Buster Posey lined a single to right field
And for just a moment, all was right with the world. Except for, you know, everything else.
The Giants played their first game of Spring Training on Sunday against the Angels, with a final score of I Don’t Remember to Who Cares. Spring Training isn’t about final scores, though; it’s all about getting semi-competitive reps for guys who haven’t seen competition in months and also for overreacting to every good performance because This is his year, man and minimizing every poor performance because These games don’t mean anything, man.
But it’s also the time for I’m just so damn glad to be able to watch baseball again. And absolutely nothing could exemplify that more than Buster Posey lining a single to right field.
Doesn’t that feel like home? Like a cool, calm night, sitting on the couch, watching the Giants lose 3-1 despite getting 14 runners into scoring position? Isn’t that swing, combined with that result, an instantly recognizable part of your life that you’ve been totally without since September of 2019? Aren’t you just pretty goddamn glad to see Posey lace a single to right?
“Oh, I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say laced,” you might be saying, very cruelly contradicting me on an imagined technicality of exit velocity. Well, here’s another angle:
Laced, I say. Laced!
If the Giants don’t disappoint you this year, it’ll be because you had Bryan Murphy-level rock bottom expectations. There is absolutely no chance that they win the division, and almost no chance that they even make the playoffs at all. Expecting more than that will only lead to heartbreak and disillusionment. Save yourself, he cried in his newsletter. It’s too late for me, but you can still save yourself!
But in a lot of ways, it doesn’t really matter. Because you’ll turn the game on on Opening Day and Posey will be throwing a runner out at second by 4 feet, or Brandon Crawford will field a short hop to his backhand, shortarm a throw to first, and still get a fast runner. Brandon Belt will take a 3-2 pitch an inch and a half inside and work a walk. Johnny Cueto will shimmy, and shimmy again, and shimmy again, and maybe never even throw a pitch, just making everyone wait until the heat death of the universe.
This has been part of the fabric of Bay Area baseball for more than half a decade. All those players are likely to be free agents this offseason, so 2021 could be it for them in Giants uniforms. All the memories, rings, All-Star Games, all of that will be firmly and concretely in the past, and we’ll have a new and uncertain future to move on to.
But we don’t need to think about that today. Today, we can celebrate what we have, which is Buster Posey playing in a baseball game and lining a single to right field. It’s right and just and pure. It’s fun, is what it is. And since the whole point of this sport is to have fun, let’s enjoy it while we can.