A Giant Surprise: Pablo Sandoval Making San Francisco Giants Relevant Again

(Photo by Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)

Over the last five years, being a San Francisco Giants fan has been about as pleasant as getting a root canal.

We’ve watched an aging, shell-of-his-former-self Barry Bonds hobble towards the all-time home run record at the expense of a competitive team. We’ve watched general manager Brian Sabean lavish ridiculous contracts onto the likes of Omar Vizquel and Dave Roberts.

And if those contracts were ridiculous, what adjective should we use to describe the 126-million dollar contract given to Barry Zito?

Guh.

For whatever reason, the franchise has had a hard time finding balance. During the Bonds years, the team often had one of the most feared offenses in the game. If Bonds wasn’t hurting you, then Will Clark, Matt Williams or Jeff Kent probably was.

But there was little pitching to back up the sluggers, so the team was never quite able to make it over the hump.

In recent years, the team has gone down the opposite path. Young hurlers like 2008 NL Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum and the hard-luck Matt Cain appeared at 24 Willie Mays Plaza just in time to watch any semblance of a respectable offense leave the park quicker than a Bonds homerun flew into McCovey Cove.

Watching Giants games from 2006-2008 often made me think of a line from Bob Uecker’s incomparable Harry Doyle character in the Major League movies.

“Hello fans,” Doyle says as he drunkenly watches the Cleveland Indians get beat again. “Welcome back to Major League Baseball…sort of.”

In 2009, despite no major upgrades to the team’s offense during the off season, the team has become a dark-horse contender for the National League wild card. They are still heavily tilted towards pitching, but suddenly, it seems they find a way to get just enough hitting to be competitive every game.

Even if they don’t win the wild card, for the first time in several years, the team is actually relevant and watchable.

The biggest reason for the team’s new-found watchability comes from a man who has affectionately been given the nickname “Kung Fu Panda.”

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