Harbaugh’s best was always appreciated

By Art Spander

SANTA CLARA — The announcement, lacking explanation, carrying no emotion, was delivered within moments of Jim Harbaugh’s last words to the media. The 49ers and Harbaugh had “agreed to mutually part ways.” 

Just like that? Not if you were tuned in, and the Bay Area, as well as Ann Arbor, where the man supposedly will take up residence, never tuned out.

The story, the agony, the questions, have been bubbling for weeks, printed in the dailies, carried on radio and TV, on Internet sites.

Harbaugh and the Niners were done when the season was done, we were told, and told again, and Sunday, with a 20-17 victory over the Arizona Cardinals, at last it was done.

Thus, after four seasons, most wildly successful, three trips to the NFC championship, one to a Super Bowl, so was Harbaugh as Niner coach.

We knew it was coming, knew it was inevitable, knew the people at the top didn’t like Harbaugh’s pushy, demanding style — although they did like the victories, of which appropriately there were a total of 49, including playoffs.

And yet in this world of social media and screaming headlines, where there are no secrets, Harbaugh and Niners management, meaning president Jed York and general manager Trent Baalke, attempted to hide it until the last second.

Then on the final day of the regular season of 2014, when it could no longer be ignored, the Niners delivered the news as they might have done about another empty seat at Levi’s Stadium.

Oh, by the way, kids, there will be a new coach next season. Thought you’d like to know.

Here’s the shame of all this: That on what most likely will be the final game for another memorable 49er, Frank Gore, who ran for 144 yards, giving him his eighth season of 1,000 or more and a career total of more than 11,000, the performance becomes a sidebar.

For the Niners, who came in at 8-8, the only non-winning reason of Harbaugh’s four, the main story is Harbaugh and the departure that was forecast for weeks.

Jim is a demanding guy. The way he’s turned teams into winners (at Stanford, he took over after a 1-11 season and, whoosh, coached the Cardinal to 12-1, leading to the Niner job), he can afford to be. But he gets to the egos of those who pay his bills, an independent cuss whose loyalty is to his players rather than the bosses.

When the Niners went to the Super Bowl two seasons back, facing the Baltimore Ravens, coached by brother John Harbaugh, Jim thumbed his nose at protocol. It’s tradition the Friday before the game that each coach shows up at media headquarters in coat and tie for a final press conference. John wore a suit. Jim wore the clothes he wears on the field, black sweatshirt, chinos.

Basically what Jim Harbaugh does is wear on others. Play a few bars of Frank Sinatra singing “My Way.”

Now it’s the highway. Or a private jet to Michigan, where he’s getting an offer worth millions to coach his alma mater. Of course, when Harbaugh became Stanford coach before the 2007 season, he said Michigan admitted “borderline guys” and steered athletes (student-athletes?) toward softer majors than the rest of the kids.

What he said Sunday standing at the podium in the stadium auditorium was he felt great with what he and the team accomplished during his short reign.

“I leave on good terms with Jed York,” said Harbaugh. While there were skeptics among us, York and Harbaugh embraced after Jim walked out of the locker room pregame.

Later, soaked by a Gatorade as a farewell gift from his players, Harbaugh left the turf carrying a game ball, handed to him by safety Craig Dahl, whose interception in the final moments locked up the win.

“It’s like the song ‘Time of My Life,’” said Harbaugh. “That’s what it’s been. The relationships remain along the way. That’s what a team is. As I’ve said all along, it’s been a tremendous four years, my pleasure to work with this organization, this football team.

“This win meant a lot. There have been a lot of great moments.”

Harbaugh thanked the fans — many of whom remained to give him a last hurrah — as well as the media, the team.

“These were signature years in my life.”

As, Frank Gore said, they were in his life.

“He’s a great coach,” Gore said of Harbaugh. “My best years were with him as a team. He was here, and we won. I just wish him the best. I know whatever team he goes to, whether it’s the NFL or college, he’s going to be fine. He’s going to get it done.”

The decision on Harbaugh and by Harbaugh has been made. The decision on Gore, a free agent, is pending. Does he also depart? “I wish we can get things worked out,” said Gore, who cried before the game started, considering past and future. “But I also know it’s a business.”

So does quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who in Harbaugh is losing not only the man who drafted him in 2011 after the two worked out, but the one who as a former NFL quarterback himself nurtured him.

“He has been a huge part,” said Kaepernick, “but I’m playing football nevertheless.

“He helped develop me, not only as a quarterback but as a person. He made sure you took care of your family and your teammates. But he sill pointed out what I needed to do to get better as a player.”

He’ll be advising some other quarterback now on some other team.

“You start something,” Harbaugh said about the grind this year, “you finish it. We battled. You do your best. People may look at it as not enough, but you do your best. If your best isn’t appreciated, then you do your best anyway.”

Jim Harbaugh’s best was always appreciated. If only for too brief a time with the 49ers.

Niners couldn't quell the noise, or the Chargers

By Art Spander

SANTA CLARA — This was the 49er year in microcosm. And in memoriam. A season that might have been unwound painfully in a game that should have been. And wasn’t.

After all the chaos, the rumors, the questions, the Niners had a chance to quell the noise, if only for a few days, and no less significantly end their losing streak.

That they could do neither seemed appropriate in their next to last game of a season that will climax for the first time since 2010 without a winning record.

And possibly, since they now are 7-8 and play one more, with a losing record.

The Niners lost Saturday night. Again. Lost on a 40-yard field goal by Nick Novak in overtime. Lost to the San Diego Chargers, 38-35. Lost after leading 21-0 in the second quarter and 35-21 in the fourth quarter.

Lost after setting a team rushing record of 355 yards. Lost when for the 15^th time in 15 games they failed to score a touchdown in the final regulation period. Or in overtime.

For a while, it seemed the Niners would have one last hurrah, a shout to echo through the dreadful silence of bewilderment, of wondering where Jim Harbaugh would be coaching, or asking why general manager Trent Baalke and team president Jed York couldn’t patch together the differences that in part turned a Super Bowl franchise into a supreme disappointment.

But a team that had a reason to win, the Chargers, chasing a playoff spot, found a way — or ways — to beat a team that already was eliminated from the postseason, had no particular reason. Except pride.

“We kept fighting,” said Harbaugh. “We did the best we could.”

There’s that one game left for the Niners, here at Levi’s Stadium, the $1.3 billion home for what evolved into a two-bit team, Sunday against Arizona.

After that Harbaugh, whose arrival in 2011 gave San Francisco the lift and the direction to become winners, will depart.

Where, to another NFL team — the Raiders? — or his alma mater, Michigan, only he knows. What everyone knows is the Niners have slipped from the their perch near the summit, and their fall could be a tumultuous one. 

Already below Seattle, they could drop below Arizona and St. Louis, an also-ran with aging linemen and a quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, apparently more qualified to use his legs than his arms.

Kaep rushed for 151 yards, including a spectacular 90-yard touchdown run, the second longest by a quarterback (to Terrelle Pryor’s 93-yarder) in NFL history. Frank Gore, 31, whose time is nearly finished in San Francisco, picked up 158. 

But for a fourth straight game, the Niners couldn’t pick up a win. Even after a great beginning.

“There’s no way to explain it,” said Bruce Miller, the Niners fullback.

To the contrary, there is.

The Niners, because of their numerous problems — only Wednesday, defensive lineman Ray McDonald was terminated because he was being investigated for sexual assault — their frequent injuries and their well-publicized dysfunction, were in survival mode from the start.

And they were unable to survive, whether the game Saturday night where the less-than-capacity crowd was less than effusive, or the full schedule. Losing to the one-win Raiders a couple of weeks back should have been the indication that the Niners were a mess.

Football is a sport of emotion as well as strength. People can say what they wish, but deep down a player must be driven. A bad break here, a tough call there, and everything comes apart. It did for the Niners Thursday night. And in other games.

Gore, who was returning after a concussion, had his finest game of the year. “There’s a man,” said Kaepernick of his main running back. Absolutely, 158 yards on 26 carries, highs for 2014.

Yet, the man wasn’t given a chance in so many other games. And now the end as a Niner is near.

The Niners' strength had been on defense. But NaVorro Bowman had a knee torn up in the NFC Championship a year ago and never played. Aldon Smith was suspended for legal troubles, including firearm violations. Patrick Willis missed the last month with turf toe. The strength became a weakness.

“I’m going to try and forget it,” defensive tackle Mike Purcell said when someone asked him if he would remember the game.

Niner fans will seek to do the same.

“We just didn’t finish,” said cornerback Parrish Cox. “We want to finish the season strong. But I don’t know what it is.”

Harbaugh may know, but he wasn’t talking.

“It doesn’t feel like there’s a lot to say right now,” he said after his penultimate game as coach.

Except, in a few days, goodbye.

If only Kevin Durant had played the second half

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — That was a wonderful line by Warriors coach Steve Kerr about Oklahoma City’s Kevin Durant. “We did a good job on him in the second half,” said Kerr. “I didn’t even notice him out there.”

That’s because he wasn’t out there, and what might have been an exceptionally wonderful line by Durant, in the box score, was not to be.

Oh, he scored 30 points. In 18 minutes. It was announced that nobody had  done that playing fewer than 20 minutes since the NBA and ABA merged in 1976. Whether that’s accurate is almost beside the point. Durant, the MVP, scoring champ four of his five years as a pro, is oh-so-accurate. And it seems oh-so-fragile. Or unfortunate.

In October, he fractured his right foot and missed the Thunder’s first 17 games. Then, Thursday night at the Oracle, while helping put on a show that if not unprecedented was exhilarating, he sprained the ankle of the same foot just before halftime.

Durant limped off, and the report was that he wanted to return. OKC coach Scott Brooks refused. One game in December was not going to cost Durant and the Thunder a dozen or so games down the road. Who it cost was the usual sellout crowd of 19,596.

They did see the Warriors win, coming back from 17 points down in the first quarter, beating OKC 114-109, and after the defeat at Memphis making it 17 victories in 18 games. What they didn’t get to see was the sort of basket-for-basket thrill that only the NBA can provide. After intermission that is.

Here they were, four of the best shooters in the game, Durant and Russell Westbrook of the Thunder, Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson of the Warriors. This is what the NBA sells, stars, personalities, gunners. This is what the game had going. Swish, Dunk. Wow. Whoo.

“They just unleashed a barrage on us in the first quarter,” said Kerr. “Kevin Durant was incredible. And Westbrook was rolling.” And the crowd was roaring. Even more so when Curry, Thompson and Draymond Green of the Warriors began to connect.

Then, like that, one of the parts was missing. Even though he was on the opposition, and that was to the Warriors' advantage, it was like an opera without Pavarotti, a ballet without Tallchief. The special few in this world help make our memories.

Curry finished with 34, Westbrook with 33 and Durant, in his 18 wonderful minutes, 30. It was great. Imagine what it might have been.

Indeed, the idea is to end up on top. “No ‘I’ in team,” we’re told. And Michael Jordan would add, “There is an ‘I’ in win.” It was a joy watching Jordan. In the first half on Thursday night, it was a joy watching Durant.

Kerr, who was Jordan’s teammate and knows so well how a player can take control of a game, was asked how one might guard Durant. “If you have any suggestions,” said the Warriors' coach, “I’m open. He’s unguardable. The logical thing when he’s hitting threes from 28 feet — the logical thing — is to get up on him and make him put it on the floor. But he’s pretty good at that too. You have to stay with it and just trust that eventually he will slow down a little.”

Durant didn’t slow down. He fell down. The ankle rolled. The battle was over, at least for this evening.

The Thunder scored 40 points in the first quarter against a Warrior team normally efficient on defense. “That’s because of a guy named Kevin Durant,” said a guy named Stephen Curry.

“I had my shot going,” said Durant after the game. “They had to convince me not to play (the second half). I have been feeling good for the last week or so. I just made a few shots today. That was the difference.”

In fact, he made 10 of 13 (5 of 6 on 3-pointers). He was close to perfection, and the game was tantalizing, mesmerizing. Bombs away. Then his ankle gave way.

“When I wake up in the morning,” said Durant, “I’ll see how I feel. I’m glad nothing serious happened. There are a lot of places I’m glad I’m not in.”

What he was in Thursday was rhythm. He wasn’t alone. Baskets from everywhere. The halftime score was Warriors 65, Thunder 63.

“The way the NBA works,” reminded Kerr, “everybody has talent.”  But not talent like Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson.

If only all four had been there at the end.

Warriors continue the streak that coaches try to ignore

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — Oh yes, the Bay Area, where suddenly nothing makes sense. Where Colin Kaepernick, the silent one, becomes an orator. Where a drought turns into a storm of biblical proportions. Where the Warriors fall behind the Houston Rockets by 11 points.

This seemed the perfect day for basketball perfection to stop. Andrew Bogut on the bench with an injury. The Warriors missing nine of their first 10 3-point shots. Sooner or later, the run has to end, right? Of course, but it wouldn’t end Wednesday night.

So Kaepernick, the 49ers' QB, talked. And talked. And the weather people warned us that we would be washed away if we weren’t blown away. But good old (well, good young) Golden State would not be defeated.

They played the fourth quarter the way the sellout crowd at The Oracle expected them to play every quarter, tight defense, effective offense and, outscoring the Rockets 32-17 in the quarter, won 105-93. It was their 14th straight victory, a franchise record.

Although coach Steve Kerr tries to stay as reticent about the subject as Kaepernick had been down Santa Clara way about another subject, himself. Kaep didn’t want to let us in on what wasn’t happening. Kerr barely will let us in on what is happening: The winning.

“The coaches don’t talk about it,” said Kerr, the usual answer when teams streak one way, winning — the Warriors haven’t lost since November 11, a month — or the other, losing. It’s the famous “one game at a time” admonition. Even though you don’t get headlines for one game. Unless it’s the one that keeps the streak alive or brings it to a close.

“I’ve heard the guys say things like, ‘Let’s keep this thing going,’” Kerr conceded. “You don’t want to put more pressure on yourself. It’s tough to win in this league. There are so many great teams.”

At the moment, off their record, 19-2, the Warriors are the greatest. And if Kerr isn’t the greatest coach — let’s see, for a start there’s Red Auerbach and Red Holzman, Phil Jackson and Gregg Popovich — he is the first to begin his NBA career at 19-2.

When asked what it meant, the rookie answered properly, “It means I’m the luckiest coach in NBA history. I inherited a team that was already really good.”

Absolutely, with people such as Klay Thompson (21 points Wednesday), Stephen Curry (20) and Harrison Barnes (20). But he also means that he has them playing with passion and intelligence. Playing defense, because that wins (teams are shooting more poorly against the W’s than against any other franchise). Playing courageously.

An off game Wednesday night, the big man Bogut not on the floor (then again, neither was the Rockets’ Dwight Howard) and Houston’s quick James Harden shooting well (34 points). And yet the W’s came out ahead. Encouraging.

They go on the road now, Dallas, New Orleans, and Memphis. Surely one of those will be a loss. Maybe all of those. Still, what the Warriors have accomplished to this point is, well, remarkable. Fourteen straight wins? That doesn’t happen these days.

That doesn’t happen to the Warriors.

“It took us so long to break through,” said Kerr. “That’s a helluva team they have over there. They defend like crazy and make it hard to guard because they have all those shooters around Harden.

“The last six or seven minutes we had just tremendous efforts from everybody on the floor. Harrison was great, and Steph and Klay made big shots.”

The Warriors, down 86-83 with 6:20 remaining, just smothered Houston.

“They attacked us off the dribble,” said Kevin McHale, the Rockets' coach, “and we didn’t handle it very well. They got some open stuff, and when they went small, it bothered us.”

Small is a relative word in pro basketball, meaning people who may not be 6-10 or 6-9 but don’t buy their clothes off the rack at Macy’s, such as 6-foot-7 Shaun Livingston and 6-6 Andre Iguodala.

“We wanted to do small down the stretch,” said Kerr. “What more can you say about Draymond (Green, who is 6-7) because he guards (7-foot) Donatas Motiejunas and fronts him and steals the ball a couple of times and then switches out and guards (the 6-5) Harden. Then he jumps out on Patrick Beverley or Jason Terry.

“The versatility defensively of what Draymond brings is remarkable.”

The Warriors are passionate in their basketball, selfless. They do what is required. Most of all, they play defense when it matters. Good teams always do that.

Is there a future for Harbaugh, Kaepernick with Niners?

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — He had the look of a man who had just swallowed a lemon. Or a huge loss. Colin Kaepernick stood at the podium with his headphones and without any meaningful answers.

The 49ers' season has gone down the drain, and it’s not unfair to suggest that Kaepernick’s career has also.

On the first play from scrimmage, Kaepernick threw an interception. On the last, in a finish that was all too symbolic, he was thrown on his backside, sacked.

In between, on this Sunday of tectonic shift, the Oakland Raiders climbed from their embarrassment of a week previous, a 52-0 loss, and stunned the Niners 24-13 at O.co Coliseum.

What a crushing, painful time it’s been for the Niners, battered on Thanksgiving night at their own venue, Levi’s Stadium, 19-3 by the Seattle Seahawks; caught in the constant tumult involving the future of head coach Jim Harbaugh; then getting embarrassed by a team that had won only once in 12 previous games.

And somewhere in the maelstrom was that tweet from team president Jed York, immediately after the defeat by Seattle, apologizing for the performance, or lack of same, against the Seahawks.

These are the conclusions one jumps to after the rapid flow of recent events: Harbaugh will not return for a fifth season as the man in charge of Niner fortunes. Kaepernick has been exposed as a quarterback who sees only his primary receiver.

Kaepernick was and is Harbaugh’s guy, chosen in the second round of the 2011 draft, a brilliant athlete who can throw a baseball more than 90 mph and in football can elude tacklers. Until, admittedly, they surround him in a well-planned pass rush.

When Alex Smith incurred a concussion midway in the ’11 season, Kaepernick took over, and with his speed and arm gained Harbaugh’s endorsement.

The following year, the two of them had the Niners in the Super Bowl, although San Francisco’s defense was the real reason, and in the game itself, the final play, Kaep demonstrated an inability to feather a pass, firing away an incompletion.

Over the last few games this season, Kaepernick and the Niner offense — one and the same — were ineffective.

Defensive coordinators in the NFL are well paid to develop designs that take advantage of every offensive weakness. It certainly appears they’ve figured out how to shut down Kaepernick.

The Raiders are in no way among the better defensive squads — on the contrary, they’re among the worst — but they sacked Kaepernick five times (including that ultimate play), picked him off once and limited him to 18 of 33 passing for 174 yards, a quarterback rating of only 54. Derek Carr, the Raiders' rookie QB, was 22 of 28 for 254 yards and a 140.2 rating.

Unsuprisingly. Kaepernick’s post-game comments offered little explanation of what was wrong and why. He has become notably reticent, almost as if being interrogated by an enemy solider rather than a few harmless journalists.

“We haven’t played well,” said Kaepernick, as if anyone holding a note pad or a microphone was under the impression they had.

Kaepernick did concede on that opening scrimmage play he was trying to find receiver Michael Crabtree, and the safety, Brandian Ross, “came over the top.” But he wouldn’t allow that the interception, so quick and jarring, had effect on the rest of the game.

“You leave that play behind,” said Kaepernick, an ironic choice of words because when Oakland’s Sebastian Janikowski kicked a field goal eight plays later the Niners were left behind, 3-0.

Although San Francisco would carve out a brief 7-3 lead, there was a sense the Raiders were in control and the Niners, about to fall to a record of 7-6, were in trouble. Once Donald Penn caught a touchdown pass from Carr on a tackle eligible play, the 49ers were out of the lead.

Harbaugh was hardly more illuminating than Kaepernick as the coach fielded questions equally divided between the game result and his own future.

When asked about Kaepernick, Harbaugh — a former quarterback himself — understandably was not going to toss his man under the bus, particularly on a day when Kaep had been tossed under the defensive line so many times.

“I look at it as a team effort,” a subdued Harbaugh said about Kaepernick’s failing, “and we didn’t get it done.”

Not at all.

Asked if York and general manager Trent Baalke want Harbaugh, under contract, to be coach of the Niners in 2015, Harbaugh responded, “My priorities are: No. 1 winning football games; No. 2, the welfare of our players, coaches and our staff; and lastly what my personal future is.”

When a journalist wanted to know if he had coached well the last month, Harbaugh said, “You have to take responsibility so it falls on me if we don’t win these games. That’s my No. 1 priority, winning football games.”

The Niners, who next face Seattle — all hope will be gone with what seems a certain defeat at the Seahawks’ place — are in a very tenuous spot. Maybe so is Harbaugh.

Asked if he wanted to be with the Niners next year, Harbaugh repeated a previous remark, “My priorities are winning games.”

Something that has become very, very difficult of late.

Great night for Mariota and Oregon, not the Pac-12

By Art Spander

SANTA CLARA — The game didn’t hurt Marcus Mariota’s chance for the Heisman Trophy. “If this guy’s not what the Heisman’s about...” said Mariota’s coach, Mark Helfrich.

The comment went unfinished, but Mariota’s quest for the Heisman surely will not be.

Nor did the game hurt the University of Oregon, arguably the second-best team in the land and surely destined for one of the four positions in the college football playoffs. The Ducks embarrassed Arizona, 51-13, Friday night at Levi’s Stadium in the Pac-12 championship game.

“Wasn’t a good night,” said the Arizona head man, Rich Rodriguez. He was talking about his team, which had beaten the Ducks two in a row, 41-24 earlier this season at Eugene, Oregon’s place, and 42-16 last season.

He also could have been talking about the conference’s reputation.

Arizona took a hit, a big one. In what was supposed to be a competitive game, Arizona was disgracefully non-competitive. At halftime, the Wildcats had minus-9 yards rushing, only 25 yards total offense. At halftime, the Wildcats trailed 23-0.

At halftime, the game was over.

“You know,” said Rodriguez, “this play didn’t work, that play didn’t work.”

But for Mariota, the redshirt junior quarterback, after a slow start almost everything worked. By the time he was taken from the game in the fourth quarter, Mariota had rushed for 33 yards and three touchdowns and passed for 303 yards and two more touchdowns.

By that point, Mariota had all but made certain he would earn the Heisman.

“I wouldn’t be in this position,” said Mariota, “if it weren’t for the other players. It’s an 11-man game.”

But of those 11, Mariota, with 39 touchdown passes and only two interceptions this season, is one of a kind. The Ducks are 12-1, that only defeat to Arizona, and headed for one of two postseason semifinals, probably at the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day. But that is a few weeks in the future.

On Friday night as the rain fell and stopped and fell, on turf at the San Francisco 49ers' new $1.3 billion stadium that despite having been replaced five times was slippery, Mario worked his magic.

And worked over an Arizona team that was as bewildered as it was battered, giving up 640 yards while acquiring only 224.

“I think Oregon is a very, very good football team,” said Rodriguez. “The winner of our league each year is going to be, I think, a contender to be one of the best in the country. Oregon’s the best in our league this year, and I think they have a chance to prove they’re the best in the country.”

That’s because, in addition to the offense driven by Mariota, they also have a defense. Or is that statement unneeded when the opponent has only 25 yards in the first half?

“The defense did a tremendous job,” confirmed Helfrich. “They stopped a higher power offense.” An offense that gained 495 yards against Oregon in October. An offense that Friday night could hold on to the ball just over 21 minutes of the game’s 60.

Helfrich was apologetic about his own offense early on. The Ducks took the opening drive to the Arizona 16 and finished with just a field goal. After Oregon recovered an Arizona fumble on the kickoff, the Ducks went to the Arizona five and finished with another field goal. Next, they were stopped on downs at the Arizona 25.

“Offensively,” said Helfrich, “we were a bit tight. A bunch of guys were trying to make it 42-0 on two plays, and that’s very difficult. Whether it was jumping offsides or making mistakes, we were inches away from a bunch of points.”

Those points would come, and in the fashion of Oregon’s high-speed tactics that wear down the defense, they came quickly. What didn’t come was the big crowd Pac-12 officials wanted in the first of the four conference championship games not held at one of the opponents’ stadiums. Announced attendance at the 68,000-seat stadium was 45,618, and it seemed closer to 35,000.

Mariota seems closer to the No. 1 individual prize in undergraduate football, the Heisman.

“We had a lot of motivation going into this game,” said Mariota. Two months ago, against the Wildcats, he caught a touchdown pass and threw TD passes of his own, but the Ducks were defeated.

“We didn’t try to put too much emphasis (on this game), because that’s going to be a distraction. We just wanted to go out there and play the best we could. The last couple of years we haven’t been able to put that out there against them. Tonight was just a great example of us playing a complete game.”

And a great example of a quarterback who has likely earned the Heisman.

Warriors: The beacon by the Bay

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — Let’s not get carried away. On second thought, do get carried away. There’s a team in town, in Northern Cal, that has everything going for it: talent, hustle, fortune, a team untouched by so much of the trouble that has beset the others.

It’s the Warriors, of course, and they’re the beacon by the Bay, winners and not whiners, a delightful breath of spring, if you will, in a dreary autumn — and I’m not alluding to the weather.

In Santa Clara it’s one thing after another, a war between Jim Harbaugh and the media — and maybe, quite possibly between Harbaugh and the owner. The Sharks have been less than hoped, if not less than expected, and the Raiders, after losing a game, 52-0, what do you say except, “When does it ever end?”

Yet nobody wants an ending to the Warriors' success. Home again, at last, Tuesday night they extended their streak to 10 wins in a row, beating the Orlando Magic 98-97 at Oracle.

Sure, they should have lost. Warriors coach Steve Kerr said they were lucky, which arguably they were. Still, that’s part of what makes a good team good, a great team great.

They win when they should have lost.

Remember the Celtics in Boston? Remember the 49ers with Joe Montana? You had them. Then, as you cursed fate, they had you, and the opponent mumbled about what might have been.

What the Warriors have is their own Montana. Basketball never will be as big around here as football, so whatever is said or written about Steph Curry — whose 3-pointer (what else) that left his hand with 4.2 seconds was the winner — he never will be elevated to the places occupied by Montana or Jerry Rice.

He’s the man right now, however, maybe ahead of Colin Kaepernick and a notch below Madison Bumgarner. If this were New York or Chicago, cities where basketball and hockey have a history and a legacy, Curry would've already been touted for the Hall of Fame.

The Warriors, however, seem less a landmark, like the Niners and Raiders, the Giants and A’s. The word "afterthought" is a bit strong, but here is a team that at 15-2 is off to its best 17-game start in the 69-year history of the franchise and gets less attention than the Niners’ coaching dilemma.

Sooner or later the Warriors are going to lose, and Tuesday night was the appropriate time. Teams coming off a long road trip, and the Warriors’ was a six-gamer, so often fall flat on their return.

“It’s always been the case in my career,” said Kerr, who although in his first season as a head coach has years of NBA experience as player, general manager and television announcer.

“It’s a tough game when you return,” said Kerr. “Three time zones (from Detroit), and you don’t practice the day before.” And the Magic, who the Warriors defeated a few days ago in Orlando, played, in Kerr’s thinking, “fantastic.”

The Warriors were 3 of 18 on 3-point attempts at one juncture in the fourth quarter. (They finished 8 of 27). The Warriors trailed by nine, 93-84, with 4:27 remaining. Then Klay Thompson hit a couple of deep ones, and suddenly with a minute and a half left, it was 95-95.

Tobias Harris hit a running bank shot with 38 seconds remaining to get the Magic in front once more. The Warriors’ Draymond Green rebounded an Orlando miss with 6.9 seconds, passed to Curry and as everyone expected Curry flashed down the court and scored from 27 feet.

“I was thinking, ‘Don’t call timeout,’” said Kerr. “Steph Curry in the open floor is going to get a better shot than anything I could draw up. It’s what Steph does. He bailed us out.”

Somebody always does on excellent teams. Which is why they’re excellent. And exciting.

Curry saved the streak. Curry and Thompson and Green. They saved the Warriors, who as the Niners flail and the Raiders fail, are saving this autumn.

“Every night you have a game that proves something,” said Curry. He finished with 22, high for the Warriors, five fewer than Orlando’s Victor Oladipo.

What this game proved is, even when they are less than their best, the Warriors have the resources to win. They are on a roll, and as December begins a promise in an otherwise disappointing time for Bay Area teams.

49ers win 'by any means necessary’

By Art Spander

SANTA CLARA — The people who play and coach the game understand what it’s about: Success. How you achieve it is inconsequential.

They don’t judge on style points, only on final scores. Al Davis told us exactly what matters in the NFL with his mantra, “Just win baby.”

This 49er season hasn’t been what some thought it might be. The team has struggled at times, mystified at other times. It lost to the Chicago Bears at home — the Chicago Bears, for heaven’s sake — and couldn’t even be competitive against the Denver Broncos.

And yet a few days before Thanksgiving, here are the Niners, perplexing, confusing — at least to the fan base — but still hanging in there. On Sunday, San Francisco, albeit unimpressively, defeated the Washington Redskins, 17-13. Then, Thursday, again here at Levi’s Stadium, they play the Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks, who at 7-4 have the same record as the Niners.

The Niners needed a touchdown with only 2 minutes 59 seconds remaining to overtake a Redskins team that now has a 3-8 record, a quarterback (Robert Griffin III) who knocks his teammates and a coach (Jay Gruden) who knocks his quarterback.

The important thing is they got that touchdown, the first one all season in the fourth quarter with Colin Kaepernick at quarterback.     

The important thing is when the time came, on fourth and one from their own 34 with only some five minutes remaining, they got a three-yard run from Frank Gore.

The important thing is the next play Kaepernick connected with Anquan Boldin for 29 yards, and when Redskins safety Ryan Clark was called for unnecessary roughness for his hit on Boldin the ball was on the Washington 19.

“We’ve got to make plays when they’re there,” said Bruce Miller, the Niner fullback. “Today, especially late in the game, we made them.”

That’s what winners do, of course. Even when they turn the ball over three times. Even when they give up 136 net yards rushing.

“That’s one thing about this team, and I applaud them for their efforts to keep going when it gets tough,” said tight end Vernon Davis. “We fought. We stayed in there, and we pulled it off.”  

Up north, the Seahawks were beating the division-leading Cardinals, 19-3. Then Thursday they’ll be in Santa Clara. If the Niners are going to the postseason it’s a game they have to win, because later they play up in Seattle where they never win.

Yet what might happen concerned the Niners less than what did happen, the victory over the Skins. 

“We win these kind of games by any means necessary,” said Niners coach Jim Harbaugh. “When you (turn the ball over), it’s about the team sticking together.

“We turned the ball over, and some teams will hang their heads when that happens. But that’s not what this team’s about. This team’s about each other. They’re about the team, the team, the team. Not into criticizing each other. We’re not into badmouthing each other, talking about each other. We’re into lifting each other up. Guys just kept playing and fighting. That’s what good teams do.” 

If by implication that was a zinger against the Redskins and their apparent dissension, Harbaugh made no effort to make anyone believe anything else. He read and heard what Griffin said about his teammates, that they needed to play better, and what Gruden said about Griffin, that he needed to worry about himself and not the others.

The unity of a football team is essential if unpredictable. A week ago, Niner linebacker Ahmad Brooks whined about coming out of a game. Just as the issue seemed about to enter crisis stage, Brooks gave his apology and Harbaugh wisely was in complete acceptance. He’s ready with a quick show of support. His guys are his guys.

One of those guys is Boldin, whom the Niners acquired from Baltimore before the 2013 season. Although 34 and in his 12^th season, the ability has not ebbed.

“He’s a shining star,” Harbaugh insisted of Boldin, “a stalwart. Still making the big plays.”

Which is what Boldin hopes to make. His touchdown for Baltimore in the Super Bowl XLVII two seasons ago helped defeat the Niners. Now he helping the Niners beat others.

“At some point,” said Boldin, “we were going to have to make a play, win a game on offense. Defense played their butts off. I think (the offense) played well in spurts, but we shot ourselves in the foot at times. Three turnovers definitely were detrimental. Tough games, but guys are making plays when called upon at the right times.”

Boldin made them. Kaepernick made them. The defense made them.

“A good team doing what it has to do,” said Harbaugh, “to win a football game.”

How good? We’ll know in a matter of days.

Cal can't keep composure — or the football

By Art Spander

BERKELEY — So this was the year Cal had a chance against Stanford, the year the Golden Bears had a defense and had tenacity. What they didn’t have one play into the game was their starting strong safety.

What they often didn’t have after that was discipline. Or, more critically, the football.

The air shooshed out Saturday virtually as the balloon was inflated. All the excitement, the hopes, the possibilities, disappeared in moments.

An ejection. A rapid 10-point deficit. Dejection.

The sun came out above Memorial Stadium after a morning rain, but the day metaphorically was dreary for most of the less-than-capacity crowd of 56,483.

The Cardinal was too much for Cal, maybe not as much as 2013 when the score was 67-13, the most one-sided in the history of a series that now has reached 117 games, but plenty nevertheless.

The final this time was 38-17, and the way the Golden Bears played defense, made penalties and threw interceptions, you never felt Cal had a chance. Both teams entered with 5-5 records, but there was no question one was superior.

“Frustrating” was the primary word tossed around in the Cal post-game comments, followed by “disappointing.” No one expected the Cal people to be pleased. Yet the remarks are becoming litany, and for the faithful, the Old Blues as Cal alumni designate themselves, agony.

The game overall was a bewildering mix of mistakes and official video reviews. In the third quarter alone, Cal had three touchdowns overruled on three consecutive plays. But good teams overcome all that incidental stuff. Bad teams don’t.

Was it a shock that on the first play from scrimmage Cal strong safety Michael Lowe was penalized and ejected for what the official believed was “targeting,” driving his helmet into Stanford tight end Austin Hooper? Of course.

“In 20 years,” said Cal coach Sonny Dykes, “I have never seen something like that happen the first play of the game. I wish that something like that wouldn’t affect us as much as it did. It affected me, and I think it affected our players.”

Which tells you perhaps as much you need to know about Cal. It is an improving team but also a fragile team, working its way back from a 1-11 record in Dykes’ first season. One blow knocked it off kilter.   

Not that Stanford’s defense and a Cal offense, which lost four turnovers — against a team that only had nine takeaways all season — weren’t major factors.

“They are a physical team,” Dykes, painfully honest about his program and other programs, said about Stanford. “And they laid some pretty good hits on us. They did a nice job tipping a couple of passes, and you have to give them credit for that. We have to make sure we move the pocket and make space.

Starting quarterback Jared Goff threw a couple of those, which were tipped and picked. His alternate Luke Rubenzer also threw two interceptions. Running back Daniel Lasco fumbled near the goal line, Stanford recovering. And there you have part of the tale of self-destruction.

“Our kids really wanted to play well,” said Dykes. “We really wanted to play well as a coaching staff. Our fans wanted us to play well. We didn’t make a very good showing today, and I am really disappointed about that.”

Goff, the sophomore, broke his own single-season record for passing yards. He had 182 Saturday on a so-so 16-for-31 completion mark and now has totaled 3,580 for the season with a game left to play against Brigham Young.

“They’re playing Savannah State,” quipped Dykes. “Probably winning 120-0, getting their confidence.” (It was only 64-0, but his point was understood. BYU gets a lot of points. And the Bears give up a lot of points.)

Goff, said Dykes, didn’t have one of his better games. “When you face a good defense,” reminded Dykes, “you have a small margin for error. Five turnovers are pretty significant errors.”

And 113 yards in penalties (Stanford had 21) are no less significant.

“I am disappointed in the way we played,” said Dykes. “I anticipated us playing better football. It was a bit of a strange football game, and it certainly didn’t start the way we wanted it to start.”

It didn’t end the way they wanted either. Stanford has won the last five years, half a decade. Somehow, Cal has to find a way to keep the other team out of the end zone — Stanford’s Remound Wright tied a Big Game record with five touchdowns — and, no less importantly, find a way to keep its composure.

Raiders weren’t going to let Chiefs out of the deep end

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — That “O’’ in Oakland? No longer does it equal the Raiders’ win total for the year. The streak is over. The streak ended here, at the O.co Coliseum — maybe they should change it to the 1.co Coliseum — on a Thursday night of rain and success.

Go ahead and say it, the drought has ended, for Nor Cal, for the Raiders.

It was inevitable. The football, that is, not the downpour, although the forecasters said that too was coming. The way Raiders interim coach Tony Sparano said a win was coming.

Teams don’t go through a 16-game NFL schedule without a victory. Sure, the 2008 Detroit Lions did, but since the 1976 Tampa Bay Bucs, an expansion doomed to failure by the system, the Lions were the only team.

Somehow, the Raiders were going to win one.

And they did against the Kansas City Chiefs, who had won their previous five games in a row and were tied for the AFC West lead.

They did by sweeping ahead 14-0 early in the second quarter. By letting that lead go and then, on a 9-yard touchdown pass from rookie quarterback Derek Carr to James Jones in the closing minutes, going back in front and winning 24-20.

“We’d been getting close,” said Sparano, who was coaching his seventh game since replacing Dennis Allen. “We’d been getting better in practice. I saw a different look in this team.”

And now there’s a different look with their record. One win may not seem like much, but to the contrary it’s huge when you’ve lost 10 out of 10 for the season and cobble that to the six straight defeats that concluded last year.

Not since Nov. 17, 2013, 368 days if you’re counting, had Oakland come out ahead.

“Those losses had been hard,” said Carr. He took over as starter from the veteran Matt Schaub before the first game. So since last year at Fresno State, he was always on the losing side. Until Thursday.

There was unabated joy in the Raider locker room. Such yelling and shouting. It was as if they had won the Super Bowl, not merely a scheduled game. “All that frustration that we’ve gone through when something goes wrong at the end,” said linebacker Sio Moore.

Moore and rookie Khalil Mack, also winless as a pro, did a bit of unprofessional celebrating — in the Chiefs' backfield — slapping hands after sacking quarterback Alex Smith on the K.C. 48 with 28 seconds. But before a penalty could be called for delay of game, Oakland wisely signaled time out. One more play, an incomplete pass, and the Raiders owned the ball. And the win.

“I was so caught up in the moment, man,” said Moore, who’s in his second year. “That was an error I’ve got to clean because in another situation — in all seriousness — that can make the difference. I do apologize for putting the guys in that situation. I can’t let emotions get the best of me.”

For 10 weeks, teams have been getting the best of the Raiders, although the way Oakland played defense in losing 13-6 to the Chargers last Sunday was verification that they were improved — if without results. Until Thursday night.

“I don’t know how to explain the feeling,” Moore said about finally winning a game. “It’s a good feeling to see through the culmination of weeks all the work that we’ve been putting in.

“We decided when we came in at halftime (with a 14-3 lead) that we weren’t going to let them get out of deep end of the pool, and we were going to finish it out.”

The Chiefs made it to the shallow end, but then the Raiders swamped them again.

Oakland scored first on an impressive eight-play drive, Latavius Murray bulling the final 11 yards. Then Murray dashed 90 yards two and a half minutes into the second quarter, and Oakland had its first 14-0 lead since the Twelth of Never.

“They blocked us,” said Chiefs coach Andy Reid, “(he) hit the hole, and we just weren’t able to catch him.

From two touchdowns back, Kansas City did catch the Raiders, however, and the guess was it would yet another Oakland defeat. Not at all.

“We learned a little something today,” said Sparano. “Learned something about ourselves. Today they just refused to give up the rope. My hat is off to the people in that locker room. Greatest feeling in the world is to see them smile. Helluva bunch of guys. They don’t stop playing. We don’t always do it right, but they play hard.

“Today the offense took the football down the field and did it in the old-fashioned Raider way. They ran it. They ran it. And we made a big play. It was a heck of a thing to watch, and if you didn’t learn anything from it, I apologize to you.”

No apologies needed this time. Only kudos.

Warriors have the look of a contender

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — The owner, Joe Lacob, walked out of the tunnel that goes from the court to the locker room and said to nobody in particular, “I feel better now.” Of course.

The Warriors had won, had stopped a mini-losing streak at two games. Still, with the team he has, Lacob should always feel good.

As should the Warriors fans.

This team has the look of, well, it’s tough to say champion, what with San Antonio and Cleveland very much a part off the NBA, but a definite contender, a team that will not crash out until very late in the playoffs. If at all.

The two guys we have declared as the heart and shooting soul of the W’s, Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, the “Splash Brothers,” were imperfect Thursday night. But with Andrew Bogut at his very best and Draymond Green quite magnificent, the result at Oracle Arena was anything but imperfect, a 107-99 win over the Brooklyn Nets.

And so the W’s, after a 5-0 start and consecutive defeats, are 6-2. Asked if he was pleased that with his stars not exactly starring (Thompson was only 8 of 22 from the floor, although he had a game-high 25 points) the team could win, Kerr chose not to be that specific.

“I am pleased anytime we win,” was his answer, implying it didn’t matter how or who.

It did matter that the 7-foot Bogut, unfettered and healthy, had 11 points, 14 rebounds and five assists.

“Bogey,” said Kerr, “was terrific. He can dominate defensively at the rim. He can rebound and he’s a terrific passer. That’s why we run the offense the way we do, with all those dribble handoffs.

“We need him to roll to the rim hard and get fouled. It was good to see him get to the line a little bit (3 of 5 on free throws) and get in the paint.”

He got to the Nets. Bogut doesn’t have a great touch, but he has great emotion and intensity. His dunks set off the crowd, which didn’t get going until about a third of the way into the second quarter once the Warriors got going.

The game was tied, 44-44, with a bit under eight minutes in the half, then, wham — or in deference to Bogut, should we say “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi”? — the Warriors were in front, 66-55.

“One of our goals this year,” said Kerr, “is to dominate the home court. The crowd was fantastic. It took us a while to get going. I think the whole key to getting the crowd involved is defense. Once you get the stops and get rebounds you can get out and run, and then the crowd gets into it.”

The first half, the Warriors had 18 assists and only three — three, count them — turnovers. That’s the stuff of a winner.

“We have a deep team,” said Curry, who finished with 17 points (for him, we say “only" 17 points). “Any night, someone can step up and make the right play.”

Like Bogut, or Green, who had 17 points and was three of eight on three-pointers.

“Our job,” said Curry, the captain, “is to be aggressive, create offense and make the right play. We need that second and third punch.”

Kerr contends that even with a winning record the Warriors are a work in progress. After all, the season’s only a couple weeks old. “We’ll get better,” he said, knowing full well every other team in the league will also — other than the sad-sack Philadelphia 76ers, that is.

“We are still adjusting and finding our identity,” said Kerr. “I want them to be explosive but a little less wild. That can be done, but it’s tricky.

“You don’t want to take away their spirit, but you have to be smart too. For the most part tonight it was pretty good, 30 assists and 11 turnovers. We missed some shots we normally make, and we had some open ones. What I tell our guys is that we are six weeks into this as a staff, and as a team we are just scratching the surface of what we are going to be.”

Which is one of the top teams in pro basketball.

There's something wrong with Niners, stadium

By Art Spander

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — There’s something wrong. With the football team, which is evident. With the new stadium, which is apparent. The 49ers are showing up as a mystery, one that has coach Jim Harbaugh so perplexed he can’t even get angry with media questions.

The fans after halftime aren’t even showing up at all.

A new home, a $1.3 billion beauty of steel and class constructed in honor of champions of the past. The tickets are sold, but the people who hold them must not be sold on the Niners.

This is what happened Sunday. The nation returned to standard time. The 49ers, however, didn’t turn their game clocks ahead or back. They just stood figuratively still before all those empty seats at Levi’s Stadium, and they were upset by the St. Louis Rams, 13-10.

The Rams, 3-5, were not very impressive. The Niners, 4-4, were very unimpressive.

Niner quarterback Colin Kaepernick was sacked eight times — by a team that had six sacks total in its previous seven games.

“We have all the talent in the world,” said Niners left tackle Joe Staley. “We’ve been doing some dumb stuff, and they took advantage of it.”

Like not keeping the Ram defense out of the Niner backfield. Again. Two weeks ago, Kaepernick was sacked six times at Denver. Then, after a bye week to make fixes, he was sacked eight times.

“We prepared for this during the week,” said Kaepernick. Maybe the situation is unfixable.

Maybe Harbaugh is as distressed as he is bewildered. Usually, when he’s asked what went wrong, the competitive, combative man he is takes issue, as if the media doesn’t have a clue so just sit down and be quiet.

Not this game. Harbaugh was restrained, responding with generalities, not specifics, the old, “Not enough good football, we got beat.”

Old, except for Harbaugh, who normally is loathe to concede that his squad was outplayed. This was a new frontier for the Niners’ fourth-year leader. This took some swallowing.

Yes, as poorly as they played, the Niners could have won. They had the ball, third and goal on the Rams one, with nine seconds remaining. A field goal would have sent the game into overtime. Instead, Kaepernick bulled up the middle and fumbled. The Rams recovered.

“I was juggling the ball,” Kaepernick conceded. He also believed he had crossed the goal. A replay review verified he did not.

Could have won. But did not win, because now, at the midpoint of the season, when the Niners usually are becoming their best, priming for the playoffs, San Francisco is a mess. And the next game is against the Saints at the Superdome, where the Niners invariably have problems.

The Niner offensive line seemed confused, not only because rookie Marcus Martin was starting at center for the first time. The pressure on Kaepernick came from everywhere, from William Hayes at left defensive end, from James Laurinaitis at middle linebacker, from Robert Quinn at right defensive end.

“We’ve been talking up those things,” said Rams coach Jeff Fisher about harassing the quarterback, “and I said we’d been getting close. You’ve got to credit the guys up front. These were individual efforts.”

So in a way, as Staley confessed, were the Niner failures. “Penalties,” said Staley in review, “dumb blocks, dumb techniques and dumb schemes.”

By supposedly some very smart football linemen, certainly for the most part by veteran football linemen, who two years ago helped the Niners to the Super Bowl.

Could they have grown too old? Could they have grown complacent? Change is a constant in sports at any level. No team remains at the top all the time. No players remain the best forever.

They tell us O-lines have great staying power. Maybe this one has stayed too long.

“We’ve got to suck it up,” said Harbaugh, avoiding mention of individuals. “Got to play better.”

Of course they do, but how? Does the blocking have to improve? Does Kaepernick have to get rid of the ball quicker — and more accurately? And how much is attributable to the fact that the Niners, who like to set up the pass with the run, could rush for only 80 net yards?

“We had opportunities in both halves,” said Kaepernick, “and we didn’t take advantage.” Not when they score a paltry 10 points. Not when the quarterback is tackled eight times behind the line of scrimmage.

“That’s why I’m here,” said Kaepernick. “I’m here to make plays. I can make people miss. So that’s part of my job.”

They aren’t going to miss when they sweep in from every direction, and they didn’t miss. The Rams knew something about the Niner offensive line. And now everyone knows.

“We’ve got to look at ourselves in the mirror,” said running back Frank Gore, the spiritual leader of the Niners, “and we’re going to try to get to this postseason. We’ve got to do it and stop playing around.”

Or, when the postseason arrives, they’ll be forced to stop playing. Period.

Nobody wins seventh game on road — except Giants

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.

Giants carry lead, and bad memories, to K.C.

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.

Pablo, Petit, Pence are Giant together

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — This World Series of unpredictability took a few more wild steps on Saturday night, swinging from disappointment to relief, and leaving an emotionally spent crowd wondering what more can go wrong. Or right?

Friday night ended with a couple hundred spectators dressed in blue chanting from behind the first-base dugout, “Let’s go Royals,” and certainly a few hours later when Kansas City burst to a 4-1 lead it seemed the Royals were on their way.

But like that, the Giants, and about 98 percent of the sellout crowd of 43,066 at AT&T Park, awoke in a blend of big hits and big cheers, and after a enthralling, captivating game that lasted exactly four hours, San Francisco had an 11-4 victory and the Series was tied at two apiece.

And not even Royals manager Ned Yost could find fault, saying, “Oh, man. Somewhere inside of me secretly I had hoped it would go seven games for the excitement and the thrill of it. Sure looks that way.’’

We’ll know in two games, but now it’s certain to go six, with the fifth game Sunday night again amongst the bedlam and breezes of AT&T, where for good measure Saturday night not only did the Giants’ drought end but briefly so did Northern California’s. Yes, rain, if only a smattering, by the Bay.

We saw the past, what happened Saturday night, Pablo Sandoval proving he can hit as a righthanded batter, Hunter Pence coming through again and Yusmeiro Petit pitching beautifully, blending with the future — the pivotal fifth game, the Giants last in San Francisco this 2014 season.

Madison Bumgarner, who Giants manager Bruce Bochy so stubbornly and correctly held to his normal rest period instead of using him in the fourth game, will start against “Big Game” James Shields. Bumgarner won that matchup in the Series opener, but the way everything has gone so far precedent may be of no consequence.

“We got our tails whipped,” said Yost, who a long while ago grew up in Hayward, south of Oakland. “But it’s Game 4 of the World Series. We’re tied 2-2. How much more fun can than be. There is nothing better in the world. I never felt so good about getting my tail whooped in my life ... This is a phenomenal series. It’s exciting. It’s fun.”

The whoopers in this case, the Giants, would hardly disagree. Look, after the KC half of the third, the Royals were ahead 3-1, San Francisco starter Ryan Vogelsong was finished and although the players later said they knew they had time to come back, you can surmise the people in the seats were skeptical.

That top of the third took a half hour. It was excruciating for fans, as well as Vogelsong. Fall behind the Royals, and when the seventh inning rolls around the opponent rolls over, so dominating is their bullpen.

But the Giants picked up a run in the bottom of third when Buster Posey, who was hitting an awful .154 in the first three games, singled home pinch hitter Matt Duffy. Then, boom. Two more runs in the fifth to tie. Three more in the sixth. Four more in the seventh.

“When the lights go down in the city ...” Those lyrics to the Journey song were bellowed by a delirious, if off-tune, group of individuals finally able to let loose because their baseball team had broken loose.

Petit, the super fill-in, the guy who took over when Matt Cain underwent surgery and when Tim Lincecum couldn’t get people out, was — dare we use the word? — brilliant.

The winning pitcher, Petit went three scoreless innings to extend his postseason streak to 12. He is 3-0 in the postseason, including six innings in that 18-inning win over the Nationals in the Division series. He also set a major league record of retiring 46 consecutive batters.

“It’s a pretty nice weapon to have in the bullpen,” said Bochy, “a long guy like Petit who seems to calm things down the way he goes about his business, and of course the way he pitches.”

Sandoval had been sick Friday when his streak of reaching base safely in 25 straight postseason games came to a halt, and Saturday, batting righthanded against KC lefty Jason Vargas, struck out in his first two plate appearances.

But he singled in the fifth, part of the rally, then singled in two runs in the sixth. And no one seemed to care he hit .199 righthanded in the regular season.

“(Friday) night, he was feeling worse,” Bochy said about Sandoval. “I talked to him today. He felt great. I was a little concerned about him being a little washed out today. He goes out there and has a great game. It’s nice to have a switch-hitter that swings it well from both sides of the plate, and he seems to rise to the occasion when you need him.”

The Giants rose when the fans needed them.

“Yeah,” said Bochy, “it is exciting. Great game tonight. It’s obvious we think it’s a great game. These guys fought hard. I mean they scratched and clawed to get back into it. You get down against this club and that bullpen, and you have your work cut out.

“Do I wish it would go seven? The way these two teams go at it, it wouldn’t surprise me.”

The 2014 Royals are the 2012 and 2010 Giants

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — The template is as old as the game. The Giants used it in 2010 and 2012.

Now the 2014 Kansas City Royals are using it. The Royals are the new Giants.

Pitching wins, and the Royals have pitching, great pitching. From start to finish. Especially at the finish.

This supposedly was the one that tips the balance. When the first two games of the World Series are split, the metrics tell us, 70 percent of the time the team that wins the third game win the Series.

Well, the Royals took Game 3, won it, 3-2, Friday night at AT&T Park, and the mood by the Bay has gone gloomy. The crowd filed out in a state of disbelief.

The Giants never lost at home in their last two World Series, never failed before their boisterous fans. In fact, home or away, against the Rangers and Tigers they barely lost at all.

This is different, a shock perhaps, although to those who have followed the Royals through their remarkable postseason when they’ve won 10 of 11 games, probably not a shock.

It’s an electric, exciting baseball team that keeps on the pressure — just as the Giants are a team that never gives anything away, most of all a game.

No designated hitter for the American League Royals on Friday in a National League ballpark. No problem. Except for the Giants, who were down 1-0 three batters into the game and never caught up. Now, with Ryan Vogelsong scheduled to pitch for San Francisco on Saturday night in Game 4 — as scheduled — the Giants never may catch the Royals.

“If you look at their pitching,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said philosophically, “you can say they might not need the DH. That’s how well they threw the ball. It’s more like a National League team. Very well balanced. Speed. They do the little things well.

“Their defense played very well. We hit some balls hard. We couldn’t find one to fall in. Cain (rightfielder Lorenzo Cain) made a couple nice plays out there, but it always comes down to pitching. I don’t care if you’re in the National League or American League. If you pitched well, you probably have a chance to win.”

The Giants pitched well, although the very first ball thrown by Tim Hudson, finally in a World Series game after 16 big league seasons, was smacked off the left field wall — out there by the Chevron cars — for a double by Alcides Escobar.

“It was a fastball,” said Hudson. “He could just as easily have popped it up.” But these Royals don’t pop up, they pound. Two batters later, Cain, that pest, grounded out and scored Escobar from third.

When it was 2-0, in the top of the sixth, with one out and a runner on second, Javier Lopez, the lefty, was bought in to face Eric Hosmer, a lefthanded batter. Lopez got two strikes, but Hosmer stretched the count to 3-2, then singled home Alex Gordon. That run was the difference. Kansas City forces the issue.

“He did what the Royals have been doing all postseason,” said Lopez.

Which is finding a way to beat you.

There was some discussion between Bochy and pitching coach Dave Righetti about perhaps using Madison Bumgarner on Saturday in a game of such importance.

A loss in Game 4, and the Giants would be where in 2010 and 2012 they had the other teams, in a hole from which excavation would be impossible.

But what we’ve learned about Bochy in the seasons he’s been in control is that he is very much in control. He stays the course, allows the patterns to remain unchanged.

“It’s confidence in (Vogelsong),” said Bochy, “and we’ve pushed Madison pretty good here. So we’re going to keep things in order and go with Vogey. He has experience. He’s pitched great in postseason. It was a good ballgame tonight, but we’re not going to change things because we lost.”

And, Bochy reminded, “If Madison pitched (Saturday), we’re going to have to pitch somebody the next day.”

San Francisco’s pitching wasn’t the problem for San Francisco. Kansas City’s pitching was the problem for San Francisco. The Giants had only four hits, received no walks. 

Jeremy Guthrie, the Stanford kid, was excellent in the five-plus innings he worked. The people who followed from that in-your-face bullpen, Kelvin Herrera, Brandon Finnegan, Wade Davis and Greg Holland, were no less excellent. Maybe more, if that’s possible.

“It’s a pretty good bullpen,” said Bochy, understating the situation somewhat. “It’s the reason they’re here. You get late in the ballgame, and you’re going to face those guys. You have your work cut out. We know that. Still, you hope to score off them.”

In the bottom of the ninth, against Holland, the Giants had their big three: Buster Posey, Pablo Sandoval and Hunter Pence. Posey was the only one to get a ball out of the infield. A soft, sad response.

“The key factor in all this for us,” said Ned Yost, the Royals’ manager, “is timely hitting, great defense, really solid starting pitching but a dynamic back of the bullpen.”

Sounds like the Giants when they were champions.

Will Raider mess ever be cleaned up?

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — The question is not whether the Raiders are broken. We know they are. It’s obvious. It was obvious before they fell to 0-6 on Sunday.

They can’t stop anybody, and in football if you can’t stop anyone, can’t play defense, you have no chance. That’s understood.

But how can the Raiders be fixed? Can they ever be fixed? To look back and blame it on the late Al Davis doesn’t do any good, except maybe for some vindictive sorts.

If Al made some bad draft picks, if Al kept trying to play 1980s football in the 2010s, railing against him in 2014 doesn’t help the situation.

For the second game under interim coach Tony Sparano, in control only for two games, the Raiders hung in there, at times played effectively. But against a better team, which the Arizona Cardinals are — a very good team, at 5-1 — bits and pieces are not good enough. Oakland was beaten 24-13 at O.co Coliseum.

What you need to succeed in football at any level are a defense and a quarterback. In rookie Derek Carr the Raiders very well may have that quarterback, the man who can lead them into the future. But they don’t have a defense.

They haven’t a defense for years.

“We put ourselves in position to win,” said Sparano. “But we didn’t win. In the 140-odd plays there are eight or nine that are critical. You’ve got to make those plays to win. We have to get better on third down. We have to get off the field.”

They have to stop the other team when it matters. The Cardinals had 15 third-down plays on Sunday. On nine they made first downs, 60 percent.

They never relinquished the ball. They had it for almost 37 minutes of the 60, and while possession time is not always a determining factor in this game — as was the case in last weekend’s against the Chargers — it certainly was.

The opposition just grinds up and down the field, holding the ball, holding the game. Is there an individual to blame?

Mark Davis, Al’s only son, is the one in charge, the team president. But he’s not really a football man as was his late father. Mark hired Reggie McKenzie to fill that role. It appears he hasn’t done it very well.

For two years Oakland and McKenzie were hobbled by the salary cap. Then, before this season, his third, he signed veteran free agents who have not done much, if anything, except earn huge salaries.

Do the Raiders start over? Does Mark Davis hire new executives? People with a plan? Or at least a plan that  might be better than the one installed by McKenzie?

Dennis Allen, a defensive specialist, was McKenzie’s choice as coach. He was fired at the end of September, four games into his third season.

Maybe he didn’t have the players. Maybe he couldn’t be a head coach. The team has been more competitive under Sparano.

However, Sparano is the interim coach. Who will replace him? And does Oakland replace McKenzie?

Where to begin? When to decide? Do you clean house? Do you stay patient?

Charles Woodson is in his 17^th season. He played safety on Sunday as he has forever, with the Raiders after he was the fourth player picked in the 1998 draft, then with the Green Bay Packers where he helped them win Super Bowl XLV, then in 2013 back to the Raiders.

He’s old. He’s still competent. In the second quarter, Charles Woodson, 38, 1997 Heisman Trophy winner, intercepted a pass thrown by Carson Palmer, 34, 2002 Heisman Trophy winner.

The Cardinals probably will have Palmer for a while. Woodson’s days are not so certain. He does provide good quotes.

“I think it’s pretty much snowballed on us,” said Woodson of a season that supposedly had promise and now at almost the halfway point doesn’t even have a single victory.

“We had a close game that first game (a 19-14 loss to the Jets) and it felt like we were on the right track. We just weren’t able to capitalize on that first game. We haven’t been able to put four quarters of football together. But again, third downs, on both sides of the ball, are really killing us.”

Not as much on offense as on defense. If you rarely have the ball, you’ll never have any rhythm. If the defense is ineffective, you’ll rarely have the ball.

“We didn’t do the job on third downs,” repeated Sparano. “Some of that we have to look at scheme. Some of that we may have to look at players.”

Some of whom were signed by McKenzie, who was signed by Mark Davis, who got the team as a legacy. They’re all in it together, and what they’re in is a mess that some way needs to be cleaned up.

Ishikawa’s shot brings Giants a pennant, and memories

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.”

Giants' clubhouse sign says it all: ‘Never Unprepared’

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — This was the game they should have lost. Well, could have lost. Their starting pitcher couldn’t make it into the fourth. The other team, the Cardinals, was banging balls off fences and, like that, was in front, 4-1.

Yet once again, the Giants found a way.

Once again the Giants pecked and pestered, getting great work from the bullpen and great movement from base runners, pressing the issue until the Cardinals were forced into making wrong decisions.

“Never Unprepared.” That small sign is posted on the Giants’ clubhouse door. Always ready. Always willing. To take the extra base. To take the mound, if only to face one batter.

“Whatever we need,” said Javier Lopez, the lefthander who was the fifth of the seven San Francisco pitchers. “We’re not flashy.”

Who needs flashy? The Giants beat St. Louis, 6-4, Wednesday night at AT&T Park, where the music pounded and the rally rags waved. They’re up three games to one in the best of seven National League Championship Series. They’re one game away from making to the World Series for the third time in five years.

But they’re also wary. Two years ago, 2012, it was the Cardinals who had the 3-1 lead in the NLCS. And the Giants won three in a row. They know what’s possible. Even with Madison Bumgarner pitching in Thursday’s Game 5.

“Great win, great comeback,” said Giants manager Bruce Bochy. “We’ve won three. But we have work to do.”

The work they’ve done in the first four games has been outstanding, if understated. Once more, no home runs — for the sixth straight game of the postseason — but beautiful defense and capable offense, waiting out a walk instead of flailing at a pitch, knowing what to do if there’s a deep fly or a soft grounder.

“It has to start somewhere,” said Bochy.

It started everywhere. It started when Yusmeiro Petit came in to pitch the fourth inning after Ryan Vogelsong, who had been so effective in his previous five postseason games, was so ineffective.

Petit, who would get the win, went three innings, allowing only one hit. Then Jeremy Affeldt went two-thirds of an inning. And Jean Machi one batter. And Lopez one-third of an inning. And Sergio Romo one inning. And finally Santiago Casilla one inning, the ninth, if one in which he gave up his first hit since September 11, a stretch of 10 games.

It started with pinch hitter Joaquin Arias singling to begin the third, Buster Posey singling, Pablo Sandoval walking and Hunter Pence singling. Now the score was 4-3. Now the momentum had switched.

The sixth was classic Giants less-is-more baseball. Juan Perez, pinch hitting (well, pinch walking), got to first. Brandon Crawford singled. Pinch hitter Matt Duffy sacrificed. Gregor Blanco grounded to first, but Matt Adams, after fielding the ball, couldn’t get Perez at the plate. The game was tied.

Not for long. Joe Panik also grounded to first, but Adams stepped on the bag, removing the force, and when he threw high to second to try for Blanco, Crawford dashed home from third.

Fundamental baseball. “Never Unprepared” baseball.

“I had talked to (third base coach) Tim Flannery,” said Crawford. “He said if there was a throw to second to take off for home. That’s what happened. We’re putting the pressure on.

“A big reason for our success is we’ve been getting on base and playing defense.”

Said Bochy, “Great base running by Crawford. If you’re not hitting the long ball, you have to find ways to manufacture runs.”

Neither team made an error that would be recorded in the box score in the a game that was just seven minutes short of four hours, but the Cardinals made the sort of botches that are the difference in playoff baseball.    

“We found a way to score a couple of weird ones there,” said Posey, the Giants' leader. He drove in three runs and scored one.

“I can speak as a catcher. Sometimes those two-out RBIs can be big in shifting momentum.”

The runs in the third, the ones that brought the Giants into the game, as they also did the unsettled sellout crowd of 43,147, were scored with two outs. You sensed then the Cards might be in trouble.

“You have to do the little things,” said Bochy in a message repeated more than once of late. “Granted we’ve gotten a couple breaks, but at the same time, we’ve done some good things, little things. Arias pinch hits, and we find a way to get him across. Now you’re getting a little bit closer, and the hope starts to build up and the momentum starts to change, and that’s what happened.

“I’ve always said, to win a game you need pitching and you need timely hits. And tonight we got them.”

And got to within a game of another World Series.

Giants are lucky — and good

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — Oh, those lucky Giants. Oh, those remarkable Giants.

They can’t hit a home run. They squander first-inning leads. They score on bloop hits. They score on wild pitches. They score when a bunt is thrown into right field. Is that luck or what?

“It’s a great thing to have,” said Giants manager Bruce Bochy, of the black magic and good fortune. “But you don’t get this far by being lucky. You have to be good.”

You have to have players who are tough, talented and most of all resilient.

You have to have players who can go through the fifth through ninth innings as they did Tuesday against the St. Louis Cardinals, with only two base runners and one hit, and remain unfazed.

You have to have players who appear as if they’re going to blow another game as they did on Sunday night when the Cardinals rallied again and again and won on a walkoff home run.

And then, as a sellout crowd at AT&T Park stops gasping and starts screaming, you have to have players who do the little things that turn out so big and win in what seems the most unlikeliest of fashions — but to the Giants is, yawn, the norm.

In the bottom of the 10th, Brandon Crawford, hitless in three at bats, leads off with a walk. Ninth-place batter Juan Perez fouls off two balls attempting to bunt, swings away and singles. Gregor Blanco lays down a bunt, which reliever Randy Choate fields and flings into right field for an error as Crawford dashes home to give San Francisco a 5-4 win and a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven National League Championship Series.

“I’m a little delirious, I guess,” said a half-joking Bochy when asked what it’s like to manage this team in these games. “Man, these are hard-fought games. We don’t do anything easy.”

When have they ever? Sweet Torture is how the broadcasters Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper labeled Giants baseball back in 2010, when the torture sweetly climaxed with a World Series triumph.

The template was created, and it’s being followed once again — chomped cuticle by chomped cuticle.

“I’m not sure if I assume something is going to happen,” said Bochy, “but it couldn’t have worked out better. Perez, he couldn’t get a bunt down and gets a base hit. Now you’re playing with house money.”

Now you’re playing Giants baseball, making the easy difficult, making the absurd reasonable. The Giants had a homer (by Crawford) in the wild card game at Pittsburgh. The Giants had a homer (by Brandon Belt in the 18th) in the second NL Division Series game against Washington.

That was six postseason games ago. They haven’t had one since.

“It’s kind of our way,” conceded Bochy of the scrambling. "We play a lot of tight games ... We didn’t get a lot of chances with men on, but we took advantage of them. Ishi with the big hit. Pence that first inning, two outs, two strikes and he hits the ball down the line.”

Hunter Pence, not unexpected. Travis Ishikawa, reacquired during the season after seasons in the minors,  quite unexpected.

Two outs in the first, none on. Buster Posey singles, Pablo Sandoval singles, Pence doubles, Belt walks and then Ishikawa hits it deep and high to right center, where the ball is blown around by wind that would have done Candlestick proud. Ishikawa has a double, two runs batted in, and San Francisco has a 4-0 lead.

“One of the toughest winds I can remember,” said Pence, who despite being the Giants regular right fielder misjudged a shot by the Cards’ Kolten Wong in the fourth that ended up a two-RBI triple. “I started to my left and it blew over my head to the right.”

The subplot in this one was the tale of Giants starter Tim Hudson, who at age 39, in the majors since 1997 with Oakland, Atlanta and now San Francisco, had never pitched in a league championship game.

He made it to the seventh, then with one out gave up a home run to rookie Randal Grichuk. The 4-0 lead was now a 4-4 tie, and Hudson was relieved by Jeremy Affeldt.

“One thing that can kill you,” sighed Hudson, “is giving up a homer right there to the number eight hitter, and you know they are going to pinch-hit for the pitcher after him. It was probably the worst cutter (cut fastball) I’ve thrown all day ... Obviously it was a tough one for me to swallow. But the guys battled and picked me up as they have all year.

“That’s our personality as a team. We have guys who scratch and claw and do whatever it takes to get some runs across and keep the game close at times, and try to find ways to win in the end.”

Which, when the other team turned a simple bunt into a mammoth mistake, is exactly what they did.

“It doesn’t matter how we score our runs,” said Ishikawa. “It’s been a big topic on how we scored on wild pitches and passed balls and things like that. Somebody asked me if there’s another way we can score a run other than a non-conventional way. I said, 'If there is, we’re going to find a way.'”

Call them lucky. Call them resourceful. Call them remarkable. Call them winners.