The Giants suck. So do the A’s. But it could be a fun season.
By A.J. Hayes
How’s this for sunny spring time forecast: for the first time since the mid-1980s, both the Giants and A’s will enter the major league season without a sliver of a hope of contending for a playoff slot.
Sad face?
In fact, it will take a minor miracle for both clubs to finish higher than last place.
But that doesn’t mean that the 2008 baseball campaign has to be a snooze-fest. There’s something appealing about a losing baseball team. Football and basketball are just unwatchable when they’re performed shabbily, but bad baseball can be a hoot.
The train-wreck 1962 expansion New York Mets who went 40-120 turned the bumbling Marv Throneberry and Choo Choo Coleman into flannel uniformed folk heroes. The Chicago Cubs and the Boston Red Sox (until their recent World Series success) built up the most loyal fan bases in the game with their lovable losers flying in the wind like a prop-plane banner.
49ers fans, on the other hand, would just as soon forget this past splotchy season.
It’s something about the daily intimacy of baseball and the fact they the players have traditionally resembled normal humans – discounting the steroids era – that allows us to empathize. Baseball players are not covered up with helmets and pads, so we see the embarrassment when they bobble a pop-up the same way we might drop a jar of bread-and-butter pickles on our foot.
But baseball fans are not suckers, and not every lousy club is in a position to be celebrated.