Giants game delayed by metaphor
It's rare to see a literary technique have such explicit real-world consequences
In the top of the third inning last night, the lights went out on the Giants.
The stadium operations people did the same things that led to successful games in the past. Before the game started, there wasn’t any reason to think that the stadium lights would be too dim to play under, that things would go so wrong in the way that they did. Obviously, there are occasional issues at stadiums, but rarely anything so major and catastrophic. It was a bewildering display of incompetence not befitting a major league team. And, of course, it was boring as hell.
This is all a perfect description of the 2022 Giants.
Rarely do things work out so perfectly in baseball. This season has been a frustrating mess, in which very little has gone right for the Giants and the things that have gone right haven’t been enough to make up for the team’s myriad failures. Carlos Rodon has been one of the best pitchers in baseball this year, but the team is still just 12-14 when he starts. Joey Bart finally found his swing, but the team couldn’t stop losing after he came back. There’s probably a third good thing that’s happened, and I’ll be sure to let you know if I figure it out.
So it shouldn’t have happened. But also, it did. The lights did go out. The promise of a fun baseball game, and a fun baseball season, stopped dead in its tracks by what was presumably a combination of bad planning and bad luck. Everything looked normal on TV, but that’s because the TV is a liar. Things were different. The Giants couldn’t see. The Giants couldn’t play.
Really, the whole game was cursed from the outset. In the first inning, home plate umpire Marvin Hudson injured himself trying to get in position on a foul ball. Starting the fourth, the Giants had Gabe Kapler and a trainer check on Joey Bart in case he had been concussed by a foul ball off his mask, and he would end up coming out of the game after the inning. Even Joc Pederson’s 2-run homer in the bottom of the inning just got back the two runs San Diego had scored in the top half.
The lights had tried to warn us. They tried to save us from this terrible game, and we didn’t let them. We’re sorry, lights. We should have listened. We should have trusted you.
The 2022 Giants are bad. Last night, the lights went out on them. At some point, the lights went out on the season. Last night, they came back on. This season, they won’t.
"There’s probably a third good thing that’s happened, and I’ll be sure to let you know if I figure it out."
Without looking, I would bet that Brebbia has been better than last year. But, I could be wrong, and I got nothing after that.
Short and sweet!