Dodger Blue (The Pain of Watching the Giants Winning)

By Mitch Maldonado:

San Francisco Giant: 2012 World Series Champions. That sentence is still hard to read. I was born and bred a Dodgers fan, true and blue. Despite growing up in the Pacific Northwest, I knew where my allegiance was, with the boys in blue.  As young as I am (24 years old), being a Dodgers fan hasn’t been the easiest.   I mean, the last time we won the Series was in the year I was born; with the epic story of Kirk Gibson hobbling up to the plate and launching one of the right field fence.

Since then, our championships have been slim to none.  In that same stretch of time, the Giants weren’t having much more luck in October. They had a couple visits to the main stage, but couldn’t quite seal the deal, which kept the rivalry between the Bay City and the City of the Angels lively, yet pretty even. That is, until a few years ago.

Seemingly out of nowhere, SF made their way up the ladder and beat out the Rangers in 2010. This was just the start to key players like Lincecum and Posey.  Now, Giants fans had a World Series ring to hang over Dodger’s fans.  2011 rolled on, with neither team even making it to the playoffs.

Then came the 2012 season. Both teams had promising seasons with emerging stars coming from both sides. Pablo Sandoval (Panda) and Melky Cabrera were heating up the bats (that is until Melky got popped for steroids), meanwhile Matt Kemp was heating it up as an MVP candidate with the support of Kershaw and Either in his lineup.

2012 was going to be our year. We had a solid spot in the NL west and Kemp (now fully recovered from his early-season injury) was lighting it up! In an attempt to beef up the lineup, the Dodgers make some huge post-trade-deadline moves. In a few swift moves we acquired Shane Victorino, Adrian Gonzalez, Hanely Ramirez and Josh Beckett. The Dodgers had an all star lineup with these acquisitions, on par with the moves made by the Miami Heat or the LA Lakers.  But despite the all star lineup, the slump began. You can blame it on choking at the end of the season, not finding their team chemistry, but any way you slice it, my Dodgers fell, and fell hard.

The complete revamping of their lineup led to them losing their number one spot in the NL west, and even out of contention for the wild card. Meanwhile, the Giants are just doing their thing, steady and consistent. Finally landing 8 games behind the Giants, the Dodgers, and their fans, hang their heads. The Giants got the better of us.

As the post season comes around, obviously my team is out of the equation.  So as I always enjoy watching the post season, “my team” soon becomes ANYTHING besides the Giants.

Despite going up against the red hot Reds and Matt Holliday’s Cardinals, the Giants prevailed. I thought, “they can’t really make it all the way again can they?” Melky was still out of the lineup (from his suspension) and the Tigers had not only arguably the best pitcher in the game right now (Justin Verlander), a heavy hitter in Prince Fielder but also the Triple Crown winner Miguel Cabrera. There’s no way. Tigers got this.

Much to my disappointment, watching game 4, in the pouring rain, for the second time in 3 years, the Giants come out on top again. Everything in me says to hate this victory. My team fell and the rivals rose to the top.

Despite the ingrained hatred and rivalry, I have to give the Giants their props, they rose to the occasion: Panda knocking 3 home runs in a single game (a feat only accomplished by a select few hall of famers); Pence coming alive at the plate and Posey just doing his job did the trick. All the smack talk in the world couldn’t deny the outstanding games that these players had. Believe me, there was a lot of smack talk.

I have a good friend in Phoenix that is a hard core Giants fan, and of course, we jaw back and forth about our rivalry, including throwing each other’s team bearing debit cards off the table. But this year, he had the upper hand. I could say all the ‘roid jokes I want, doesn’t deny their championship. In fact, the moment they won, I had both a tweet and Facebook post rubbing the Giants’ victory in my face.

Like I said, I have to give props where props are due. Giants played well, they did their homework and played hard. But next year is around the corner, and with a star studded lineup like my Dodgers have, we’ll see who comes out on top this year. We’ll see. #DefeatSF #BleedDodgerBlue