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calsnowskier
Sarcastic F-wad
This is a LONG one. Sorry, but this has been brewing for a while now…
The Giants are a business first. I understand that.
We, as fans, ultimately just root for Laundry. I also understand that. I try to fool myself into forgetting that as much as I can, but at the end of the day, that is the ultimate truth.
So given these truths, what do fans owe the team, and what does the team owe the fans?
These past few years, where the team has been absolutely ZERO fun to watch (even in ‘21), with nobody outside of Crawford, Webb, and maybe Bailey who is worth a shit to watch, I have been asking myself more and more what I owe the Giants. And did winning in ‘10-‘14 spoil my fandom?
I enjoyed watching the team in ‘08 and ‘09. We had never won, but “this might be the year” was the standard, so that was what I lived for. Realistically, though, I didn’t expect us to SERIOUSLY contend until ‘11 or ‘12. I thought we would be good in ‘10, but I thought that was a year too early.
But I trusted that we had a FO and an ownership group that was legit trying. They were in this thing with me, so they deserved my fandom.
But now they have embraced Farhan, and his love affair with “Moneyball”. There isn’t a fan favorite to be found. There isn’t a connection between the fans and the team. There isn’t anything on the horizon for the smart-fans to grasp onto. Who is our Angel Villalona? Our Tim Alderson? Our Madison Bumgarner? Our Buster Posey? I realize two of those guys busted BAD, but they were a BIG 4-some that were widely recognized across all of baseball as 4 of the top prospects going, all in the same organization.
Harrison and Luciano COULD be our Bum and Villalona, but Bailey is only Posey because there is absolutely nothing else to ACTUALLY be Posey. Whisenhunt MAY be Alderson, but he really hasn’t shown anything yet, performance-wise.
And does anyone really get the feeling from this FO/Ownership group that really care about winning past just putting asses in seats? McGowan cared about winning. I don’t think anyone would ever argue against that. He LOVED the Giants. He put his sack on the line to keep then in SF. He retired from his elite CEO gig to head up the Giants and make them a winner. Neukam seemed to be a worthy successor, but he wasn’t able to play well with the rest of the board, so he was quickly shown the door. The Johnson clan seems to be more in line with the A’s line of owners, who really only view the Giants as a financial investment rather than a project of love. And with the A’s now gone, there is officially no reason for the Giants to field anything close to competitive anymore in order to own the market.
So this brings me to the point of my rant.
What do teams owe fans to keep them as fans? At what point do fans stop rooting? How much cache have the ‘10-‘14 teams built up, and at what point has the org exceeded “resting on those laurels”?
Should fans blindly support a team? Do they owe it to the team to continue supporting them financially, even if the team is floundering and going nowhere fast?
The Giants are a business first. I understand that.
We, as fans, ultimately just root for Laundry. I also understand that. I try to fool myself into forgetting that as much as I can, but at the end of the day, that is the ultimate truth.
So given these truths, what do fans owe the team, and what does the team owe the fans?
These past few years, where the team has been absolutely ZERO fun to watch (even in ‘21), with nobody outside of Crawford, Webb, and maybe Bailey who is worth a shit to watch, I have been asking myself more and more what I owe the Giants. And did winning in ‘10-‘14 spoil my fandom?
I enjoyed watching the team in ‘08 and ‘09. We had never won, but “this might be the year” was the standard, so that was what I lived for. Realistically, though, I didn’t expect us to SERIOUSLY contend until ‘11 or ‘12. I thought we would be good in ‘10, but I thought that was a year too early.
But I trusted that we had a FO and an ownership group that was legit trying. They were in this thing with me, so they deserved my fandom.
But now they have embraced Farhan, and his love affair with “Moneyball”. There isn’t a fan favorite to be found. There isn’t a connection between the fans and the team. There isn’t anything on the horizon for the smart-fans to grasp onto. Who is our Angel Villalona? Our Tim Alderson? Our Madison Bumgarner? Our Buster Posey? I realize two of those guys busted BAD, but they were a BIG 4-some that were widely recognized across all of baseball as 4 of the top prospects going, all in the same organization.
Harrison and Luciano COULD be our Bum and Villalona, but Bailey is only Posey because there is absolutely nothing else to ACTUALLY be Posey. Whisenhunt MAY be Alderson, but he really hasn’t shown anything yet, performance-wise.
And does anyone really get the feeling from this FO/Ownership group that really care about winning past just putting asses in seats? McGowan cared about winning. I don’t think anyone would ever argue against that. He LOVED the Giants. He put his sack on the line to keep then in SF. He retired from his elite CEO gig to head up the Giants and make them a winner. Neukam seemed to be a worthy successor, but he wasn’t able to play well with the rest of the board, so he was quickly shown the door. The Johnson clan seems to be more in line with the A’s line of owners, who really only view the Giants as a financial investment rather than a project of love. And with the A’s now gone, there is officially no reason for the Giants to field anything close to competitive anymore in order to own the market.
So this brings me to the point of my rant.
What do teams owe fans to keep them as fans? At what point do fans stop rooting? How much cache have the ‘10-‘14 teams built up, and at what point has the org exceeded “resting on those laurels”?
Should fans blindly support a team? Do they owe it to the team to continue supporting them financially, even if the team is floundering and going nowhere fast?