In San Diego, they call the second home game of the season Tony Gwynn Opening Day. The Padres legend respected the home opener, but the season didn’t really start for him until the pomp and circumstance was gone. Anyone can get excited for opening day, the idea goes, but it takes a baseball nut to be just as excited the next day. To translate this into Giants-ese: The fans at the home opener know who Buster Posey is, but the fans at the second game know who Guillermo Quiroz is.
If this is a real phenomenon, that would mean Saturday night would give you a better sense of how Giants nuts are feeling. They watched their team defeat the Mariners 4-1 and extend their winning streak to six games, so spirits were obviously high. But it was a much calmer and more reasonable game than the home opener, which featured several obvious do-or-die moments, crossroads and pivot points. So in a more typical, garden variety win, what was going to get second-opener fans screaming the loudest?
The short answer: They like it when the Giants are fun. But there’s a little more to it than that.
Before the game, fans lined up to get one of the 15,000 Matt Chapman bobbleheads given away to celebrate his fifth Gold Glove, which was presented to him before the game. An unofficial sampling of the jerseys in the crowd suggested a ratio of about one Chapman jersey for each bobblehead. It was his day, so it makes sense that the Chapman aficionados were going to represent. He didn’t disappoint, with two doubles, two runs scored, two runs driven in, and a typically brilliant defensive play to get the last out of the game.
It wasn’t like every Chap-head ran out and bought a jersey when he signed a one-year deal with an opt-out before the 2024 season, though. Giants fans had seen that playbook before. If he had a typically Chapman-esque year, he was going to opt out and leave for a long-term contract somewhere else. There aren’t nearly as many (or any) Carlos Rodón jerseys in the crowd for a typical game.
The lines for the bobblehead, the jerseys and the pre-game cheers were all in celebration of a player who was going to be around for a while. There are suddenly a few of those, from Logan Webb to Heliot Ramos to Patrick Bailey, who was also presented with his Gold Glove before the game. Willy Adames jerseys will become more and more prevalent with every walk-off hit and standout moment. Chapman is a lot of things, with a lot of them having to do with being good at baseball, but he’s the best representation of a sense of permanence that’s been missing for the last couple of seasons. The second-opener fans appreciate good baseball, but they also appreciate stability.
So when Chapman hit a double in the fourth inning to drive in the first run of the game, it made sense that the crowd would go nuts and an impromptu cheer would ring out:
Jung! Hoo! Lee! Jung! Hoo! Lee!
That’s right. It was a cheer for the runner who scored on the hit, which is a scenario I honestly can’t remember happening before. It wasn’t a cheer for the batter who drove in the run on his bobblehead night, shortly after he was presented one of baseball’s most coveted awards. And that’s not to take anything at all away from Chapman’s night or the crowd’s response to him. It was an organic appreciation for what led up to the moment.
Jung Hoo Lee beats the tag to steal third base in the fourth inning. (D. Ross Cameron / Imagn Images)
It was as simple as this: Jung Hoo Lee doubled on a liner down the line that had almost no chance of being a triple, except it looked for a minute that he was going to try for one. The crowd loved even the idea that there was a Giants player who could put that thought into their heads. Then Lee got a huge jump and stole third on the next pitch, and the crowd loved that even more. When Chapman drove him in, the chant came naturally, and it wasn’t necessarily about feteing one player over the other, but roughly translated to:
We like fun! We like fun!
Eight games into the season, the Giants are playing fun baseball. The 107-win Giants of 2021 were impressive and exciting, but in a way that felt like a marvel of engineering. That team was an elegant invention being displayed at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, with gears and pulleys that hinted at a new era. It was a team that said, “Behold! We simply place Darin Ruf in to pinch hit against this left-handed pitcher, and … voilà!” It was fun as heck in its own way, but it was a celebration of the process as much as the execution.
That wasn’t a team, though, that made you think, “Maybe this guy will steal third base and make something happen,” right before a guy steals third and makes something happen. That’s not to suggest there’s a “lesser” way to win, or that the Giants are playing purer baseball than they ever have, or some such nonsense. If the over-under is 106.5 wins for this season’s team, you can comfortably bet your retirement fund on the under. Let us not besmirch the great Giants teams of the past.
Even as the 2014 Giants were about to win the World Series, though, it was possible to look over at the Royals and think, dang, that looks like fun. Again, the season is eight games old, so it’s irresponsible to compare any team favorably to pennant winners, championship winners and the team that won the most games in franchise history. But as a snapshot of the sugar plums dancing in the heads of second-opener Giants nuts, it works.
This is the only franchise with a 600-homer guy and a 700-homer guy. They have championships and records and Hall of Famers for days. They’ve watched a long-haired little fella pitch his heart out for them. They watched a homegrown pitcher throw a perfect game, and they watched another one get a five-inning save in Game 7 of the World Series a couple of days after a shutout.
You know what they haven’t seen yet, though? A dude who can slap the ball all over the place and make things happen.
And you know what they haven’t seen in a while? A team that has a chance to stick together for a long time.
We’ll see what the next 154 games will bring, and it’s entirely possible that this sentiment will age like a slice of avocado. As a window into the secret desires of the Tony Gwynn-approved baseball nut, though, Saturday night’s game was a revelation. Fun, continuity and winning. It’s not a new formula, but it feels like it for Giants fans. The team might be … fun? In a new way?
Until the shine of the 7-1 record fades — and it almost certainly will, to some degree — every win suddenly feels like proof that it doesn’t have to ever stop.
Matt Chapman received his 2024 Gold Glove Award before today’s game. For the 27th out of tonight’s game, he did this … pic.twitter.com/NwT3CY6ZD6
— SFGiants (@SFGiants) April 6, 2025
(Top photo of Matt Chapman hitting an RBI double to score Jung Hoo Lee: Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)