There was something to be said for growing up in the 1960s and only being able to hear San Francisco Giants exhibition games on my transistor radio. I felt all the hope of spring without actually seeing Jim Ray Hart butchering ground balls at third base or the parade of inadequate starting pitchers behind Juan Marichal.
When Street & Smith's baseball annual had the Giants picked to win the National League, I knew everything I needed to know about the club and the glorious summer that was surely ahead.
It seems like only yesterday that this space was devoted to a full exploration of the final few moves the 2010 Giants need make to set a winning roster of position players to go with what should be the National League's best pitching staff.
After watching the Giants play the Oakland A's under the lights in Cactus League action on television to night, though, a thought that felt like a sledgehammer to the head hit me.
Juan Uribe and Edgar Renteria are built like middle infielders on a 35-and-over softball team, likely with only slightly more range. The other veterans at the core of whatsome are willing to believe was a lineup that could win 85-88 games are actually guys past prime years that really weren't all much to begin with.
Bengie Molina lined a shot off of pitcher Jason Jennings' glove. The ball rolled, literally rolled, to an infielder. His toss to first base beat the slow-footed catcher by two steps. Oh, that's right! Molina's not just slow. He can barely move. When he's on base as a key run-producer he's a double down the line and a single to the gap away from scoring.
Love Uribe! Really. It's just hard to put a great deal of faith in an infielder with love handles like those that haunt this old writer in the mirror every morning while getting dressed. Instead of relishing the memory of his magic 2009 performance with the stick, the vision of him getting bigger and bigger and bigger was deflating, especially after he booted a routine grounder.
John Bowker's the hottest hitter in camp? John Bowker? Home Run Bowker? The guy Giants fans insist provides power -- based on one homer every 32 big league at-bats over 448 plate appearances?
Two thoughts came to mind as the station-to-station attack -- that lacks speed and power -- looked a lot worse on TV than it did in my mind's eye. Well, three thoughts, really came to find.
The initial thought was that the Giants better do something quickly to shore up the inner defense or the pitching staff will mutiny by June. Doesn't matter where the defensive upgrades come from, but they need to make them.
Second, is it possible for an old team with no speed to add score more runs by adding Aubrey Huff and Mark DeRosa? Probably not. The defense will allow more runs than those two will provide.
Third, let's say the MLB Network's Dan Plesac is wrong and the Giants won't actually win the NL West. Let's say they'll go great guns and still wind up 82-80. How much worse would the big club be with a little infusion of youth, with a little effort to catch lightning in a bottle? Add a key defender to cover some ground and runners to steal a few bases and put a little pressure on the other team?
Man, the TV showed us what the old Giants are going to give us.
Maybe it'd be worth considering rolling the dice to put together a younger team.
Some folks wretch at the notion of even keeping Buster Posey on the roster unless he catches every game, all season long. They won't like this idea that became increasingly intriguing as the 2010 Giants did a remarkable impression of the 2009 Giants on TV.
The idea makes sense, though, since teams need to win with pitching AND defense. Even Plesac knows teams don't win with good pitching an inferior defense.
Realizing that Brendan Crawford's hitting .192 in camp and that he's played just 138 minor league games, the idea of the 6-foot-2, 200-pound, 23-year-old shortstop covering the left side of the infield seemed...appealing.
He's a left-handed hitter and he'd give the club a legit youth movement on the left side of the infield along with Pablo Sandoval. When Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain and the rest are nursing a 2-1 lead (or trail 2-0 entering the sixth), it might be nice to for them to have an energetic kid shortstop to make up for the range that Sandoval and Uribe lack.
Don't start with the "Oh, he has to be playing in Fresno" hoo-hah.
A sad-sack Milwaukee Brewers outfit drafted Robin Yount in the third round in 1973 and had him starting at shortstop at age 19, in 1975. Nobody's saying Crawford's going to be a Hall of Famer, but the Brewers rushed a kid shortstop with fewer credentials than Crawford has and that kid wound up in Cooperstown.
The Giants have kept Crawford with the big club all spring for some reason. Somebody likes him. Let's say Crawford struggles with the stick, platoons with Renteria, and fields his position really well. Would his presence on the field be more or less aggravating than whatever Renteria will provide in 2010?
Taking a good, long look at the Giants convinced me that Posey needs to catch 3 games a week in the bigs. The impact on Molina is irrelevant. The guy's a veteran presence who fizzled late last summer. He's not gotten faster or younger.
The club signed Molina to play until Posey's ready to catch. Well, let's just speed the process with the focus on Posey and not Molina. And, Posey should play 2, 3 games at first base -- meaning Huff plays wherever that puts him if it's necessary to keep his bat in the lineup.
Imagine the vets really surprise -- that they over-achieve. Compare that to what folks figure Posey and Crawford can do if they perform well beyond expectations. The latter would be magical and the former could leave us wondering where another season went.
The Giants didn't sign DeRosa, Huff and Molina to give up on them in spring training. Fans, however, don't have to worry about justifying salaries and signing bonuses. Fans pay to watch the most entertaining, effective club the Giants can put together. And, maybe, that means going much younger.
There's room for a young outfielder. I floated the idea of keeping Darren Ford.
He's an unproven talent lacking big league experience at age 24. Fans seem to love Andres Torres, the 32-year-old speedster with a whopping 164 big league games under his belt.
If fans dig Torres, why not see what a novice with the same skill set can do -- and send Eugenio Velez, Kevin Frandsen, Fred Lewis, etc. out.
The pitching staff is young and strong now. We don't know what it will be like in 2012 or 2016. This is the only season that fans can be certain the pitching staff will begin in quite this sterling condition.
Being a bit of a dreamer makes it easy to turn off the TV and think, "Man, there's got to be a more a more entertaining, athletic crew out there behind those pitchers..."
As the online lynch mob is formed and the proper slurs are aimed in this direction, keep in mind that rejecting this notion out of hand is also offering defense of and support for putting 2010 hopes and dreams in the hands of Renteria, Molina, Nate, Geno and "Home Run" Bowker.
Fans are supposed to be wide-eyed dreamers who believe in miracles at this time of the year. There was one miracle-maker on the diamond in black and orange Wednesday night -- and Sandoval can't carry this outfit all summer long.
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