The day after the Giants won the World Series in 2010, I remember going to HOPE Services, a community center in my hometown of San Jose, Calif., as part of a class field trip. As we got close to the facility, our supervisor on the trip told us that every time he’d visited for the past five years, one of the clients at the facility asked him how the Giants game had gone the night before. As predicted, when we entered, a blind man in a wheelchair came up to him and asked how the Giants did last night.

“They won the World Series.”

There was a pause as he processed the news for a second.

“Are you f—–g kidding me?”

It seems unfathomable now that the Giants, winners of their last seven postseason series, were ever the team of misfits and underachievers, but for the first 56 years of their existence in San Francisco, the team just couldn’t win the big one. Despite legends like Willie Mays, Juan Marichal and Barry Bonds roving the field, San Francisco came up empty time and again. Through the late 2000s, the main attraction was not the team on the field but scenic AT&T Park itself, located on the edge of the San Francisco Bay.

The ballpark is still a wonder, but the past two postseasons have changed the view of the Giants in the Bay Area and across the country. While their recent success is still surprising and exciting in 2014, the magic of 2010 — when the team broke its long drought — and 2012 — when they staved off elimination in five straight games — is difficult to recapture, especially in comparison to the real underdog stories in this year’s American League Championship Series.

But these Giants aren’t your traditional villains: They’re still a band of castoffs and misfits, winning the National League Divisional Series behind the pitching rotation of Jake Peavy, Tim Hudson and Ryan Vogelsong, who are a combined 109 years old.
Injuries have affected pretty much everyone, throwing rookie second basemen Joe Panik and defensive wizard Gregor Blanco into the fire at the top of the batting order. The faces of the franchise have changed without injured veterans Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum: now leadership rests on the homegrown shoulders of catcher Buster Posey, third baseman Pablo Sandoval and starting pitcher Madison Bumgarner.

As the postseason unfolds, I’m not going to ask you to be a Giants fan the other stories are too compelling. But if you’re a fan, take this opportunity to marvel at Posey’s pristine swing, Bumgarner’s snot bubbles and quirky right fielder Hunter Pence’s … everything. And keep hoping this winning era of Bay Area baseball doesn’t end anytime soon.

Kshithij Shrinath is a sophomore in the School of Foreign Service.