If you are a Giants fan of a certain age, then there’s a certain meme — this was before we called them memes, because that word didn’t exist yet — that you used to hear. If you criticized then-GM Brian Sabean for glaring deficiencies in roster construction, then you would be told — and let’s assume it was early 2006 here — that “Under Sabean the Giants have played only 14 meaningless games in 9 seasons.”
Yeah! That showed you, nerd! The Giants have been IN IT just about every year since Batman And Robin came out! And you’re UNGRATEFUL to the man who put those teams together? He gets you a shiny new Matt Morris and you don’t even say THANK YOU? Shame. Shame!
Anyway, then the Giants were awful for a few years and you, the arrogant fan, felt entirely vindicated.
Anyway, then the Giants won three World Series and you, the arrogant fan, realized that your feelings about Sabean had always really been nuanced, unlike some of these other morons online.
In the meantime, the games the Giants were playing were as far as it gets from meaningless. Those World Series games were replete with meaning, whole oceans of meaning, meaning pouring out of their eye sockets like some Event Horizon shit. They were what it’s about, why they play the games, the culmination of everything these guys have worked for.
They were also two teams of guys trying to hit balls with sticks, only somewhat later in the year.
All the talk of meaningless games always obscured one thing: They’re all meaningless. They’re guys trying to hit balls with sticks and some of those guys are better at hitting the balls with sticks and some of the other guys are better at throwing the ball so the guy with the stick can’t hit it, and some of the guys are Shohei Ohtani. We ascribe higher meaning to it because we want baseball to be more than that, to tell us about competition and struggle and adversity.
It doesn’t have to be more than that. Baseball can just be entertaining and interesting and sometimes kinda goofy, and that’s enough for it to justify itself. It can just be fun. As long as you’re seeing people who are great at baseball compete against other people who are great at baseball, well, there’s meaning in that. From that, you can get to the higher, deeper meanings that I pooh-poohed at the end of the last paragraph if yo uwant, but it all starts there. The best competing against the best.
Or they could pack it in because, fuck it, we’re not in the playoffs so who gives a shit anymore.
Per multiple reports last night, Carlos Rodon is unlikely to make his final start of the season today, not because he’s injured, but because apparently it’s bad for a professional baseball pitcher to pitch baseballs until the end of the baseball pitching season. He could make that start with no problem — his agent, Scott Boras, said that Rodon absolutely would make that next start if the Giants were in the playoff hunt — but what would be the point? He’d just be maybe getting injured, and for what?
My counterpoint is this: Carlos Rodon is paid to play baseball, so he should fucking play baseball.
Rodon’s not hurt. He’s not injured. He’s physically as fine as pitchers get at the end of a season. The point of playing sports is to entertain fans, and fans will be much more entertained if Rodon makes that last start than they will if the Giants throw another fucking bullpen game out there.
This is a wild swing towards corporate risk avoidance — the same corporate risk avoidance that means the only movies that get released anymore are about superheroes, which is exhausting — at the expense of what the sport is about. Because I want to see Rodon out there, trying to take the NL lead in strikeouts. It would be cool! I watch baseball to see cool stuff, and that would be a cool thing that I would enjoy.
“Remember that year Rodon was on the Giants before he signed a 5-year deal with the Mariners?” I would ask a fellow Giants fan. “Yeah, man,” the other guy would say. “Led the league in strikeouts.” “They shoulda re-signed him,” I would say. The other guy would shrug. “They needed that 40-man spot to churn through more Quadruple-A guys.” I would concede the point.
I mean, when he’s right, he’s right.
The Giants have already shut down Logan Webb for the season, and he was one of the few players on the team who was actually worth watching for the whole year. Rodon was another. A third, Camilo Doval, is still available out of the bullpen.
The thing is, though, if it’s okay to not pitch during the last series of the year because the games are meaningless, it’s okay to not pitch any game after your team is eliminated from contention. And really, since the whole sport is meaningless anyway, it’s okay to not pitch at all, ever. It doesn’t mean anything, so why put your arm at risk, even a tad? It just makes no sense.
The reason to put your arm at risk, even a tad, is that that’s the point of the sport. It is a customer service business, because you need to deliver a good product or the fans will go home unhappy and won’t come back. The Giants lost some fan interest when they lost Buster Posey, and they lost some fan interest when they played like garbage over several months this year. Every time they actively choose to put an inferior product on the field, they lose a little more. Maybe they’ll get it back next spring. Maybe not.
All I know is this: as a fan, I want to see the best team the Giants can put on the field trying their best to win. Anything else — and not starting Rodon today would count as anything else — means the whole thing pales and fades, drawing closer to irrelevance. I want the game to mean something. That can’t happen if the team doesn’t try.
Dammit I want to see Rodon get the strikeouts to move past Corbin whatshisname. So I can be the other guy in your mythical conversation. Or something. He only needs like what, two? So let him pitch one inning, towel him off and call it good!
Great interview with Carlos Valderrama. The info he provided (like the fact that Pomares had problems seeing at home, and on the road had a pretty good year) is just what we look to you to provide. Outstanding!