The Un-Naturals

What the hell is lurking in the waters of McCovey Cove? The ghosts of Candlestick Park? Ken Kesey's Kool-Aid? A magical dragon called Huff? Inquiring minds want to know, because this is getting ridiculous. This whole post was going to be about my experiences at the park yesterday and the most inspiring win of the season, but it seems as though every game keeps trumping the last. It's gotten to the point that when birthday boy @JeremyAffeldt drew a walk in the bottom of the 10th, I started laughing uncontrollably. I'd hardly contained myself by the time Freddy "Ballgame" Sanchez ended things with a patented oppo slap job and Chris Stewart had his moment in the afterglow that pervades everything that happens at 3rd and King these days... aside from one quite horrific night.

There is no stat for what the Giants are doing this season. There is no sabermetric that could possibly explain it. How can a team with a run differential of +4 be eight games over .500 and a game ahead of the hottest team in the sport for first place in their division? That's just not natural. And neither is this team. It's like the pennant race and playoff chase of 2010 carried over into spring training and kept right on bucking. If they'd only come all the way back on Opening Day against the #Doyers, you could say it's been a perfect storm that's carried the Giants thus far. No doubt, they've had moments that confound the soul and crush the spirit, this re-united band of fartknockers. But they've had far more that elicit orgasms of joy all across Northern California — and all the way across the country in a Manhattan bar at two in the morning.

Steal this game.

Manny awaits his big moment | Photo by Ash Kalra

So there we were. The 'pen had just blown a 2-0 lead for Jonathan "Dirty" Sanchez, who despite all his demons managed to find the better angels of his nature in yet an other "quality start". Before Jeremy Affeldt could utter "Jesus wept," the misfits were down 4-2, and Gio Gonzalez had re-discovered his best stuff. When you consider the Giants have the second-worst run production in MLB, that's gotta be a "Game Over" scenario, right?

Well, a funny thing happened on the way to what would have been certain defeat even two years ago. Bob Geren lifted Gio during a futile 7th inning rally and turned the game over to the vaunted A's bullpen (#sarcasm), Miguel Tejada got his second (second!) hit of the afternoon, and Nasty Nate Schierholtz from San Ramon Valley got just enough of a mistake on the inner half to launch it into the Arcade just inside the fair pole. Tie game. Two innings later, after a refreshingly dominant performance from Sergio "Heart-Crushing Two-Strike Gopher Ball Victim" Romo, @DarRunFord and his BFF Manny Burriss formed like Black Voltron to send the home team and its spoiled fan base home in hysterics... once again.

You really can't start worrying yet.

Seriously. It's just as reactionary as getting all hyphy 'cause your team jumped out to a hot start. Admit it: If the Giants were cruising through the first few weeks of the season, you'd be all over Twitter and the blog comments talking nonstop smack about how the Boys were on their way to a repeat and y'all better watch out! And if they were barely scraping by like the, ahem, Red Sox Nation, you'd be paging Chicken Little and devising new and exciting ways to kill yourself... slowly. But everybody regresses or progresses to their natural mean at some point. Everybody's gonna win 60 games. Everybody's gonna lose 60 games. It's what you do with the 42 in between that counts.

IMHO, over the 2011 season's first 20 games, the Giants have played 6 of the Middle 42, and they're 4-2 in those games: