Those of use who follow the San Francisco Giants have a palpable sense of mourning and rage this holiday season. That came to a head on Sunday when news broke that Madison Bumgarner, the left-handed pitcher who was historically excellent during the Giants championship runs between 2010 and 2014, was leaving via free agency to the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Posts on social media fumed with indignation casting a pall over the normally bouncy radio programming at KNBR, home of the Giants. My buddy Brian Murphy, co-host of the KNBR morning show, has been particularly and uncharacteristically aggrieved.
When Murphy tweeted a black and white image of a stoic Bumgarner, tipping his cap one last time to Giants fans at the season ender of 2019, more than 800 people liked it and piled onto the Giant fan scrum of discontent.
"I'm just sad. This sucks," tweeted one of Murph's legion of followers. "We can't pay 17M per year for (Bumgarner's) 200 innings. Maybe this is the incentive I need to downgrade my cable and save some $$."
And it went on and on from there.
People aren't just mad, they are ready to boycott. To stop watching. To abandon the orange and black and the horse it rode in on.
This about denial among people who can't fully accept that the Giants championship window closed when their core players faded too soon. But it goes deeper than that.
