Hunter Pence, the Authentic Giant No Matter What

When Larry Baer vaguely hinted at the San Francisco Giants "shaking things up" for 2019, it was largely assumed that said shakeup would probably include Hunter Pence, one of the mainstays of TGOD.
 
The Grand Old Days.
 
But it was also largely assumed that Pence would seek what is left of his baseball fortune elsewhere because, well, he just seems like a guy who would be standing in someone's outfield forever.
 
Instead, when asked about his future after he hit his gargantuan home run in San Diego Tuesday night, all he said was, "We'll see."
 
Pence is not a "we'll see" kind of guy. He has made his fame on being a "hell yeah!" kind of guy, and that was the very attitude that elevated him to cult status in San Francisco.
 
And that's the other thing. It's hard to imagine him in another uniform, even though he was an Astro and a Phillie before he went west, and typically players from other teams don't usually get cult status in this very provincial town.
 
Oh, and don't get your delicates in a knot with that "provincial" crack. Every sports town is provincial, and not just a little. All sports, like all politics, are first and foremost local. Pence just happened to crack San Francisco's code with the pregame dugout speeches, and the scooter, and the goofy pre-at-bat rituals, and the gangly gait and googly eyes and Captain Underpants nickname and the Wawindaji nickname and the all-weather-carpet hair.
 
And the results. On a team that has not fielded a full complement of major-league-starter-caliber outfielders since Barry Bonds' last year in 2007, Pence stood out through two World Series and a third playoff run. He mattered greatly at a time when the Giants were at the top of their game in making fan-base memories.
 
And now, "we'll see." It almost sounds like a retirement speech rehearsal, even though there are so many ways to interpret that simple two-word speech.
 
Indeed, players hate when outsiders do their retiring for them. If Pence wanted to announce that he was done, he was more than capable of forming a longer and more declarative sentence.
 
But he has established such a visceral connection with this town that imagining him anywhere else seems wrong. Signing somewhere else and then coming to sign a one-day contract "to retire as a Giant" seems inauthentic for him.
 
And for those who note that he was handsomely compensated for his time in San Francisco (which he very clearly was; a shade over $100 million), he paid it back in deeds. The books are square on Pence, and begrudging him anything is the mark of a cad.
 
So "we'll see" it is. He'll say more when it's time to say more, but "we'll see" seems perfectly sufficient for today no matter how he takes to embellish those two words.