The Giants Win

The new World Champion San Francisco Giants navigated the baseball tournament waters flirting with disaster early in the event but then eased to seven straight victories including a four game sweep vs the favored Detroit Tigers in the World Series. Make it 22 of 27 wins for the team opening the World Series at home since 1985. That was the first year of the best of seven league championship series and also a year the Kansas City Royals won six must games to win the title. The Giants also won six must games and five others and have their second title in three seasons.

Pablo Sandoval was the MVP but how about Hunter Pence, who did not have gaudy numbers but contributed in three of the four wins while Sandoval only really mattered in game one. Is Matt Cain the first pitcher to start in his team’s series clincher in all three rounds of the expanded baseball playoffs, again a veritable tournament? Cain joins Paul Derringer in 1940 and Sandy (not the hurricane although he had that kind of power and is the best pitcher since Lefty Grove) Koufax in 1965, as pitchers to win the All Star Game and a seventh game in the same season. Derringer and Koufax won Game seven of the World Series while Cain won game seven of the NLCS.

It was a masterful managerial job by Bruce Bochy using his deep bullpen which was nearly flawless. The Giants are a nice team but think about it: they have two titles in three seasons, and their predecessors of the ’60’s with Hall of Famers Willie Mays, Willie Mc Covey and three others won nary a title. They had to finish first in a super National League and did that only once. That year, 50 years ago, they lost (1-0) in game seven to the Yankees.

Hunter Pence