“It’s designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything is new again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains comes, it stops, and leaves you to face the fall alone.”

A. Bartlett Giamatti, Former Commisioner of Major League Baseball

Ahhh, baseball.  Every year about this time I have a brand new love affair with the game.  They say, “Hope springs eternal,” and there couldn’t be a better case for that than the beginning of baseball season.  Whether you’re a New York Yankees fan, jaded by the expectation of pennants year after year, or a long-time Chicago Cubs fan, still waiting to see your team in the Fall Classic, April brings the promise of hope that “This could be the year!”

As a San Francisco Giants fan for nearly 50 years, I have endured my share of heartaches over the decades. 

The sixties, with a tremendous roster, but a string of 2nd place finishes.  How could a team of Mays, McCovey, Cepeda, and Marichal not win one pennant?

The seventies… orange softball shirts and orange bills on the caps.  ‘Nuf said. 

The eighties… I’ll never get rid of the image of right-fielder Candy Maldonado sliding on his rump, successfully turning an out into a game winning triple for the Cardinals.  Two years later, God personally stamped his seal on the Giants’ fate with a 6.9 earthquake in the middle of a four-game World Series sweep at the hands of the Oakland A’s.

In the nineties, things got interesting.  They couldn’t win the pennant with 103 wins, they were swept in the playoffs by a wild-card team, and they lost a one-game playoff to the even-more-snake-bitten Chicago Cubs.

A new decade, a new millennium, even a new ballpark was needed.  Alas, a 3-2 game lead in the World Series and a 5-0 lead in the 7th inning of Game 6 turned around quickly as the Giants lost to a stupid Rally Monkey!  Two years after that, yet another playoff loss to the Marlins.

Yet, here we are in 2010 and again I say, “This could be the year!”  Even though 52 years have gone by since the Giants moved to San Francisco and they still haven’t won a World Series crown, I am excited about the prospect.  I am re-energized by the fresh start, by the young new prospect who lit up AA in some town I only know as a Giants farm team, by the veteran whose glory days are behind him, but who will undoubtedly resurrect his career this year.

So, what is the connection to business or accounting?  Is it that we have an opportunity to put the dismal year of 2009 behind us, throw off the bad news of the recession, and start 2010 feeling inspired that we have a chance to make a fresh start, that “This could be the year?”

No.  I just love baseball.