This article was originally published April 13, 2012.
By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com
The number, 42, hangs in every major league ballpark, a reminder of a man who was as much a pioneer as an athlete — a superb athlete — talented, proud and courageous.
Sixty-five years now since that April day in 1947 when Jack Roosevelt Robinson integrated the majors.
By Art Spander
OAKLAND, Calif. –- There’s a reason they call him King Felix. “He can throw any pitch on any count,” said Bob Melvin. He’s the Oakland Athletics' manager. He was in the other dugout Monday night, opening night, a disappointing night for Melvin and the A’s.
A losing night.
“Opening night,” Melvin reminded, not that anyone needed reminding, “you’re always going to face the other team’s best pitcher.”
The Seattle Mariners’ best pitcher. One of baseball’s best pitchers. Felix Hernandez, who’s won an American League Cy Young Award, who last season threw a perfect game, who by anyone’s definition is pure baseball royalty.
“Maybe he didn’t have his best velocity,” said Melvin, a former catcher who knows all about pitching and too much about Hernandez, “but he was great.”
What Hernandez did was retire the first 10 batters of the game, really of the season, and although Hernandez would allow three hits – one to his former battery mate, John Jaso, whose double in the fourth was end of the no-hitter – the A’s never scored, losing 2-0.
An opening day and night without runs from teams by the Bay. Down in Los Angeles, the Giants – the World Series champion Giants, if you will – were blanked by the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw, 4-0. A few hours later, up at this end of the state, the A’s, the American League West Champions, were just as ineffective.
Two teams, two winning teams from 2012, zero runs.
“You always get somebody’s ace,” said Melvin.
The A’s similarly had one of their aces pitching, Brett Anderson. He struck out the first four Mariners. He went seven innings. Permitted only four hits and two runs.
“You’re going to take seven innings and two runs anytime from your starter,” Melvin insisted. Absolutely. But when your team gets no runs, you’re in trouble.
The A’s traded for Jaso in January. So long, Felix. “It’s easier catching him than batting against him,” said Jaso. But he did get that double. He did halt any chance for more perfection.
Before the game, Hernandez sent his former catcher a remembrance from the perfect game against Tampa Bay last August, a Rolex watch. Those beauties don’t come cheaply, starting a $5,000 or so and climbing exorbitantly depending on the number of diamonds on the face. Then again, Hernandez signed a $175-million, seven-year contract in January, so he has a bit of spare cash.
Someone asked Jaso whether it meant more getting a watch from Hernandez or a hit. “The hit,” he said, not all that seriously. “Then he struck me out.”
Hernandez struck out eight in his 7 2/3 innings, walking only one. “He had his stuff,” agreed Jaso. “He was really fun to catch when I was in Seattle. But today, so was Brett.”
Anderson is the medical miracle. The lefthander underwent Tommy John surgery in June 2011 and didn’t pitch again until last August. Then he strained an oblique muscle in September and missed more time. But on October 10, with the A’s trailing the Detroit Tigers two games to none in the best-of-five American League Division Series, Anderson, in his first start in six weeks, went six scoreless innings.
Monday night, opening night, was the next time Anderson pitched in competition. He liked the way he threw, for the most part. He didn’t like giving up the runs.
“A couple of mistakes,” said Anderson, analyzing the performance. “We had a chance to win it. I walked the leadoff batter (in the fifth). I hate walking people. That was my biggest downfall.”
The O.Co Coliseum was a wild place, a sellout – if with an asterisk, because the tarped rows of seats restrict attendance to 36,067 – the fans coming out with their rally towels and high hopes.
Where the A’s go from here – no jokes about San Jose – nobody is certain, but they won’t be going up against Hernandez at least for a few days, maybe a few weeks.
“We kept feeling we would pull it out,” said Melvin, the 2012 American League manager of the year. “In close games you have to have that feeling. We had it all last year, and it worked. A lot of times, one hit makes the difference.”
Hernandez wouldn’t let it work Monday night. The fans could chant “Let’s go Oakland.” The A’s couldn’t get that one hit. The A’s couldn’t get any runs.
“Felix is probably as good a pitcher as anyone as getting guys to swing at pitches,” said Melvin. He meant pitches at which they shouldn’t have swung. Pitches which they couldn’t hit.
At least when thrown by King Felix, as he threw them Monday night. So disappointing.
By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO — They are too exuberant for some, bouncing around like high school kids at a rally, celebrating even the smallest achievement, a single, a strikeout.
They are too talented for everyone, kids from the land that they proudly declare produces more ballplayers per capita than any other on the globe.
Baseball is in the soul of the Dominican Republic, serving both as recreation and, in a place of extensive poverty, an opportunity to find fame and wealth. It was so strange then — and so bewildering to the citizens of the DR — why they had done poorly in the World Baseball Championship in 2006 and 2009.
That failure has been corrected, emphatically. The DR, as the players refer to their home, won the WBC on a rainy Tuesday night along the shore of the Bay, defeating Puerto Rico, 3-0, and going through the tournament unbeaten in its eight games.
“I had enough of that shame of not having a trophy like this,” said Tony Pena, the Dominican manager, as he stared at award in front of him and several players. “And thank God this group of men was able to accomplish what we wanted, which is to put our country on top in terms of baseball.”
They are millionaires, so many on the Dominican team. They are stars in the bigs, Jose Reyes, Robinson Cano, Hanley Ramirez, Nelson Cruz. They play for the Marlins and the Yankees, the Dodgers and the Rangers. But this was their team. This was their country.
That’s why Reyes gave those fist-pumps when he led off the first with a double. That’s why Erick Aybar almost strutted into second on his double in the fifth. That’s why the entire squad, holding on to a mammoth Dominican flag, red, blue and white, danced around at game’s end.
Maybe they get on other teams’ nerves, but it’s a matter of sheer enjoyment, of full involvement, of unfettered excitement.
“This ball club is about emotion,” said Pena. He is a coach on the Yankees, and he’ll return to that position in a matter of hours. After the celebrating.
“We showed emotion every single time. And when Jose got to second base the first time and put the fists up way high, that was telling the other guys, let’s go.”
Considering the lack of an Asian team and the weather — rain was forecast and arrived early on — the attendance of 35,703 was quite impressive, about 6,000 below AT&T Park's capacity.
Fans had to flee from the open areas to protected ones, under the overhang, when the downpour arrived, but the game went on, and certainly so did the Dominican Republic, which appropriate for the setting, won on pitching. As in 2012 did the Giants, who call AT&T home.
If the other team doesn’t score, the adage goes, the worst you’ll have is a 0-0 tie. The other team, Puerto Rico, not only didn’t score in this game, it didn’t score in the previous game of the tournament against the DR and not since the fourth inning of the game before that, a stretch of 23 innings.
“You look at the Dominican roster,” said Edward Rodriguez, the Puerto Rico manager, “the arms that they have. Not only the starters, but that’s a big league bullpen right there.
“We didn’t score in those many innings, but the last time I checked there was not many that scored against that team. Because when you take a guy throwing 94, 95 and then bring in a guy throwing 97, 98, that’s pretty hard to score against.”
Samuel Deduno, who spent part of the 2012 season with the Minnesota Twins — and part in the minors — started for the Dominicans. He pitched five innings and allowed only two hits. Then came the relievers, first Octavio Dotel, who’s been around forever, then Pedro Strop, Santiago Casilla (of the Giants) and finally Fernando Rodney, who recorded his seventh save in the eight games.
“Samuel Deduno did a great job for us not only tonight, but the whole WBC,” said Pena. “He pitched three games for us, and he pitched three successful games . . . Since I said earlier, when we started the WBC, our bullpen was the root. We would play five innings with the starter and then turn the game over to them.”
Robinson Cano of the Yankees — a free agent for the coming season — was hitless Tuesday but ended up batting .469, a good reason he was chosen tournament MVP.
“We have superstars,” said Cano, “but God knows when things happen. This is a great feeling. Tony did a great job. We have this great energy and have always been praying.”
It was playing, not the praying, that enabled them to sweep through the Classic and led Dominican president Danilo Medina — watching the triumph along with virtually everyone in the nation — to call Pena and offer his congratulations.
“The Dominican Republic,” said Pena, “were hungry for this moment.”
Now that the moment has passed, the players, coaches and manager head back to their respective teams. Or will they?
“I’ll tell you one thing,” said Cano, laughing. “Tonight we are going to celebrate. Tomorrow we are going to celebrate. Thursday we will go back to spring training.”
As champions of the world.
By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO — Maybe it doesn’t mean that much in America, which just happens to be where the game was created. Maybe it ranks somewhere below the Heat keeping their streak alive or Tiger and Lindsey admitting they are an item, and they certainly are.
But this World Baseball Classic, which will come to an end Tuesday night, with the Dominican Republic facing Puerto Rico at AT&T Park, is huge in those two places where the populations are small, two places where baseball matters more than the land where it once was called the national pastime.
All you had to do was watch the way the Dominicans bolted out of their dugout — well, the Giants’ dugout, but Monday night it was the Dominicans' — after they beat the Netherlands, 4-1, in their semifinal.
All you had to do was listen to the shouts and repetitive honking of horns from the Dominican fans, wrapped in their flags and their joy. This is their moment, as it will be Puerto Rico’s, a chance for two Caribbean baseball hotbeds to rank as the best.
The WBC officials must be disappointed in the way the United States has supported the Classic. Or not supported it. The crowds were big a weekend ago in Miami. But in San Francisco, they went from marginal — some 33,000 for Sunday night’s semi between Puerto Rico and Japan — to miserable, 27,527 on Monday night.
The Giants, the World Series champions, have sold out every game for two straight years at 41,000-seat AT&T. There was no spillover. No connection. There was only ennui, although not from the Dominicans, or the few Dutch who wore their orange sweatshirts with the word “Driemteam” on the front.
The Dream Team, in effect, is the Dominican Republic. It is 7-0 in the tournament. It is full of millionaire major-leaguers such as Jose Reyes, Robinson Cano, Hanley Ramirez and Nelson Cruz.
“Those are great hitters,” said Hensley Meulens, who was the Netherlands' manager and also is the San Francisco Giants' hitting coach. “They rise to the top when it comes to playing big games like this.”
Most of the Netherlands' players are also Caribbean islanders, from Curacao and Aruba. Some you know — Andruw Jones, Wladimir Balentien. Most you don’t. They hung in behind a pitcher who never has made the majors in 10 years, Diegomar Markwell. But eventually the big bats wore him down, the Dominicans scoring all their runs in an explosive fifth of line drives and pop flies.
“They put some great at-bats on us today,” said Meulens.
On the mound, they put some great pitches on them. The Netherlands got a run without a hit in the first off Edison Volquez. And then no more runs and only four hits off Volquez and three other Dominicans, including Fernando Rodney of the Tampa Bay Rays, who recorded his sixth save in this WBC.
“I think they only had a couple of starters,” said Meulens, “and then most of their guys were bullpen guys. It showed today.”
The Netherlands won both of its games against the Dominican in the 2009 WBC, but that domination was destined to end. “They came to play this year,” said Meulens. “And that’s why they’re undefeated. And that’s why they’re going to the finals.”
Japan won the only two other World Baseball Classics. Now the championship will go from the Far East to the tropics. “Whoever wins,” said Dominican manager Tony Pena, a Yankees coach, “it’s going to be the Caribbeans. It could be Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic, but it will belong to the Caribbean.”
The Dominican players take the Classic personally. It’s their Olympics, the chance to prove their skills and dedication, to show basically that, at this game, they are the best in the world.
“When you’re representing your country, and you’re making your country proud of you, that’s amazing,” said Volquez, the Dominican starter. “That’s awesome.”
He’s 29. He knows English well. He’s with the San Diego Padres. But the question was asked in Spanish, so he responded in Spanish, which was then translated.
“This is not something you can do every day,” Volquez continued. “And we’re able to win. It’s like we’ve been on this one mission, just winning and winning as a team.”
Winning as a team. Winning as a nation. Winning because it means so much.
“I think we have a lot of unity on this team,” said Pena. “That has brought us to where we are right now.”
They’re one game from the championship of the World Baseball Classic. That might not mean a lot in the United States, but it means everything to the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.
By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO — It was a version of one of those old baseball jokes, a Three Stooges routine without laughs. Isn’t there a manual that advises it’s never a good idea to steal second base when there’s another teammate already there?
Japan knows how to play the game, precisely, carefully. There is an ethic, a tradition of repetition that leads to perfection, a style that made the nation the World Baseball Classic champion the only two previous times the tournament had been played.
But the odds and Puerto Rico caught up with Japan on Monday night at AT&T Park, the Puerto Ricans winning, 3-1, to advance to Tuesday night’s final against the winner of Monday’s Dominican Republic-Netherlands game.
Puerto Rico was in control from the very start on this chill evening, scoring a run in the first and then, after a massive seventh-inning home run by Alex Rios, going in front 3-0.
“They were superior pitching and hitting,” said the Japanese manager, Koji Yamamoto. “I could see an opportunity.”
So, with a run in, one out and Hirokazu Ibata on second and Seiichi Uchikawa on first, Yamamoto called a double steal. It would have worked, or let’s say could have worked if only Ibata hadn’t stayed at second while Uchikawa sped there. Oops.
You’re only allowed one man on each base. Except in comedy films. Uchikawa was out. Yamamoto presumably was out of his mind after the tactic, but that isn’t true. “I wanted to move the runners,” he said. “I don’t regret it.”
Ibata did. He took a few steps toward third and then realized he’d never make it so dashed back to second. Uchikawa didn’t know where to go, so he went no place, stopping between the bases. Rally finished, if it even started at all.
So, Puerto Rico, with a history of great players — Roberto Clemente, the Alomars, Orlando Cepeda, who was at the mound for the first pitch even though he didn’t throw it — but a lack of success recently, proves it still knows how to win.
And Angel Pagan, who will be out there in a few weeks wearing a San Francisco Giants uniform, gets another chance for the Puerto Ricans as a center fielder in Triples Alley at AT&T Park.
Japan had the crowd, maybe two-thirds of the announced 33,683 in the ballpark by the Bay. The fans came with their flags and noise-makers and enthusiasm. “I really felt their support,” said Yamamoto, the manager. Puerto Rico, however, had the edge.
“Their pitchers were really good,” said Yamamoto through a translator. “It was hard to seize the opportunity.”
Their pitchers, six of them, began with Mario Santiago, who in six years had never been in the majors and last year played in Korea. But his resume belied his performance against Japan, as he retired the first 10 batters before giving up a single.
“Now,” said Santiago, “I’m back to the states to accomplish my dream of playing in the major leagues.”
First the accomplishment of another dream, to bring a title to his homeland. “I’m really happy,” he said. “I know the people in Puerto Rico must be so proud of our team that we’ve come so far.”
They made the semis, of course, by defeating the United States, where the World Baseball Classic doesn’t seem to mean as much as it does to the other small nations, especially those around the Caribbean where the sport is almost religion.
There were enough Puerto Ricans in the stands, with their passion and their flags, if not in the same numbers as the Japanese. When pinch hitter Kazuo Matsui flied out to Pagan in center — a perfect ending, for San Francisco as well as Puerto Rico — horns honked and cheers resounded.
On the field, the Puerto Ricans were celebrating in a huge mass of happiness. The Japanese, class all the way, stood on the third base line and in union took a final bow, turning the park over to the ecstatic winners and, as usual after night games at AT&T, the swarming seagulls.
Rios is a legit big leaguer, with 25 blasts and a .304 batting average in 2012 for the White Sox. Atsushi Nohmi came in to pitch the seventh for Japan. The first batter he faced, Mike Aviles, singled. The second, Rios, smashed a ball halfway up the leftfield bleachers.
“It was a very exciting at-bat,” said Rios. “The pitch I hit, I saw it earlier in that at-bat. He threw that change-up and then repeated the change-up. That’s the one I saw. I guess I put a good turn on it.
“It was a very emotional at-bat. The whole tournament has been very exciting.”
And thus far, very successful.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
PHOENIX — Pat Venditte has been to Italy, if a while ago. Omaha, Neb., where he grew up, has one of the largest Italian festivals in the Midwest. So it was understandable that he would try to pitch for Italy in the World Baseball Classic -- if only with one arm.
Copyright © 2013 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
PHOENIX – It isn’t as if the final score is inconsequential. The games indeed are exhibitions in the candid description of baseball’s warm-ups.
Yet A’s manager Bob Melvin wants players who understand the importance of winning, even at the time of year when it isn’t important.
He cares about the thought process, the attempt even more than the result.
The idea in exhibitions is to perfect techniques, for the pitcher to work on, say, fastballs to the left side of the plate for a righthander such as Dan Straily, Oakland’s starter Wednesday against San Diego.
“Even if they had a lot of lefthander batters in the lineup,” said Straily.
In the regular season, it doesn’t matter who does what, just that the team does what it needs to do -- win.
In the exhibition season, the individual takes precedence, which is why final scores are so high, Oakland beating San Diego, 11-6.
“But,” cautioned Melvin, “I don’t want people who don’t come out in any game and try to win.”
It was one of those almost afternoons in the desert, the temperature finally climbing – the first pitch came with the thermometer at a cool 63 degrees – and the balls finally flying.
Sure a couple of 80-degree days would be welcome, but as Melvin reminded, “not every night at the Coliseum is warm.”
The A’s, as February heads into March, still are trying to get hot with the public. There were those sellout crowds at Oakland at the end of the regular season and the playoffs, but down here, midweek at least, not many seem interested.
Attendance Wednesday was 1,867 at 10,000-seat Phoenix Muni.
The Athletics continue as the Great Unknown. They were the Cinderella team of 2012, but other than Yoenis Cespedes, the Cuban, star quality is lacking.
Players such Jemile Weeks (who led off with a home run in a four-run first), Seth Smith and Josh Reddick are on the cusp of fame. They also are ignored by ESPN and, as Wednesday’s embarrassing crowd indicated, by the fans.
Phoenix and Scottsdale – and Mesa – belong to the Giants and Cubs. Even the Dodgers, with their modern complex 25 freeway miles to the west in Glendale, don’t draw like San Francisco and Chicago, well established physically and psychologically.
At least, on Friday the Giants come to Phoenix, bringing their cachet – a World Series championship gets attention – and their fans. Better to have a crowd even if it's an opposition crowd.
The A’s at the least are building on the field. Only three and a half weeks ago, late for a trade unless Billy Beane is doing the trading, Oakland acquired Jed Lowrie from Houston in exchange for Chris Carter, with a few other individuals tossed in.
Lowrie, who was drafted out of Stanford by the Red Sox, then went to the Astros, in theory would play “all over the place” in the infield, according to Beane. On Wednesday, he was at third, and in his first two at-bats had a double and single, respectively.
“He swung the bat well,” confirmed Melvin, “but for me what counts is he can play multiple positions. The ball he made a play on in the first inning was just as important as his offense.”
In his first spring training in Arizona after time in Florida, Lowrie, 28, said he is “just trying to get himself ready to be an everyday guy.”
He’s ready. He knows his status.
“There are guys here trying to make the team,” Lowrie said, “trying to impress. I’m not in that . . .”
The word Lowrie might have chosen is “category.” He’s a starter, a switch hitter, a second baseman, third baseman and shortstop. He’s not a star, but we know how little that seems to matter in Oakland.
The A’s, as the cover of their media guide emphasizes in words and a wonderful photo of players celebrating, are the 2012 AL West Champions. And that end-of-September run last year, when they overtook Texas, has gained them respect.
Stories about the renaissance have been everywhere. The nothing A’s are now the special A’s. They are being predicted to battle the Angels for the division, just as in the National League the Dodgers are figured to match up against the Giants.
Last February, such a suggestion would have seemed absurd, but now it’s expected. Oakland proved it could win.
Bob Melvin doesn’t want his team to forget that, even in exhibition games.
By Art Spander
GLENDALE, Ariz. –- It was baseball with a history, out here in the suburbs of Phoenix, Giants vs. Dodgers. An exhibition, but for Tim Lincecum, seeking reassurance, more like an exhibit, of himself.
He had to show us, show baseball, that he wouldn’t be the same as last year.
Tim had been the man for the Giants, two Cy Young Awards, a World Series win. Then things went haywire in 2012, until the postseason when, as a reliever, he came through. Still, he had to be a starter, not a reliever, not at $20 million per.
Giants against Dodgers, Lincecum against his fears. His first start of spring training on Tuesday. More acutely, the first time he would face live batters, even in practice. A rainout prevented even that bit of normal preparation.
He was waiting. Giants Nation was waiting.
Lincecum threw 38 pitches in 1 1/3 innings, as stiff a workout as allowed in his situation. Though he would be charged with three runs in a game that would end tied, 8-8, after San Francisco got consecutive two-run homers in the ninth from Brock Bond and Brett Pill, Timmy was not at all displeased.
On the contrary. The doubts have fled.
No worries about mechanics. No thoughts about what had been, only what is.
“It wasn’t a question of whether I was going to throw strikes,” said Lincecum, who at times last season could not. “It was a question of how I was going to throw those strikes. I didn’t feel out of whack.”
Camelback Ranch, the complex that serves as home for the Dodgers — “Whole new team. Whole new 'Tude” — and Chicago White Sox, has a beautiful stadium of rust-colored steel that blends perfectly with the desert. It seemed a proper place for a renaissance, if only partly filled — attendance, 5,019, and of that total numerous Giants fans.
The afternoon began long before the first pitch with a recording over the public address system of the Eagles’ “Hotel California,” hardly inappropriate with the state’s two National League powers about to face each other. Then, came one of the Giants’ AT&T Park anthems, Journey and “Don’t Stop Believing.”
Which, through his season of 2012, when Lincecum was 10-15 with a 5.18 earned run average, he never did. He had lost too much weight, which observers said led to him losing his fastball and all those games.
For 2013, he gained pounds and trimmed his shoulder-length locks. Hard to know if the hair style had any effect, but Lincecum was effective.
“I missed only a couple pitches high,” said Lincecum. “I was thinking about a spot and hitting it, My timing was good.”
He will be 29 in June, an age when a pitcher should be at his best, still youthfully strong but also well experienced. His No. 1 place in the rotation has been ceded, unintentionally, to Matt Cain, who emphasized his brilliance with a perfect game. Add Madison Bumgarner, Ryan Vogelsong and the comeback of Barry Zito, and Lincecum may have to battle for a start.
Unless he’s back to 2008 or 2009, and those Cys.
“It was really good to have the atmosphere of being in a game again,” said Lincecum. “It was nice to face hitters again. I was kind of locked in. Other than the slider to (Jeremy) Moore (resulting in a two-run double in the second, Lincecum’s last pitch) I wasn’t too bad.”
For manager Bruce Bochy, still laughing about playing a second straight tie — it was 9-9 against the White Sox at Scottsdale on Monday — “wasn’t too bad” is an understatement. Bochy was more than satisfied.
“I thought Timmy did real well,” said Bochy. “He had good rhythm with his pitches and threw strikes. He looked very comfortable, and I thought he had good stuff.”
A former catcher, Bochy offers a keen eye on pitching, one of the reasons the Giants’ staff has been so strong — and one of the reasons San Francisco has won the World Series twice the last three years. He and general manager Brian Sabean fully understand that pitching dominates a game.
“What I saw,” Bochy said of Lincecum’s performance, “was a consistent delivery and good rhythm. Last year, he got out of sync. He knows it. He fought hard to get it back.”
Last year, with fans and teammates watching nervously and expecting the worst, which too often came, Lincecum would do well for three or four, or maybe five, innings, and then, bam. A walk, a double, a single, another double. So quickly it would come apart, and there would come Bochy taking the ball to hand to a reliever.
“Today was different,” said Bochy. “He looked very consistent.”
What the manager nearly said, but did not, was that Tim Lincecum looked very much as we expected Tim Lincecum to look: a great pitcher.
By Art Spander
The issue is one of perception more than of judgment. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens – and yes, Mike Piazza – have not been allowed to pass muster. Yet does anyone, including the balloters who rejected them, doubt they are Hall of Famers?
Which is why the vote as a lesson to future generations, if you will, is nonsense. Yes, I voted for them, along with Mark McGwire. And I would vote for Pete Rose, who merely recorded more hits than anyone in the history of major league baseball, except he’s never going to be on the ballot.
We know Rose is a Hall of Famer, even without the plaque. Same thing for Bonds, the all-time home run leader, and Clemens, who won seven Cy Young Awards.
The prettiest girl in town doesn’t necessarily have to win Miss America for us to recognize her beauty. Rose, Bonds, Clemens and Piazza won’t have to get elected for us to know they are Hall of Famers.
Bonds won three MVPs before most of the country even had even heard of performance-enhancing drugs. Clemens struck out 20 in a game back in 1986. (And McGwire hit 49 home runs in his rookie season, 1987, before anyone could tell a steroid from a stereo.)
A little chicanery – although the self-righteous will say one has nothing to do with the other, even if it does because both play loose with the rules: Gaylord Perry was elected to the Hall and then wrote a book describing how he doctored the balls he was pitching with petroleum jelly. A little wink and nod. And a permanent plaque.
Either the Hall of Fame is a reward for greatness or it is not. The voting writers failed to make that decision.
“The Hall of Fame is supposed to be for the best players to have ever played the game,” was the statement released by Michael Weiner, executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association on Wednesday when it was announced for the first time since 1996 that not a single player had been elected to the Hall.
Understand, the man is biased. He represents the players, good and bad. Understand, the man is correct.
The “best players to have ever played the game.” If Bonds, Clemens and Rose are not in that category, then we better create a new category.
The New York Times on Wednesday had an article about the reprobates who are in the Hall, the racists, the sociopaths. “Plaster saints is not what we have in the Hall of Fame,” the baseball historian John Thorn told the Times. Nor, for the moment, suspected PED users, not that some hadn’t already been elected.
A candidate, someone who has played 10 years and been retired five years, needs 75 percent of the votes from the eligible members of the Baseball Writers Association of America to make the Hall. Bonds received 36.2 percent, Clemens 37.6 percent. Nearly two-thirds of the voting baseball writers opposed each? Please.
They talk about the smell test. What we lack here is the vision test. Was Barry Bonds the player in the bigs from the early 1990s until he left after the 1997 season? Was Roger Clemens the man you’d want on the mound when it mattered? Yes to both those questions.
Cooperstown isn’t Lourdes. The inductees only had to be recognized as some of the best players of their time, not Mother Theresas in spikes. The only position player I saw better than Bonds was Willie Mays, Barry’s godfather.
What made Bonds so effective wasn’t necessarily his power -- not until the later years when we’re told he bulked up to get the home runs and attention of McGwire and Sammy Sosa – but his baseball skills, learned at the foot of his major league dad, Bobby.
Barry Bonds knew when to steal, where to position himself on defense, toward which base he should throw. His arm wasn’t the best, but his instincts were.
The wonderful arm belonged to Clemens, who at times simply wound up and threw the ball past people. He was the Rocket Man, an Elton John song come to life and come to win. As with Bonds, he made games adventures, full of excitement.
Piazza is the finest-hitting catcher ever. He’s never been accused of using steroids, at least not openly. But he was a star in what detractors have labeled the steroid era, and so by suggestion and association he is linked and punished.
Buster Olney of ESPN pointed out that baseball, the game, the business, exploited Bonds and Clemens – and the rest – making money and making headlines off of their accomplishments. There was elation as McGwire and Sosa had their home run battle in the summer of ’98. There was box office.
Fun while it lasted. Guilt ever since it finished.
No one is certain who took what, but what is certain is that a Hall of Fame without Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, the best of their time, is inconsequential.
SAN FRANCISCO – The city that knows how. That’s the slogan of this town, the one of little cable cars and World Series titles. A little too much, perhaps. Or maybe not enough.
This is a city in love with its hills, its food, its views, its bridges, even its fog.
A city of diversity and lunacy, where a century ago a man named Norton declared himself Emperor and the hallowed Rudyard Kipling described the citizens as mad.
A city of hippies and gays and Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Bookstore. And the latest vintages from Napa.
And, now, maybe most of all, of the San Francisco Giants.
The once-again-champion San Francisco Giants.
They weren’t supposed to be there, on top of the baseball world. The Detroit Tigers were the favorites, the overwhelming choice.
The Tigers had – have – Miguel Cabrera, the first Triple Crown winner in 47 years. They had Justin Verlander, arguably the best pitcher in baseball. What they also have now are the blues.
How did it happen? The sporting mavens will spend the winter trying to explain. They’ll decide the Tigers again were burdened with too many off days between the league championship series and the World Series.
Or the baseball gods were totally on the side of the Giants, pointing out Angel Pagan’s ball, which ricocheted off third for a double, or those Tiger line drives that kept ending up in Pablo Sandoval’s glove.
The Giants, we’ll be told, caught lightning in a bottle, and if the teams played again next week, Detroit would win, instead of – how embarrassing – getting swept by a team that hit the fewest home runs in baseball during the regular season.
It’s all true, and who cares? In 2010 it was Brian Wilson closing things out in Texas. This time – with Wilson missing almost from the start of the season because of arm surgery – it was his doppelganger, Sergio Romo.
This team lost Wilson. This team lost Melky Cabrera – and for a while Guillermo Mota. Pablo Sandoval underwent surgery on a hamate bone. Freddy Sanchez never made it out of spring training. Tim Lincecum went from Cy Young winner to Mystery Man, although in the postseason some of that mystery was solved.
But it wasn’t what the Giants didn’t have, it’s what they did have. Which, as that song from the musical “Damn Yankees’’ told us, was heart. Along with some wise thinking just before the World Series by manager Bruce Bochy’s wife, Kim.
Remembering that the Bochys attended the pre-series gala in San Francisco two years ago, and the Giants won, she persuaded him, a bit superstitiously, to take her to this year’s gala, last Tuesday at the Fairmont Hotel, the one night off between the NLCS win and the start of the World Series.
Watching him for a few minutes, you sensed Bochy would rather be somewhere else, but she thought he shouldn’t change the routine from 2010. He didn’t. In the end his team didn’t.
In four games the Tigers, so powerful on offense, scored a total of six runs, three in the first game, three in the second, which the Giants won, 4-3 in 10 innings. Good pitching always will beat good hitting. The Giants’ pitching wasn’t good, it was great.
Add the 27 innings from the last three games against the Cardinals in the NLCS, a total of 64 innings, and the Giants allowed only seven runs.
“Unbelievable,” Vida Blue, the pitching great of the 1970s, said on CSN Bay Area.
“You don’t need a superstar at every position. Just tell a guy, you’re my shortstop, you’re my first baseman and go out and play.”
When you’re playing for Bruce Bochy, who treats everyone with respect, it’s easier.
“Our guys had a date with destiny,” Bochy said on postgame TV. “What made them special was they were such an unselfish group. They played for each other and the fans.”
The fans. San Francisco had its virtues, but one of them wasn’t the way it went about supporting teams. We were blasé, unemotional.
The 49ers helped change the image. Winning five Super Bowls will get attention. Then two years ago, Giants general manager Brian Sabean, whose handiwork can be seen on the roster, said, “This is a baseball town.”
It hasn’t stopped being one. The Giants sold out every game the last two seasons. On Sunday night, an estimated 10,000 people showed up at Civic Center Plaza to watch Game 4 on a very big-screen TV.
You have to be happy for all of them, in their orange and black, in their Panda outfits – fittingly, deservingly, Sandoval was the Series MVP.
You have to be happy for Barry Zito, who stoically accepted many seasons of boos.
You have to be happy for Ryan Vogelsong, who two years ago seemed at the end of a career that was spent mostly in the minors or in Japan.
You have to be happy for San Francisco, for the whole Bay Area.
The good guys won. Great Unexpectations.
By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO – Jim Leyland took exception to the question. “Breaks?’’ he responded rhetorically. “I don’t think the Giants are getting any breaks. They’re outplaying us.”
Most of all, they’re outpitching the Detroit Tigers. Which in baseball is where it all begins. And ends. The adage can be repeated forever: If the other team doesn’t score, you can’t lose.
The other team, the Detroit Tigers, managed by Jim Leyland, didn’t score Thursday night. And so beaten, 2-0, by a team that barely scored, Detroit has lost the first two games of the 2012 World Series.
Defense wins. In baseball, defense begins with pitching. And ends with pitching.
With Barry Zito fooling the Tigers on Wednesday night. With Madison Bumgarner, who had been fighting himself, who had been getting chased from games in the fourth inning, stunning them Thursday night.
These are the Giants we’ve come to expect, the Giants who throw strikes and make big plays, such as Gregor Blanco firing to Marco Scutaro, whose relay cut down Prince Fielder at the plate. And make scoring against them almost an impossibility.
In the last five postseason games, the closing three against St. Louis in the National League Championship Series and the first two in the World Series, Giant pitching has given up runs in only three different innings. Three of 45.
A run in 27 innings to the Cards. Three runs in 18 innings to the Tigers, who were shut out only twice during the regular season. One run in the sixth on Wednesday, then, almost as a gift, two runs in the ninth. And none Thursday on an evening at AT&T so full of noise and tension that 42,855 fans at AT&T Park may never unwind.
The way they were starting to think the Tigers would never score.
“This was a really good World Series game,’’ said Leyland. “It didn’t turn out right for us . . . I don’t have any perspective. We got two hits tonight. I’m certainly not going to sit here and rip my offense. I think our offense is fine . . .”
It’s just that the Giants’ pitching has been better.
Santiago Casillla took over for Bumgarner in the eighth. Sergio Romo took over for Casilla in the ninth. “Those fans,’’ said Casilla of the crowd, “I’m 5-feet-10. The way they cheer when I’m on the mound, I feel about 6-feet-10. They’re unbelievable.”
A word some might apply to the Giants’ pitching. Zito overcame his demons of the past. Bumgarner overcame his struggles of the present. San Francisco manager Bruce Bochy even took Bumgarner out of the rotation after he couldn’t make it through the fourth inning of the NLCS opener against St. Louis.
“I thought the first inning would be critical for him, for his confidence,” Bochy said of Bumgarner’s opportunity Thursday night. “Also to see where he was at.”
Where he was at was back in 2010, when as a rookie Bumgarner was so impressive in a World Series start against the Texas Rangers.
“I mean,” said Bochy, after Bumgarner allowed only two hits and two walks to the Tigers, “what a job he did. Dave Righetti, our pitching coach, did a great job getting him back on track. He had great poise out there with a great delivery, and he stayed on it for seven innings.
“He needed a break, and I thought he benefited from it, both mentally and physically.”
No question everything so far has gone the way of the Giants, who, along with the nightly sellout crowds, waving their “rally rags,” singing along with the music of Journey, dressing in all sorts of loony attire of orange and black, have turned AT&T into a magical place.
On Wednesday night, Angel Pagan’s bouncer hit third, spun crazily and bounced into left for a double. On Thursday night, Gregor Blanco’s sacrifice bunt virtually dug a hole inches inside the third base line, loading the bases with nobody out in the seventh.
When Brandon Crawford grounded to second, the Tigers chose to go after the double play – which they got – instead of throwing home, and the Giants went in front, 1-0.
“It’s not debatable,” Leyland said of the decision, “because if we don’t score it doesn’t make any difference anyway. I can’t let them open the game up.”
Bochy said the difference in Bumgarner from his last few games was the delivery. “It was simpler, more compact,” he said, “and I think he was able to get the ball where he wanted to because of that.”
Asked if there was a different feel, Bumgarner, a laconic sort, but not without a sense of humor, answered, “Yeah, I went into the seventh inning instead of getting took out in the third.”
OK, his English isn’t perfect, but his fastball was.
“I think the only difference,” Bumgarner added, “was being able to make pitches. I hadn’t been able to do that this postseason, and tonight Buster (Posey) caught a great game, the defense did great.“I wanted to go out there and pitch well for our guys and the fans.”
He, Casilla and Romo couldn’t have pitched any better. If the other team doesn’t score you can’t lose. And the Giants didn’t.
By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO – They sat side by side on the dais, heroes on a heroic night, so near to each other and so far from the pain of 2010. That was the World Series that Barry Zito didn’t even get on the roster, the World Series that Pablo Sandoval only started one day.
That Series they also were also side by side, on the end of the bench, watching their Giant teammates, supportive but surely disappointed – one not even being allowed to play, the other having misplayed himself out the lineup.
But now it’s the Series of 2012, and on a wild and historic Wednesday night by the bay, everything changed.
Sandoval rang down the echoes of the Babe, of Mr. October, of Albert Pujols, hitting three home runs.
Zito pitched elegantly and tantalizingly, keeping one of the baseball’s top offensive teams to a single run before leaving.
And the Giants, the underdogs, the team nobody east of the Sierra Nevada understands or tries to understand, clubbed the Detroit Tigers, 8-3, in Game 1 of the Series.
That the other starter, the guy for the Tigers, was Justin Verlander, arguably the best pitcher in baseball, seemed make everything perfect – for Sandoval, for Zito, for all the Giants and maybe most of all for 42,855 fans engulfed in their own gleeful bedlam.
Four in a row now for the Giants, three over St. Louis in the National League Championship Series and then the opener of the World Series. Four in a row, in which the opposition scored a total of four runs – and two of those came in the ninth inning by Detroit. Four in a row in which San Francisco scored a total of 29 runs.
Sandoval got it going, a homer with no one on to dead center in the first. Then he kept it going, a two-run home to left in the third. Then he made it go some more, another solo to center in the fifth. Each inning climaxed with a playing of that long-ago song from the days of Mays, McCovey and Cepeda, “Bye Bye, Baby.’’
“To hit three home runs,’’ said Giants manager Bruce Bochy, “that’s always a surprise. But the guy can hit. He’s got great ability to get the good part of the bat on the ball and threw out some great at-bats . . . Just a tremendous night. A night I know he’ll never forget.”
Nor will anyone else. Sandoval, the Panda, the player replaced by Juan Uribe in the 2010 Series because he was overweight and underachieving, is the first ever to hit home runs his first three at bats in a Series game. Babe Ruth, who twice hit three, Reggie Jackson and Pujols needed to come to the plate four times. In his fourth at bat, Sandoval singled.
“Man, I still can’t believe it,” was Sandoval’s opening statement of his accomplishment, even if everyone in the place could believe it.
“When you’re a little kid, you dream of being in the World Series, but I was thinking of being in this situation, three homers one game. You have to keep focused, keep focused and playing your game.”
Sandoval had a big hit off Verlander during July’s All-Star Game, where the National League's win gave the Giants the home field advantage in the best-of-seven Series, four games if it lasts the full seven.
“For me, I just go there and don’t think too much,’’ he said. “This means a lot. In 2010 I was part of the World Series. I didn’t get a chance to play too much. I’m enjoying this World Series. I’m enjoying all my moments. You never know when it’s going to happen again.”
Sandoval is 26. Zito, 34, may have wondered it was going to happen ever. He had that $127-million contract. He struggled. The fans booed. He was an outcast. Until 2012. The Giants have won 14 consecutive games in which Barry Zito started.
“I battled in September to make the postseason roster,’’ admitted Zito, haunted by his failure two years earlier. “The last thing I would have expected was to be starting in Game 1. Just the opportunity was magical. To be able to go up against Verlander and give our team a chance to up, 1-0, and the fact that we won, it’s just kind of surreal.”
Sandoval tried to stay cool about his night, unlike his teammates.
“When he hit his third,” Zito said, “man we were just going nuts in there. We were going nuts.”
A glance at the rally-rag waving, shrieking fans proved they weren’t the only ones.
“We didn’t know at that point if it ever had been done,’’ said Zito, “and we’re just like, ‘Oh, my gosh.’ “
Or, linking Sandoval and Zito, oh, good gosh.
“We got ups and downs in our career,” Sandoval insisted. “Not every year is going to be up . . . so I see my teammate, Barry, and I’m very happy for him. He started the first game of the World Series. We were sitting down on the bench in 2010.”
Now they’re on top of the world.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
SAN FRANCISCO -- The Giants, using their usual fine pitching and some very unusual big hitting, completed another improbable playoff comeback Monday night, defeating the Cardinals, 9-0, in Game 7 to win the National League pennant.
After falling behind three games to one in the NLCS, the Giants outscored the Cardinals 20-1 in the final three games behind stellar starting pitching by Barry Zito, Ryan Vogelsong and Matt Cain. The Giants, who won the world championship in 2010, will face the American League champion Tigers in the World Series, which begins here Wednesday night.
Copyright © 2012 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
SAN FRANCISCO -- A pitcher who two years ago was stuck at his 10th minor-league stop put the Giants into Game 7 of the National League Championship Series.
Righthander Ryan Vogelsong allowed only one run and four hits in seven innings and struck out a career-high nine as the Giants defeated the Cardinals, 6-1, Sunday night at AT&T Park.
Copyright © 2012 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO – They were called the “Gas House Gang,’’ the 1934 St. Louis Cardinals, people such as Leo Durocher and Ducky Medwick, ballplayers who would just as soon knock you over as win the game. “I come to beat you,” was a Durocher warning.
By Art Spander
By Art Spander
OAKLAND – Seth Smith said it was nothing but good baseball. It was that – is that – and more.
It’s legerdemain. It’s mystery. It’s triumph conjured up by the most unlikely group of young men this side of Cooperstown.
Most of all, it’s amazing.
There they were, the Oakland Athletics, three outs from the end of the season. And they were, sprinting around the diamond in unrestrained joy, stunning winners of the game they could not lose, and somehow did not lose.
The Detroit Tigers, with their $132-million payroll, were two runs ahead and bringing in super closer Jose Valverde to wrap up the American League Division Series and also wrap up the A’s season. So the rest of us thought.
But not the way the A’s, the $55-million A’s, think.
“What it’s done,’’ said Bob Melvin, the magician of a manager about a multiplicity of comebacks, “is give us a sense that we’re never out of it until the last out.”
And Wednesday night, that last out never was recorded. Instead, the A’s got a single by Josh Reddick, a double by Josh Donaldson and a single by Smith to tie the game, 3-3, then almost as the sellout crowd of 36,385 sensed it was about to occur, a two-out game-winner by Coco Crisp that sent Smith home to beat the Tigers, 4-3.
So, the A’s, destiny’s darlings, after their 15th walkoff victory of a season that even viewed up close seems impossible, have come back from a two-to-none deficit to tie the series at two wins apiece and force a deciding fifth game Thursday night at O.co Coliseum.
It was Kirk Gibson in reverse, revenge for a long-ago disappointment, when Gibson came out of the Dodgers dugout in the opener of the 1988 World Series and hit a game-winning home run off the Athletics' then-relief ace, Dennis Eckersley.
Different circumstances this time, but a memory is effaced. And another created.
“I guess to say the Oakland magic,’’ Smith explained in a calmness belying the moment, “our mentality is just that. I don’t really know how to describe the magic word. But when you go out there and give it your all, more times than not, good results will happen.
“Yeah, at some point it’s got to be just good baseball. There’s no magic recipe or anything like that. We go out there, and we play carefree and get the job done.”
If in the most dramatic and unsuspecting of ways. The A’s basically couldn’t do anything against numerous Tigers pitchers other than strike out 11 times in eight innings. And Valverde was the guy who was going to finish it off. Except he couldn’t.
On Tuesday night, Crisp stole a home run from Prince Fielder, his glove two feet above the fence. On Wednesday night, he helped steal a game, lining a Valverde pitch to right as Smith raced home and everyone else on the A’s raced to swallow Smith in a circle of bodies. This walkoff celebration took place at first, not at home.
Moments later, there was Crisp with a face full of whipped cream, the obligatory reward for walkoff heroism, and after that a back and head full of Gatorade, the drink having been dumped on him.
“He hits closers,” said Melvin of Crisp, “and he hits good pitching. He always puts up a great at-bat. We don’t need a homer right there. All we need is a hit. I don’t think there’s anybody we feel better about.”
In the postgame interview room, Smith and Crisp sat side-by-side in front of two microphones, and when someone mentioned Melvin’s comment about relying on Crisp, Smith showed mock displeasure.
“I don’t know if I should be offended by that or not,” was Smith’s first response. Then he continued, “No, he comes through every time. Or it seems like it in the clutch.”
His face wiped clean but his undershirt still damp, Crisp, asked about his performance, fell back on the word now linked to the A’s of 2012, “Amazing.”
“Yeah,” Crisp said, “the guys in front of me obviously did a fantastic job of getting on base. Redd (Reddick, obtained from the Red Sox over the winter) came up huge.”
He had come to the plate 1-for-13 in the series, with eight strikeouts. “We try to keep his head in the game,” Crisp said. “He’s been battling the whole series. Balls haven’t been falling for him. J.D. (Donaldson) obviously got a bit hit. Smitty's huge hit gave me the opportunity to come up there and do something magical.”
Crisp did just that, but as he reminded, he wasn’t alone. He had hits from teammates, great pitching from teammates and, we must admit, a boost from fate.
“There’s a confidence,” Melvin insisted. “We’ve done it so many times.”
But only one time, this time, when they were three outs from the end of the season.
By Art Spander
OAKLAND – And so they’re back. Back in Oakland, back in the series. It could have been over for the Athletics, but somehow, you knew it wouldn’t be. The season that couldn’t be still is.
Because of the way Brett Anderson pitched. Because of the way Coco Crisp soared. Because of the way 37,090 fans screamed, shouted and reminded everyone how loud it can get in the once-silent Oakland Mausoleum.
A shutout for Anderson and the relievers, 2-0, over Detroit on Tuesday night. And as we’ve been taught, when the other team doesn’t score, you can’t lose. So after dropping the first two games of this best-of-five American League Division Series, after dropping six straight in the postseason to the Tigers, the A’s didn’t lose.
A remarkable catch by Crisp, who leaped high enough to reach over the centerfield fence some 400 feet from home plate to grab Prince Fielder’s apparent home run.
A rebirth by the A’s, who were one defeat from elimination and now, with a certain game Wednesday night and a possible fifth game Thursday, are a mere two games from moving on.
That’s the joy of baseball. One game changes everything. Back in Cincinnati, the Giants, awful at home, got one from the Reds, 2-1. Then a few hours later, the A’s followed suit. Gloom by the bay became glee by the bay.
“Well, they pitched and they played a perfect game,’’ said Jim Leyland, the Tigers manager, of the A’s. “Nothing you could do about it. (Anderson) had a good curveball and a very good breaking ball. I think Coco gave them a lot of momentum when he took the home run away . . . I think Coco’s catch really got them into it.”
A catch Anderson enjoyed immensely. “It was fun,’’ said the pitcher. “Not to give it up, but to watch it.”
Watching is what Anderson had done the past 20 days or so, since incurring a right oblique strain. Who knew what he might do when finally returning to the mound? Well, A’s manager Bob Melvin, a former catcher who had monitored Anderson during bullpen sessions, thought he knew. So did Anderson.
“We felt confident that he was simulating (games) enough to go out there and pitch accordingly in a game,’’ said Melvin. “I don’t know how you could expect more than we got out of him tonight.’’
What they got was six innings, 80 closely viewed pitches and, after he was about to be relieved having allowed only two hits and struck out six, an argument to be allowed to continue. Which Anderson lost.
“He wasn’t aware there was a pitch count,” said Melvin of Anderson. What most A’s fans were aware of is the fact that Anderson had Tommy John elbow surgery and missed 2011. The A’s were taking no extra chances.
“Earlier in the game,’’ Melvin agreed, “I don’t think he felt as good as he did later in the game. But 19, 20 days off, we weren’t looking for any more than that.”
Indeed, what they were looking for was the victory, and through a combination of fine defense – Yoenis Cespedes made a diving catch in the seventh almost the equal to Crisp’s grab in the second – and just enough offense, a run-scoring single by Cespedes in the first and a home run by Seth Smith in the fifth.
Through the three games of the series, the A’s have a cumulative batting average below the infamous Mendoza Line, .198, but they survive.
“The first inning was great,” said Melvin, “to be able to score a run and get the fans involved and get some excitement out there.”
Oakland doesn’t have a ballpark as impressive as San Francisco's, but it has hardcore fans. When they turn up, as they do in the playoffs, the noise is deafening. Imagine what it might be if those in charge took off the tarps that restrict stadium capacity to under 38,000.
“The atmosphere in Detroit,’’ said Leyland, “atmosphere in Oakland. If you look around all the teams have great atmospheres this time of year. (The A’s) played a perfect game. You tip your hat to them.”
The question is whether the A’s tipped the balance. So hot after sweeping Texas to win AL West, Oakland was ineffective in Detroit’s Comerica Park. Did the Anderson performance and the victory shift Old Mo, momentum?
“What (Tuesday night does) is gets us to tomorrow,” said Melvin. “We’ll go at in the same fashion as he did tonight. And we’ll go from there.”
They can’t do much else. Then again, the way Anderson pitched and Crisp stole a homer – “I thought I had a hit,’’ sighed Fielder – they didn’t have to do much else.
The season goes on.
By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO -- One game, but a telling game. A game when the Cincinnati Reds took Matt Cain’s mistakes over the fence. A game when seemingly every time there was a line drive by one of the Giants it was right at someone.
A game when there was a sense of “Dustiny.”
Remember that word? It was coined by a Giants fan back in 2002 when Dusty Baker was the team’s manager and, until the sixth game of the World Series that year, fate was on their side.
Now Dusty is on the other side, managing the Reds, and so is good fortune.
Cincy didn’t win the opener of the National League Division Series, 5-2, Saturday night at AT&T Park because it was lucky.
The Reds hit two homers off of Cain, who did not give up a run in any postseason game two years ago. The Reds had excellent pitching, especially when starter Johnny Cueto left after one batter because of a back injury. And, yes, the Reds had the breaks.
Cain drove a liner with the bases loaded in the second, but it was caught. Brandon Belt smashed a none-out ball with Hunter Pence on first – and Joey Votto leaped and turned it into a double play. Belt hit one to left in the sixth and Ryan Ludwick made a stumbling catch.
“Our guys never stopped going after the ball,’’ said Cain. “You can’t fault them.’’
Not at all. But this is baseball, and there are no style points. The oldest adage is “hit ’em where they ain’t.’’ The Giants hit ’em where they were.
And Brandon Phillips and Jay Bruce hit them into the seats for the Reds, who now need only two more victories in this best-of-five playoff to move to the League Championship Series.
“This is one game,’’ said Bruce Bochy, the Giants manager, stubbornly fighting any feeling of despair, a feeling that except for rare moments – a home run by Buster Posey, a couple of wild pitches in the bottom of the ninth – seemed to affect the sellout crowd of 43,492.
“We have a lot of baseball left,’’ Bochy tacked on.
Giants fans can only hope. For certain, they have Sunday night’s game by the Bay – perhaps the last home game of the season – and Tuesday night’s at Cincinnati. Nothing else is certain.
Especially after Cain, the guy who threw the perfect game back in June, the guy who started for the National League in the All-Star Game, gave up the shot to Phillips leading off the second. The disbelief was nearly palpable. So was the disappointment.
“He wasn’t as sharp as he normally is out there,’’ Bochy said of Cain. “He left a couple of off-speed pitches out there. He was missing spots a little bit.’’
Something the Giants, so dependent on pitching, couldn’t afford. Not when they were getting shut out until Posey homered in the sixth. That jolted the crowd out of its misery and torpor.
If you don’t count sing-alongs to the Bee Gees – the Bee Gees, for heaven’s sake – Journey and Cab Calloway, the people in the seats did little other than merely occupy them. Maybe the Blue Angels’ flyovers earlier in the day were too much.
Clearly the Reds were too much for the Giants, although Bochy kept offering the could-have, should-have explanations.
“We hit balls hard,’’ said Bochy. That they did, with little result. “I felt we had better at bats than what it looked like. We had a tough night with balls. We didn’t have a lot of things going for us.’’
What they had was 11 men left on base, and that can be credited to Reds pitchers – six different ones, including Cueto who had only eight throws to home plate before hobbling off – as well as the Giants’ inability. San Francisco was 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position.
“We nearly had the tying run on in the ninth,’’ said Bochy. True, but nearly doesn’t mean much. “I’m proud of the guys. We found a way to battle back, and we had two pinch hitters up there, and they got some good swings off. But we came up short.”
In the inning before that, with runners on first and second and two out, Gregor Blanco, playing in his first postseason game and having reached base three times, didn’t get a swing off. He watched a Jonathan Broxton pitch for strike three.
“It looked like a borderline pitch, and they got the call,’’ said Bochy. “Blanco thought it was outside, and it’s a tough break. Sometimes you have a great pitch thrown, and you can’t do anything with it.
“This is one game, and you hate to lose the opener, but these guys have been resilient all year, and it’s time for us to wash this off and be ready to be back at it (Sunday).’’
Nothing else they can do.
By Art Spander
OAKLAND -- It was 87 degrees at the first pitch. On October 2. In Oakland. If that makes sense, then why shouldn’t the A’s? “Nobody saw this coming,’’ both Tim Kurkjian and Terry Francona said on ESPN Tuesday morning about the miracle.
What they and everyone else saw Tuesday evening were the Oakland Athletics tied for first place in the American League West with Texas, and one last game, the biggest game of arguably the most improbable season, a few hours away.
“The fact that we won (Monday),’’ said Bob Melvin, the homegrown A’s manager, “we were in better position (Tuesday). Now both teams have to go out and see what they can do.’’
The story is what the A’s already have done. After the 3-1 win over the Rangers, after 30,660 spectators shouted and screamed, after the drummers out in the bleachers had finished, Oakland was locked with the Rangers at the top of the division.
In three months, they had gained 13 games on Texas. In three months, they had destroyed the theory that in baseball, like in wine and cars, you get what you pay for.
Because compared to other franchises, the people who run the A’s – owner Lew Wolff and GM Billy Beane (and can you imagine his inner smile?) – paid almost nothing for the players on the roster and, no matter what happens Wednesday, have received everything.
“We’ve had a nice run,’’ said Melvin, in the understatement of the year. BoMel, as he is known, wants to stay as low-key as imaginable for the express purpose of keeping his young athletes just as low-key.
If, after the sparkling wine spritzing on Monday night when the A’s clinched at least a wild card place, if after a celebration that back in March – hell, back in May when Oakland lost nine in a row – seemed as unlikely as 87-degree night in October.
Night baseball by the bay is supposed to be cold, and in Oakland this season it was supposed to be bad. “People said the A’s might lose 100 games,’’ said Ray Fosse, their former catcher and current TV analyst.
The question in spring was whether the Angels, who spent $240 million for Albert Pujols and another $77 million for pitcher C.J. Wilson, could overtake the Rangers, the 2011 and 2010 American League champions. But it was the A’s who caught the Angels, after going 56-26 since June 30 -- which was a day Oakland lost to Texas -- while the Rangers went 43-39.
On Monday night, Melvin found it difficult to speak, overtaken by emotion, doused in bubbly, and thinking about the past.
Melvin will be 51 in another month. He grew up on the Peninsula, went to Menlo-Atherton High, then played at Cal, then after a bit with the Detroit Tigers came for a while to the Giants. You can’t get more local than that. Or more connected to the region.
“What I was thinking of,’’ Melvin explained later, “was the times I had been to the Coliseum, the rock concerts – The Who – the postseason games the A’s played in the early 70s when I was a kid. It all was coming back."
Lew Wolff, the A’s owner, the man who desperately is trying to move the team to San Jose some 30 miles down the freeway, has been a despised figure in Oakland. But suddenly, the image has changed, as that of his ball club.
Wolff properly was part of the Monday jubilation, and he said to a television camera, wonderfully candid, “I didn’t think we’d be here.’’ He meant in the playoffs. Maybe he also meant in Oakland.
That war between Wolff and the cross-bay San Francisco Giants, who won’t relinquish their territorial rights on San Jose to the A’s, is at a temporary truce. The battles will be on the diamonds, the Giants and A’s both in the postseason in what most be the giddiest time in years for Bay Area baseball lovers.
The Giants’ success was expected. Needless to add, the A’s was not. Tuesday night, they got the victory using four pitchers, two of whom, starter Travis Blackley and closer Grant Balfour, are Australian. But why not? Baseball has been called the national pastime, but the nation was never specified.
Blackley, picked up from the Giants off waivers in May, went two innings against the Yankees and one inning against the Rangers in his previous two games. Tuesday night, he pitched six innings, allowing three hits and a run. Balfour came in for the ninth and in order retired Josh Hamilton, Adrian Beltre and Nelson Cruz, the heart of the order.
That’s a baseball term. The order for the A’s is one with plenty of heart.
“We got better as the year went along,’’ said Melvin. Nobody saw it coming.