There was no joy for Giants fans in Marin County or anywhere else on Tuesday night.
With San Francisco trying to wrap up its third World Series championship in five years on the road in Kansas City, Giants fans had high hopes as Game 6 was getting under way.
At Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley, a capacity crowd watching the game on a giant screen TV sang the “National Anthem” along with the Kansas City Symphony playing on the field. The room was filled with eager anticipation as Rick Brandon of Mill Valley blasted “charge” on a bugle.
But a seven-run second inning by the Royals began a 10-0 rout that evened the series at three games apiece. It would be a long night for everyone wearing orange and black.
Even before the seventh-inning stretch, Giants fans were already looking to Wednesday night’s Game 7.
“Because I don’t have any guts, I wanted them to finish it tonight,” said Steve Carry, a Larkspur travel agent wearing a Giants cap and sitting by himself at an outdoor table at a Starbucks in Larkspur. “But really you want seven games. With seven, you’ve got a story.”
Carry didn’t have the heart to stay until the bitter end with the other fans who had gathered to watch the game on a large screen TV in an open-sided tent at Marin Country Mart in Larkspur.
But Martin Castro, a middle-school teacher who lives in San Rafael, was determined to stick it out with a handful of diehards who remained to watch the desultory Giants fail to mount a rally inning after inning.
“If they were winning, this whole place would be filled up,” he said, sitting with his wife and some friends at a white picnic table. “You never know if they’re gonna come back.”
That last remark elicited a sardonic cheer of “Go Giants” by his friends.
“Chances are they won’t,” he acknowledged. “But we gotta hang in there with them, not just when they’re riding high.”
With Game 6 out of hand, Giants fans were putting the best face they could on the royal thrashing in K.C.
“I think it’s better that they’re losing this bad because it will knock them back into shape,” said Zoe Davis, a nanny who lives in Ross. She was watching the game with her father, Greg Davis, a Petaluma mortgage banker.
“They have always been a comeback team,” she said. “And tomorrow they have to get redemption.”
Her father was not quite so philosophically upbeat.
“There was so much hope,” he said. ” I hate to give up hope, but the odds ” He let his voice trail off before adding one final thought. “They have to win tomorrow.”
