The Giants, like the New York Yankees, are assembled for one purpose only, and that's to win it all. Their failures are resounding proof that unlimited budgets and avarice are not always rewarded--that ordinary people have a chance to seize the spotlight.
Yet, this has been a tough season for the legion of people who take solace in Giants' failures, not because rookie manager Tatsunori Hara won the pennant, but because he could do so with a team that was hit with more injuries than a nursing home having a bull-riding contest.
Hara had the perfect pedigree to be Giants manager: He was a former star with no managing experience but the requisite amount of swagger.
No one expected him to be a tactical wizard, and he hasn't been. Hara was clearly a step behind on numerous occasions and he is likely to get outmanaged during the Series.
But while in-game decisions are the most visible part of a manager's job, they are not necessarily the most important.
What's far more significant is getting the most wins out of all the talent at your disposal. By that criteria alone, Hara and his staff did something his predecessor, Shigeo Nagashima, was unable to do: Take a team that was continually losing its key players and not only win, but win convincingly.
First-year Tigers pitcher Trey Moore said the Giants overcame their injuries because of their depth, and he was right. The Giants were deep this year, but only thanks to Hara and his staff lead by head coach Yoshitaka Katori.
What Moore didn't know, being a newcomer, was that Hara is the first Giants skipper since Motoshi Fujita in 1989, to win a pennant with a team that was frequently missing key performers.
Since then, Giants fans have watched the low-budget Yakult Swallows not only win five Central League titles, but four Japan Series championships as well.
With the best team money could buy, the Giants have a second-best tally of four CL crowns and two Japan Series championships over the same period.
The Giants' tradition and their expectation of winning is a powerful attraction for players who can chose the team they want to play for.
Combine that with the Giants less-than thrifty nature and fans got a roster stocked with big names.
This organization used to act as if the names of manager Nagashima and its stars would count for bonus wins at the end of the season.
What distinguishes sports from pro wrestling is that games are not decided by name value but by competition, and in baseball that means building a team.
In yakyu, the team concept--you work hard so your teammates can depend on you because you depend on them--is talked about ad nausea. Yet it is ironic that the most popular pro team in the country has, for the past 30 years, been the antithesis of the idea. If star players got hurt or slumped, the Giants were doomed. There never was any Plan B for managing and preparing the backups.
By getting their reserves into games and giving them starts whenever possible, Hara and Katori had Plan B ready to go.
Tigers batting coach Tom O'Malley said last month that you win pennants with depth. And while the Giants have always had the resources to be a deep team, it was never the focus. Hara took the spare parts he had available, guys like Mototsugu Kawanaka and Takayuki Saito and put them to work to create the depth the Giants needed to win the pennant.
But depth is no longer the issue. Championship series are won by front-line talent: where the Giants have a big edge over the Seibu Lions.
It is ironic that Hara, who got the job because of his brand value as a binge star in the Giants tradition, has created a new tradition, a team that is more than just names on the marquee and one that is far more difficult to despise.
The Hot Corner appears each Thursday in The
Daily Yomiuri .