We totally missed this, but yesterday was the 10-year anniversary of probably the most famous home run in Giants history since "the Giants Win the Pennant! The Giants Win the Pennant" home run, the Brian Johnson home run. Sure, there's been more important one's and there's all those Barry home runs, but nothing brings a smile to a Giants fan more than that home run. How could it not? It was an extra innings game deep in an improbable pennant race against the hated Dodgers, hit by some random dude just acquired a few weeks before, and it came right after the late and great Rod Beck's derring-do in getting out of a bases loaded no-out jam. It was an epic ending to an epic game in an epic season. Well, except for the end of it. Since everybody else is reminiscing, we thought we would too.
We were at work that day and trying to pay attention to the game while also working, not so easy back in those prehistoric days of '97 when there was no radio feed, just some ESPN Gamecast that was slow and clunky and very capable of slowing down your entire computer as it updated, something that wasn't so cool when your boss occasionally sat down in your cubicle to check in on your work. Whenever it looked like something exciting was about to happen, we ran downstairs to our friend's cubicle who was listening to the game on her radio. Sometime in the tenth, as Beck started to get himself into a pickle of a jam, our friend called us to let us know something was up and we just gave up on our work and ran downstairs to listen. By that time, half of her department had the game on, listening as Rodney got himself in and out of trouble. When Eddie Murray hit into the double play, ending the inning, several of us yelled out loud and cheered. By that time, I was too wrapped up in the game and basically spent the rest of the game in our friend's department, too stressed out to go back up to work. When Johnson hit his home run, we didn't jump, didn't shout. We just gave a long sigh of relief and went back to our desk while wearing one, big huge smile.
It's moments like that that makes us love baseball so much.
