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

By Art Spander

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

Yet once again, the Giants found a way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It has to start somewhere,” said Bochy.

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

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

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

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

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

Fundamental baseball. “Never Unprepared” baseball.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And got to within a game of another World Series.

Giants are lucky — and good

By Art Spander

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Harbaugh: Somewhere, Bo’s up there smiling

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — Time had gone backwards, unlike the persistent runs of Frank Gore. There we were, back in the 20th century, the fans at Candlestick Park doing the wave — in this final year of the old stadium, anything is acceptable — the 49ers employing a pound-it-out, eat-up-the-clock offense.

A fourth-quarter drive that covered 89 yards and nine and a half minutes, old-fashioned but wonderfully effective, as 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh agreed.

The sort of drive, with eight straight runs in one sequence, that Harbaugh’s coach at Michigan, the late Bo Schembechler, would have loved.

“Yes,” said Harbaugh, “he would have. He would have loved it very much. Somewhere, he’s up there smiling.”

And then Harbaugh, already feeling good after the Niners on Sunday won their third in a row, defeating the Arizona Cardinals, 32-20, began to smile himself.

“It was a huge win,” he said gleefully. “Grinded some meat, playing tough, hard-nosed football, grinding out the running game.

“That was a line coming off the ball, and Frank was determined, and the whole unit, they were determined to move the football and keep the defense off the field that had played so well in that ballgame.”

The Niners ran for 149 yards against the sixth-best rushing defense in the NFL.

They were playing smack-you-in-the-chops football that made Schembechler and Woody Hayes winners in the old Big Ten, a style defined as three yards and a cloud of dust.

Harbaugh, sure, was a quarterback, at Palo Alto High, at Michigan, with the Chicago Bears and Indianapolis Colts. But he despises finesse football. It is his nature. It is his training.

"When I got my first coaching job at the University of San Diego, I called Bo Schembechler and told him,” Harbaugh has explained. “Before he said congratulations, he said, 'Jimmy, tell me you are going to have a tight end that puts his hand in that ground on every snap. Tell me that you are going to have a fullback that lines directly behind the quarterback, and a halfback in the I-formation.'

"'Yes, coach, we will have that.' 'Good, congratulations on getting your job.'"

Now, with the Niners, Harbaugh also has a quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, who can run (18 yards on four carries) as well as throw (16 completions for 252 yards and two touchdowns).

He has a tight end, Vernon Davis, who doesn’t necessarily put his hand in the dirt on every snap but certainly puts his hands around the ball (eight catches for a career-high 180 yards and two TDs).

And most of all, in crunch time, Harbaugh has Gore, who carried 25 times in all, for 101 yards, and seven of the 18 plays on the drive, five of those in succession. That Kendall Hunter powered the final six yards was fine with all concerned, especially Gore, who doesn’t worry about personal statistics.

“Three years with Frank,” said fullback Bruce Miller, “and I just feel he’s getting better and better. He has a passion for the game. He loves the game. He loves the team.”

He definitely enjoys dashing through the gaps or going around the edges, whatever is needed to pick up yardage.

“It felt good,” said Gore of the drive and his contribution. “Especially when their defense knew that we were coming to run the ball at that moment, and we did it. Our O-line made good blocks, our fullback made a good block, the receivers outside made good blocks, and I ran hard.

“When I get in rhythm, I just feel like I can do whatever I want.”

Early on, the Niners couldn’t do what they liked or wanted with the Cardinals, who came into the game with a 3-2 record, as did San Francisco. The Niners, without a first down until there was only a minute left in the first quarter, and then only on a penalty, led only 22-20 into the fourth quarter.

Then 9 minutes 32 seconds and 18 players later, they had the touchdown that meant the game.

“The score was 22-20,” said Darryl Washington, the Arizona linebacker. “We had a chance to get that momentum. We were stopping the run, getting pressure on Kaepernick, but those guys made more plays than we did at the end of the day.”

Kaepernick threw an interception, a tipped ball. Kaepernick lost a fumble when he was sacked. But when required — dare we call it crunch time in the sixth game of the season? — everything worked, especially on that long drive.

“It was huge,” said Kaepernick, a bit more talkative than he's been recently. “We drained the clock on that drive. We had a lot of third-down conversions, had the big fourth-down conversion (a yard by Miller). We said in the huddle, we have to go down and score right now.”

They did. Only in this situation, "right now" means 9 minutes 32 seconds.

Newsday (N.Y.): Giants overcome 3-1 series deficit to win NL pennant

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.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2012 Newsday. All rights reserved.

Newsday (N.Y.): Ryan Vogelsong excels as Giants force Game 7 in NLCS

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.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2012 Newsday. All rights reserved.