Torture: Part I

The motto for the San Francisco Giants this season has been, "Giants baseball: torture." Duane Kuiper coined the term back in April, and it has caught on as this most unusual season has continued into the playoffs. Kuiper has taken to regularly reciting it during the post-game shows on the radio, particularly after harrowing losses (or, for that matter, wins). KNBR replays the original soundbite ad nauseum as a part of their commercials for Giants-related programs. Fans are selling t-shirts and carrying signs emblazoned with the slogan. Newspaper editors throughout the bay area are utilizing it in headlines. There's even a Facebook page dedicated to the term. While the slogan is the motto and rallying cry for this particular team and this particular season, it is also acknowledges the entire history of disappointment and misfortune that Giants fans have endured since the team moved to San Francisco.
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In Praise of Small Things

Sometimes it helps to appreciate the less obvious details of the things that make up the fabric of existence around us. Here are some of my favorite of those details:

Jeffrey Leonard's "One Flap Down" Home Run Trot
As a kid, Jeffrey Leonard was one of my favorite players. He was a two-time all-star and he won the 1987 NLCS MVP Award despite the fact that the Giants lost the series to the Cardinals. But the two things I've always remembered best about him were his awesome nicknames ("HacMan", like PacMan, and "Penitentiary Face" because he never smiled) and his ridiculous "One Flap Down" home run trot. The "One Flap Down" was born sometime during the 1986 season when the HacMan decided to leave his left arm motionless while he rounded the bases after hitting a home run. The signature trot gained further notoriety during the afformentioned 1987 NLCS when Leonard employed it while running the bases after each of his four home runs in the series.
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Jay-Z, Michael Jordan, and Unretiring

The Black Album is my favorite Jay-Z album and one of my favorite rap albums of all time. In fact, analyzing this album is one of the original reasons why I wanted to start a music blog. I'm not entirely sure why, but something about this album stimulates the critical portion of my brain. One of the reasons why this album is so ripe for analysis is because of its underlying concept as Jay-Z's farewell to rap.

Like most rappers, Jay-Z's favorite subject throughout his career has been himself. His songs are so full of auto-biographical details that even casual fans can tell his life story (or at least the life story he wants to present to the public), and this supposed final album is the perfect summation of that narrative. Of course, this artistic statement ultimately was not an accurate depiction of his career path, and his short-lived retirement drew the inevitable comparisons to Michael Jordan, the Patron Saint of Unretirement (though Brett Farve could also lay claim to that designation). Though the comparisons are apt, there is a critical distinction to be made between each man's botched attempt at retirement: Jay-Z's should-have-been-final-statement retains a greater semblance of its aura and significance than Jordan's specifically because it was an artistic statement rather than an athletic one.
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