã¦ãã‚Œã¦ã‚ã‚ŠãŒã¨ã†”, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart.