Walnut Creek Mom: My Life With The Giants

A Walnut Creek mom celebrates the Giants’ win Monday by remembering how she learned to love baseball by following the Giants with her brothers, journeying through the joys and heartbreak in their own lives.

By Sharon Muhlenkort

My Life With The Giants

The San Francisco Giants have quickly defeated the Texas Rangers to win the 2010 World series, taking four out of five games in the best of seven classic series.

Let me repeat that, because I can hardly believe it myself.

The Giants have won the World Series.

I say quietly because after all the excitement, all the hoopla, all the baseball parties and the dreams, it is now here, and instead of jumping up and down, and screaming as I have in so many other games, I found myself sitting quietly with tears streaming down my face. My boys, 13 and 9, who also play baseball and have been caught up in all the excitement with me, just looked at me, mid yelp, with concern.

“Are you OK, mom?”

“What’s the matter?’

But I could not put into words the depth of emotion that snuck up on me.

I was 6 years old when the Giants lost the World Series to the New York Yankees after going into the seventh game, tied at three and three. I had watched my brother Mark, age 10, and Jeff, age 7, listen to every game they could all season on their little transistor radios. I listened, too, and caught the bug. They had already started using me as the runner in the middle as they played pickle. It wouldn’t be for awhile that I would be good enough to catch, too, and then try to pick them off as well.

Believe it or not, I would eventually get pretty good at it and play on a softball team myself in high school. But that season, at age 6, I was listening and feeling the excitement. I became familiar with the guys on the Giants team much like I remember my own friends from those years. Now, 48 seasons later, I fondly remember Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, the Alou brothers, Pitchers Don Larsen and Juan Marachal. I also remember my brother Mark in agony, as only a 10-year-old boy could be, over each “Ball” pitched by Juan Marachal. I vividly remember my brother with tears streaming down his face, also, over a wild pitch at a crucial moment in the game.

Like my boys, tonight, I didn’t understand his tears either.

Then there was Bat Day circa 1964. My father, a laborer at Chevron with no love for baseball himself, had promised to take us three kids to the game as a reward for good report cards. We were all equally thrilled to be going because going to the ball game was a rare treat, but going on Bat Day, was close to a miracle.

The night before the game, my parents had been to a dance at the Slav Hall in the Diamond District in Oakland with other Midwestern transplants. Perhaps my father had one too many drinks, which was quite rare for him, because he was sick that Sunday morning: Irish Flu kind of sick.

As you might imagine, we were all disappointed, but we needn’t have been. My dad kept his promise and drove us to the game, opening the driver side door occasionally to vomit along the way. He drove us to the “Stick” in time to each receive our coveted free bat, and got us seated in the bleachers with glove in had, ready for that homer from Mays or McCovey. Then, he went back to the car and slept for the duration. We won our bats, and my dad won our respect for a promise kept when it was easier not to.

That bat was the only piece of baseball equipment I owned myself, even though I was now a top pick in my brothers’ pick-up games, or game of 500 with the neighbors in the street: But always with a borrowed glove. No, we weren’t that poor, but my mother was old-fashioned and didn’t approve of my love of playing the game.

She didn’t want to encourage it, especially when she learned that I secretly harbored the dream of playing in a girl’s professional league when I grew up. Perhaps I would have never played on my high school team if she hadn’t died of cancer two years before. I still had to borrow a glove though, as that rule my dad would not break for me, though he did let me play. I won the trophy for the highest batting average (362) my sophomore year.

Almost 50 years have passed, since that Fall of ‘62 when I first got the bug. I still play for Camp Blue at Lair of the Bear, UC Berkeley’s Family Camp each summer, one or two games is all. Not enough to satisfy the desire. But I get to watch my boys play, and follow the Giants. I was there the night Barry Bonds broke Mark McGwire’s single-season home run record, and while the asterisk has diminished some of the joy, it has not diminished the memory of the evening, which was more about the camaraderie of all those fans just like me in the stands. So many highs, so many painful memories, and so many games that were unremarkable but good just the same.

Good-enough games. Like life. Good-enough days, good-enough effort, and yes, some painful memories, too. Some were unremarkable, perhaps, but good just the same. The San Francisco Giants have won the World Series after five decades of trying. The tears are for all the joy and pain and good-enough days and games that we have lived and played.

How am I celebrating? I am remembering.