On Offense

There's a lot of baseball teams that I find very exciting this season. I'm really into the Pirates and their young, speedy contact guys and solid pitching. If everything does well, they're going to have a simply exhilarating team in a couple of seasons.

I like almost everything about the Brewers. I love their stadium. I love Bob Uecker. Their Friday throwback uniforms are probably the best-looking uniform in baseball and it's a real shame it's not their everyday outfit. They have a player named Nyjer Morgan whose "on-field name" is Tony Plush, and he's the best interview in baseball. I have trouble reconciling Prince Fielder's dickish and outright cheating antics with my love of massive-armed fat vegan dudes who crush deep home runs. I have trouble reconciling my hatred of Mark Teixiera facial expressions on Elijah Wood's face with the awesome baseball that Dave Braun plays. But most of all, I love that the Brewers are not the Cardinals.

There are a lot of teams that are fun or interesting to watch for a ton of very different reasons. The 2011 Mariners, Mets, Diamondbacks, Blue Jays, and Indians are fascinating thus far. It's been a spectacular baseball season, and we're only just into June.

But the truth is, since I got back into baseball full-bore in about 1999 after a really unfortunate few-year absence (the departure of Will Clark in the pre-internet, pre-MLB.tv era coincided with my abrupt cessation from playing organized baseball during my adolescence), my second-favorite team has been the Boston Red Sox. It made a lot more sense at the time. The Giants were the West Coast Red Sox, so why not root for another set of talented, hard-luck losers?

Having your favorite team play in a separate league from your second-favorite team is essentially like having two favorite teams. Also, watching these two maligned teams win historic World Series within six years of one another is...well, it's still sort of hard to believe. Especially considering the collapses of the seemingly-unstoppable Giants teams of 1987, 1989, 1993, 1997, 2000, and 2002, and basically every Red Sox season before 2004.

The Giants have a rich history of fearsome mashers. Will the Thrill, Stretch, the Say-Hey Kid, the Hackman, Matt "no nickname" Williams, Kevin Mitchell, Ellis Burks, Jeff Kent, and some guy named Barry. Since Number 25 departed, however, the Giants have had pitchers. Boy, have they ever had pitchers! On offense, they've had Randy Winn, Brian Bocock, Manny Burriss, John Bowker, Dave Roberts, Edgar Renteria, the old and fat version of Bengie Molina, and [see today's lineup].

The American League and the National league are fundamentally different. You watch the two different leagues and it's clear that they're two different leagues. But you watch a Giants game and then watch a Red Sox game...and it's two different solar systems. When a Giants starter gives up a run, you can honestly feel the Giants fan hivemind wail in despair. How can they possibly overcome this deficit? You run through the options. Who's up next inning? Huff? He'll roll one to the right side. Schierholtz and Ross might get a base hit or walk between them, but...oh, no. Rowand! God forbid the one good hitter in that day's lineup is leadoff off the next inning. Getting stranded after a leadoff double is even worse than three slow rollers to second base. Watching a Giants game in 2011 is slow and agonizing. How can they overcome a two-run deficit? It's just not possible! Evey Giants run scored is a tiny miracle, an anomaly. A Bret Hart loogie in the eye of God/Vince McMahon. Every Giants pitcher takes the field knowing they're going to have to be essentially perfect or that's the ballgame. Every Giants hitter stands at the plate knowing they're going to mess this one up. Those of us watching at home can't believe that Barry was here as recently as 2007. That can't be right, we think. That was a million years ago. Two million.

Watching a Red Sox game after a 2-0 Giants loss or a 2-1 Giants win is like the feeling you must get immediately following a complete mental break. So this is insanity. Huh. It's pretty crazy! The Red Sox go out and wallop the ball. Just absolutely abuse the thing. Ellsbury and Crawford hit triples. Pedroia and Youkilis bring them home. Gonzalez and Ortiz launch taters to every field. The runs just pile up and up, a seemingly inexhaustible supply. John Lackey might give up five runs in an inning, and you can see the Sox players look at one another and shrug. "Gee, I guess we'll just have to hit more home runs next inning. No big deal. It's what we do."

It's ridiculous that the Red Sox can have such an embarrassment of riches when it comes to putting up crooked numbers. Sure, you can point to their payroll and to the difference in play in the DH league. But the Red Sox team philosophy that Theo Epstein scrawled on the whiteboard in his office are the letters "OBP" crossed out, and below that, the words "HOME RUNZ" two feet high.

It's going to be very interesting for the rest of the 2011 season. The Giants have a phenomenal pitching staff, and no offense. None available, and none forthcoming. The Red Sox have a lineup of fearsome cave trolls that hit baseballs so hard the baseballs evaporate, and the umpires are forced to award the batters "super-homers" which count for twice the normal runs. I've always wanted to see a Giants-Red Sox World Series, and this might be the craziest year for that to happen. I don't believe it will, though. I don't believe the Giants can make it this far.

Pitching wins ballgames, sure. The Giants proved that last year. But you have to put a number on the board first. The Giants can't do that consistently. Sometimes they can't do it at all. The Red Sox have nothing but numbers. Sometimes they let their opponents score 4 or 5 or 7 runs, because they feel bad there's no mercy rule. "Sorry about the 16 runs, fellas. We're gonna just throw underhand for a while. No hard feelings, yeah?"

I like watching fantastic pitching that makes great hitters look like fools. I also like watching 500-foot home runs and three-run doubles off the wall. With my two favorite teams I get the best of both worlds.

Still about 100 games left. It's going to be one hell of a season.

- Bill