We here in San Francisco all love our Giants, but I think I can speak for the entire city when I say that even we are surprised by how ruthlessly we've been creaming the Texas Rangers in the World Series. The Rangers, who beat the Yankees to take the American League pennant, are the odds-on favorite in Vegas, and no one honestly expected our little misfit band of Giants—half of them picked up mid-season in random trades—to take the Series in four games, but it's looking like that's exactly what might happen.
When Game 1 ended with the Giants winning 11-7, everyone in San Francisco was obviously happy—and, perhaps, quietly surprised at that large of a run differential. But last night, when the Giants shut out the Rangers 9-0, I can safely say that many of us were wide-eyed. It was then, during the bottom of the eighth, as Rangers reliever Derek Holland began walking in one run after another, that it dawned on me.
What if the Giants' victory is not just about baseball? What if it's symbolic, driven by forces larger than ourselves? If it is, then its message is obvious: San Francisco values are the values of the future, and woe be to those who resist them!
How could we have not seen it before now? San Francisco is a peace-loving, eco-friendly, compassionate David to Texas' gun-toting, oil-spilling, dog-eat-dog Goliath. The beautiful, hilly city by the bay—the city that recycles and adds $2.54 to the national minimum wage and wants to let all its nice gay people get married—is suddenly, inexplicably slaughtering the good-ol'-boy, middle-America team formerly owned by George W. Bush? Um, hello!
What else can it mean that the Rangers' clean-cut, collegiate-looking lineup of pitchers is proving to be no match for our boy Lincecum, the scrawny "Freak" with the long hair and stoned look in his eye, or for his closer Brian Wilson, the tattooed fast-ball machine who paints his scruffy beard with shoe polish and uses Magic Marker to decorate his neon-orange sneakers? What could it have meant when Ian Kinsler's top-of-the-fifth flyball landed smack on the AT&T Park fence and then, instead of toppling over it, bounced back into the stadium instead, leaving the Rangers scoreless?
That, my friends, was Fate. It was the Divine speaking. True, in San Francisco, the Divine is a Mother Goddess dressed in leafy skirts and wearing patchouli oil, but she is powerful nevertheless, and she blew that Texas flyball right back onto the Giants' center-field where it belonged, delivering her mighty message. It said:
Listen up, America. You may think San Francisco is just a bunch of pot-smoking, bike-riding, latte-drinking radicals, but you'd better get your Walmart-shopping, Humvee-driving butts used to it. Your time is over, and the era of the Left Coast Liberal Elite is at hand.
If the first two games of the World Series haven't convinced you, then just look down at your computer screen or phone. What do you see there? Does it say Apple, Google, Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube? If it does, it was invented in San Francisco. What's the last great invention to have come out of Dallas or Houston in the past decade?
Go ahead, mull that one over while our former president throws out the first pitch on Sunday in Arlington. Nine innings later, don't be surprised when San Francisco takes the Commissioner's Trophy. Today the Series, tomorrow the world! Now pass the patchouli.
