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Welcome to Giants Baseball Corner

an independent view of the San Francisco Giants – some reporting, fanposts, history, theorizing about management or strategy – all out of love for the team. I’m not selling anything. Also, I am eight years older than Gabe Kapler, ten years older than Farhan Zaidi and 18 years older than Evan Longoria, eldest veteran on the team.

I’m Karthik, Editor-in-Chief, author and artist. I posted everything here myself and all content is produced by me, unless otherwise credited. I go by “M.T. Karthik” on the radio and in the art world – you can call me Karthik or M.T. or mtk. People bite things from here all the time because they cannot be bothered to credit “Giants Baseball Corner.” or MTK. It’s a lot cooler if you do.

Again, not selling anything, just sharing my opinions. Join me if you like. Please don’t come at me physically if you don’t … it’s still a free country.

2010 World Series Championship – Relief

My word for the first championship in SF was: “relief” (with a tip of the hat to The Freak, The Beard, the Thong and the Rodeo Clown). sigh. finally. We’d won. I was at The Public House when we won the NL pennant:

If you click around in the archives you’ll find hundreds of videos, stills and stories from Giants games over the past dozen years. We were at City Hall for that first championship:

Here’s my video of the 2010 parade after we finally won it all after coming so close at least a half dozen times over the 20 years previous and after nearly losing the team from the city altogether in the year of my first game at Candlestick, 1993. My son – who was three days old when we lost it all to the Angels in ’02 – is here, eight, and we win it all! Sweet interviews with longtime fans in here:

 

2012 Second WS Championship – Affirmation

Prologue – The second one should have been in Buster’s first full season, 2011, but the plate collision took him out. I believed then and do now: that was young Buster’s fault. You’re not supposed to turn until you have possession of the ball for a reason. If you turn and don’t have the ball, then your upper body and eyes are still looking at/for the ball, while your lower body is facing the incoming runner with no real protection. Baseball’s rules are old and specific.

It was not the first nor last of my unpopular opinions. I am not a gadfly or a crank. I’m a mid-50-year-old Giants fan with well-honed feelings about the etiquette and poetry of the game we all love – and I’m a writer. I was a journalist. I expect more from those charged with covering the Giants. So I write about them myself.

This blog has content from the years we didn’t win as well. Here was a game I captured from 2011 – Timmy’s 1,000th strikeout:

Players come and go. Managers come and go. Even bandwagon fans come and go. Fans like me stay until we die. Our opinions are personal and experiential, not handed to us by some digital video channel’s idiotic promotional campaign or ex-player/talking head. We are more authentic.

Eschew sycophantic glad-handing, I say. Be critical.

The motto of this site says: “It isn’t personal, it’s personnel.” I wrote that. I criticize people when they are bad. I avoid coverage that protects the players over the team. I’ve given up on hoping they’ll change, but the fawning TV and radio personalities that aren’t journalists need to stay out of my way – I’m trying to watch the game and write about our team.

Ugh. Bad thoughts should be washed away and so I turn your attention to the second part of the GBC site motto, written by our WS champion LOOGY Javier Lopez, “Stay focused on the relentless flow of the positive river.” Which is what he said when we won it all in 2012.

To return to 2012, we were forced to play the entire playoffs without our most-consistent hitter of the season, the MVP of the 2012 All-Star Game! He tested positive for PEDs in August, admitted he hid it from us and was sent on a 50-game suspension. Against all odds and expectations, we released Melky Cabrera and still won. We swept the Tigers.

This one is my favorite. Verlander, turning, watching the second Panda smash go out, saying, “Wow!” and the greatest strikeout in Giants history: Romo throwing a fastball to Miguel Cabrera, the best hitter in all baseball, and getting him looking to end the World Series?!?! It’s forever emblazoned in my mind!

Tips to Romo, to the WS MVP 3-Dinger Panda, to the NLCS MVP the Blockbuster, Scutaro in the rain and Buntmaster Barry Zito’s Championship Performance.

SFG Productions included my son and me among the fans they followed throughout the playoffs, which was cool. They came to Oakland to film us before that amazing Zito outing … whew … You can see us at the 10:00 mark in the video below:

Mathematically, we could have had Melky back, it would have been legal by MLB rules. and. we. didn’t. And still, we won. And we swept the AL team. This made my word for the 2012 Championship, “affirmation.“

I filmed the parade again. Here’s Buster and Panda:

2014: Third WS in Five Years – Madbum’s Championship

#TheLegendOfMadBum  … go check that hashtag on twitter. It’s mostly me. Tips to Hunter Pence for powerful motivation and energy, to Ishikawa’s walkoff homer and the crazy 18-inning game in Washington and its heroes Petit, Panik and Belt.

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