Shear the Beard?

If there’s one thing the 2013 Giants are good at its losing… and on July 30^th they lost something more than a game. Noted facial hair aficionado Brian Wilson opted not to sign for the Giants. This in itself is disappointing but far from terrible. A reliever coming off his second Tommy John surgery is not going to salvage the Giants disastrous season. It might be a good thing that the Giants did not sign him, they are riddled with enough bloated middle reliever contracts as is. But not signing Wilson really isn’t the issue. Wilson did not simply rebuff the Giants, he rebuffed them for the f@#*ing Dodgers. Even if they weren’t the Giants rivals, this current incarnation of the Dodgers manages to make the Yankees seem like a loveable team. And the face of the 2010 Giants donning the blue and white just seems dirty and wrong. If he had signed with the Pirates, the team most heavily linked with Wilson outside of the Dodgers, there would have been little uproar from SF fans. Hell, the modern day Blackbeard signing for the Buccos might have been pretty fitting. But The Dodgers? Ugh.

Unsurprisingly, a quick scan of sports websites, the blogosphere, the twittersphere, or any other sphere pertaining to the web (is Facebooksphere a thing?) revealed that on the whole Giants fans were pissed off at baseball’s newest version of Benedict Arnold (it also revealed how many people are unaware that a traitor and trader are two different things.)

While it may seem that I would be the first to jump on the hatred bandwagon, I am not overly mad about this whole affair. Honestly, I’ve never quite understood why sports fans expect so much loyalty from their favorite players. We never judge a “normal” person for choosing a career path that comes across as disloyal. If your neighbor Billy accepted a new job at Microsoft after working at Apple for ten years, you would think nothing of it. We all make career choice that work in our best interests, and that is exactly what Wilson did. He currently lives in L.A, wants to play for a contending team, and wants to be paid a lot of money… signing for the Dodgers was the best career choice for him. So I personally think all the scorn and contempt thrown in Wilson’s direction is rather silly. Why the hell do we hold people who are really good at throwing and hitting balls to a higher standard than we do ourselves?

This does not mean that my opinion of Wilson is not unchanged. I believe that athletes who show loyalty to their team and fans should be admired. I’m simply stating that I don’t think that an athlete’s loyalty should be expected. So while many might boo Weezy when he returns to AT&T Park, I would prefer to cheer the beard.