Demons hover for the A’s

By Art Spander

They’re so close. Again. But the demons hover. Again. One game is all the Oakland Athletics need to advance to the American League Championship Series. 

As year after year, it seems all they needed was one game to advance.

A game they never could win.

Having taken two in the 2013 best-of-five division championship competition, the A’s appear to have the edge over the Detroit Tigers. 

History begs to differ. 

The statistics are notorious, the memories painful.

Last season they were a win away, against these same Tigers, well, virtually these same Tigers, tied at two victories apiece. Detroit went on to the World Series, the A’s back to the same question that has haunted them much of this brief 21^st century: What went wrong?

In 2000, they lost the fifth game to the Yankees.

In 2001, they won the first two from the Yanks – in New York – then came back to Oakland, to the Coliseum, with its raucous fans, and began a three-game losing streak. Adios.

Game 3 was when Derek Jeter grabbed a poor throw halfway up the first-base line and with a backhanded flip from foul territory cut down the plodding Jeremy Giambi at home. Final score, New York 1, bewildered A’s 0.

In 2002, the so-called “Moneyball” year, Oakland lost in five to the Twins. Not the Yankees or the Red Sox – to whom they would drop the series in 2003 by the inevitable total of three games to two. The Twins. 

It was in 2003 Mr. Moneyball, Billy Beane, the A’s general manager then and now, was heard to mutter to a few journalists after the 4-3 loss to Boston in Game 5, “If I had another $50,000, we would have won this.”

Of course, Beane’s image and reputation were burnished by the Michael Lewis book, subtitled, “The Art of Winning an Unfair Game,” for succeeding despite not having that $50,000.

Beane’s then-revolutionary ideas of going after unwanted, slow-footed bargain-basement sluggers didn’t hurt. Yet, what is conveniently overlooked about 2002 is that on the roster were three of the era’s finest pitchers, Barry Zito, Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder.

Oakland’s shortstop that season, Miguel Tejada, wasn’t bad either, voted the American League MVP Award over Alex Rodriguez, then playing short for the Texas Rangers. Zito won the AL Cy Young Award.

That hardly sounds like a roster scraped together from the Sunday rec leagues.

Beane knows his ballplayers. He also knows his budgetary limitations, which basically have prevented Oakland from retaining the biggest stars, such as Jason Giambi, who departed after winning the MVP in 2001. Still, sometimes it seems Beane delights in being forced to dig for pennies and solutions.

The real problem -- and this is as much a cause of the poor regular season attendance as playing games at O.co Coliseum, the last stadium shared by baseball and the NFL – is that fans never have time to identify with the best players. Here today, gone to New York or Washington or Phoenix.

Years ago, a columnist – well, me – knowing names make news, complained to Beane, “Your team has no buzz.” Without hesitation, he responded, “You call it buzz, I call it noise.”

The stories are litany. Oakland, the city, is in a bad way, with too much crime. The Coliseum, 48 years old, is antiquated, subject to overflowing sewage in clubhouses and dugouts. (Did anyone notice, across the Bay during the 49er game Sunday, there was a sewage leak at Candlestick Park?)

The A’s owner, Lew Wolff, wants to move the team to San Jose, because of the wealth and cachet of Silicon Valley.

A’s fans, few from April through September, numerous in October, are a stubborn, boisterous group, more so than those who follow the San Francisco Giants, where at AT&T Park the surroundings are lush and the concession menu includes sushi and garlic fries.

Giants fans attend as a diversion. A’s fans attend because of an obsession.

Oakland in 2012 made a huge (and expensive) leap, signing the Cuban free agent Yoenis Cespedes, who has been worth every dollar of his four-year, $36 million deal. That he won the home run hitting contest, prior to the All-Star Game, only gave him added status.

The A’s, as is every winning team, are built on pitching, from 40-year-old Bartolo Colon to 23-year-old Sonny Gray, who shut out the Tigers in Game 2. In Cespedes, Coco Crisp, Josh Donaldson and others they have enough hitting.

They’ll need both in Game 4 against the Tigers. History being what it is, they do not want to confront another Game 5.

Newsday (N.Y.): Stephen Vogt, Sonny Gray help A's even series with Tigers

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

OAKLAND, Calif. — It was an hour after rookie catcher Stephen Vogt had taken a pie to the face and a bucket of Gatorade down his back. O.co Coliseum already was being converted to football for Sunday night's Chargers-Raiders game.

The Athletics were packing and scrambling, headed for a red-eye to Detroit, where Monday, almost too quickly, they will meet the Tigers again.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2013 Newsday. All rights reserved.

Newsday (N.Y.): Oakland A's battle on despite numerous problems

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

OAKLAND, Calif. — The headline Monday was on crime. "Nation's robbery capital: Oakland."

The headline Saturday was on disenchantment. "A's, Oakland remain far apart on lease."

And, of course, there are the sewage problems at the stadium and the continued intent of the owner to shift the franchise 50 miles south to San Jose.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2013 Newsday. All rights reserved.

A’s: Too many strikeouts, not enough runs

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — No tarps on the upper deck. Revelation. No runs for most of the game. Ruination. The O.Co Coliseum could barely hold the excitement. Detroit’s Max Scherzer had very little trouble holding the Oakland A’s.

The game was everything it was supposed to be, a matchup of two of baseball’s best teams, a matchup of two of baseball’s best pitchers. “You figure the runs were going to be stingy,” said Tigers manager Jim Leyland, “and they were.”

Scherzer, the major leagues’ only 20-game winner during the regular season (he was 21-3), wasn’t at all stingy with strikeouts. He recorded 11. His backups, Drew Smyly and Joaquin Benoit, added five more.

When a team strikes out 16 times in any game, especially one in the postseason, it’s not going to win.

And in Game 1 of the best-of-five American League Division Series on Friday night, the A’s did not, losing 3-2 to the Tigers, who scored all their runs in the first inning.

Oakland’s 40-year-old starter, Bartolo Colon, couldn’t retire any of the game’s first three batters, giving up a double to Austin Jackson, hitting Torii Hunter with a pitch and then allowing a single by Miguel Cabrera.

What an awful way to begin for 48,401 fans, the largest baseball crowd in Northern California since a Giants-A's game in 2004 in Oakland drew more than 52,000. That was before the A’s had the absurd idea of covering seats in the upper deck and so-called Mount Davis, to make people believe, ostrich fashion, that those seats didn’t exist.

In last year’s playoffs, the tarps stayed on. This time, wisely, management opened up the place, and the people filled it. Unfortunately, except for a Yoenis Cespedes monster two-run homer in the bottom of the seventh, the crowd had no reason to do much than chant every now and then, “Let’s go Oakland.”

Pitching wins, especially in the postseason — yes, there are exceptions, such as the Red Sox and Pirates on Friday — and for the Tigers and Scherzer, pitching won. Now, Detroit follows tonight with Justin Verlander, last season’s Cy Young Award winner.

“We tend to strikeout some,” said A’s manager Bob Melvin. Some? How about a lot? 

The trouble with a strikeout is it does nothing for the offense, doesn’t move a runner, doesn’t force a fielder to make a play that he may botch, doesn’t get a guy home from third with one out. Think of it. Of the 27 outs made by the A’s, half were on strikeouts.

“We’ve been a little bit on and off with that over the course of the season,” conceded Melvin. “But Scherzer is a strikeout guy. He’s a swing-and-miss guy ... He has a gap (a differential in velocity) between his fastball and his two off-speed (pitchers). He can pitch up and down, which he did.”

Scherzer insisted that every game was the same to him, that it was no big deal he was chosen for the first game of the playoffs. Leyland believed otherwise.

“He was thrilled to get Game 1,” said the manager, who tends to be wonderfully forthright. “He was locked in all night. He was awful determined. I think it meant a lot to him, even though he said it didn’t matter which game he pitched. And he responded like we expected him to respond.”

Mixing fastballs, change-ups and curves, keeping the A’s guessing when they weren’t lurching.

“You go on your instincts,” said Scherzer. “Today we noticed my fastball seemed pretty good, and my change-up seemed pretty good, so early in the game we featured those two pitches a lot.”

Then, contradicting his manager, Scherzer said, “I don’t get caught up in the hoopla, worry about where I’m pitching or if I’m pitching Game 1 or Game 5. When you’re pitching against the A’s, you have to bring your game. And tonight I was able to pitch effectively and pitch well against their left-handed hitters, and that’s the reason why I had success tonight.”

It was a righthanded batter, Cespedes, only a few days ago a doubtful starter because of shoulder soreness, who ended Scherzer’s shutout and the despair among the A’s partisans.

“It got to 2-2,” said Scherzer of Cespedes’ at-bat in the seventh. “And I didn’t know what pitch to go with, and I thought if I went with my fastball I could make him go away (hit the ball to right). The pitch caught too much of the plate, and he took it deep, and that’s just something that happens.

“It’s baseball. It’s pitching, and you move on. From there I was able to settle down and get three big outs in that situation. The crowd was roaring, and the crowd was on their feet, and to get those outs was big, because I was then able to pass it on to the rest of the (bull)pen.”

Which did what bullpens are supposed to do, shut down the batters and, in the process, shut down the crowd.

Sad September song for the Giants

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — A sad September song at AT&T Park. An autumn with nothing but memories, an autumn of dreams as faded as the leaves.

Something new for the San Francisco Giants and their fans, a final week of a season that went so awkwardly wrong that on Tuesday night the Giants again had to face the pitcher who once was their savior.

Brian Wilson out there on the mound in a Dodger uniform, throwing against the Giants the crackling, snapping, unhittable balls he once threw for them. The Dodgers, the division-champion Dodgers, getting a couple of home runs and beating the Giants, 2-1. How mortifying. How depressing.

Two of Matt Cain’s pitches were driven halfway to Oakland, one by Yasiel Puig, a couple of innings after Cain presumably hit Puig intentionally, and another by Matt Kemp. And the way the Giants can’t hit — they scored only three runs in three runs against the Yankees over the weekend — that was enough.

They’re playing for pride now, and nostalgia. Barry Zito, for the last time, was to pitch Wednesday for San Francisco. A reward. A farewell. A what-the-heck, why not?

It was supposed to be Madison Bumgarner’s turn, but Giants manager Bruce Bochy was thinking of the future — and the past. MadBum will sit out the rest of this disappointing year, having pitched one inning short of 200, while Zito gets his final chance before heading into the sunset. Or onto the roster of another team.

A seven-year contract of $127 million, which became bigger than anything Zito did or couldn’t do with a baseball. A contract of hope and controversy. Boos and jibes, but through it all Zito stood tall, acted the gentleman until the end, and in 2012 helped pitched the Giants to their World Series win.

"There were a lot of things I would have liked to go better,” Zito told the San Francisco Chronicle, “but when it's all said and done, I'll always know I helped the team win a World Series. That's huge for me."

And it remains huge for Bochy and the front office. They’re bringing Zito on stage once more, a victory lap if you will in a year when victories have been rare, for Zito (4-11 record, 5.91 ERA) and the Giants (72-85 after Tuesday night).

“I wanted to see him have one more start,” said Bochy, who deals in sentiment as well as anyone in baseball. “This is the best time. He’s done a lot. We know what he did last year for us. He has done everything we asked.”

The days dwindle down to a precious few. Such poignant lyrics. It is up to the Oakland Athletics alone to play October baseball by the bay this year. The A’s came through. The Giants are through.

There was a sequence in the top of the eighth on Tuesday night that was perfectly representative of this imperfect year for the Giants. With Kemp on first for the Dodgers and two out, reliever Jean Machi struck out A.J. Ellis. Buster Posey, the MVP, dropped the ball, which happens, but his routine throw to first for the out was short of Brandon Belt, and Ellis was on first and Kemp on third with the error.        

That rarely happens. Fortunately, for the Giants, Mark Ellis grounded out.

The Giants’ defense has been terrible this season, devastating for a team that has trouble scoring runs. The middle of the order, the big guns offensively, have failed with men on base. In the three games against the Yankees and one against L.A., the Giants got four runs total.

“We’re cold right now,” affirmed Bochy, talking as if San Francisco had a few months remaining rather than only a few games. “The series in New York, we didn’t swing the bats very well either.”

Zito will pitch then depart. That’s a given. What then happens to Tim Lincecum, who has been occasionally brilliant — the no-hitter — and frequently erratic. Do the Giants re-sign him?

What they must do is sign a power hitter, presumably to play left. What they must do is somehow persuade or order Pablo Sandoval to get into shape. He will be in his contract year in 2014. Pablo has only 13 home runs — and three were game in one game.

What they absolutely must do is pick up ground balls and throw them into a glove, not into right field or center field.

Bochy, not unexpectedly, insisted Cain pitched well, and Cain did pitch well. But the slightest mistakes, the two balls hit for home runs, are critical when a team can’t get runners home — and except for a solo homer by Tony Abreu in the fifth, the Giants couldn’t get runners home.

“We couldn’t get much going,” said Bochy.

When have they ever in this 2013 season?

Giants’ frustration turns into victory

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — The manager felt exactly like the fans. Frustrated, disappointed, maybe if he would confide, defeated. The Giants, the World Series Champion Giants, had spent four hours Tuesday night “squandering a 6-0 lead,” as Bruce Bochy so accurately phrased it.

Now a bit before noon Wednesday, a weary Bochy was meeting his obligations and the media. “That,” he said to the journalists about the night before, “was one of our worst games.”

One of their worst games in one of their worst recent seasons. It’s one thing not to repeat. It’s another to plummet, to bumble in the field, to fail at the plate, to be embarrassed.

Baseball, it’s been said, is designed to test a man, to find how he can react when times are going poorly, because as we’ve seen from the celebrations and the acclaim, we know how he will react when everything’s going well.

How does he play the mental game, often the most difficult of all? Does he solider on? Does he start contemplating the end of the schedule?

What we found out a few hours after Bochy’s remarks was what Bochy said he already knew. The Giants still have their pride, and their professionalism.

The Giants loaded the bases in the seventh on three walks with nobody out. Only one of those runners scored. The Giants trailed, 3-2, and you surmised they would lose another. They didn’t, getting two runs in the bottom of the eighth to beat the Colorado Rockies, 4-3.

The feeling in the clubhouse was more of relief than elation. More of reassurance than satisfaction.

“If we had lost this game,” conceded Bochy, “after the way we did (Tuesday) night it would have been really bad, really frustrating. This would have been a hard game to take.”

Especially with a 10-game road trip against the Dodgers, Mets and Yankees starting Thursday. Especially with a home crowd, one of those empty-seat sellouts, the 240th in a row, screaming as if the Giants were in first place, not in last.

“The fans are still behind us,” said Brandon Belt.

The Giants on Wednesday at AT&T Park got what they had been missing, effective pitching and timely hitting in the same game. The mark of a lousy team is to lose a game 9-8 and then the next day lose one, say, 3-2. Which, after a seventh inning when they had the bases loaded and scored only one run — on a sacrifice fly — appeared likely.

But not only did San Francisco win, it also won a home stand (2-2 against Arizona, 2-1 against Colorado) for the first time since May. The Giants also received fine pitching again from Yusmeiro Petit. On Friday, he was one out from a perfect game. On Wednesday, he retired the first nine batters he faced in order — meaning only one base runner in 13 innings — but then he wobbled in the sixth and came out.

Still, three runs allowed in 14 2/3 innings is the stuff of a guy who might very well be a starter next season. He’s hoping as much, as he explained through a translator. So is management.

“He’s a really smart pitcher,” said Bochy.

Petit is 29, and it took him a long while to get to the bigs, but perhaps his time has come. In 5 2/3 innings Wednesday, Petit struck out seven.

“We’re playing hard,” said Bochy. “I never doubted that. We don’t have a choice. This is what we’re paid to do.”

They just haven’t done it very well much of the year. Only two statistics are truly important: runs scored and runs allowed. The Giants for weeks now haven’t been able to get people around the bases and across home plate. They did Wednesday because Marco Scutaro, six weeks from his 38th birthday, refused to rest, and because Belt drove a pitch to the opposite field, left.

With the bases loaded in the eighth — in part due to a perfect sacrifice bunt by pinch hitter Eire Adrianza — and one out, Scutaro singled home the run that tied the game, 3-3. Belt followed with a single that would prove to win the game.

“Marco doesn’t like days off,” said Bochy. “He wanted to win this game.”

And so he and Belt, along with Angel Pagan and Brandon Crawford, won it.

“This could take us into next year,” said Belt.

Where it takes them immediately is to Los Angeles, where the Dodgers, supplanting the Giants as the best team in National League West, are waiting.

“There will be a lot of people down there,” Bochy said, referring to expected sellout crowds. “It will be good for our young players to be on a stage like that. We’re going to go down there and try to win some ballgames.”

Something they haven’t done very often — Wednesday being a fine exception.

Zito deserved a better ending

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — He deserved a better ending. Maybe not red-carpet, but not red-faced either.

Barry Zito should have been able to walk away with a smile, with the cheers of thousands ringing in his ears. That’s the way it happens in the movies. The way it happens in reality was played out on a depressing Wednesday at AT&T Park.

The guess is that the game Zito pitched against the Boston Red Sox, the game the Giants in this what-else-can-go-wrong season would lose 12-1, was his last start for San Francisco, his farewell in a year during which neither he nor his team fared well.

Zito wasn’t very effective, not that anyone expected him to be, and the Giants, who can’t field and can’t hit, were even less so. A franchise in search of itself, and reasons for the decline, surely will try someone, anyone, other than Zito from here on out — unless injury demands otherwise.

So it is time to acknowledge the man, as opposed to the player, because Barry Zito was always a man no matter how poorly he threw or how miserably he was treated by the media or the fans.

Good times — and he knew those — or bad times, Zito was mature and in control. If not always in control of a fastball or curve.

I’ve dealt with the best and the rudest in a half century of sports journalism, athletes whose response to even the most harmless of questions could be an obscenity or a quick rush to a hiding place.  

Barry Zito took the blows. What he didn’t take was the criticism as personal. He accepted it as part of the job.

Sure he had the big salary, but that’s the nature of the beast. If you had won a Cy Young Award, as did Zito with the Athletics, and you were in demand in a seller’s market, the dollars would be there.

The Giants wanted this Barry to be a softer, more kindly face of the team than the other Barry, Bonds, so they spent and acquired him.

Zito didn’t pay off. Not until last season, 2012, when needed most.

In the playoffs, in the World Series, he pitched with guile and grace. The Giants don’t win a championship without Zito. Nothing could be more apparent.

Other than the fact his days with the Giants are numbered. They sent him to the bullpen briefly, then Wednesday, gave him the opportunity to start. “He could have come out better,” said Bruce Bochy, the San Francisco manager, who is marvelously protective. “He hung a slider...”

That was smacked into the left field seats in the second inning by Will Middlebrooks. Only 2-0 at that point, but the demons were hovering.

The night before, Tuesday, the Giants won their only game of the series from Boston, a game that in itself might not have meant much but could have been seen as a small step toward the respectability that had flown with the wind.

“The season hasn’t gone the way we hoped,” Bochy had said, as if the fact had to be verbalized. It hasn’t gone the way he hoped, the front office hoped and most of all the way the fans hoped.

“But we have some pride,” Bochy said. 

And almost out of nowhere, they had a 3-2 victory over the Red Sox at AT&T Park, because Ryan Vogelsong became the pitcher he had been — and surely has a chance to be next season — and because Brayan Villarreal walked Marco Scutaro with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth on the only four pitches he threw.

Such a disaster, the defending World Series champion Giants, with a lousy defense, a pathetic offense and pitching that at best could be called erratic.

The way everything went right in 2012 is the way almost everything has gone wrong in 2013.

Except the attendance, the Giants now with 229 consecutive regular-season sellouts. The fans keep coming because the tickets were sold and — because, as on Tuesday — they may be rewarded.

“We have a huge fan base,” agreed Bochy. “I was disappointed in the way we played Monday night (losing 7-0).”

He was even more disappointed Wednesday. “We drifted mentally,” he said. “That shouldn’t happen playing a good team like Boston. We had played well the night before.”

So Zito will be gone in 2014. As will Tim Lincecum. Matt Cain and Madison Bumgarner, as now, continue to be the main men of a franchise built around pitching. Vogelsong’s work Tuesday night indicates he should be No. 3. And then?

Maybe the Giants obtain another starter — without Zito or Lincecum’s salaries on the ledger, there will be room financially. More likely they go after a left fielder, someone with power.

Yet whoever is on the mound or in left, the fielding must improve. There are 30 teams in the majors. The Giants rank 29th in defense.

“It’s hard to explain,” said Bochy.

He didn’t need to explain his choice of Zito, who a month earlier had been pulled from the rotation.

“I think (Zito) has earned this,” Bochy said Tuesday. “He’s a guy who has done a lot for us. I know it’s been an up-and-down year. He’s been waiting for his turn, so he gets to go first. My hope is he goes out and throws the ball great and stays in the rotation.”

He didn’t. He won’t.

Cooperstown: Babe and the Kid, Line Drives and Lipstick

By Art Spander   

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — The statue of James Fenimore Cooper sits in proper relaxation, maybe a pop fly away from the bronzes of Roy Campanella and Johnny Podres, who naturally as catcher and pitcher are located 60 feet, 6 inches apart.

This indeed is Cooper’s town. It was established more than 250 years ago by his father, in the rolling Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, where the subjects of Cooper’s novels, the Mohican Indians, lived.

This also is baseball’s town, the site of the most famous of American sporting halls of fame, a shrine to myth and reality, where a visitor quickly comes upon life-size figures of the Babe and the Kid, George Herman Ruth and Theodore Williams.

That baseball almost certainly wasn’t invented in Cooperstown by Abner Doubleday but more likely in Hoboken, N.J., by Alexander Cartwright is of no great issue here. Legends do not require confirmation, only recognition.

What Milan is to opera lovers and St. Andrews is to golfers — sites that if not quite holy are close — Cooperstown is to baseball. There’s an art museum here. There’s also a golf course — Leatherstocking, named for a Cooper book. They are insignificant.

Baseball is the lure, the National Baseball Museum and Hall of Fame, where kids in T-shirts and shorts reach up to touch the letters of plaques honoring a Babe or a Ty Cobb or a Willie Howard Mays, as if able to grasp some bit of history.

It’s been said that one of the virtues of baseball is that it enables the generations to talk to each other. Seven years old or 70, the link is the game, grandfathers recalling their youth, grandsons projecting the future.

A half-century ago, it still was three strikes you’re out, and yes, Sandy Koufax and Juan Marichal knew how to throw those strikes the way Justin Verlander knows these days.

Main Street — what else would the main street of Cooperstown be called? — is packed with memorabilia stories and ice cream parlors. Of course.

It was the late Leonard Koppett, a fine journalist and brilliant thinker, who insisted that one of the reasons kids grow to love baseball is that at the ballgame, parents — dads, mostly — unhesitatingly buy them anything, cotton candy, hot dogs, particularly ice cream. Who wouldn’t want to go?

Maybe 10 years ago, every other shop in Cooperstown was peddling something connected with Pete Rose, who, if he’ll never get in the Hall — silly when the guy with the most hits in history isn’t a Hall of Famer — was getting wealthy from the sale of autographs.

Pete’s presence has dimmed. He was at the induction ceremonies a couple of weeks back, which drew only a tiny percentage of the usual 10,000 fans because no living ballplayer was involved, but the various stores now focus on the Yankees and Mets. That’s understandable, because the Big Apple is only about a three-hour drive away.

As with other places in the country, really the world, Cooperstown has been hurt by the economy, although at the moment most of the bed-and-breakfast locales, places with names like “Baseball, Bed and Breakfast” or “Landmark Inn,” are filled.

In another few days, as a contrast, the county sheep dog trials will be held in Cooperstown. It would be neat if the dogs could be taught to steal second. You mean they already do, grabbing the bag in their jaws and running off?

If men are predominant here, women are not ignored. There’s a shop on Main calling itself “Line Drives and Lipstick,” which despite the allusion is more boutique than dugout store.

Several shops manufacture bespoke bats or at the least engrave any name you want on any previously milled bat. “Please don’t swing the bats,” admonishes a sign at Cooperstown Bat Company. That’s inside.

Outdoors, on Main Street, where boys are trying to duplicate Miguel Cabrera, or Lou Gehrig, it’s a wonder there aren’t more broken heads or broken windows.

For Red Sox fans, and they are easily identified by their attire, it’s more a question of broken hearts. On a wall in the Hall is an enlarged reproduction of the promissory note of $100,000 the Yankees gave Boston in 1919 for Ruth. The man then in charge of the Yanks, Jake Rupert, was one of the recent Hall inductees. No reference to the Curse of the Bambino, it must be noted.

In the Hall’s souvenir shop you can buy various jerseys, including one with Yankee pinstripes and the No. 3. All well and good, except above the number is “RUTH,” which is nonsense because not only were there no players’ names on uniforms when Ruth was active but the Yankees, home or away, never had them at any time.

“Never let fear of striking out get in your way,” is the quote from the Babe, who whiffed 1,330 times in his career. Never let fear of revising his uniform get in your way, either.

Newsday (N.Y.): Everybody loves Giants catcher Buster Posey

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

SAN FRANCISCO — The statistics and fan votes for the All-Star Game tell more about the man than the man chooses to tell us. "I don't like talking about myself,'' Giants catcher Buster Posey said.

So others must talk about him — his manager, his teammates, a Giants radio and television commentator, and an executive from a sports drink firm.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2013 Newsday. All rights reserved. 

Lincecum finally finds Momen-TIM

By Art Spander
 
SAN FRANCISCO — The sign is small but poignant, pasted on the door of the small cabinet where Tim Lincecum keeps items above his locker. It’s in two different colors for obvious emphasis, but here we’ll depict it in lower case and capitals, “momenTIM.”
  
That’s what he’s been searching for, trying to regain the style and domination that won two Cy Young Awards, that helped the Giants win two World Series — even if he was a reliever in the second one, 2012.
   
That’s what his ball club was hoping for, waiting for.
  
And on a Tuesday night at AT&T Park that may have been a breakthrough but at the least was the sort of performance he has produced in his best of times — the best of Tims, if you will — Lincecum woke up more than a few echoes as well as the 196th straight sellout crowd, 41,981.
  
After giving up a first-inning home run to dead center by Edwin Encarnacion that surely brought thoughts of “Here we go again,” Lincecum gave up only one more hit and no more runs, San Francisco defeating the Toronto Blue Jays, 2-1.
   
Lincecum had lost his last three starts, had, in order, been responsible for allowing six earned runs against the Rockies, then four earned runs against the Rockies, then last week five earned runs against the Athletics.
 
More than a hint had been offered about Lincecum taking his unpredictability — well, he was predictable for his failings — and his $20 million salary to the bullpen as, yikes, a middle-inning reliever.
  
He wasn’t thinking that way. Neither was Giants manager Bruce Bochy, publicly, although Bochy refused to confirm or deny that Lincecum would make what would be his next regular start, Sunday at Arizona. The way balls fly out of Chase Field in Phoenix, well, San Francisco probably would be better using Chad Gaudin.
   
Desperate times — and the Giants had dropped five of their previous seven — demand desperate measures. But after Tuesday night, with Lincecum retiring 14 in a row at one stretch, striking out six and walking only one, there is considerably less desperation around Willie Mays Plaza.
 
“We needed that,” Bochy said of Lincecum’s pitching. Did they ever. A team with a collective earned run average of 4.15 (after Tuesday night) and not much of an offense had to find something in which to believe. They think they’ve found it.
 
“That’s the Timmy we know,” contended Bochy. Well, the Timmy we knew back yonder, the Timmy who didn’t get crushed by a three- or four-running inning, the Timmy who got the ball over the plate.
 
“His pitches were crisper,” said Bochy, who as he addressed the media appeared more relaxed than before the game. “He had great stuff. This is something he can build. Even when he had bad games, he had good stuff. Last year he was out of rhythm. That hasn’t been the problem this year.”
  
Whatever the problem was or is, Lincecum, after the fine way he pitched, still had only a 4-5 record with a somewhat astronomical 4.75 ERA.  Of course, it was 5.12 before his brilliance against the Blue Jays.
  
“This should do a lot for his confidence,” said the manager. “This game, that’s more our style, good pitching and good defense. We got it done.”
  
Indeed. For a second straight game, the Giants — who, with more than 40 errors for the season, have been mishandling grounders and throws like the Bad News Bears — didn’t make a single error. Physical or mental.
   
Lincecum was pleased but not much more. One game doesn’t atone for what had preceded it, although as Bochy reminded this is the direction the pitcher and the ball club want to head.
 
“It feels good,” confided Lincecum, “but I’m not jumping up and down. (Wednesday) is another day for work.”
  
Since his last start, seven days earlier, Lincecum said he worked and worked, attempting to make certain his fastball, the key to his repertoire, found the edges of the plate, strikes that were virtually unhittable and not pitches that either were down the middle or wide.
  
“I worked my fastball to both sides of the plate,” said Lincecum. “That was the big thing. That opened things for my other pitches. I was hitting my spots more often, more consistently.”
  
What Andres Torres, the Giants left fielder, hit was a two-run home in the second that turned out to be all the runs San Francisco would score and would need. Torres also made a couple of excellent catches off deep balls in the fourth, one against the fence in the corner.
  
“Not easy plays to make,” said Lincecum. But plays that are made when good pitches are made and all the pieces fit together almost perfectly. “The rhythm was there, and I was mechanically sound. That makes just throwing the pitches the only factor.”
   
If the factor that matters most.

‘Pride involved’ in Giants’ win over A’s

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — The man never deals in extremes. Well, almost never. Bruce Bochy is the essence of composure. His words carry the reassurance of someone who understands the wonderful — and painful — unpredictability of baseball, a game of fortune as well as skill.
   
Yet Bochy realized, as did so many others, that his San Francisco Giants were on an edge, faced with as many questions as they had problems, faced with the secondary issue of losing dominion over the Bay Area as well as losing another game to a team unrelentingly determined to claim the territory for themselves.
    
Three in a row the Giants had dropped to the Oakland Athletics, and suddenly the fourth game, the last game on the schedule between them this season of 2013, became enormous. For the Giants.
  
“I thought (Thursday) was really critical,” Bochy conceded not long after the Giants did at last beat the A’s. “We had to find a way to win this game. There was pride involved in there.”
   
They won, 5-2, won at home, at AT&T Park, where they usually win but lost, 9-6, Wednesday night after losing Monday and Tuesday at Oakland.
  
They won because Barry Zito was able make just enough of the right pitches at the right time, after making seemingly far too many wrong ones. They won because the big hit, absent of late, a two-run double, was delivered by Brandon Belt in the sixth inning. They won because the bright sunshine and light wind of an all-too-typical late spring afternoon by the Bay caused havoc for A’s fielders.
   
They won, and then they bused to the airport for an immediate trip to St. Louis, where Friday they open a series against the Cardinals, arguably the best team in the majors — or anywhere else.
  
“And if this game had gotten away from us,” said Bochy, “it would have been a very long flight.”
    
He meant mentally, but you knew that, with a lot of doubt and confusion, maybe the Giants would be wondering what had happened, the way their fans — and there were 41,250 of them, the 195th straight sellout — would be wondering what had happened.
  
Pitching failures, injuries, illness. And losses in eight of their previous 12 games, including the three against the A’s. These were the Giants, the defending World Series champions? Yes. And no.
   
A.J. Griffin, who as Zito grew up in San Diego, pitched beautifully for Oakland. He didn’t give up a hit through three innings, gave up only one through five. “Great, hit the spots,” Bochy said of the opponent. “A great curve ball. Good command.”
  
Then the manager, a onetime catcher, made the ultimate observation of the sport, to wit, “The pitcher on the mound sets the tone.”
   
It was true for Griffin. It was no less true for Zito who, like some medieval knight trapped in a maze, kept finding the escape route.
  
In the first, the A’s had runners on second and third with nobody out. And didn’t score. In the second, they had runners on first and second with two outs and scored only a run. In the fifth, they had runners on first and second with one out and didn’t score.
  
“The key was we didn’t get down the way we had the last few games,” said Bochy. “Barry kept dodging bullets. He was amazing. He made pitches when he had to. The A’s are a tough team, a good team. We needed this game.”
  
Zito turned 35 two weeks ago. He’s been in the majors since 2000. He won a Cy Young Award, with the A’s. He’s been booed by Giants fans. He’s been cheered by Giants fans. He hardly needed anyone giving him an explanation of the game’s importance. Or his performance.
 
“Way too many walks,” said Zito. Six, to be specific, in six innings. Actually in five, because in the sixth, he retired the A’s in order for the only inning. “I was able to come up with stuff when I had to.”
   
Too many walks, very few hits, three, all to Coco Crisp. Zito, as Bochy put it, was Houdini, a magician, making base runners disappear, or at least keeping them stranded.
  
“Pitching is not always about location,” Zito reminded. It’s about speed and effectiveness and — when a batter misses a fat one — about fortune. It’s about courage, about, as the saying goes, hanging in there.
   
“This was a big series,” agreed Zito. “Big crowds in both parks. It was nice for us to take one.”
   
It was essential.
  
“These games are fun,” said Belt, the lefty who hit the lefty — reliever Hideki Okajima. “They bring a lot of energy for both clubs. We did just enough to win the ball game.”
  
Which is all that counts.

Not the debut Giants rookie wanted

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — There was no magic. The Michael Kickham debut wasn’t Hall of Fame stuff, wasn’t even enough to get the San Francisco Giants a win.
   
These are the majors. These guys are the best. “Mistakes here,” conceded Kickham, “are magnified.”
    
For an individual. For a team.
  
The Giants are not doing very much right these days. Across the Bay from their home park, at the O.co Coliseum, against the Athletics, they’ve done everything wrong.
    
So the A’s made it two in a row over the Giants, one in a row over the rookie Kickham up from the minors, beating San Francisco, 6-3, Tuesday night. That follows a 4-1 win Monday.
   
The best team in Northern California at the moment, and maybe for a period longer than that, is Oakland. The A’s have won five in a row, 10 of their last 11.
  
The Giants are the defending World Series champions, but that was then, this is now, and now is a team whose strength, starting pitching, is no longer its strength. And whose weakness, offense, is magnified.
  
Angel Pagan, the table setter, the leadoff man, is ailing. Without him in the lineup the Giants seem flat, the middle of the order ineffective. Pablo Sandoval, with the flu or a virus, something keeping from his best, was 0-for-3, and is 2 of his last 21. Buster Posey didn’t have a hit in either game at Oakland.
  
“We got guys struggling at the plate,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said in a statement impossible to deny. “Our offense is not scoring runs. Give their pitchers credit.”
  
The A’s starting pitcher Tuesday night, when again Oakland sold out the restricted-seat Coliseum, was Jarrod Parker. He gave up a run in the first and another in the sixth. Two runs allowed in seven innings.
  
Giants pitching used to do that. A’s pitching is doing it now.
  
“It was exciting catching him and watching him,” Derek Norris said of Parker. “He’s a potential Cy Young winner.”
   
So Norris was a bit carried away. That is allowable. He hit a two-run homer off Kickham in the second. And he was superb at the most important job for any catcher, making sure his own pitcher is in control.
  
The interleague series goes west Wednesday and Thursday, if not very far, to the other side of the bridge, San Francisco, where the Giants have a winning record, as opposed to the losing one they have on the road, where they’ve dropped seven out of eight.
   
Tim Lincecum starts for the Giants, and as things go these days that’s hardly a sure thing. He’ll probably last longer than Kickham, whose contract was purchased from Triple-A Fresno only hours before his first pitch Tuesday. He’s the fill-in for Ryan Vogelsong. He went 2 1/3 innings. He’s not the savior.
 
“He showed really good stuff early,” said Bochy. Yeah, like one inning, the first, when the 24-year-old Kickham retired the A’s on eight pitches. Wow! And then whoops.
  
A strikeout to open the second, after which Oakland’s Jed Lowrie singled. Then a strikeout. But on a 3-1 count, Norris smashed one into the left field seats.
   
“It was a decent pitch,” said Kickham. “But it came on a hitter’s count.”
    
And the hitter hit, but if Madison Bumgarner can’t beat the A’s — although Monday he didn’t pitch badly — it’s difficult to fault Kickham for not beating the A’s.
    
“His stuff was impressive,” said Bochy, maybe trying to make himself feel as good about the defeat as Kickham. “He just started missing by a little bit. A couple of mistakes.”
   
One, insisted Bochy, after the Giants lost for the fourth time in six games, was not the decision to elevate Kickham to the big-league team. Kickham can get wild on occasion, but some of his fastballs reached 94 mph. Still, out of 65 pitches in fewer than three full innings, he had only 36 strikes.
   
“It was awesome just to get the opportunity to put on a Giants jersey,” said Kickham, who has been in pro ball only since 2010. “It’s a great opportunity. (The game) didn’t go how I wanted, obviously, but it was something to learn from.”
   
Before the game, Bochy described what he liked about Kickham, his repertoire, his manner.
 
“It’s a big day for him, as it is for anyone his first big-league game,”  said Bochy. “He probably could use another year at Triple-A, but he’s here. We’ll know more about him after the game.”
     
They do. So do the Oakland A’s.

Giants show who they really are

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — That’s who they really are, the Giants. At least who they’re supposed to be, a team that keeps the game close, which has great pitching and effective fielding. For three games, three reassuring games, that’s exactly what they did.
   
There was a loss Wednesday, an agonizing, grinding 2-1 loss to the Washington Nationals at AT&T Park, a loss that reminded how difficult it is to win in baseball.
    
A loss, but not a downer.
    
Not one of those “What the heck is going on here?” type of exhibitions the Giants had a week ago at Toronto and Colorado when they got pummeled, giving up extra-base hits, dropping ground balls — or throwing them away — and dropping five games out six.
  
A “horrible trip” is what Bruce Bochy called it, and for a manager perennially upbeat, that’s a concession as shocking as what happened to the pitching and defense.
   
But the return to the ballpark by the bay brought a return to what we had known as Giants baseball, an 8-0 win over the Nats on Monday, a 4-2 win in 10 innings on Tuesday, and then that 10-inning, 2-1 defeat on Wednesday. Four runs allowed in three games.
   
"The guys bounced back," said Bochy. "They got on track here. This was more (like) our baseball. It was very encouraging how we played in this series. We played well again.
  
“Sure it was a loss (Wednesday), but the way we played was encouraging. Good pitching. What we thought we could do.”
    
Which was hang to in there. To go through some of that sweet torture made famous in that championship season of 2010.
    
On Tuesday, they rallied to tie and then won in 10 on Pablo Sandoval’s home run.
   
On Wednesday, they rallied to tie, then lost in 10 when the superkid, Bryce Harper, who earlier had homered, doubled and scored on Ian Desmond’s single.
   
“Their defense beat us,” said Bochy. Quite probably. After Buster Posey singled home Angel Pagan with one out in the eighth, Hunter Pence drove a liner to right that Harper grabbed on a dive. Then when Brandon Belt smashed one on the ground to right, first baseman Adam LaRoche stopped the ball from going through and forced Posey at second.
   
Two innings later, Washington, underachieving this season, got the run that got the win.
   
“He’s a good hitter,” Bochy said of Harper, an understatement.    
  
Harper, the 2012 NL Rookie of the Year, has been labeled the “New Natural.” He was the overall No. 1 pick in the 2010 amateur draft — a year after teammate, Stephen Strasburg, the pitcher, was the No. 1 overall pick in the 2009 draft.
      
The Nats have talent. So do the Giants, or they wouldn’t have won the World Series twice in the past three seasons. The Giants also had problems, those one-sided losses in Toronto and Colorado. With Ryan Vogelsong out with a broken finger and Santiago Casilla also on the disabled list, they still have them.
    
Yet Matt Cain’s start on Tuesday, only two runs allowed, and Madison Bumgarner’s on Wednesday — seven innings, one run — were reminders of the way it was and should be once more.
    
“It was no fun to give it up (at Colorado), but we know what we can do,” said Bumgarner. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
    
What he didn’t say was that the ugly exhibition on the road wasn’t what people have come think of as the San Francisco Giants. “No,” was his one-word response when asked if that was anything close to what he or his teammates expected.
    
What Bochy and the 190th consecutive sellout crowd at AT&T expected Wednesday was exactly what they got, great pitching, Washington’s Gio Gonzalez — formerly with the Oakland A’s — and Bumgarner matching shutouts through five innings.
   
Then, leading off the sixth, Harper, a left-handed batter, powered a 1-2 pitch off Bumgarner, a left-handed thrower, into the left field stands.
 
"I think he made it pretty clear that he's going to play as hard as he can every day," Bumgarner said of Harper. "It's fun to play against guys like that. Most everybody plays that way, but ... he's the kind of player who can bring out the best in you."
   
The Giants, with a day off Thursday, believe the games against the Nats brought out the best in them after a week when they played their worst.
   
The only disappointing thing Wednesday, other than the final score, was the end of Marco Scutaro’s hitting streak, which had reached 19 consecutive games.
    
Scutaro was the Giants’ final batter. With two outs in the bottom of the 10th, he hit one that appeared might reach the fence but was caught on the warning track by Roger Bernadina.
    
“He just missed it,” said Bochy.

The Sports Xchange: A's sweep Royals thanks to Cespedes' homer

By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange

OAKLAND — Someone wondered before the first pitch what Oakland Athletics' manager Bob Melvin was going to do about Yoenis Cespedes.

The second-year major-leaguer from Cuba was hitting below the dreaded "Mendoza Line" of .200, at .198. Or as the players say, he's on the wrong interstate, I-98.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2013 The Sports Xchange

A's don't play ball, they work it

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — Another one of those "tote that barge, lift that bale" situations for the Oakland Athletics, another game that was worked and not played, agonized and not enjoyed.

“Our type of baseball,” said Josh Donaldson.

On Tuesday night, however, that type, the type that drags on when most of the fans have dragged themselves home — and when the announced attendance is 12,969, that doesn’t leave many in the stands — wasn’t successful.

The Texas Rangers got a couple of home runs in the 10th off a star-crossed A’s reliever named Chris Resop, and when this one came to a close, long after every other game in the majors already had done so, 3 hours 43 minutes after the first pitch, the Rangers were 6-5 winners.

Resop was the sixth A’s pitcher. He came in for the 10th, got Lance Berkman to ground out. Then he went 3-0 on Adrian Beltre. It’s like baiting a lion.

“I was just trying to get back in the strike zone,” Resop would say quietly, his right shoulder encased in ice.

The ball stayed there for a blink of an eye, then Beltre, who already had a double and a single in the game, powered it over the center field fence to break a 4-4 tie. After Nelson Cruz was retired, Resop threw another over the plate, and Mitch Moreland, who had hit one out in the fourth off Bartolo Colon, hit one out in the 10th off Resop.

“It’s not what I wanted,” said Resop.

“Rough,” someone sympathized. Resop disagreed. “This is worse than rough,” he said. “This is tough. This is not fun at all. You hate to let the others down. It’s a team game, but at the end of the day, there’s one person who could make the difference. I was trying to be too fine.”

The Swingin’ A’s, they used to call the franchise in a different time. Now it’s the Plodding A’s, the team that turns a sporting event into a seven-act production of Shakespeare. Nothing is easy. Nothing is quick. Nothing is brief.

There was that 19-inning game a couple weeks ago, right here at O.Co Coliseum. Then Tuesday night, when the pace was acceptable, everything slowed and slowed.

The A’s trailed 3-0. The A’s led 4-3. Seven innings had passed. It wasn’t going to be tidy, but at least it would be a win, and in regulation. The A’s needed it. Oh, did the Bay Area need it. The Warriors had lost. The Sharks had lost. The Giants had lost. Saved by the A’s? It was to dream.

The Rangers tied the game in the eighth, and then, boom (Beltre), boom (Moreland), they led by two in the 10th, 6-4, and they held on despite an Oakland run.

Maybe 1,500 fans were left. Maybe 30 or so beat their drums and blew their horns. So few people, so much noise. So little satisfaction.

“(Resop) is just going through a bad stretch,” said Bob Melvin, the A’s manager. Melvin has gone through his own bad stretch.

Last week he was ejected in Cleveland for arguing, correctly, that a ball hit by Oakland’s Adam Rosales was a home run, not a double. Tuesday night he was ejected, incorrectly, for arguing that Daric Barton beat out a grounder to short in the eighth.

“I probably deserved to go,” said Melvin of getting thumbed over the Barton play. “From where I was, I thought he was safe. But he (umpire D.J. Reyburn) got the call right, so I deserved it.”

The A’s have lost seven of nine. Sometimes it’s the hitting, or lack of it. Sometimes it’s the pitching. Or lack of it. When a team rallies from being down 3-0, goes ahead and then squanders a lead and a game, the feelings are mixed.

“We continue to battle,” reminded Melvin, “especially here at home.”

That’s admirable, but moral victories are of little use, especially for a team that was in the playoffs last season and is expected — was expected — to return in 2013.

Josh Donaldson, the A’s third baseman, had four straight hits, including two doubles, before flying out in the 10th. He’s hitting .315. He’s optimistic, not about his numbers but about his team.

“We feel competitive,” said Donaldson. “We’re aggressive. We play hard.”

Unquestionably. Now, if they only could play faster and with less stress.

The Sports Xchange: Lincecum, Giants shut down Braves

By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange

SAN FRANCISCO — The game is not that complex. If a team pitches and hits better than the one it's playing, it's going to win. Which is exactly what the San Francisco Giants did for three games against the Atlanta Braves.

Not only did the Giants make it three in a row after dropping the Thursday series opener, but they outscored the Braves 23-4 over the final three games. San Francisco cruised to a 5-1 win Sunday afternoon.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2013 The Sports Xchange

The Sports Xchange: Cain, six-run fourth carry Giants

By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange

SAN FRANCISCO -- Matt Cain pitched as expected. Tim Hudson did not. And so the San Francisco Giants, who have haven't had an easy victory in a while, got one Friday night, defeating the Atlanta Braves 8-2.

"We don't have a lot of these games," Giants manager Bruce Bochy said. "It's kind of nice."

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2013 The Sports Xchange

Giants' Bochy manages in every possible way

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — They call him a manager, don’t they? Bruce Bochy manages, in every possible way. Manages his players with grace and skill. Manages his own emotions with superb calm.
  
Baseball will drive a man crazy, but only if he lets it.
  
The San Francisco Giants have done things the hard way for several seasons now. “Sweet Torture,” it was labeled by TV announcer Mike Krukow. Sweet because somehow the Giants make all the gnawed nails and deep breaths worth it.
   
As they did Wednesday at AT&T.
   
The Giants couldn’t hold a two-run lead in the ninth but as normal held their composure, and then won in the 10th, beating the Phillies, 4-3, and avoiding a sweep.
  
Not what Bochy desires, but almost what Bochy has come to expect.
   
“I’m used to it,” said Bochy. He looks more grizzled every game, but after this game, after the halt of a two-game losing streak, he also looked satisfied, a twinkle in his eyes.
   
What doesn’t break a man makes him laugh, right?
    
“These guys are entertainers,” Bochy said. If he was being sarcastic, and the possibility existed, it was hard to detect.
    
“I enjoy the game.”
    
He might have enjoyed it more if Sergio Romo didn’t give up a couple of runs in the ninth, but that’s baseball. Imperfection is everywhere. If you lose 62 times during a major league season, you’ll be a winner. It helps to be philosophical, maybe even fatalistic.
    
“Sergio’s been so good,” said Bochy. Which, certainly, he wasn’t on this afternoon by the Bay, but you’re not going to hear Bochy rip his players. You’re more likely to hear him credit the opposition, as he did with the Phils. “They’ve got a good club too,” he pointed out.
  
A club that beat the Giants on Monday and Tuesday.
    
What Bochy wanted was for his starting pitcher, Barry Zito, to get deep into the game, giving an overworked bullpen a rest. Zito responded, giving up only one run in seven plus innings and even adding a run-scoring single.
   
But Philly scoring twice in the next inning, off Romo, meant for a third straight game, after the Padres, after the Dodgers, Zito was not involved in the decision, even if in a larger sense, walking none, giving up only four hits and one run, he was very involved.
  
His control was a reason the Giants never trailed. It’s considerably easier when a team isn’t always playing from behind
  
“What a job Barry did,” Bochy said with emphasis. “He was throwing strikes. We’re not clicking on offense. It’s too bad he didn’t get the win, but it was a quality start.”
   
After the squandered lead, there also was a quality finish. Buster Posey was hauled out of the dugout on what was supposed to be his day of rest and opened the bottom of the 10th with a single. Then, after moving to second on a sacrifice and third on a wild pitch, he scored the winning run on a single by Andres Torres, who also had begun the game on the bench.
  
For Torres, who was with the Mets in 2012 before returning to San Francisco this season, it was the fourth walk-off hit of his career.  It also was the Giants fifth walk-off win of the season and — time to exhale — their third in the last six games.
  
“I just tried to be aggressive,” said Torres. “I was looking for a slider. I just reacted. I think it was a fastball.”
  
Torres was buried under celebrating teammates, as was Buster Posey on Friday night and then Guillermo Quiroz on Saturday night after game-winning home runs against the Dodgers.
   
“This type of win is a confidence booster to us,” said a magnanimous Zito, “to get it done in the bottom of the 9th or 10th when the other side battles back.”
   
Zito’s performance had to be a particular boost to a franchise built on starting pitching but in the past two weeks rarely getting the starting pitching it needed.
   
Matt Cain did achieve his first win of the season Sunday, and Tim Lincecum, after a wobbly beginning, lasted seven innings on Tuesday night, if in a loss.
   
“It was important for me to be aggressive,” said Zito, “to make those guys swing their bats so I could keep my pitch count down.”
   
He met that requirement, lasting 101 pitches, the last one smacked into left for a single by Carlos Ruiz. Santiago Casilla took over for Zito but hurt his knee and two batters later was replaced by Jeremy Affeldt.
   
“We’re going to have a hiccup now and then,” said Bochy.
     
The cure for hiccups is water sipped slowly, we’re advised. Or in a game as this one, a run-scoring single by Andres Torres.
    
Entertainment? Whatever Bochy wants to call it is fine with the fans if it’s a win.

Finally able, Cain gets that first win

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — The game wasn’t merely about Matt Cain and his vexing month of winless pitching. Then again, it was mostly about Matt Cain.
   
When a guy is your ace, throws a perfect game, is the All-Star starter and then has zero for April in the victory column, he is the central character in the mystery.
    
Dodgers-Giants remains the essential component of San Francisco baseball, as the unrelenting chants of “Beat L.A., Beat L.A.” bear witness. The final score means everything.
   
Sunday night’s final score, 4-3 in favor the franchise that carried “GIGANTES’’ on its uniforms for Cinco de Mayo, meant those Gigantes had swept the three-game series from Los Angeles.
  
Yet the Cain performance was not to be underestimated. To the Giants, who knew once more Matt was the rock of a pitching staff that is the team’s strength, and yes, to Cain himself.
   
No matter how much success a player has experienced, an 0-2 record with a 6.49 earned run average in six games must be bewildering at the least.
   
He and probably everyone else knew sooner or later the wrongs would be corrected, but the issue was when. The response was delivered by Cain along with his fastballs and breaking pitches in 7 1/3 reassuring innings.
  
“It was a solid effort,” said Giants manager Bruce Bochy of Cain. “A great job. No runs.”
   
Until an eighth inning Bochy said has become all too familiar for the Giants, when a 4-0 lead ebbed, relievers entered and departed and the normal sellout crowd of 41,000-plus at AT&T Park wondered why it always had to be so nerve-wracking.
  
“Our boys made it entertaining,” said Bochy, who by his subsequent smile made us understand he’d accept something less so. “It’s our nature. We made it close.”
  
But close or not, it was the Giants’ sixth straight win, three over the Dodgers, each by a run, after three over Arizona, following five straight defeats. Some chewed fingernails, some beautiful hitting — Sunday night Hunter Pence drove in all the San Francisco runs — and a lot of happy patrons.
   
The mini-achievement, Cain getting off the schneid for 2013 and also becoming the first Giant starter in 12 games to get a victory — oh, that bullpen has been spectacular — was simple enough.
   
“I didn’t make as many mistakes,” said Cain, “and some of the mistakes I was making were hit at guys.”
   
It is a baseball truism that nothing in the game is fair. Line drives are caught — as three line drives, or at least deep flies, off Sergio Romo were caught in the top of the ninth — while bloops and dribblers fall for hits.
   
“A couple ground balls go through,” Bochy said of the Dodgers' eighth. “Then in the (top of) ninth, hard-hit balls right at them.”
    
Still, it isn’t only a matter of fortune. When a pitcher is sharp, the breaks, good or bad, don’t have that much of an effect. Twice this season, Cain had given up three home runs in a single game. Sunday night he allowed nothing more destructive than a first-inning double by Matt Kemp, who never moved from second.
 
“All of the starters hadn’t been doing what we wanted to do,” said Cain. “To get off that skid, it just took some time.
  
“I had those bits where I was giving up home runs while ahead in the count. I wasn’t necessarily thinking about that, but about bearing down and just thinking about pitching. (Catcher Guillermo) Quiroz did a good job keeping me focused.”
   
Cain gave up five hits and three walks and, although charged only with one of the Dodger runs, still has an ERA 5.57. It will decline.
    
There was a report on ESPN, which televised the game nationally, that the Giants felt Cain’s problems were physical, he had dropped the angle of his delivery, causing his balls to flatten out. Bochy was in full denial about that or any other issue with Cain’s body.
  
“I never thought something was wrong with Matt,” said the manager. “I said along he was healthy, his arm was fine. And tonight he showed it.”
  
Cain was not one to disagree,
  
“My arm always felt good,” Cain said. “I was just making bad pitches. I didn’t pitch well. Tonight I made better pitches at times. Yes, sometimes when you make a bad pitch they’ll pop it up, but that wasn’t what happened.”
   
The Giants continued a remarkable record. Never in their 56 years in San Francisco have they lost a home game to the Dodgers when they built a lead of three runs or more.
   
That beat goes on. Matt Cain’s beating finally has changed.
  
“The most encouraging part,” answered Cain when asked, “was I got kind of better as the game went along.”
     
He’s a winner now. Of course, he always has been.

Giants do everything they can to lose

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — The Giants did everything they could to lose it. And succeeded.
  
Just one of 162, certainly, and there are going to be games like this, but, full of errors and other misplays, particularly worrisome nonetheless.
   
Maybe former Giants shortstop and current Comcast TV commentator Rich Aurilia was a bit strong when, after an erratic top of the 11th inning Tuesday that made the difference in Arizona’s 6-4 win, he tweeted, “Terrible baseball in this half inning.”
    
Strong but hardly inaccurate.
   
He was referring to Andres Torres watching a ball fall for a double in that half inning, then an error by first baseman Brandon Belt on a one-bounce throw from Pablo Sandoval, then a wild pitch by Santiago Casilla.
  
“We probably should have been better there,” said Bruce Bochy, the Giants’ manager.
   
Matt Cain, the Giants’ starter, still searching for the dominance of last season, also probably should have been better there.
  
He had some bad breaks — the first batter of the game was safe on one of the three errors San Francisco would make. And then against the nemesis, Paul Goldschmidt, he made a bad pitch in the third inning, a pitch that was immediately turned into two-run homer.
  
Bochy, always the optimist, didn’t seem displeased with Cain, who went six innings without a decision and still is winless in 2013.
  
“He threw well at times,” said Bochy of Cain, who struck out six and allowed five hits. “Matt settled down. One pitch got away. It was a mistake, and that was against a guy who did some damage.”
  
It was the Arizona starter, Patrick Corbin, who was doing damage to the Giants. He retired the first nine betters in order and gave up only three hits through seven innings.
  
San Francisco, with Brandon Crawford tripling to center, however, picked up two runs in the eighth, and then Brandon Belt, pinch-hitting for Joaquin Arias, homered into McCovey Cove in the ninth to make it 4-4.
  
The usual sellout crowd at AT&T, the 177th straight, shook off its torpor and the icicles (summer left in late morning), screaming, chanting and thinking that as Monday night the home team would find a way.
   
Yes, as Bochy says virtually every game, these Giants, the World Series Champion Giants, prove resilient. But also at times, they tend to inefficient.
  
You can shrug off Sandoval getting thrown out by what, 20 feet or 25, attempting to score from second on Hunter Pence’s two-out single to right. It was the onetime Giant, Cody Ross, who cut him down. It was the third base coach, Tim Flannery, who sent him home.
  
“A two-out base hit,” said Bochy, whose managerial skills are rarely questioned, “you try to score. Ross charged it well. That’s part of the game.”
  
Part of this game, a huge part, was the Giants looking bewildered at the plate against the left-handed Corbin and incompetent with the gloves against the ground balls.
  
Three errors mean the other team figuratively gets 30 outs instead of 27. And wild pitches with a man on third in a tie game are ruination.
  
As Bochy said, you play enough games and those things occur. But for a team constructed upon pitching and with only one starter, Sandoval, who could be timed by an hourglass, hitting at least .300, when errors and errant pitches occur, too often you lose.
  
The Giants had won seven in a row at AT&T, and since baseball is a game of averages, surely they were due to drop one. It’s the way they dropped it that causes dyspepsia.
    
In the mind’s eye there’s Sandoval, rumbling into the end of an inning — yes, we’ll shrug it off — then moments later Casilla bouncing a ball as if he were a bowler in cricket rather than a pitcher in baseball.
  
Maybe the Giants should find satisfaction that, for a second straight game against the Diamondbacks, they rallied. But this time, it only extended the time until the eventual disappointment.
  
Bochy was asked why he allows his starting pitchers to stay in a game when they don’t appear to be particularly sharp, but it’s obvious. They are the strength of this Giants team, even on nights when they’re not particularly strong. Besides, he doesn’t want to overwork his bullpen.
  
“They’ve earned the right to stay in,” Bochy reminded, not that anyone who’s studied the Giants needed reminding. “You’re going to allow your guys to work.”
    
Cain worked, and that’s a good description. It wasn’t easy. He left trailing by four runs. The Giants managed to get those four and get even. After that, it was an embarrassment and a defeat.