Parade

One of my earliest baseball memories is getting taken to see the victory parade for the Oakland A’s winning the World Series in 1972, their first championship win in the Bay Area. Today I got to see the equivalent event on the opposite side of the bay, as seven of us rode down from Davis to see the San Francisco Giants’ victory parade, taking a minivan down to the Pleasant Hill BART station and riding the train into the City. I suspect the 2010 incarnation of this celebratory ritual was far bigger than the 1972 event; San Francisco city officials today did not have a crowd estimate but believe this was the largest parade or civic event in the city’s history.

We didn’t actually see that much, there being about 20 ranks of people between us and the parade floats. At right was the typical view I had from our spot on Market and McAllister. We could barely see the motorized cable cars passing by, labeled fore and aft with the names of the two players each were bearing. I’m fairly sure I spotted Cody Ross and Matt Cain, and had a good sighting of a busload of trainers and physiotherapists and another of the front office staff, accountants and all, but that was about it.

We had no chance of hearing any of the speeches, being probably a third of a mile from where we needed to be at that point, but after lunch grabbed at a gyro place across from the closed-for-the-day SF Public Library, Pica and I went towards Civic Center Plaza and did some sketching. At left is the sea of orange-and-black humanity stretching forth towards City Hall, and at right is one fan sporting a Willie Mays jersey.

A sea of happy people, dancing in orange-and-black. I have to wonder about how this event will change the character of San Francisco. This may be subtle, perhaps a new aura of confidence about the city. Certainly the city now has a claim to be a baseball town of the first rank, which it never quite could before it won its first World Series, though the team has had a fantastic sense of tradition.

Alas, I can’t help but worry about next year. Others are pondering the same — the most pressing question seems to be who’s going to play shortstop — and the front office has many decisions to make soon. The Giants’ awesome rookie catcher Buster Posey in his speech today that we didn’t hear, apparently said something like we’ll celebrate for a week or two, but then we gotta start putting the work in for next year! Baseball is always a cycle.