What was Mark Twain's quote about the San Francisco Weather?

"The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." - Mark Twain

Does that sound familiar, Giants' fans?

All the years in Candlestick where the "routine" pop fly was out of a Steven King novel and it tormented anyone who dared to put on the cream colors with orange and black trim.

Back when the Giants called Candlestick Park their home nobody wanted to play for the San Francisco Giants. Oh, they knew that the game was a business and if some team needed a player on the Giants' roster and your name was asked about, as possible trade bait, then you had to suck it up and play for the Giants at their dreaded home ballfield at Candlestick point.

In interviews with former Giants you hear all the right things being said but they all, tongue in cheek, have some sort of comment or body language that tells you exactly how treacherous playing in San Francisco was. (We, as humans, have a tendency to laugh at things that may have been uncomfortable or was perhaps stressful at an earlier time in our lives.)

Baseball is a humbling game. It's tough enough to play 162-games a year. Now throw in the element of unforgiving, unexplainable, inclement weather and you- as a ballplayer- can't find a glove big enough or apply plenty of stick 'em to the piece of leather you have come to play defense with as long as you played baseball.

It's unfortunate really because the fans love their Giants. Always have. And the one unexplainable reason why Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda, Jim Ray Hart, Gaylord Perry, Juan Marichal, Jack Clark, and Will Clark never won a World Series championship comes down to the unpredictable winds that blow in the City by the Bay.

In this 2013 baseball campaign the Giants have been witness recently to seeing very reputable defensive players befuddled by the interesting route balls took with the help of Mother Nature. And it dawned on me when Gregor Blanco trapped the opening batter's fly ball (in Tim Lincecum's game after his no-hitter) that it was the damned wind that kept the Giants from attaining more glory in America's pastime.

Kevin J. Marquez