At a luncheon before spring training this year, Oakland General Manager Sandy Alderson took his annual cheap shot at his Bay-Area rivals from San Francisco.
“There’s nothing more boring than golf on radio,” Alderson said. “Except the Giants on television.”
Almost nine months later, the A’s finished with the worst record in baseball while the Giants completed a dramatic worst-to-first season and are headed to the National League playoffs.
You can call the Giants overachievers. You can call them rejects. But one thing the Giants definitely are not is boring.
The Fabulous Baker Boys, guided by manager Dusty Baker, continue their improbable season Tuesday when they take on Florida in Pro Player Stadium in the start of the NL divisional playoffs. The Giants don’t have a whole lot going for them outside of Barry Bonds and the best one-two closing punch in baseball in Rod Beck and Roberto Hernandez. It’s an enigmatic team, doing just enough to get by at times, but it has 45 comeback victories to its credit.
“One minute, you’re swearing at us, the next minute, you’re loving us,” Baker said. “One minute, you’re kicking your TV. The next minute, you’re turning the volume up.”
Florida and San Francisco are complete opposites in their approach to putting a winning team on the field. While San Francisco did it with a relatively modest payroll and only one superstar player in Bonds, the Marlins went out and spent $110 million for free agents Alex Fernandez, Moises Alou, Bobby Bonilla, Jim Eisenreich and Dennis Cook, as well as veteran manager Jim Leyland.
It didn’t take long before owner Wayne Huizenga admitted he bit off more than he could chew and will be forced to sell the team because of the millions of dollars he was losing. But at least Huizenga’s money didn’t go to waste like Jerry Reinsdorf’s, and with Fernandez, Kevin Brown and Al Leiter in the rotation, the Marlins have as good a chance as any team to upset the Braves in the postseason.
But first they have to get by the Giants, who rank only 11th in the NL in hitting and ninth in pitching but compiled 90 victories nonetheless.
“They’re solid players,” said Atlanta’s Fred McGriff. “They’re not flashy. They’re not your big studs. But they make the plays, and they’ve been around a while.”
The series will be a reunion of sorts with Bonds, Bonilla and Marlins manager Jim Leyland together again.
They were the three main components of those Pirates teams of the early 1990s that lost to Atlanta in three straight NLCS from 1990-92. Bonds’ postseason failures have become something of an October legend. He hit .191 with only one home run in the postseason, marring his reputation as perhaps the best player in the game. But Bonilla is no stranger to postseason failure himself. He was with Baltimore last year when the Orioles fell apart against the Yankees in the ALCS. He went 1 for 20, getting a hit only in his final at-bat. Bonilla is a lifetime .190 hitter in postseason play.
The real key to the Marlins offense is Alou, the former Expo who quitely has become one of the most productive outfielders in the game. Bonilla believes Alou, who hit .292 with 115 RBIs, deserves mention as an MVP candidate.
