Giants success would surprise 12-year-old me

 They were one of the worst organizations in sports, a terrible team with awful management, playing in the worst stadium in America in front of an indifferent fan base.

Losing. Always losing.

Now they’re one of the best organizations in sports, with a spectacular stadium and a devoted, loving group of fans who expect the best while selling out every game.

Had you told the 12-year-old version of me that the San Francisco Giants would be anything like they are now, he would have considered you as dumb as John Travolta’s character, Vinnie Barbarino, on his favorite TV show, “Welcome Back, Kotter."

But here we are.

If you’re following the San Francisco Giants – and this time of year, after their championships in 2010 and 2012, who in Northern California isn’t? – realize this: You are living in the golden era. Enjoy it, because it won’t likely last, although stranger things have happened.

Stranger things? How about this: Having the team sold to owners who planned to move it thousands of miles away (to Toronto in 1976, to Tampa, Florida, in 1992), only to be saved at the last minute by civic-minded businessmen willing to lose money.

Or this: Being unpopular enough that the radio station in my hometown dropped them in favor of the Oakland A’s, leaving the Giants on a station that went off the air when the sun set.

Or even this: Going from when I was 8 years old and discovered that I liked baseball until I was 25 and the sports editor of the Daily Republic without making the postseason. Ever. While having a winning record in just four of those 17 years.

That the San Francisco Giants are now a prime franchise in sports, with a beautiful waterfront ballpark filled with 40,000-plus devoted fans every game while the nation’s fans watch every game on TV is beyond what anyone could have expected in 1975. Or 1985. Or even 1995. This is the equivalent of waking up one day and seeing President Kardashian and finding that Yugos are the most popular luxury car in America.

When I became a Giants fan – around the time I lost my first bet, a $1 wager with my dad that they would win their division (he got the other five teams) – the idea that someday the team would have a group of likeable star players and that Giants T-shirts and caps would be evident all over Northern California was unthinkable. That baseball experts would shake their heads in wonder at how they always shine when the pressure is the biggest was beyond possible.

As the Giants play the St. Louis Cardinals in the National League Championship Series, much of the region will nervously sit in front of TVs, hoping that Buster Posey, Madison Bumgarner, Hunter Pence and Pablo Sandoval can do it again. Fans will trust that the team is destined to win a championship every other year. Games at AT&T Park will present a thrilling postcard to the rest of the country of a city that loves its team.

I’ll enjoy it all. And shake my head that the team I saw with 1,500 other fans in miserable Candlestick Park several times in the 1970s is now the gold standard in baseball.

I still quote their team motto in 1984, when they lost 96 games with a roster that included  journeyman players Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper: "C’mon, Giants, hang in there!"

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.