Why do we care about the Giants?

Yes, why do we care about them? With so much in this world to care about, why do we care if a baseball team wins or loses? Clearly, many of us care, millions and millions of us. My cousins drove in from Fresno for the games. Others come from Sacramento and points east. There are identified groups from far north of here at the ballpark: Ukiah, Fort Bragg and I think I saw a contingent from Arcata once.
As soon as the playoffs began, people all over the Sonoma County started wearing orange and black, and it wasn’t for Halloween. Giants shirts and hats and, on the few who still wear neckties, Giants neckties were seen in profusion upon the citizens along our bend in the Russian River. Wherever one turned in those days, it was orange and black and “Let’s go Giants.” What can it mean that so many of us care about this team?
I’m sure there are deep probing psychological theories about being a sports fan. One probably posits that we compensate for our inadequacies and failures by identifying with those who prevail against the odds, as the Giants are so good at doing. But if that’s so, how do you explain Chicago Cubs fan who, year after sorry year, love their dear team with undying passion even as it finishes in the second division?
There are preachers who point out that a ball game, like a church service, has order and pageantry, rules and traditions and it pulls us out of ourselves toward a sense of community and larger purpose. Actually, a lot of folks seemed to fold their hands and close their eyes in prayer during anxious moments in the recent World Series, and there were many such moments.
I would add that there is singing as well. Whether it’s “Our God, Our Help in Ages Past” in church or “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” at the seventh inning stretch at AT&T Park, singing together is really good for us to do. It’s a spiritual thing, really. In whatever setting we choose, we all would do well to sing together more often.
I have heard preachers use the word “idolatry” in connection with the kind of devotion many of us feel for the Giants. Idolatry is elevating something worldly to the level of the Almighty, treating a human thing as if it is divine. That’s serious business, of course.
But, heaven help me, I can’t help but feel that it takes a terribly hardnosed theological attitude to make something as harmless as “one, two, three strikes you’re out in the old ball game” into a venial sin. We preachers can get carried away at times.
I’m thinking a better explanation for the way we feel about the Giants is simply that it’s a lot of fun. It’s fun to care about them. It’s even fun to worry about them, and in the course of the season this team gave us a lot to worry about. They fell from having the best record in either league to getting into the playoffs by the skin of their teeth. At many moments, this season was on the brink of catastrophe.
Even at the very end, one out away from victory in the World Series, our extremely reliable center fielder lets a ball get by him and what should have been a routine single, ends up with the tying run at third base. I was preparing myself for the greatest of disappointments when the next batter pops up weakly to our Pablo Sandoval who catches it and flops on his back like a beached walrus instead of the panda bear he is known to be.
Whew! What a ride. What a team. What fun it is to care about them. Only four months to spring training and the fun begins all over again. I and untold millions can hardly wait.
Columnist Bob Jones is the former minister of the Guerneville and Monte Rio Community churches.