Giants fans jubilation soured, but only a bit

SAN FRANCISCO - The bars bustled, rally towels twirled and red-white-and-blue bunting graced the outfield walls.

The World Series and all its pageantry returned Friday night to its most familiar stage in recent years.

Only this time, AT&T Park threw a dud of a party, at least, for fans of the men in orange and black.

“As they say, there’s a lot of baseball left,” Sonoma County Judge Jim Bertoli said after Game 3 of the series, which the San Francisco Giants lost 3-2 to the Kansas City Royals. “I’ve played and coached way too many games to go into a panic.”

Prior to the game, the talk was whether the Giants were destined to win the World Series, given the team’s titles in 2010 and 2012 and superiority at their China Basin home. Some pundits cite the team’s recent dominance as one reason why most of America appears to be tuning out this series, despite some pretty good baseball being played at times.

The Giants have been there, done that, they say.

But on the Giants’ home turf, any such talk Friday was quickly dismissed by fans of both teams. Some paid big money and traveled long distances to attend the game, and nothing could dampen their enthusiasm.

Then there was Melanie Valesi, whose attendance at the game was about more than the box score.

Valesi, 40, kept stats for the Piner High School baseball team for three years. She said that experience and encouragement from her father, who had a brush with professional baseball, instilled a lifelong love of the game in her.

A week ago, Valesi and her father, David Welty, watched the Giants clinch the pennant on a dramatic walk-off home run as the pair rested on a bed in Welty’s Sonoma home. The 71-year-old was receiving hospice care for lung cancer.

Valesi said the retired CHP officer, who also coached football at Montgomery High School, told her she had to find a way to get to the series. He died Sunday.

“And I’m here,” she said Friday, her voice breaking.

She didn’t care that her seat, which was courtesy of a friend, was so high up it made tracking the ball difficult at times.

“Just to be here is amazing,” she said. “For three hours, everything wrong in the world is right.”

Friday’s loss put the Giants down 2-1 in the Series, hardly an insurmountable hurdle to overcome for a team that’s made a practice of dramatic, come-from-behind victories.

Bars and restaurants along King Street on Friday evening were packed with fans, including at Pedro’s Cantina, where doorman Jesse Minton managed a line that snaked out the door and far down along the street. A few people jumped the queue by palming money into Minton’s hand, but he demurred when he was asked how much he typically makes on a big game.

“They take care of me,” he said with a smile.

Still, Minton said the atmosphere wasn’t anything like it was in 2010, when the Giants shocked everyone by winning the series in a romp over the Texas Rangers.

“Don’t get me wrong, a Giants crowd is always great. But that first year was explosive,” Minton said.

The team’s subsequent success in 2012, when the Giants swept the Detroit Tigers to again take the series, have Giants fans tossing around the “D” word. But talk of dynasty seemed to fade a bit after the Royals first batter roped a double off the first pitch Friday, leading to the team’s first score.

A brief rally in the sixth inning, when the Giants scored two runs to make the score 3-2, recharged the Giants faithful.

They will have to remain faithful yet.

As season ticket holders, Judge Bertoli and his wife were offered the privilege of participating in the flag ceremony before the game. The judge took in the stadium’s expanse as he stepped onto the field carrying one end of a long pole draped with a red and silver flag.

“You’ll never regain the feeling of 2010. That can’t be matched,” Bertoli said prior to the ceremony. “But just because this is the third time hasn’t diminished the enthusiasm at all.”

However, outside pockets of America that have large fan bases for the two teams, this World Series has not generated as much interest as it has in the past. The first game of the Series on Tuesday drew 12.2 million viewers to Fox, making it the lowest-rated Game 1 on record. Game 2 on Wednesday night attracted 12.9 million people.

Jay Takacs of Santa Rosa, who attended Friday’s game with his wife, Jennie, attributed the low TV ratings to the game’s regional appeal.

“The Giants may not sell well in Chicago or New York, but I bet if you called Kansas there’d be some excited people there,” he said.

Indeed, Casey Stotts, who recently moved from Healdsburg back to her native Kansas - to a community just over the state border from Kansas City - said the region has gone baseball-mad, much like Northern California did when the Giants made the 2010 series and then won it.

“Everyone’s talking about the Royals, which is weird, because it’s mid-October,” Stotts said.

She and her wife, Becca Stotts, spent about $1,200 on bleacher seats to attend Game 4 Saturday in San Francisco. The couple flew into the city late Friday night.

Casey Stotts rooted for the Giants when the couple resided in California. But she said her wife has forbidden her from supporting the orange and black during the series, which means they’ll both be decked out in blue at Friday’s game.

“I’ve got shoes with orange laces and I can’t even wear them,” Casey Stotts said.

But they’ll be happy just to be at the game, as Kansas resident Kyle Gilmore and his brother were on Friday. Gilmore said he was born during the third game of the 1985 World Series, which the Royals won and also marked the last time the Royals made the post-season prior to 2014.

Gilmore said the Royals and Giants are “small-market (teams) playing a part in a big sports story.”

Striding along the promenade along McCovey Cove prior to Friday’s game, Gilmore said “to be here is unbelievable.”

You can reach Staff Writer Derek Moore at 521-5336 or derek.moore@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @deadlinederek.