Padecky: When trophies are time machines

Who says you can’t live in the past? That’s what more than a thousand people did Saturday afternoon at Finley Community Center. They were living in the past, reveling in it, totally absorbed by it, stuck in it actually, and no one would have dared to tell them to get over themselves. It would have been so rude.

As the speed of tomorrow came flying toward them, on the wings of hand-held devices and instant gratification, they stopped to stand and stare. There they were, less then three months old, the three World Series trophies, the three metallic testaments to the best manager-general manager combo in the game, Bruce Bochy and Brian Sabean.

Those chunks of silver and gold - valued at $15,000 apiece but going for king’s ransom on eBay - were emotional turn-keys. Each clicked on a memory so telling that for the moment it didn’t matter if Pablo Sandoval would ever be replaced, if Matt Cain was every going to be Matt Cain again or if Angel Pagan could ever play again without being under doctor’s care. Those trophies were so powerful they took people places, to the past where such concerns were irrelevant.

Art Trinei was in fourth grade at Longfellow Grade School in San Francisco. It was 1958. The Giants had just left New York for San Francisco. Art Trinei is a fourth grader and, at the time, not a student of the game.

“The Giants Are Coming!” was the announcement over the school’s loudspeakers. The team had arrived in the Bay Area that day. Some kids lowered their heads. Some kids ducked under their desks.

“We were scared,” said Trinei, 67, now living in Sebastopol. Puzzling it was.

“You mean, giants like Jack-and-the-Beanstalk giants?” I asked.

“Yes,” Trinei said. “Our school was next to a hill and we kept looking out the window for the giants to come over the hill.”

Yes, the affection for San Francisco’s baseball team arrived in different ways for different people. Trinei overcame his fear of being eaten like a chocolate chip cookie to develop such a connection Trinei and eight of his descendants stood behind the three trophies, posing like poster children for the organization.

“This is like,” said granddaughter Lexie, “rubbing Buddha’s belly.”

This is like a rock star in the house. The trophy may be static but it felt alive, as all meaningful symbols tend to be. Symbolic representation is an interactive experience, a linkage unseen but obvious, obvious as the stares of the people who approached the podium, people who might otherwise be self-conscious.

“I had to get here,” said Julio Aquino of Santa Rosa, a simple sentence with a noteworthy commitment behind it. Aquino arrived at the Finley Center Friday at 7 p.m., setting up his camp. He was the first one in line – by 12½ hours. His attraction to the Giants came not through a common route, like loving what dad loved. Rather it came because of the bees.

At 12, Santa Rosa’s Aquino was playing around where he shouldn’t have been playing around. He reached under a log and hit a hive with his hands. Aquino estimated 100 bees stung him, a hundred welts, a hundred reminders how close he came to not making it through the night. Aquino was coated in mud and told to hit the couch and stay there.

“So I turned on the television for something to watch,” said Aquino, now 29. “A Giants game was on. Um, I thought, I kinda like this game.”

One memory stood out from that first encounter.

“I saw a skinny Barry Bonds,” he said.

Thus a love was born, a kiss on the cheek for him and, as it were, a kiss on the cheek for so many people that the two-hour viewing turned into two hours and 45 minutes. Over the next two months the three trophies will hit 35 cities from here to anywhere that has electricity, shown at high schools (Kelseyville), ballparks (Raley Field in Sacramento), colleges (Porterville), a farmer’s market (San Luis Obispo), an Elks Lodge (San Mateo), even an airport hangar (Marina).

The only place, apparently, they will not be seen is at truck stops.

The trophies will log more miles than an aging movie star’s face, with none of the pretending that they still look beautiful. Say what you will about outgoing commissioner Bud Selig – and you could go hoarse in doing so – The Commissioner’s Trophy was one his best ideas. (He approved its redesign in 2000.) With the team flags, with latitude and longitude signifying global, with the 14-karat gold covering sterling silver, it offers none of the bewilderment or heated bounce-back of a typical Selig decision.

So easy, then, for the trophies to diminish if not erase all those windblown moments at Candlestick and other such discomforts.

“These are dynasty trophies,” said Terry Wicks of Santa Rosa. “It’s OK now, I forgive Dusty Baker for screwing up that World Series.”

That would be the one the Anaheim Angels won back sometime somewhere and no more details will be offered, so as to not dull the warm and fuzzy of Finley on Saturday. Baseball may be the only pro sport that still allows for space to reflect, savor and enjoy. The fans find a pause that refreshes, for stories to be told; the only sport that allows its followers time to do so.

Like Robert Camilli of Santa Rosa, whose great uncle was Dolph Camilli, a stellar first baseman for the Dodgers and Phillies, the 1941 National League Most Valuable Player. Robert still remembers Dolph having Hall of Fame shortstop Pee Wee Reese over for family barbecues.

“Pee Wee told me that once while taking infield,” said Camilli, a construction carpenter, “on purpose he hit Leo Durocher (standing near the field) right between the eyes with a throw. Pee Wee told Durocher (the widely disliked Giants manager) it was an accident. Durocher believed him.”

A sportswriter comes to a trophy presentation and it becomes a story presentation. Reba Leonard of Santa Rosa has her living room festooned with a miniature outfield fence and, behind it, Giants hats, gloves, pennants, bags, pictures, baby pandas, baby giraffes.

“When the season ends,” said Leonard, who has taped and seen every single Giants game in the past five years, “I don’t know what to do with myself.”

I felt like suggesting to Leonard there are 34 other cities she could visit. That could clog up some space for her before spring training. It could take her mind off a prevailing conundrum: Why aren’t quality free agents lining up to play for a franchise that’s won three of the past five World Series?

Who knows? As of Saturday, who cares. Tomorrow will come soon enough. The three trophies are a reminder. Yesterday does matter. Yesterday can last, sustain and satisfy. Yesterday is a portal to take us where tomorrow can’t. To the goosebumps. Each time. Every time. Guaranteed. Try imagining tomorrow like that.

To contact Bob Padecky email him at bobpadecky@gmail.com.