Interview #28: Hawkeyes turned Giants fans
Michael and Jannien Weiner and their lives from Iowa to San Francisco
Intro
Mike and Jannien Weiner have been together for over 40 years, having met in Iowa where they both grew up and went to college. They moved to the Bay Area in 1979 and had two kids, one of whom became a huge baseball fan and got them into sport. I grew up playing on baseball teams with their son, Louis, and since they retired to Arizona I asked them for an interview. Jannien said Mike would be the better person to talk to as he knew more about sports, but it turns out they made a better tandem interview than soloists.
From Iowa to San Francisco
Are you a Giants fan?
Mike: Yeah. I wasn't a Giants fan growing up in the Midwest. I grew up in Iowa; I was a Cubs fan. So when they finally won the World Series, I was very happy. I only have one team I'm waiting for to win the world championship and that's the Minnesota Vikings.
Good luck.
Mike: Yeah, I know.
What town in Iowa?
Mike: I was in the northwest corner of Iowa, like all the way on the other side of the state. Sioux City.
Jannien: Nowheresville.
So you played basketball growing up?
Mike: I played on my high school team. I was lucky, I played on good teams. We went to state. We only lost one game my senior year, actually. My teams only lost 14 games in four years, 11 of them were in one year.
What position were you?
Mike: Forward and guard but back then forward was 6’2”, which I was. If you had a big guy in the middle he was like 6’6”, 6’8”.
Why did you play basketball of all the sports?
Mike: I just liked it. I started playing in grade school. We didn't have organized football. There was no soccer back then.
You didn’t have football in Iowa?
Mike: We did, but in the public schools, you didn't start until 9th grade. There was no Pop Warner League or anything like that. But the Catholic grade schools all had teams. So by the time they get to high school, they knew what they were doing in football. The public schools were just learning how to play the game.
So you didn't play baseball?
Mike: I played baseball like two or three years and that was it. I think once when I was in grade school and once or twice in junior high. I didn't like getting hit by the ball. They hurt.
Where did you guys meet?
Jannien: Iowa City.
Mike: University of Iowa.
And then you moved to the Bay Area for some reason?
Mike: Yeah in ‘79.
Jannien: Well, I mean, we moved to the Bay Area here because I… it's kind of a weird thing. Like in ‘67, I was 11 and I just knew I wanted to move to California.
Had you ever been?
Jannien: Nope.
Mike: My first time was when we drove there.
Jannien: You know what was kind of weird, I went to a Catholic High School and obviously there's big families and everybody's related. There's a lot of people I went to high school with, their brothers and sisters just moved out to San Francisco and ended up staying there.
Where were you living when you moved out?
Jannien: In the Marina right across the street from Fort Mason for about five or six years. Then we moved to 18th avenue, on the Richmond side.
Mike: Right off of Golden Gate Park.
So you were in the city…
Mike: It was different then, too.
Jannien: It was like a town.
So you had to go to Candlestick Park.
Mike: We had to go to Candlestick, which was just a joy.
Jannien: It was a toilet.
So Iowa was not a baseball kind of place?
Mike: No, there's no cities big enough for a professional sports team. It was different back in the 60s and sports was not as prevalent as it is today, 24/7 on TV today.
Had you been to Wrigley or anything growing up?
Mike: My first Major League Baseball game was at the Giants. You know what, the atmosphere is fun. There's a lot going on, but you'd go there in the summer time, with the down coat and gloves and still freeze. And then you’d go there in September, you could be in a long sleeve shirt and it's just gorgeous. Or even a short-sleeve shirt sometimes in a night game, no wind and it's beautiful.
It sounds like once you got to an area where it was bigger like San Francisco…
Mike: Yeah, it was great. I loved going to the games.
You had to really love it to go to Candlestick.
Jannien: You had to take a bus… we took buses a lot when we lived in the city. I wasn't going to pay to park. Sometimes we’d get free tickets or we might go out there and get cheap tickets because they didn't sell them all.
How many Giants games do you think you went to?
Mike: I don’t know, probably 100 or more.
So what kept you coming back?
Mike: It was the hometown team. Even though they sucked. When we first moved to San Francisco in ‘79, they just weren't that good.
Jannien: And they were cheap, it was something to do. I mean, people would give you tickets a lot. When I was in public accounting, they'd give us tickets.
Mike: Then we knew some people who were like, let's go to the Giants game. It's cheap. The tickets were $5, $6 for the bleachers. We’d go out there and hang in the bleachers and drink some beers.
Two things. First, I didn’t realize Iowa wasn’t a huge baseball state, especially since it borders baseball-crazy Illinois. Then I looked up baseball Hall of Famers from Iowa and there are six. Five of those six played before 1933 and the sixth was Bob Feller, who, while being more famous, last played in 1956. So it’s been a drought in the Hawkeye State.
Second, this project has now featured many subjects that attended games at Candlestick Park in the late 70’s, early 80’s when the Giants were terrible. Yet they still seemed to keep these people as fans in spite of the freezing weather, mediocre-at-best baseball and lots of other options for entertainment in San Francisco. I wonder how a professional team would fare today operating like that.
The Baseball-obsessed Son
So did you turn into a Giants fan? Or was that a Louis thing?
Jannien: Louis. That was so weird because in second grade, Louis said, I want to play baseball. And then started playing baseball and… we have no idea where that came from. He was just enamored with it. We did not have a TV until 2002. So he used to listen to the games on the radio. And he'd get these box scores from the newspaper.
Mike: God, endless stacks. I think one year his team went to a Giants game at night. We were way out in the outfield. And then I'm like, ‘Come on, let's go,’ because I had to get up early for work and it's a night game. He goes, ‘No, Barry Bonds is up. He's going to hit a home run.’ I'm like, ‘He's not going to hit a home run.’ He's like, yes, he is. So we sat down, literally, we sit down in the seats that we were walking by and Barry Bonds hits a home run. And then we went home, and he turned to me and he goes, ‘I told you he was going to do it, dad!’ He loved Barry Bonds. And then I found out what an asshole he was later on.
Jannien: Louis didn’t care.
So did you have to get into baseball too?
Mike: His first year when we moved to Danville, I learned how to keep score. Louis's first year in Danville, Sig Miller was his coach. He's a good guy.
Jannien: One year we went on vacation to Palm Springs and rented this great house in this fantastic club and we're hoping the kids would just enjoy the heck out of it with pools and all the other stuff. They had ESPN, which of course we didn't have because we didn't have a TV. During spring break, they were doing a 24/7 marathon of former World Series, like every game of the World Series. Louis did nothing but watch that the whole time. He's like, ‘I'm watching the World Series game from like 1977.’
No TV!?!?
Also this is one of the first times I’ve seen the kid get the parent into baseball. It’s not like hockey or auto racing or a newer sport that maybe the younger generation latches onto and gets their parents into it, baseball has been around for generations (see the above black and white image), yet, in this case, it was passed up from son to father.
The World Series Promise
Jannien: I can't remember what year it is (2014), but it was the second time (third time) the Giants went to the World Series. So I told Louis in August, because they were doing shitty, I said, well, if the Giants go to the World Series, I'll take you for your birthday. And he went, ‘OK, thanks a lot mom.’
Did you expect that to come to pass?
Jannien: Not in a million years. So of course it did come true and I bought the tickets. So we went, it was a beautiful day, and the seats I got were really weird because they were on the upper deck, they were third base line, but the seats were kind of far apart, and it was only one row and there was nothing behind them.”
The handicap section?
Jannien: It was the handicap section, but we didn't know that and you didn't have to be handicapped to sit there for the World Series. So they were fantastic seats. They had people coming around bringing drinks because I think they thought we were handicapped or something like that.
Anyway, it was very serendipitous. It was very wonderful. So don't ever think that you could make some off-the-cuff comment, like if the Giants go to the World Series, and then they end up going and you end up spending like $1,200 a seat to go to a World Series game.
Well, now you’ve learned your lesson.
Jannien: I did, but I'm going to say even though they lost, we had a really good time. I had a really good time. We had Italian food, Mike found a parking spot on the street. Mike can find a parking spot anywhere. He has parking karma.
Mike: Yeah, it was on the street. Instead of paying $5 million for a parking spot, just plugged the meter.
Jannien: But Mike actually went to a whole bunch of World Series games.
Mike: That's right. My story is when they went to the first World Series in 2010. The company I worked for did the food service for all the luxury seats and seating in the ballpark. And my manager called and said, ‘Hey, I need you at the ballpark to work.’ I said, ‘OK, what time you want me there?’ He's like, ‘You need to be there at 11 in the morning.’ And I'm thinking the game doesn't start ‘til like 5:30. And he said wear a suit. So I got there and it was kind of magical because they were in the World Series for the first time in a long time.
It had kind of an almost small town feel to it. Everybody was in a good mood. Way out in center field, there was a party for a company. And so I just had to supervise that and had the staff drag everything, had to push carts all the way out to center field. And we got out there and the party started I think like at 3:00.
We got everything out there. And everybody's having fun. And they also opened up the outfield, the warning track, so people can go stand on the warning track and the teams are out there warming up. Of course it’s October, so it's beautiful weather in the Bay Area. And it was just really cool. I got on the field beforehand and had my picture taken out there. I went back to my manager and I said, what do you need me to do next? He said get a beer and watch the game. So I was all done.
Did you have to work all the home games or just one?
Mike: I worked two of them. And the second World Series, I worked there again. I got to actually, when they opened up the ballpark, I got to go there and and help with the opening.
In 2000?
Jannien: So mostly he just stood around and complained that his feet hurt in hard-soled shoes.
Mike: But it was cool. And I ran into people from Bank of America that I knew when I was running Bank of America’s foodservice in the early 1990s. It was just a lot of fun and just a different atmosphere.
So did they ask you to do it because they knew you liked baseball?
Mike: No, they just needed managers because Bon Appetit does the luxury suites.
So you've done less glamorous events then too?
Mike: Oh yeah. I remember doing Christmas parties there at the ballpark for EBay and Google.
How many games did you work at the park?
Mike: It was mostly the World Series, but every once in a while they'd have an event there and they'd ask for extra help and I'd go. I'd say maybe 3-4 games a year. It was a lot of fun. I knew the managers there, so I'd call and say, hey, can you get me in?
I used to do that with Louis when I would go up there and work. I'd say, hey, you want to go to the game? He's like, Yeah. And I said go to the left field gate and I'll meet you there at 6:00. I'm like, him and him and him, they need to come in with me. They're just like, go on in.
Jannien: So the first game he told you he was working at, Louis used to go to the games all the time and then just wait till the 1st inning was over ‘cause the scalpers would be walking around with their tickets and then offer them for a ridiculously low amount, so he and Donald got cheap tickets for that first game, but it was in the Rangers section. They went and got free food from Mike, and towards the end, it was after the 7th inning… they were doing terrible and then they got four home runs in the 7th inning or something.
So then I'm sitting there (at home) and my neighbor had come over with a wine glass full of vodka and she's like, what are you doing? And I said I'm working and just listening to the game, I'm not watching it. So she's blabbing away. I just had my laptop and I'm just working. Listen, accountants work a lot, as you know. (note: most of them do…)
So, she's sitting there talking, talking and all of a sudden she goes oh! Is that Louis and Donald? And I'm like, what? They're sitting in the nosebleed seats, around a bunch of Rangers that are like this (frowning), and they're standing up with their rally rugs going crazy. They're drunk of course. And Donald is a huge man. He's like 6’5”. Yeah, his gut’s hanging out. His T-shirt’s curled up. And Louis looks like a big tank.
Mike: And then Louis would grow a beard during playoffs. So he had his bushy beard sticking out.
Jannien: And they looked like two big beasts amongst this crowd. So I backed it up a couple of times, and and then I took a video of it. Then they they came back to the house, I said you guys have to see this because you're on national TV, you look horrible. And Donald goes, Oh my God, I look so fat. I said, Donald, the camera adds 50 lbs.
Mike: Oh my God, we watched that so many times. It was just funny to see the two of ‘em in the middle of all these Ranger fans with the rally rags.
Jannien: And they're standing up and everything, I mean. They just look like two big beasts.
Mike: I took them beers before I left too, like they needed more beers.
Jannien: Yeah, like they needed it badly.
More fun stories out of the 2010-2014 Giants era. And an important lesson that, until mathematically impossible, nothing in sports is a guarantee to happen or not. I wish every fan base got to have something like that. Everyone who was around San Francisco for that era speaks of it like some kind of Golden Age. In a sport where only one team can win each year, and only 1/3 even make the playoffs, there are a lot of lean years but it’s runs like that that make it all worth it. And getting to share it with your family also makes it so much the better. Now I need to get Louis’ story and get his tales from Pac Bell Park SBC Park AT&T Park Oracle Park.