I Should Have Known Better Than Root for the Giants to Win the NL West

How naive we were just a few weeks ago. We thought that rooting for the Giants over the Dodgers would bring about a nice feeling of schadenfraude. The D-backs weren't going to win, so it was really an act of survival. One of those two teams had to survive, so why root for the team that would confirm the evil of too much money in sport?

But in our desperation we turned to a team we didn't fully understand.

The Dodgers were a dangerous and known threat. They are the ancient evil of too much money and power, where the lucky few have disproportionate access to the world. The Diamondbacks and the Athletics of the world don't get to trade for every former or current All-Star. Instead, they fight for the crumbs and crawl over each others broken bodies for even just a little more, all while the select few look on and laugh.

We thought perhaps it would be funny if the Dodgers didn't make the playoffs after such a tremendous midseason binge. They'd be in an even worse spot in 2013, when their payroll will quickly approach $200 million with diminishing returns. The Dodgers acquired a lot of big contracts, but the dirty secret was many should be expected to begin their decline, if they haven't already. Wouldn't it be funny if the Dodgers managed to get no playoff teams out of this roster?

The nature of closed systems, however, is that if one team were not to win then some other team will. Someone had to win the NL West. So the fans of the NL West justified invoking the dark spirits as a kind of lesser of two evils. It was logical, really.

Some teams, however, aren't looking for anything logical, like All-Stars.

The Giants aren't just some small market team. They, too, rot from the privilege of the rich. But where others content themselves in wrapping their bloated bodies in their ill gotten spoils, the Giants operate on a different value system. They've been twisted over years of rejection, and have learned to cope with scrappy role players and those they brainwash themselves. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some teams just want to watch the World Series burn.

By rooting for the scourge that is the Giants, we've willed into being a spiral of horror, where we pray for ever more extreme abominations. A month ago San Francisco seemed the lesser of two evils. Today, it is the Tigers. Be careful what you wish for, baseball fans. The sides we chose are the very shackles around our necks.