By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — His orange Giants hat had been replaced by a black one, this with the “4440” on the front, a model number of John Deere tractors. Madison Bumgarner, heading toward his 30th birthday, remains the country boy from North Carolina.
Copyright 2019, The Maven
By Art Spander
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — “Frost,” the sign read. “Stay off grass.” No one-liners, please, even if the warning is so very Nor Cal. Besides, this was after the Giants had worked out Wednesday in weather chilly enough to keep observers bundled, but not chilly enough to keep young ballplayers from working out.
There’s a new field at the Giants' complex, with two infields. Not exactly as impressive as, say, the White Sox and Dodgers' facility 15 miles west at Glendale, where each team has a dozen diamonds apiece. But the Giants have civilization, which counts for something.
Not as much as some power hitting and relief pitching, of course. This spring training of 2018 is one of problems and questions. For the first time in years, San Francisco enters — let’s say it — as an also-ran, a team theoretically without hope.
The Giants bottomed out in 2017. A chill. A fall from the heights. Three World Series championships in five years, certainly. But that was then. Now is a muddle.
Will Evan Longoria and Andrew McCutcheon make that much of a difference? The Dodgers and Diamondbacks are locks, aren’t they, and the Rockies should make the postseason. The Padres were seven games in front of San Francisco and just signed Eric Hosmer for millions.
It is a sobering reminder that last season the Giants not only didn’t win four out of every 10 games, they finished 40 games behind the dreaded Dodgers. That seems impossible. It wasn’t.
Maybe it’s the temperature, the high down here just 61 degrees. Maybe it’s the reality. But for the Giants, the usual optimism of spring training seems absent. How do you pick up 20 games on the Dodgers, never mind 40? And how do you feel good wearing parkas in Arizona?
Giants manager Bruce Bochy spent a good part of Wednesday on that new back field, watching prospects such as Andres Blanco and Chase D’Arnaud. “I need to put the face with the name,” said Bochy, ”although I know them all. They have it a little tougher.”
He meant tougher than the veterans, who are not to be rushed. The Giants’ exhibition season opens Friday, split squad against Milwaukee, and Buster Posey will be watching, not playing, and probably a game or two after that. Posey is approaching 31. Catchers wear down.
Pablo Sandoval already is 31 and, at times, being dropped by Boston and then returning to the Giants in July 2017, already looked worn down. He hit .225 with five home runs in 47 games with San Francisco.
Bochy said Sandoval, with a history of being overweight, is in good shape. He’ll be used at third base and first base, backing up, and at times as a bullpen catcher. Where the Panda will not be used is in the outfield.
“We were playing one of those postseason games in Taiwan, a lot of major leaguers,” said Bochy. “I put Pablo in left field. There’s a line drive in the gap. He looks to his left at the center fielder, a speed guy (it was Curtis Granderson), as if, ‘That’s your ball.’
“But everything that’s happened to Pablo over the years hasn’t fazed him.”
What happened last season certainly fazed the Giants and their fans. The AT&T Park sellout streak ended at 530 games. Madison Bumgarner fell off a dirt bike and missed a couple of months. It was as if the baseball gods were making San Francisco pay for the glory of earlier years.
When Bumgarner went down, Ty Blach stepped up. And Blach will start the Cactus League opener on Friday. The usual contention is that exhibition games don’t mean anything, that pitchers are working to get in shape.
But for a team built on pitching, a team coming off a rotten year, these exhibition games over the next month could mean a great deal. They could make everyone, players and fans, believe.
“My job,” said Bochy, “is to get these guys ready for opening day.” Being ready does count. Being successful counts much more.
By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner
Buster’s on the disabled list, if only momentarily. Mad Bum is on the outs with fortune. Brandon Belt is, well, struggling is the kind way to phrase it, although, glorioski he did get a hit after going, ooh, 0-for-18. Oh, those odd-year blues for the Giants.
Yes, the season isn’t two weeks old, and a year ago San Francisco started beautifully and ended less so, proving over 162 games and six months a great deal can change, sometimes for the better as opposed to 2016 when it was for the worse.
©2017 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner
PHOENIX — Somewhere beyond the usual platitudes and justifications, the expected words that it was only one game and yes, baseball can be bewilderingly strange, is the unavoidable fact the Giants started the 2017 season exactly the way they ended the 2016 season: With a massive bullpen failure.
Say what you want, and what manager Bruce Bochy said Sunday was true to his character, that the Giants should have scored more, that the Arizona Diamondbacks had some good fortune — “seeing-eye hits,” is the phrase — and that a couple of calls by the umpires could have, more specifically, should have gone the other way.
©2017 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Eight in a row for the Giants, the wrong way. True, they don’t count, but going a week without a win, even in the exhibition season brings back haunting memories of the second half of the 2016 regular season, when those losses did count, when San Francisco plunged from first place.
Madison Bumgarner pitched beautifully on a 72-degree Sunday afternoon, and that is what we should take from yet another Cactus League defeat for the Giants, this one to the Kansas City Royals, 4-3.
©2017 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO — They’re not going to win the division. That’s for sure. Maybe the Giants still will make the postseason, get in as a wild card, and even that’s problematic.
But definitely the way they are playing, just poorly enough to lose, they won’t overtake the Dodgers — who gleefully overtook the tumbling Giants in the National League West days ago.
It’s not that the Giants are a bad team. The Atlanta Braves are a bad team. No, the Braves are a terrible team. The San Diego Padres are a bad team. They are 22 games below .500. And that’s after sweeping a three-game series from the Giants. For a second time this season.
The Giants are a good team playing badly. Or once were a good team playing badly, very badly as defined by a classical, baseball reference.
When they hit they don’t pitch, as they did and didn't on Tuesday night, San Francisco entering the ninth with a 4-1 lead and ingloriously losing to the Padres 6-4 on a home run by, not Nate Colbert or Tony Gwynn even, but Ryan Schimpf. The 27th blown save of the season. Oh, where are you now, Robb Nen?
When the Giants pitch they don’t hit, as they did and didn't on Wednesday in the sunshine and gloom (the mood, not the weather) at AT&T Park, San Francisco getting only four singles and thus getting whipped by the Pads, 3-1.
So the little bit of optimism created when the Giants had a sweep of their own, taking three in a row at Arizona over the weekend, has been trashed, smashed and tossed into McCovey Cove. So much for progress.
The Dodgers, who beat the Yankees for the second time in their three-game series at the Stadium, now are five in front of San Francisco. The billionaires at Chavez Ravine smirk.
In the post-game session Wednesday, Bruce Bochy, the Giants' manager, was asked if he had sleepless nights, to which he answered in the affirmative, adding, “I wish I could do more. Every manager or head coach does. It’s always on your mind.”
Some would say Bochy could have done more on Tuesday night if Brandon Belt hadn’t been out because he was ailing. Buster Posey was playing first, and there was a ball off Posey’s mitt, which became an infield single when reliever Hunter Strickland conceded he was slow to cover the base.
The little things, and the big defeats.
On Wednesday, the Giants' bullpen couldn’t be faulted. Neither could starter Madison Bumgarner. You allow only three runs, you’ll normally win. Not, however, when the season is coming apart at the seams.
San Diego starter Luis Perdomo mystified the Giants' batters. The first four men in the order, Denard Span, Angel Pagan, Posey and Brandon Crawford, had two walks and no hits among them. Only because Belt and Joe Panik managed back-to-back singles in the second, after a Crawford walk, did the Giants avoid a shutout.
“He had a good sinker,” Bochy, a former catcher, said of Perdomo, who didn’t look like someone who came into the game with a 7-9 record and 5.89 earned run average. Ah, but the Giants looked very much like the team that has collapsed (20-35 since July 10) in notable fashion.
Bumgarner, gracious as always post-game, stood there attired like a hunter (not Strickland) and was asked what needs to be corrected: pitching, hitting, whatever.
“I don’t know,” he answered quietly. “So far, the second half’s been a club I’ve never seen before.”
A club that Giants fans have seen too much of, one that's causing them to wonder what might have transpired if San Francisco, not the Cubs, got 100 mph closer Aroldis Chapman (or who the Giants would have been forced to trade to acquire him).
Bumgarner was unable to pick up his 100th career victory, a total that’s inevitable.
“There’s a lot of pressure this time of year,” reminded Baumgarner, reflecting on the chase for the playoffs and not his personal goals or difficulties. “It’s more of a mind-set this time of the year.”
Bochy could only agree.
“This was a big series,” he conceded about the three games, three defeats, against San Diego. “They’re all big.”
A little more than two weeks are left in a season that began so well, a season — an even year — in which the Giants were picked to be champions. How did we go wrong? How did the Giants?
By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO — It hurt. Don’t doubt that. To have the Dodgers, the team that infuriates Giants fans even more than their own team enthralls them, clinch the division at their home, was painful. And, sadly, inevitable.
Finally, emphatically, the Dodgers, with all that talent, but with all those questions, ended the chase and for the Giants the hope. It was a rout Tuesday night.
It was Clayton Kershaw in full domination. It was an 8-0 victory that had the message board at AT&T Park offering L.A. congratulations — imagine that, and telling us to “#respecttherivalry” — and the defending World Series champion Giants staring in dismay, if not disbelief.
“You have to remember that in the off-season,” Madison Bumgarner said of the opposition celebrating in what in effect is his house. “You don’t want to be part of that. It’s always tough.”
Even tougher when your own fans began departing as the score built, and in the stands behind first base there were only spectators in blue jackets or jerseys shouting, “Let’s go Dodgers.”
Infuriating. And to the Giants, unacceptable.
Bumgarner was the San Francisco starter this fateful night by the Bay. He was the World Series hero last fall and the one reliable pitcher this summer. But the game and the moment — and the Dodgers — got to him, while the Giants couldn’t get to Kershaw.
Thirteen strikeouts for Kershaw. One hit for the Giants, that by Kevin Frandsen, who spent most of the season with Sacramento, the Triple A farm team. And, after seven straight defeats at AT&T this year, a momentous Los Angeles victory.
Bumgarner, trying to win his 19th game of 2015, more significantly trying to save the Giants, understood the task and the difficulty, maybe too well. “I don’t want to say it got the best of me,” said Bumgarner, a standup guy as well as a brilliant athlete, “but I was a little more emotional than I like to be. I didn’t have what I wanted to have.”
The Dodgers scored in the first, which it turned out was all they would need but not all they would get. Kike Hernandez homered in the third, Justin Ruggiano and A.J. Ellis homered back-to-back in the sixth. Mad Bum had thrown 112 pitches but would throw no more.
The game was over if there were innings left to play. The season was over, if there were five games left to play.
Yet, properly, there was little remorse from the Giants. “Four concussions and two obliques,” said Giants manager Bruce Bochy, reminding of a year too filled with injuries and trips to the disabled list. “And yet here we were on September 29th finally getting knocked out.
“It’s always tough when it happens, but with everything, the new kids, the injuries, to go to the last week of the season you still have to be proud of these guys. Bumgarner had a tremendous year. He had good stuff today.”
Until he wore down. Until the weeks and months caught up with a man who a year ago pitched through October and surely must have felt weary, not that he ever would suggest as much. He wanted the ball, and the Giants, who had watched him outduel Kershaw earlier this season, wanted him to have it.
“There was a lot at stake,” said Bochy, stating the obvious. There also was an uphill climb. The Giants had three long losing streaks during the season, and after allowing leads to get away last week, twice against San Diego and once against Oakland, were eight games behind the Dodgers. They cut the margin to five, but sooner or later L.A. would stop losing. Sooner happened on Monday night.
“We had no margin for error,” said Bochy, repeating a theme of the past few days. Now they will have an autumn without the playoffs. Now there will be no more pennants or paraphernalia.
It’s hard to fault a team that didn’t have Hunter Pence except for a few games, that had Brandon Belt and Nori Aoki get concussions, that for a while lost Jake Peavy and for most of the time didn’t have Matt Cain or Tim Lincecum.
In spring training gleeful Giants fans wore T-shirts that read, “We like the odds,” a play on words noting the team had won titles in even years. But the odds were not on the Giants’ side. And the Dodgers were too strong.
“We were very competitive,” said Bumgarner. “We were there to the end.”
And now it’s the end.
By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO — He wears glasses. Not Madison Bumgarner, of course — he simply wears out the opposition. And not anyone from the Chicago Cubs, although given the frequency with which they struck out against Bumgarner, maybe that wouldn’t be a bad idea. But no, the reference is to Kelby Tomlinson.
As in Grand Slam Kelby, who Thursday, on the warmest (79 degrees at first pitch) and surely most enthralling afternoon of this often painful season at AT&T Park, hit his first major-league home run.
That it came in the eighth inning with the bases loaded of a 9-1 victory over the Cubs had Tomlinson’s teammates applauding like fans, and had Tomlinson a bit bewildered.
Barely a month away from the minor leagues, Tomlinson wasn’t sure how to respond when the slam was reshown on the big video board in center field. When your career has been limited to places like Augusta, San Jose, Richmond and, until August 3, Sacramento, there’s unfamiliarity with heroic celebrations in the bigs.
“Everybody got up and started clapping for me,” said Tomlinson. Including, one guesses, in absentia his optometrist.
In these days of laser surgery and contact lenses, the ballplayer who wears glasses is rare. Across the Bay, Eric Sogard of the Athletics chooses them. And although he’s not competing, Cubs manager Joe Maddon wears glasses, the horn-rimmed variety.
Tomlinson has astigmatism. He tried contacts, on the suggestion of his wife. But he feels more comfortable in the spectacles, he said facing a dozen newspaper and TV types, half of whom also were wearing glasses.
Years ago when he first played for the Lakers, Kurt Rambis wore horn-rims, leading a group of young men who called themselves the Rambis Fan Club to show up at games in the same sort of glasses, whether they required vision correction or not. Maybe some of the Giant partisans should try the same stunt, although Tomlinson’s glasses are not particularly unusual.
Tomlinson, 24, born and raised in Oklahoma, isn’t unusual either. Although the way he’s started with the Giants definitely is. In 20 games, he’s had 18 hits in 52 at bats, a .346 average, and now 11 runs batted in.
“He’s a base-hit guy,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said of Tomlinson. “Has a short swing. Good speed. One of the most complete players from this club.”
A club with so many players injured that men such as Tomlinson, Juan Perez and Ehire Adrianza have to start. But it’s also a club that, after going winless in five games against the Cubs, won the last two — and the series.
As always, Bumgarner was at least in part responsible. The first six outs he recorded were strikeouts. By the time Bochy decided to “give him a break,” taking him out after six innings, MadBum had 12 strikeouts and his 16th win.
He allowed only two hits and two walks, and in August was 5-0 with a 1.45 earned run average. “A great athlete,” said Bochy. “He was disappointed because when I sent him up to pinch hit (in St. Louis) he didn’t get a hit.” That was a night after Bumgarner pinch hit and did get a single.
The Giants have lost Joe Panik, Angel Pagan and now for a few days Brandon Crawford. So they reach down and grab Tomlinson, and Tomlinson grabs the spotlight. “It’s a long season,” said Bochy, “and you learn to deal with it because you have no choice.”
Wednesday night, on first, Tomlinson beat a throw to second on a grounder when it appeared he would be out. “That’s how the game should be played,” Bochy said of Tomlinson’s hustle.
His power isn’t bad either. “You play in the yard,” Tomlinson said about growing up, “and you never dream about getting a hit. You dream about hitting a home run and hitting a grand slam. I don’t hit that many home runs, so that was great.”
Marlon Byrd, a few days from his 38th birthday, does hit that many home runs. He had 21 for the Mets in 2013, 25 for the Phillies in 2014 and his shot in the third for the Giants was his 21st of 2015.
He was the one who urged Tomlinson to step up and acknowledge the ovation for the grand slam.
“I’m so happy for him,” Bochy said of Tomlinson. “I loved the way he came through.”
By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner
A liner to left field by Justin Upton in the top of the seventh. A hit for the San Diego Padres. Their first hit Monday night. A gasp by the crowd at AT&T Park. Madison Bumgarner’s near perfection at an end, his dominance unending.
Two hits allowed on this evening by MadBum, but no runs. The Giants are back to .500 after a 2-0 win over the Padres, who came in as hot as the weather was cold. But at his best — and this was his best of the young season — Bumgarner chills them all.
© 2015 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner
MESA, Ariz. — Winter hung in the air, one more brief shower for the Valley of the Sun. But on the field Tuesday unofficially it was spring, the Giants and the A’s in a game that while it didn’t mean anything, it conversely meant a great deal.
Ballplayers on the diamond, people in the stands, both delighted to be in the presence of the other.
© 2015 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
The story was in my head if not yet in my computer: Giants lose. Road teams don’t win the seventh game. Not after they’ve dropped the sixth game. Look at history. Look at the Giants in 2002.
What I failed to look at was the Giants of 2014.
Home teams had won the seventh game nine times in a row since 1979. Too bad, Giants. No, too good. Precedent be damned. Somebody had to break the streak. Did we dare imagine it would be the Giants?
The last time the Giants were in this position was 12 years ago in Anaheim. The Angels, as we know, won the last two and won the Series. And J.T. Snow, then the Giants' first baseman, sat staring at his locker and saying so quietly, “You play seven months, and it all comes down to one game.”
That game belonged to the Giants on Wednesday night, the Giants and remarkable Madison Bumgarner and brilliant Bruce Bochy and everyone else in the visiting clubhouse. That game made nervous wrecks of fans watching at San Francisco’s Civic Center and in taverns from Sausalito to San Leandro. That game, a 3-2 victory over Kansas City, also made the Giants champions a third time in five years.
Maybe not a dynasty, compared to the Yankees of the late 1940s and early '50s, but not unimpressive either, particularly since after moving to San Francisco in 1958, the Giants couldn’t win a single championship for 52 years.
"Nearly men" is the British phrase. People who come close but never reach the top. But that’s all done now. Three in five years. This one with Matt Cain out half the season. This one with a search for a second baseman until Joe Panik arrived in late summer. This one with Brandon Belt missing because of a concussion. This one after the Giants were stomped by the Dodgers during the regular season.
“Ya gotta believe.” The Mets fans originated that phrase when their expansion team rose from hopelessness (40-120 in 1962) to win the 1969 World Series. The team gained a nickname the New York tabloids still use, “Amazin’.” The Post only calls them “The Amazin’s.”
The Amazin’ Giants. Wild cards. Wild champions. Defier of odds who win in the evens: ’10, ’12 and now ’14. How did they do it?
Tim Lincecum slumps. Matt Cain needs surgery. Marco Scutaro never shows. Angel Pagan is out much of the year. “These guys are resilient,” Bochy has said so many times. Unquestionably.
And something I ignored: Winning breeds winning. The Giants, as are all great teams — and three titles in five years allows the use of the word “great” — understand who they are and how to succeed.
You’ve head the cliché so often. They do the little things, which turn out big. Kansas City was going to run the Giants to the Missouri state line. It didn’t work out that way. The Giants are the ones who took the extra base. The Giants were the ones who found heroes at virtually every position or in front of virtually every locker.
Panik turns a probable hit into a double play. Juan Perez, a 170 hitter, hangs one off the centerfield wall at AT&T Park. Travis Ishikawa comes out of the minors to hit the Giants' biggest home run in 63 years. Pablo Sandoval can’t hit in April and can’t miss in October. And Hunter Pence is irrepressible.
What this World Series reminded us is what the 1960 World Series, won by the Pirates over the Yankees, taught us: each game is a separate entity. A 10-0 loss is no different than a 1-0 loss. In fact it’s probably better. Except for the fans.
The Giants were pummeled Tuesday. That wasn’t as important as the simple fact that the Royals, who at the start of this postseason won their first eight games, had drawn even in the 2014 World Series. And had the seventh game at home. Which meant they would win.
Except they didn’t win. The Giants won. The Giants are the new Yankees. The Giants are the new Cardinals. The Giants are the team that doesn’t care what anyone predicts or says.
On Tuesday, after that one-sided defeat, Bochy was asked why he wouldn’t start Bumgarner in the seventh game. He smirked, but instead of berating the questioner, responding with something like, “What do you know about baseball?” Bochy said something like, “Everybody is a manager.”
On the Giants there is but one manager, Bruce Bochy. He brought in Bumgarner at just the perfect time. But of course.
These are the perfect times for the Giants, the times of their lives, the times of our lives. Who knows what the future holds? The present is fantastic. I don’t think I’ll write that “Giants lose’’ story. Ever.
By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO — This is a tale of accomplishment, of a man so skilled in his profession that he leaves others, his opponents, virtually helpless.
This also is a tale of wariness, of being alert that no matter how much Madison Bumgarner has done, winning World Series games and calling down echoes of Koufax, Gibson and Whitey Ford, the San Francisco Giants are far from done.
Mad Bum once more was magnificent Sunday night in Game 5 of the Series, a 5-0 Giants victory that gave them a three-to-two lead. “He was fantastic again,” affirmed Ned Yost, the guy who manages the other team, Kansas City.
But as Yost made so clear and Giants followers know so well, the Series now goes to the other team’s ballpark, and that brings up unhappy thoughts.
It was 2002 when the Giants led the Angels three to two, went to Anaheim and lost the last two games and the Series.
Brandon Crawford is the Giants’ shortstop now and was one of the heroes Sunday night, driving in the first two runs. But in 2002 he was a 15-year-old in Danville, and a fan as passionate as those who filled AT&T Park Sunday night screaming and chanting.
“When we lost,” said Crawford of the Series 12 years ago, “I was depressed for a couple of days. I remember in Game 6 they had a 5-0 lead, and they lost.”
So it’s all there, the bad times, and now the thought of more good times, of adding another Series title to those of 2010 and 2012.
The Giants are one game away. As they were in Anaheim.
“We’re going back to our home crowd,” said Yost, sticking in a dart. Game 6 is Tuesday. Game 7, if needed, is Wednesday.
“The place is going to be absolutely crazy. We’ve got to walk the tightrope now without a net, but our guys aren’t afraid of walking without a net.
“We fall off, and we’re dead. But we win Tuesday, nobody’s got a net.”
What the Giants have are memories. Long ago memories. Unpleasant memories.
If it could happen in ’02, it could happen in ’14. What the Giants probably won’t have unless there is a seventh game is Bumgarner.
“Would he be available if that situation came up?” Giants manager Bruce Bochy asked rhetorically after some journalist wondered if Bumgarner, who went nine innings and 117 pitches, could come in as a reliever in Game 7.
“Yeah,” said Bochy. “He’d have two days off, and he’s a strong kid. We wouldn’t mind pushing him one time, but the talk about doing it twice, we did have some concern.”
Bumgarner is 4-0 in four World Series starts, including two this time, with an 0.29 ERA. He’s allowed only 12 hits in 31 innings, and struck out 27, eight of those Sunday night.
It’s a truism of sport that if the opponent doesn’t score the worst you’ll ever get is a 0-0 tie. But the Giants are able to score, in their own unique manner. On Sunday night they got their first run when Crawford grounded out, their second when Crawford singled.
Then, most unlikely of all, they broke loose in the eighth when Juan Perez, a defensive specialist who had a paltry .170 batting average in the regular season, was sent up to bat for Travis Ishikawa — and hit a ball off the centerfield fence which scored two more runs.
The wizards keep casting their spell.
“That’s the way we do it,” said Crawford. “Our averages may not be high, but we can produce when we have to.”
Bumgarner, the 25-year-old lefty from North Carolina, has been remarkably productive. And to the other team, baffling. The Royals had only four hits and were able to get only one man as far as second.
"He's so fun to watch,” Crawford said of Bumgarner. “He's always fun to watch. In the postseason, you could look at him and he looks like he's just pitching in the middle of June, like it's no big deal. He takes the pressure off of everybody else. We just feed off of him."
Said Yost, the K.C. manager, “You know what (Bumgarner) does so well, and what he’s so impressive doing, he commands his fastball in and out and up and down. He commands his breaking ball in and out, and really can command that pitch down and away in the dirt when he needs to get a strike.”
Bumgarner, pure country, and the last year or two quite shaggy, with a beard and long hair, said he’s humbled to be compared with the greats of history.
When he did a TV interview in front of the Giants dugout, fans who had been yelling “MVP, MVP” simply let loose a resounding cheer. Always polite, Bumgarner tipped his cap.
“It’s something that’s tough to say right now,” Bumgarner insisted when asked about the meaning of the victory. “I’m just happy we won. That was a big game for us.”
Which put them in position for the game that’s even bigger, the one that would give them another World Series. The one they couldn’t get back when Brandon Crawford was a fan, not a hero.
By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO — Always the Giants, in New York, in San Francisco. Always the miracle workers, bending reality, banging dramatic home runs, winning pennants.
This one, on a Thursday night by the Bay that will cling to the memory, wasn’t exactly Bobby Thomson homering off Ralph Branca, and the great Red Smith writing, “Truth has overcome anything fiction could envision.” But it will do.
In 1951, the Giants came from more than a dozen games behind the Brooklyn Dodgers to tie, and Thomson’s “shot heard ‘round the world,” gave them the playoff series. That was forever.
This was for now, and yet still for a lifetime. “What a story,” said Giants manager Bruce Bochy.” Indeed.
Travis Ishikawa, once a Giant, then a castoff, returned to hit his own Thomson-esque three-run blow in the bottom of the ninth Thursday, giving San Francisco a 6-3 victory and the pennant.
The Giants won the best-of-seven National League Championship Series from St. Louis, four games to one, and for the third time in five years march on to the baseball’s ultimate, the World Series.
For four games the Giants did the little things, racing the bases, forcing the issue, riding key hits and a bit of luck. But in the fifth game they went big, breaking loose after six postseason games without a home run to get three homers, including the game-winner by the most unlikely of heroes, Ishikawa.
Joe Panik, the rookie second baseman, had a two-run shot in the third. Then off the bench, Michael Morse, pinch-hitting, tied the game, 3-3, with a ball into the left field bleachers in the eighth. After that, it was a given somehow the Giants would get this game.
But no one figured on Ishikawa, a first baseman forced to play left field where in the second he misplayed a fly ball that allowed the Cards to score. “It was a terrible read on my part,” said Ishikawa. “I ran a tough route.”
His teammates wouldn’t let him suffer. “I told him don’t worry,” said Jake Peavy, the pitcher San Francisco got in a trade from Boston. “We’ll get it back. That’s the way this team is, so spirited.”
And so intriguing. Ishikawa was a backup on the Giants’ 2010 World Series champions, but he ached to play. What he did, however, was move, not play, joining four major league and numerous minor league franchises. The worst season was 2013 when he was with teams in four eastern cities and rarely saw his family in San Jose. He thought about quitting.
Instead for 2014 he signed with Pittsburgh, but when early in the season the Pirates wanted to ship him to Triple A, he requested his release. He joined the Giants — who sent him to the minors.
“I remember calling a buddy of mine halfway through the year,” said Ishikawa, “crying in Texas. No matter what, I was 0-for-4 and just didn’t look like I could hit a ball off a tee. He continued to encourage me.
“And after the All-Star break I was able to do just enough to allow the Giants to bring me up, which I wasn’t expecting ... I came up, just thinking I was going to be a pinch-hitter, and obviously Bochy, with his mastermind of intuition, just throwing me out in the outfield and giving me this opportunity. It’s unbelievable.”
A phrase that describes the first home run to decide a pennant for the Giants since, yes, Thomson’s six decades earlier.”
Not that the 31-year-old Ishikawa thought it was clearing the bricks in right field when he connected. He believed it would be off the wall, still enough to bring home Joaquin Arias, running for Pablo Sandoval, from third with the winner.
“It was a 2-0 count,” said Ishikawa. “I knew (Michael Wacha, who had been brought in to pitch the ninth) didn’t want to go to 3-0. I was just trying to be aggressive, put the barrel of the bat on the ball.
“When I first hit it I thought it was going to be a walkoff hit, so I was throwing my hands in the air, and then I just heard the crowd going crazy. So my thought was, ‘OK, if this gets out, it’s going to be fantastic.’ “
Which it did, and which it was.
All this way, and no mention yet of the wonderful Madison Bumgarner, who started and allowed only five hits, but because two were home runs, one each in the fourth by Matt Adams and Tony Cruz, left after eight innings trailing 3-2.
“That was as fun a game as you can have,” said Mad Bum, chosen the MVP of the NLCS for shutting out the Cards in the first game and keeping them under control in this fifth game.
“I don’t know I’m 100 percent deserving of it,” said Bumgarner. “We’re just excited to be moving on.”
Probably no less excited to get out a clubhouse where for a half-hour the Giants had doused each other, and trapped media, in Mumm’s sparkling wine. “It’s time to celebrate,” confirmed Bochy.
Not surprisingly when the Series begins Tuesday against the Royals in Kansas City, Bumgarner will be the Giants pitcher. “Yeah, definitely,” said Bochy.
And the guess is Ishikawa, the out-of-position first baseman, will be in left.
“I’m sure he’s going to wake up and realize what just happened,” said Bochy. “He’s such a great kid. ... You know it’s all about perseverance, and he didn’t give up. He said there’s a time or two he thought about it, and I’m sure it’s all worthwhile now.”
By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO — It just got away. Madison Bumgarner was talking about the bunt he picked up and hurled into left field. He could have been talking about history, about the National League Division Series, the one that may have slipped out of the Giants’ grasp as surely as the ball did from Bumgarner’s grasp.
A sacrifice bunt with runners on first and second and nobody out in the top of the seventh of a scoreless game. Bumgarner grabbed the ball. He’s a lefthander.
He’s a great pitcher, probably San Francisco’s best. He was out there to wrap up the Series, to give the Giants a sweep over the Washington Nationals. For six innings Monday afternoon he was impressive, as was the other starter, Doug Fister.
In the seventh, Bumgarner gave up a leadoff double to Ian Desmond and then a walk to the dangerous Bryce Harper. The Nats needed a win. The Nats needed a run. Wilson Ramos tried to sacrifice, but the count went to 1-2. Washington manager Matt Williams wouldn’t back away from the bunt.
Ramos dumped it down, and Bumgarner picked it up. And threw away the baseball. Maybe, knowing how little things grow large and fateful in the playoffs, threw away the postseason. Flung the ball past third baseman Pablo Sandoval. Maybe flung the Giants' chances into oblivion.
Desmond would score from second, Harper from first. The Nats would beat the Giants, 4-1, and not only would stay alive but perhaps also would change the direction of the series.
Washington had a win. Washington had momentum.
“It just got away from me,” said Bumgarner. He had gone 22 innings in the postseason without permitting a run, six in this game. He was the man who would clinch. But with the bunt in his hand, he clutched. “I felt good throwing it,” said Bumgarner.
A door was opened. The Nats had the best record in the National League during the regular season. But the Giants were baffling them, frustrating them, beating them, 3-2, the first game then in a record 18 hours, 2-1 the second. Everything was going the Giants way. Until Bumgarner’s throw went the wrong way.
Do the Giants come back? Do the Nationals, waiting for the break, win the last two? Was that error in the nightmarish litany of fairy stories the clock striking midnight? The Giants did win the World Series in 2010 and 2012, but their legacy is of heartbreak, of line drives caught and other miseries.
Giants manager Bruce Bochy saw everything unfolding and winced. “I was hoping we would get an out there,” said Bochy. Instead he got a figurative punch in the jaw.
“He tried to do too a little too much there on the bunt,” Bochy said of Bumgarner. “You know you take the out. He tried to rush it. He threw it away.”
Then as if to lighten a grim setting, Bochy added, “He threw it away well, too.”
There was laughter. There was jolting reality. The Nats had been given life, and in baseball, where time stands still, where there is no clock, that’s all you need. Especially when you have Denard Span, Anthony Rendon (7 of 15 in the three games), Jayson Werth and Adam LaRoche at the top of the lineup.
Ryan Vogelsong pitches for the Giants when the teams play again Tuesday night at AT&T Park. “He’s one of our starters,” said Bochy, explaining why Vogelsong was chosen. “He’s a guy we have all the confidence in the world in. He’s been in this situation before.”
Gio Gonzalez will go for the Nats. He used to be on the Oakland A’s. He knows AT&T. “Spent half my career here,” said Gonzalez, exaggerating only a trifle. What he didn’t know Monday morning was he would have the opportunity to pitch one more time. One very big time.
“We all want to win,” said Gonzalez. “We can’t dwell on the past.”
That was the Nats’ mantra after the 18-inning loss Saturday night. That is the Giants’ mantra after the stunning loss Monday afternoon.
“I don’t know if shock’s the word,” Bochy said of the way the way things turned in the seventh. “It’s such an intense game, and I know that they wanted to get that out at third base. They played so well in these type of games. We made a mistake. We’ve got to learn from it.”
It may be too late. It may be that the only thing Bumgarner and the Giants will learn is they gave the Nationals the break that may break the Giants.
“Well,” said Bochy, “I don’t know how many times I’ve heard down the stretch in September ‘must win’ and all that. That’s why you play the game. We’re fortunate not to be in that situation quite yet with our two wins in Washington.
“But they are all important games. We know how good this club is we’re playing, and you have to play your best ball to beat them. Today we didn’t, and we made a mistake that hurt us. But we’ll come out and get after it (Friday).”
By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO — That’s who they really are, the Giants. At least who they’re supposed to be, a team that keeps the game close, which has great pitching and effective fielding. For three games, three reassuring games, that’s exactly what they did.
There was a loss Wednesday, an agonizing, grinding 2-1 loss to the Washington Nationals at AT&T Park, a loss that reminded how difficult it is to win in baseball.
A loss, but not a downer.
Not one of those “What the heck is going on here?” type of exhibitions the Giants had a week ago at Toronto and Colorado when they got pummeled, giving up extra-base hits, dropping ground balls — or throwing them away — and dropping five games out six.
A “horrible trip” is what Bruce Bochy called it, and for a manager perennially upbeat, that’s a concession as shocking as what happened to the pitching and defense.
But the return to the ballpark by the bay brought a return to what we had known as Giants baseball, an 8-0 win over the Nats on Monday, a 4-2 win in 10 innings on Tuesday, and then that 10-inning, 2-1 defeat on Wednesday. Four runs allowed in three games.
"The guys bounced back," said Bochy. "They got on track here. This was more (like) our baseball. It was very encouraging how we played in this series. We played well again.
“Sure it was a loss (Wednesday), but the way we played was encouraging. Good pitching. What we thought we could do.”
Which was hang to in there. To go through some of that sweet torture made famous in that championship season of 2010.
On Tuesday, they rallied to tie and then won in 10 on Pablo Sandoval’s home run.
On Wednesday, they rallied to tie, then lost in 10 when the superkid, Bryce Harper, who earlier had homered, doubled and scored on Ian Desmond’s single.
“Their defense beat us,” said Bochy. Quite probably. After Buster Posey singled home Angel Pagan with one out in the eighth, Hunter Pence drove a liner to right that Harper grabbed on a dive. Then when Brandon Belt smashed one on the ground to right, first baseman Adam LaRoche stopped the ball from going through and forced Posey at second.
Two innings later, Washington, underachieving this season, got the run that got the win.
“He’s a good hitter,” Bochy said of Harper, an understatement.
Harper, the 2012 NL Rookie of the Year, has been labeled the “New Natural.” He was the overall No. 1 pick in the 2010 amateur draft — a year after teammate, Stephen Strasburg, the pitcher, was the No. 1 overall pick in the 2009 draft.
The Nats have talent. So do the Giants, or they wouldn’t have won the World Series twice in the past three seasons. The Giants also had problems, those one-sided losses in Toronto and Colorado. With Ryan Vogelsong out with a broken finger and Santiago Casilla also on the disabled list, they still have them.
Yet Matt Cain’s start on Tuesday, only two runs allowed, and Madison Bumgarner’s on Wednesday — seven innings, one run — were reminders of the way it was and should be once more.
“It was no fun to give it up (at Colorado), but we know what we can do,” said Bumgarner. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
What he didn’t say was that the ugly exhibition on the road wasn’t what people have come think of as the San Francisco Giants. “No,” was his one-word response when asked if that was anything close to what he or his teammates expected.
What Bochy and the 190th consecutive sellout crowd at AT&T expected Wednesday was exactly what they got, great pitching, Washington’s Gio Gonzalez — formerly with the Oakland A’s — and Bumgarner matching shutouts through five innings.
Then, leading off the sixth, Harper, a left-handed batter, powered a 1-2 pitch off Bumgarner, a left-handed thrower, into the left field stands.
"I think he made it pretty clear that he's going to play as hard as he can every day," Bumgarner said of Harper. "It's fun to play against guys like that. Most everybody plays that way, but ... he's the kind of player who can bring out the best in you."
The Giants, with a day off Thursday, believe the games against the Nats brought out the best in them after a week when they played their worst.
The only disappointing thing Wednesday, other than the final score, was the end of Marco Scutaro’s hitting streak, which had reached 19 consecutive games.
Scutaro was the Giants’ final batter. With two outs in the bottom of the 10th, he hit one that appeared might reach the fence but was caught on the warning track by Roger Bernadina.
“He just missed it,” said Bochy.
By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO – Jim Leyland took exception to the question. “Breaks?’’ he responded rhetorically. “I don’t think the Giants are getting any breaks. They’re outplaying us.”
Most of all, they’re outpitching the Detroit Tigers. Which in baseball is where it all begins. And ends. The adage can be repeated forever: If the other team doesn’t score, you can’t lose.
The other team, the Detroit Tigers, managed by Jim Leyland, didn’t score Thursday night. And so beaten, 2-0, by a team that barely scored, Detroit has lost the first two games of the 2012 World Series.
Defense wins. In baseball, defense begins with pitching. And ends with pitching.
With Barry Zito fooling the Tigers on Wednesday night. With Madison Bumgarner, who had been fighting himself, who had been getting chased from games in the fourth inning, stunning them Thursday night.
These are the Giants we’ve come to expect, the Giants who throw strikes and make big plays, such as Gregor Blanco firing to Marco Scutaro, whose relay cut down Prince Fielder at the plate. And make scoring against them almost an impossibility.
In the last five postseason games, the closing three against St. Louis in the National League Championship Series and the first two in the World Series, Giant pitching has given up runs in only three different innings. Three of 45.
A run in 27 innings to the Cards. Three runs in 18 innings to the Tigers, who were shut out only twice during the regular season. One run in the sixth on Wednesday, then, almost as a gift, two runs in the ninth. And none Thursday on an evening at AT&T so full of noise and tension that 42,855 fans at AT&T Park may never unwind.
The way they were starting to think the Tigers would never score.
“This was a really good World Series game,’’ said Leyland. “It didn’t turn out right for us . . . I don’t have any perspective. We got two hits tonight. I’m certainly not going to sit here and rip my offense. I think our offense is fine . . .”
It’s just that the Giants’ pitching has been better.
Santiago Casillla took over for Bumgarner in the eighth. Sergio Romo took over for Casilla in the ninth. “Those fans,’’ said Casilla of the crowd, “I’m 5-feet-10. The way they cheer when I’m on the mound, I feel about 6-feet-10. They’re unbelievable.”
A word some might apply to the Giants’ pitching. Zito overcame his demons of the past. Bumgarner overcame his struggles of the present. San Francisco manager Bruce Bochy even took Bumgarner out of the rotation after he couldn’t make it through the fourth inning of the NLCS opener against St. Louis.
“I thought the first inning would be critical for him, for his confidence,” Bochy said of Bumgarner’s opportunity Thursday night. “Also to see where he was at.”
Where he was at was back in 2010, when as a rookie Bumgarner was so impressive in a World Series start against the Texas Rangers.
“I mean,” said Bochy, after Bumgarner allowed only two hits and two walks to the Tigers, “what a job he did. Dave Righetti, our pitching coach, did a great job getting him back on track. He had great poise out there with a great delivery, and he stayed on it for seven innings.
“He needed a break, and I thought he benefited from it, both mentally and physically.”
No question everything so far has gone the way of the Giants, who, along with the nightly sellout crowds, waving their “rally rags,” singing along with the music of Journey, dressing in all sorts of loony attire of orange and black, have turned AT&T into a magical place.
On Wednesday night, Angel Pagan’s bouncer hit third, spun crazily and bounced into left for a double. On Thursday night, Gregor Blanco’s sacrifice bunt virtually dug a hole inches inside the third base line, loading the bases with nobody out in the seventh.
When Brandon Crawford grounded to second, the Tigers chose to go after the double play – which they got – instead of throwing home, and the Giants went in front, 1-0.
“It’s not debatable,” Leyland said of the decision, “because if we don’t score it doesn’t make any difference anyway. I can’t let them open the game up.”
Bochy said the difference in Bumgarner from his last few games was the delivery. “It was simpler, more compact,” he said, “and I think he was able to get the ball where he wanted to because of that.”
Asked if there was a different feel, Bumgarner, a laconic sort, but not without a sense of humor, answered, “Yeah, I went into the seventh inning instead of getting took out in the third.”
OK, his English isn’t perfect, but his fastball was.
“I think the only difference,” Bumgarner added, “was being able to make pitches. I hadn’t been able to do that this postseason, and tonight Buster (Posey) caught a great game, the defense did great.“I wanted to go out there and pitch well for our guys and the fans.”
He, Casilla and Romo couldn’t have pitched any better. If the other team doesn’t score you can’t lose. And the Giants didn’t.