While Ernie Pomin and James Brady are the big San Francisco Giants fans here at SB Nation Bay Area, I am an unabashed Oakland A's fan. As an A's fan I've been able to spend the last six months observing, with some level of neutrality, the celebrating of the Giants after winning the World Series. More importantly, I've been able to observe the developing "insanity" of Giants closer Brian Wilson. While Wilson had always been a bit of a quirky personality, winning the World Series allowed him to turn that craziness into a marketable product.
The examples of marketing the crazy is endless, but a few of the more amusing examples include his declaration of being a certified ninja, an all-time classic appearance on The George Lopez Show, and even his own Sportscenter commercial. Based on the accumulation of experiences over the last six months you'd think Wilson was simply crazy. Moreover, I found myself wondering how Giants fans would react to early struggles by Wilson. His personality is endearing to Giants fans when he's successful. It would not be so endearing if he struggled.
However, the last month or so, culminating in yesterday's blown save against the Cardinals, would indicate Wilson really has thought all of this out to some degree. Wilson began the season the disabled list with an oblique strain. During the course of the injury he remained fairly quiet, dealing with his rehab and not bringing much attention to himself outside of when he was getting healthy.
Now that he's off the disabled list, he's got a pair of rocky performances under his belt. He came in to the Wednesday Giants-Padres game and gave up three runs in an 8-4 Giants victory. Yesterday he came in and blew the save in a game the Giants eventually won 5-4 in the twelfth. Given his injury, Wilson is still in a sort of extended spring training. That doesn't mean fans will cut him a ton of slack, but it's still worth considering. However, the important part of all this is for Wilson to keep a relatively low profile as he regains his 2010 form. Thus far he's done a good job of that, which makes me think his crazy is a manufactured marketable crazy, as opposed to say Ron Artest crazy.