The baseball season is long. Very long. And because it's so long, it often takes awhile to get fully into it. Sometimes, like the 2000-2003 seasons, you're into the season from the get go. Other times, like the past two seasons, you can never quite get into it, turned off by mediocrity and losing. And sometimes, like this season, you don't really care that much and then, blammo, something happens to spark your interest and then manic depression catches the soul. It's like reading a long book that you're only kind of mildly interested in and then, one day, you put the book down and realize you can't wait to pick the book up again. Or like in Revenge of the Sith where you're kind of bored and once more irritated with Lucas until the last hour or so when the Jedi start getting wiped out and all of a sudden you wake up and start thinking "My God, here's the Star Wars movie I've sat through seven hours or so of crap to get to."

Well, for us, this past week was the week that did it for us. We are now fully committed, fully into this season and fully about to purchase our tickets for the roller coaster ride that is the pennant race. We're ready for the ups and down of the season, the nail biting, and the compulsive scoreboard watching that comes with the pennant race. Bring it.

Image from Michael Doeff's Flickr account

And yeah, winning will do that. But it's not just the fact that they won five out of six, it's how they won it. The Giants played with whatever the baseball equivalent of Joga Bonito is: they hit in the clutch, played great D, stole bases, moved runners along, pulled off a suicide squeeze, and played with an intensity not seen in these climes since Jeff Kent prowled at second base. Emblematic of the team's new found fighting spirit was in Sunday's game when brittle Ray Durham went in to home plate hard and gave Mike Piazza a shoulder, causing Mike to drop the ball. Yeah, Finley screwed up while running and should have scored, but just the fact Ray sacrificed his body like that shows they're playing with intensity.

How much joy does a five game winning streak bring? We're even okay that they lost the last game on Sunday. Four game sweeps of division rivals is really hard to do and frankly, we were happy they just didn't split the series, something that would have been typical of the team so far. Hell, we're even at peace with Armando blowing yet another save. It happens. Even the mighty Mariano Rivera blows a save now and then. Of course, it helps that we missed the last couple of innings and didn't know who won or how until later that night, but well, there you have it.

Up this week for the Orange and Black are away games against two patsies of the NL, the Nationals and the Pirates, followed by a home stand against the Nats. Here's where we really see if this is indeed the '06 Giants 2.0. If that current run the Giants were on was nothing but a mirage, we'll find out soon enough. This team has had an annoying habit of playing down to their competition and there's not much lower you can go with the Buccos and the Nats. Anything less than a 4-2 road trip will be a disappointment.

We may have hopped on board the train, but we still have refundable tickets. Football (both American and otherwise) starts up soon enough and in a few weeks we'll start hitting up the fantasy football books. We want to commit fully to this team and this season, but we can be swayed otherwise. Ask our mothers.