Dave laments (weep Dave):

it would be nearly impossible to write about anything but
the Giants. Anything but Game Six when the champagne was on ice and we were making plans for ticker tape parades and reminding each other to behave magnanimously when dealing with our tanned, blonde and pitiful neighbors
to the south. Sure when we saw Travolta and Michael Eisner in his Mickey Mouse t-shirt, we (like anyone outside of Edison Field) wished them nothing but ill. But for the rest of them, those Angels and their fans, well they were a fun team to beat. No hard feelings.

I had been sure for years that I was beyond all this. I had systematically taken the heart out of sports, especially baseball. My own short-lived playing career was most notable for a feverish fear of the ball (I hit the dirt on low and outside change-ups) and a decades-long, haunting streak of repeatedly allowing (or maybe inviting, my shrink suggests) a steady stream of hard and softballs to be
driven into my groin. By the waning years of my career on the diamond I was greatly slowed by the grating metal of the Ford Escort hood that I along with my pediatrician and other concerned parties had refashioned into a pair of game-day underpants.

So one would think, just based on my forever altered gait, I would write on anything today, anything other than the victory ring that was wrested from my city's clutches. If the early years didn't do it, I was sure that that the later
ones had. For several years I worked as a sports reporter for a Bay Area television station. One summer I attended nearly a hundred major league baseball games and then stuck my microphone into the mix for a never-ending drone of post-game cliches. Nothing can take the fan out of person faster
than ritualistically listening to the participants of a professional sporting event speak of playing one game at a time and leaving it all on the field. During one hopeful spurt, I decided that instead of going after the usual mumbo jumbo, I would get creative and ask the Giant's players for their picks for best picture in an upcoming Academy Awards. One player said he had no idea what I was talking about and Giant's star of the moment Kevin Mitchell paused for several seconds and then came up with the thoughtful selection of Miami Vice. I may have been the only person associated with baseball who wasn't the least bit surprised, when later that season, Mitchell shocked viewers by accidentally catching a deep fly to left field with his bare hand.

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