Giants' Parade Offers Sweet Smell of Improbable Championship

SAN FRANCISCO -- They came to the home upon the hill, hundreds and hundreds of thousands bedecked in orange, their cheeks slightly sunburned, their mouths still agape. It was as if the Chinese New Year and Pride Parades had occurred on the same fine day, only it was even better.

It was the loveliest trophy in all of sports, sparkling under a brilliant and unseasonably warm November sun. It was a crowd that seemed to stretch from the steps of the Civic Center all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge. It was Bruce Bochy and his big head, bigger and grayer than ever the manager would joke, telling that crowd "we do apologize for the torture," and the ground trembling from the subsequent roar.

It was Juan Uribe, ringleader of the famously loose clubhouse, taking the microphone Wednesday and uttering one simple syllable. "Uuuuu ..." he'd say, and that crowd, snaking all the way to Coit Tower now (or so it seemed), knew exactly how to respond: "Ribeeee!" It was such a fine, poetic serenade linking this cosmopolitan city to its colorfully eccentric world champion baseball team.

It was Edgar Renteria needing only to smile to spark an even greater howl. "MVP! MVP" yelled the crowd, now extending well into Oakland. Not a single Giant hit 30 home runs, or drove in 90 runs all season. Renteria, the MVP of the world champion San Francisco Giants (still kind of trips off the tongue, yes?), might retire, or he might not find any takers for his service next season, and isn't that just a perfect metaphor for this team that could?


It was those outstanding Giants' pitchers who had spent the last couple months handcuffing and baffling batters. Their personalities could not be more different, another reason these Giants captivated this diverse city, but here is where the dominance began, in these nonpareil arms. Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Madison Bumgarner and closer Brian Wilson combined for a minute 1.41 World Series ERA, a large reason the Giants needed only five games to defeat the Texas Rangers in the 106th Fall Classic.

"I'm kind of having a mini heart attack. Not sure what it's from, maybe the electricity in the crowd, maybe the smell of Prop 19," Wilson told the crowd, some of whom were hanging from trees and streetlights or swaying atop bare shoulders and grooving to the championship beat. The ballot measure aimed at legalizing marijuana had been defeated just hours earlier, on Election Day, but a distinctly sweet aroma still filled the air, and if you didn't know better you might think this is how success smelled.

"I'm kind of having a mini heart attack. Not sure what it's from, maybe the electricity in the crowd, maybe the smell of Prop 19."
-- Giants closer Brian Wilson Earlier, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, attune to his audience, said Wilson -- or, more to the point, Wilson's beard -- could make a fine future mayor. "I'm not sure I'm up for that job, but I know a man who is," Wilson replied. "I only have three words: Where's The Machine?"

More roars deep enough to shake the streets of Haight-Ashbury, because as any true Giants fan knows, the leather-masked S&M Machine is as much of a mascot to this irreverent group as the cuddly Lou Seal.

It was Lincecum, always the smallest kid on any team, having twice outpitched the great Cliff Lee, the quirky, long-haired Timmy supplanting the surly Barry Bonds as the face of the Giants; and it was Matt Cain, the Giant longer than anyone else, finishing with a divine 0.00 postseason ERA; and it was Bumgarner, a good ol' boy from North Carolina who failed to make the team out of spring training, now roaming territory reserved for icons like Gaylord Perry and John "The Count" Montefusco.

It was Buster Posey, the delightful rookie catcher who, when informed not every season ends like this, responded, "Why not?" Indeed, why not? Most of the young Giants are locked up for the next few years, and general manager Brian Sabean shrewdly refused to trade his four rawboned, homegrown pitchers for bats while the team recovered from the Bonds years.

Posey, his choirboy practicality the perfect complement to Lincecum's free spirit, told the crowd to enjoy this party today, tomorrow, for a week, maybe even a month. "Then let's get back to work and make another run at it," he pounded the podium and shouted, to cheers that came from Inner Sunset.

And, of course, it had to be Aubrey Huff, the veteran whose childlike fervor lightened the load of a team not expected to do much. Mocked by other kids in his formative years for thinking he'd ever make it to the major leagues, Huff began wearing a red thong under his uniform weeks ago, and when he took the stage and said, "I've got a little present for you," the crowd went more than a little nuts.

Huff reached into his jeans, fumbled around, fumbled some more like the character in Zoolander, keeping it G-rated, then ripped out the slip of red panty and waved it around. "Nailed it!" he yelled, a slogan that ought to replace the well-worn "torture." Maybe the thong would go to the Hall of Fame, Huff said, maybe he'd just wear it next year in spring training. The cheers rocked the Marina.

It was some way to celebrate the crushing of a 56-year hex, a remarkable and one-of-a-kind ceremony for a one-of-a-kind city. There weren't any overblown egos on this team, no outrageous contracts to weight it down. (Barry Zito, remember, was left off the playoff roster despite his excessive paychecks, and he was a gracious teammate despite being benched.) For all their wild and crazy antics, unique personalities and waiver wire-claims, it should be remembered that this team more than anything played hard and, as Bochy and Sabean both noted, respected the game, their opponents, each other and, certainly, the fans who began cramming the city streets at dawn and never stopped showing their deafening approval.

"San Francisco is a baseball town," Sabean said, and it sure did prove that Wednesday, the city sidewalks packed 50 deep by schoolchildren and business folks who all called in sick with Giants fever. Against a turquoise sky, the confetti resembled snow flakes as it rained down on the rowdy but still family-friendly street bash that, officials said, attracted more than a million people. There were marching bands and floats, furry mascots and dancing freaks, dignitaries and drag queens, streetcars and snazzy convertibles -- hardly the type of parade that followed this very route 52 years ago when the New York Giants migrated to the Bay Area, to begin baseball anew.

Down Montgomery Street came bicycling pandas honoring infielder Pablo Sandoval, more SF novelty. Up Market Street stood an impenetrable wall of human beards, some real, some fake, and Wilson kept jumping off his clanging trolley to high-five his bearded groupies, a scene that could only happen in SF.

Sitting atop their parents' shoulders, kids craned for glimpses of their heroes as the procession moved glacially toward the Civic Center. The young ones heard stories of what it was like to be a depressed Giants fan in '62, in '89, in '02, of being wrapped in a blanket in miserably windy Candlestick Park, hot dog wrappers flying in the face, or sitting alone in the long-gone Seal Stadium. One man carried with him a piece of concrete shaken from the Stick by the earthquake in the '89 World Series.

It was Willie Mays, bringing down the echoes as he rode in the back of a vintage car. The Say Hey Kid, now 79, was on the last Giants team to win a World Series, in 1954 when the New York Giants called Manhattan's Polo Grounds home. The presence of Mays at Giants games throughout the decades was a humbling reminder of how cruel and precarious the sport could be, until now.


"Not a superstar among them," Mays told a TV reporter. "They're just 25 guys pulling for each other, like baseball should be."

It was like old times, Willie McCovey, still fondly known as "Stretch," riding in a separate car and no longer having to answer why, after 52 years in Northern California, the Giants couldn't win a single World Series title. McCovey's line drive in Game 7 of the 1962 World Series, a pitch he crushed harder than seemed possible, no longer rings as the defining moment in Giant futility.

It was Freddy Sanchez, author of all those October doubles, being mobbed as the procession approached Grant, the human globs now hundreds deep, glowing orange everywhere, bodies leaning out every possible window and waving, black streamers cascading from the sky, freak flags flying. Sanchez, as he often does, gave thanks to God.

It was Cody Ross, former aspiring rodeo clown who was snapped up by the Giants in late August after being discarded by Florida, getting serenaded by a gaggle of screaming teeny bop girls as his trolley car slowed to a standstill, as if this were the Beatles and Ross was McCartney. Ross, a Giant for all of two months, was the team's best postseason hitter, the MVP of the NLCS and a modern fable about never losing faith. On this extraordinary day, he made girls swoon.

It was Bochy, styling in a '57 Chevy and cradling the World Series trophy for a few mind-boggling miles that seemed to take a few days. The manager who labeled his team "misfits and castoffs" deserved this most of all. Twelve years ago, Bochy's San Diego Padres were swept by the New York Yankees in the World Series, a devastating defeat Bochy chose to think of as a step in his learning process. His optimism is frightening: he tells friends he'll someday swim from Alcatraz to the city, even though he's not much of a swimmer, and he's been known to say he can survive a leap off the Golden Gate Bridge, even though statistics are very much not in his favor. (His giant head, those friends joke, hopefully will serve as a life preserver.)

All around Bochy young men scaled light poles, bearded women danced on benches, firecrackers popped, cops worried the high temperatures -- or mad hysteria -- might cause mass heat stroke. Construction workers in their hard orange hats high-fived bare-chested bodybuilders draped in orange flowered leis. A woman in her 70s shouted she wanted to marry the Giants manager, and when he looked her way, she darn near fainted.

"It's every thing you'd think it should be. You couldn't make this up," said Bochy, his words, true as the trophy he was holding, reverberating throughout Northern California.