Interview #1: John W, A Career Military Man's Perspective on Baseball
A mid-March A's game led to a fascinating meeting
A recently unemployed friend of mine wanted to go to a Spring Training game this week. So what better way to spend an afternoon than at Hohokam Park in Mesa, Arizona and take in another installment of one of the most storied rivalries in all of sports: the Oakland A’s and the Colombian National Baseball Team, who were playing a warmup game before the World Baseball Classic. We had $11 tickets behind home plate five rows up and it was a gorgeous afternoon to finally get some sun.
Rob got up to replenish our beers in the middle of the 4th, so I took out my phone and messed around on Instagram because I’m 15 apparently. I wasn’t really paying attention and missed the applause for the “Salute the Service” part of the program. I saw the guy in the row in front sitting back down so I thanked him for his service.
“Thank you. I got paid for it, don’t worry. But I met a lot of guys who’d do it for free.”
I asked where he was from and then we talked about the Bay Area for a while, since I grew up in the East Bay (Danville) and he was north of the Golden Gate Bridge (Rohnert Park). He was down here by himself for a quick getaway. This may be the first year in history where Californians have been gone on vacation to find better weather.
John (I found out his name in the bottom of the 8th) was a lifelong Giants fan who grew up watching Willie Mays and Willie McCovey (when asked, he said Stretch is his all-time favorite Giant, with Brandon Crawford his favorite active player). I told him Will Clark was my guy and John told me about the time he had dinner with him as a rookie.
“A friend of mine was having a dinner and said she was going to have a couple of players over. Well, Will Clark was one of them. And Ernie Banks was another. And this was 1988, so Will was the hot thing and he kept talking and talking. Ernie kept shaking his head and finally told him to be quiet,” was his big Spring Training story. So that would explain why Will Clark buried the Cubs in the 1989 NLCS. It was a revenge thing…
I asked what he was doing at an A’s game then if he bleeds orange and black. Turns out he was in town because the A’s had signed the son of a family friend who had gone to the same D-III school as him. Jake Fishman, a left-handed reliever who made his debut for the Marlins in 2022 and signed a minor league deal with the A’s in the offseason, was a Union College alum just like John. Fishman pitches with a funky delivery that, combined with being a lefty, seems to always lead to job opportunities.
I mentioned John looked like one of the scouts from Moneyball in his beige dad jacket, Hawaiian shirt, glasses and old school A’s hat. Which he then went into the story that he was at a wedding last winter (2022) and by some coincidence so was A’s executive Billy Beane. A mutual friend introduced the two and they chatted for a bit when John brought up Fishman as a pitcher to keep on his radar. And when they parted ways, Beane shook his hand and said, “Jake Fishman. I’m gonna remember that.” So, if he gets the call this season, now you know.
Anyways, John came out for a couple A’s games and he was planning to see his family friend pitch. Only it turns out this week Jake Fishman left the team because he is a pitcher for Team Israel in the WBC (he also pitched for them in the 2020 Olympics). So now his trip was reduced to listening to two dudes talking about beer league hockey for 3 hours.
The game ended and we were headed out to the lot. John said he was gonna catch an Uber back to the Valley Ho in Scottsdale. Well that’s close enough to my house that I said I’d drive him back. Gotta support the troops.
On the ride back I asked a bit about his baseball fan story. It ended up being really similar to a lot of people I knew growing up in the region. The Giants moved to San Francisco in 1958, and John was born in 1954. So from the time he could remember he was at Candlestick Park, which of course came with some stories of his coldest games there. He rattled off names only diehard San Francisco names would know, like shortstop Hal Lanier (SFG, 1964-1971) and third baseman Jim Davenport (1958-1970). And for a few years he was a season ticket holder even.
I could tell he wasn’t as into the team as he used to be and didn’t go to as many games. So I asked him why that was the case.
“I’m a patriot. I served my country. And when Gabe Kapler came out, on Memorial Day weekend of all the weekends, and said he didn’t like where the country was going and wouldn’t go out for the national anthem… I just said, if that’s how you guys see it, then I won’t give you my dollars. Not that they care. And I was so happy to see in this magazine (a baseball 2023 preview magazine from the airport) that said he’s losing the locker room…
For those that don’t remember, here’s a link to the story. It was related to the gun violence debate in the aftermath of the Uvalde shooting.
John, a lifelong member of the military (I think he said Marines, but it may have been Army, joining just as Vietnam ended and serving all over, including extensive time in the Middle East), had also been part of the Trump administration under the Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. He couldn’t stand the former president and left with the first exodus of military leaders that happened, as he respected Mattis and others like HR McMaster and John Kelly and was unhappy with how they were treated.
I remember, especially from 2020 into 2021, when the anthem protests were a major topic for every sport. And how loud and heated the debate got on both sides. The news and social media were littered with posts saying people were going to stop being a fan over it.
I think those people, the loud and brash ones, telling everyone their intentions as if anyone cared, I think they aren’t the people I’d want to actually listen to. But hearing John tell it was different. He admitted that he’s also upset with the way the country is headed in some areas, and agrees with Kapler that guns should be better regulated. But hearing the disappointment in his voice when he said he wasn’t going to Giants games anymore, it was tough. It was like they let him down personally, not in a superficial way that fans can be mad at a team, but in a meaningful way that went against his entire career serving the country.
I could tell he wished the anthem had never been something that became divisive. Especially with how much politicians and corporations and sports leagues use the military as a prop now, paying them lip service to appeal to certain fans while ignoring the actual needs and issues facing veterans and those currently serving.
I know John isn’t the only one who has given up games because of the anthem issue. And I also know that he isn’t one of the ones who refuses to admit that there are changes that need to be made. But it feels like sports and leagues have acted in ways to distance themselves from these issues without addressing them. And without some kind of reaching out in an earnest attempt to mend those fences, those fans may be gone. And after almost 60 years as a die-hard Giants fan (through all those years in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s where they had runs of good teams but still, “the Dodgers were always just a little better” as he put it), he seems at peace with letting that go.
He’s still a baseball fan, and he loves going to San Jose Giants games (several a season with his wife, he said) and said he’d be down near the dugout if Jake Fishman gets called up to the Coliseum this summer.
I don’t know what would bring him back to a Giants game, or multiple games. I don’t know if the Giants care. But this afternoon conversation was enlightening to me, because it’s something I barely even thought about. I have my own reasons for going or not going to games, and I’d kind of forgotten all about the controversy over the anthem and the protests. But it sounds like, to a certain portion of that generation (the one that always seems to be taken for granted), it’s still a sore spot.
