Lots of reasons to love the Giants. Let me tell you about it. Primarily, like the city they represent, they're casual and fun with their weirdness. They bought out this lady with this hat (of the San Francisco skyline) to sing "God Bless America" during Game 5.
The remaining living members of the Grateful Dead sang the national anthem.
I especially like the weirdness that plays with masculinity. Take this guy, Brian Wilson. His punk/hipster style. His brown beard dyed black, which he claims he colors with a black Sharpie. In affect, hyperconfidence, alpha masculinity, wildness: the closer personality. A long clip, but you can see some of it here. Look how much this other man wants to impress him.
He pulls pranks like this one. It starts at :43.
Shit like this makes me wonder if he is a raging homophobe. If they all are. Aubrey Huff wears a red, rhinestone-encrusted "rally thong" for luck. These are frat boy jokes. A friend of mine, one of eleven female firefighters in FDNY at the time, told me that in the fire houses the men would pretend to hump each other; apparently this is how they expressed their disdain for homosexuality? The ways of man-groups are unknown to me. Still, because my sickness for Giants baseball is at fever pitch, I find this endearing, not yet abhorrent.
Then there is the man they call Panda, the pudgy third baseman who missed a tag in Game 5 because he couldn't stretch his leg to the bag. The catcher is a cherubic rookie with the fake-sounding name Buster Posey. Cody Ross, a man who pulls off the bald head and beard look, a reject from the Marlins picked up by the Giants two months ago, aspired to be a rodeo clown:
For years, Cody sat in the stands at every rodeo in full clown regalia - baggy pants with billowing colored scarves in the pockets - and full clown makeup.
He didn't abandon the dream until his dad quit the rodeo and moved the family to Dallas, where Cody blossomed as a baseball star.
But my favorite Giant by far is the skinny ace Tim Lincecum, the 26 year-old hippie/skater/stoner who was busted for misdemeanor pot possession a while back. After signing his contract, he told his agent his ambition was to buy a Volkswagen minibus. He can't stop saying "Fuck yeah!" on live television. He looks like he's sixteen and gets mistaken for the bat boy at away games. He walks around AT&T Park in flip-flops with his French bulldog. And he's a two time Cy Young winner and the best pitcher in the league. His demeanor is that of your average idiot stoner brother (we have all had one), as seen here in his promotional shoot for Giants Snuggies:
The outcome:
As if this is not enough, Lincecum is Asian-American!!!! Okay, half. His mother is Filipino!! Nawa'y pagpalain ka ng Diyos ng marami pang kaarawan!!! I bought a t-shirt.
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