Baseball fan suspects he's entering his last September with beloved Giants

It occurred to me tonight, watching the San Francisco Giants suffer another agonizing loss, that I'm running out of seasons as a baseball fan.

What began in 1963 or 1964 as a curiosity, as a child falling in love with baseball and its heroes, turned into one of the cornerstones of my life. No, I didn't paint my face orange and black or call radio talk shows to rant about how "WE can still win the World Series" or "If the Dodgers can't beat US, we'll be OK." I fell in love with the nuances of the game.

To fall in love with the strategy of a game played at a snail's pace requires a fan to be absolutely immersed in a team, its players and the ebb and flow of a season. Everyone seems to think they know something about baseball strategy, but it takes a different level of knowledge to sit through a serious slump like these Giants have gone through without saying, "There must be something more productive I can do than watch them fail to hit the ball hard or often for 2 1/2 hours a day!"

And, for most of my life as a Giants' fan, I've understood the strategy. I know why pitchers sometimes take 20 seconds between pitches (it allows them to mess with the batter's mind). No matter how often a Giants player like Aubrey Huff strikes out on 3 pitches or pops up meekly to the infield, I understand exactly how hard it is to hit a baseball solidly. The pitcher, after all, is trying to throw the ball at a speed the batter doesn't expect and to a spot the batter can't reach.

In 1966 and 1967, I spent September watching the National League championship slip through the Giants' grasp in a way that only a 10- or 11-year-old kid could survive without wanting to jump off a roof. Although, in 1967, when Sandy Koufax beat the Phillies on the final day of the season (on 2 days rest, when the Giants simply needed the Dodgers to lose to force a one-game playoff for the league title) ... I was sitting on the roof of my house hitting rocks into the forest with a baseball bat.

When the score of Koufax's win over the Phillies came across my transistor radio ... the idea of jumping did cross my mind. How many painful Septembers could an 11-year-old take?

The Giants were my summer friend. Even when I was chasing girls, riding bikes all over town with my pals, playing baseball myself (knowing I was good, but that one had to be simply fantastic to play in the big leagues) -- the club and games on the radio were my most faithful companions. Oddly, I never talked to my Little League teammates or my junior high pals about the Giants. Heaven knows I never let a girlfriend close to my relationship with the Giants, with baseball. I was trying too hard to be cool, so talking about staying up nights listening to the radio broadcasts, then doodling out possible trades and potential Giants' lineups was just ... just ... something I didn't discuss with anyone.

I'm not a statistics nerd either. I don't care about all the new stats like OPS, WHIP, etc. Sabermetics helps baseball analysts determine the value of a player or a team using scientific formulas. They're really not interesting to me at all. I know when the Giants should, maybe, bunt ... and I know that bunting is just giving up an easy out in a game where every team only gets to make 27 outs before a winner is determined. If I see a slow-footed infielder let a ball roll into the grass, I don't need a formula to tell me that the Giants could have a better defender at that position.

My summers with the Giants are numbered, I suspect. At least, the summers I can spend as immersed in the agony and ecstasy of a team that will break my heart one night and remind me that anybody who claims to know what's going to happen in a baseball game is a moron the next.

I'm totally into this year's Giants. They're in position to reach the playoffs and defend the World Series championship they won in 2010 -- the World Series championship I'd been waiting for for 47 years. They're also playing so incredibly badly that I could make the case for them not winning another game all year. I understand the game. I know every player on the team's roster.

I have time on my hands, so I know about the teams they're playing, too. I'm unemployed, at age 54. I've not had this much time to pay this much attention to the Giants in decades. My knowledged of the club and the game wasn't as detailed the year I covered the Giants in the 2002 World Series as it is now. I have more time to pay complete attention to everything ... and I do mean everything. Covering the 2002 Giants in the postseason was my job. It was work. I wasn't into that team for me, but rather so that I could tell the stories to other Giants fans in a completely objective manner.

This year? I need the Giants to distract me like I haven't needed them ever before.

It's scary to be unemployed at age 54. It's more frightening given that I spent a career in the newspaper business, a dying industry. I'm looking for work and the work I do best is now being done for free, or for pennies on the dollars we used to make, by fans with blogs or newspaper writers who double as kings of Twitter, masters of Facebook and hosts on talk radio and TV sportscasts. I'm not sure why truly invested fans would read some foolish diatribe by a disgruntled Giants fan and consider it a news report. If I hear a professional writer tweet out a fact, then post it on Facebook, then mention it twice in the electronic media ... I'm not really interested in reading it in his story.

So, yeah, I'm scared. I've got little to do with myself, once I'm done job-hunting each day. I need the Giants like I haven't needed them since the summer my mom died in 1975 when I was 18.

While I'm not into stats or the Sabermetric formulas, I know the numbers don't lie. So, tonight, when I thought taking my dog for a walk might change the Giants' luck in the fourth inning, I realized I probably won't have another September with the Giants like this one.

If September of my 55th year rolls around and I'm back at work, Wal-Mart needs greeters and Sports Authority his hiring, I won't have time to give to the 2012 Giants. Don't get me wrong, I'd much rather have a job and an income (and health benefits) than to be this invested in the San Francisco Giants. I'm just aware that if I have a job next season, then 2011 will likely have been my last summer, alone with the Giants.

If I can't find a way to generate income (the idea of finding a job is too daunting, so I try to imagine just ... generating income), my 55th year will lead me to places I never thought I'd be. People need a television set, with some sort of cable of satellite connection, to follow the Giants. They need a house, with a room to put that TV in, too. While I'm certain I could follow the Giants on an empty stomach, I know that the ability to buy food, pay utility bills, etc. is important to following a team and ... if I'm 55 and I'm not generating income ... it just feels like investing in the San Francisco Giants will be difficult and, finally, impossible.

So, I'm going to follow the San Francisco Giants all the way to whatever end this season reaches. With each passing day, it feels like the playoff race ... the final weeks of the season ... could be my last September with the Giants.