A longtime observer of professional baseball and a lifelong fan of the San Francisco Giants, Dana Sibilsky has seen many eras come to an end. She was there to see Willie Mays play his last game in a Giants uniform before he went back to New York to finish his career with the Mets, and she was there when Barry Bonds left the game for good in 2007. Though she understands that all great eras in sport eventually come to an end, Sibilsky does not believe that the recent San Francisco Giants dynasty is at its end.
According to Sibilsky, too many Giants fans are panicking over the team’s slow start and are forgetting that the baseball season is 162 games long. Sibilsky, a season-ticket holder going back several decades, has seen her fair share of slow starts and knows that the Giants can still turn it around. While at AT&T Park recently, Sibilsky ran into Hunter Pence while he was rehabbing from injury, and she noted that Pence’s return could be the key to the team’s resurgence in the NL West in the year following the Giants’ third World Series championship in five years.
Of course, most Giants fans will recognize Sibilsky as one of the most ardent fans around, as she is a fixture at home games and frequently travels to San Diego, Los Angeles, Arizona and Colorado for road games against division rivals. She is on a first-name basis with the bulk of the players on the Giants, and if team members do not recognize her it is probably because they were only recently acquired. Sibilsky’s seats are right behind the home dugout, and both Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow point her out from time to time during the games in which she is particularly animated.
Sibilsky, a vice principal at a middle school in Marin County, is known for wearing black and orange outfits to school as each new baseball season approaches and the school year ends. Sibilsky pointed out that any real discussion about the standings in the NL West should wait until June and perhaps even July, as there have not been nearly enough games played to truly evaluate the quality of the team. Sibilsky still believes in the Giants, and she thinks that the team will contend for another title in 2015 despite a rather tepid start to the season.