At the risk of being melodramatic The Giants gave me joy and hope at a time when I really really needed it and they will be my team for ever. And sorry this has become sort of longer than I originally anticipated.
I was raised mostly in... LOS ANGELES. My dad was in television and the station he worked out even carried the Doyers for a while. I got to met Vin on a few occasions and honestly I didn't even realize how cool or big of a deal it was (Vin Scully is amazing though, great kind person, greatest broadcaster). Anyway, I was not into sports, like, at all. Even with all these cool opportunities. My brother was, but he was a cubs fan as we were born in Chicago. So I grow up into adulthood and move to the east coast for college and have been there ever since. Never been a dedicated fan of any team in any sport really.
Anyway I moved to San Francisco in Oct 2013 for what turned out to be only one year (2013-2014) pursuing a job opportunity that turned out to be fucking terrible for many reasons I don't feel like going into. It was a very difficult time for me and I had few friends and was deeply unsatisfied/stressed out. It was a real existential crisis I even started seeing a therapist and stuff.
I did, however, live in SOMA, and could see the lights of AT&T from my apartment. When we first moved in I pointed to the lights and said to my girlfriend, "you know, when next season starts we should really take advantage of that." Even though I was no sports fan I still had fond memories of going to baseball games with my brother and father (yes, mostly at Dodger Stadium). I always enjoyed the atmosphere without ever having learned to love the game.
So April 2014 comes around and I have been beaten and battered and discouraged by my first 6 months at this job. I've had no time or energy to even begin developing a social life and I'm lonely and deeply worried about my future and all those other sorts of things. I go to a game. It's a revelation. It's the first time I feel genuinely relaxed in 6 months... so I went to another game that same week. This time something starts to click and the game starts making sense and the poetry and the beauty of baseball just infected me. I went to at least one game every single homestand for the rest of the regular season as not only a rookie Giants fan but a rookie baseball fan, almost always sitting in section 315. I made friends at the ballpark, some of whom I'd see again and again and some not. When I am at AT&T there is nothing else in the world. It's simply the best. After falling in love like that for the first time October was just serendipity.
My girlfriend and I moved back east November 2015. Overall it's been very much for the best, but I miss the Giants. My girlfriend has her stuffed Lou Seal I got her on her sitting on her desk and I've got my hat, my orange shirt from one of the friday give aways and a few other trinkets, that's about the only record we have of ever having lived by the Bay. I originally told myself that as a new baseball fan I should try and fall in love with the team where I now live but I just haven't had the heart to even try it. Maybe one day when Posey, Pence, Lincecum, Cain, Bumgarner, Bochy Belt and the others have retired or moved on. But even then I don't know. I'll never have a summer of baseball like I did last year.