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.

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.

Cardinals’ new version of Gas House Gang

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.

The new Cardinals, the 2012 version, can still play that roughhouse style, can still barrel into an infielder to try to break up a double play and perhaps break an opponent’s bones, the way Monday night Matt Holliday crashed into the Giants’ Marco Scutaro on a slide in the first inning.

A slide that sent Scutaro, the San Francisco second baseman, out of the game eventually, a slide that angered Giants manager Bruce Bochy, a longtime baseball man who rarely seems upset about anything.

Yes, the Giants won the game before a raucous sellout crowd of 42,679 at AT&T Park. They defeated the Cards, 7-1, and so the best-of-seven National League Championship Series, which resumes Wednesday in St. Louis, is tied at a game apiece.

But Scutaro, with a sore hip where Holliday rolled into him like an offensive tackle might a linebacker, successfully breaking up a double-play attempt, is facing an MRI and could face a game or more of inactivity.

“I think they got away with an illegal slide there,’’ said Bochy, his voice tight. “The rule was changed a while back. And (Holliday) really didn’t hit the dirt until he was past the bag. Marco was behind the bag and got smoked.”

And lay there to the right of the bag for a while, then got up and in the fourth singled home two runs. After the fifth, however, Scutaro, picked up late in the season from the Rockies, was replaced by Ryan Theriot. Scutaro was seen leaving the ballpark before the final out.

“It’s a shame somebody got hurt because of this,’’ said Bochy. “And that was more of a roadblock. (Marco) got hit pretty good.”

It’s also a shame the incident came to dominate a game that in another way was dominated by Ryan Vogelsong, who went seven innings and threw 106 pitches, finally giving the Giants their first solid performance by a starter in seven postseason games.

He not only got the victory but the support of fans chanting, “Vogey, Vogey, Vogey.’’ After those same fans rocked the park with boos every time Holliday came to the plate following his first-inning take-out slide.

“We’ve got our second baseman hurt,’’ Bochy pointed out when someone sensed his irritation. “And again he was behind the bag. You’re all for playing hard, but again, hoping for good news with Marco. He got a big hit, but he was hobbling. It got to the point where he said ‘I can’t move out there,’ so we had to take him out.”

After Holliday figuratively had taken him out.

Brandon Crawford, the Giants shortstop, had fielded the ball hit by Allen Craig and thrown to Scutaro to force Holliday. “It was pretty late,” Crawford said of the slide, “but I don’t think Holliday is a dirty player.”

Asked if he were surprised by Holliday’s contact, Bradford said, “I’m surprised Scutaro got off the throw to first.” Which Craig beat. But then Vogelsong retired Yadier Molina on another grounder.

Cardinals manager Mike Matheny, as expected, defended his player. He could do nothing else. Teams are taught to support their own, right or wrong.

“I didn’t see a replay,” explained Matheny, who as Bochy is a former catcher. “But as I watched it live, it looked like it was a hard slide. It didn’t go out of the baseline to get him. We teach our guys to go hard. Play the game clean, play it hard, not try to hurt anybody. We go hard but within the rules.”

Giants fans could be kind, their team finally winning a home playoff game. Back in the seventh game of the 1934 World Series, Medwick slid hard into third baseman Marv Owen of the Detroit Tigers. The two fought, Detroit fans showered Medwick with garbage when he went to left field and the commissioner of baseball, Kennesaw Landis, ordered Medwick removed from the game.

The incident Monday night had no chance of escalating into that. Holliday, in fact, was somewhat apologetic.

“In hindsight,” he said, “I wish I had started my slide a step earlier. It was happening fast, and you’re trying to get him so he can’t turn the double play.”

He couldn’t, of course, and the crowd turned on Holliday, but as the Giants broke away the mood changed. It was back to the AT&T staples, mugging for the video screen and singing along with Journey in the eighth inning.
   
“He’s a great player,” Holliday said of Scutaro. “He’s a good guy. I was trying to keep us out of a double play.”

Giants are heads, and hats, above the rest of the West

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO – Hats off. No, hats on. Alex Smith of the 49ers wearing one from the Giants, a dastardly, fineable act according to the uniform police of the NFL. And, in response, Bruce Bochy sitting pre-game in the Giants’ dugout topped by a 49er hat.

Tit for tat. Or, literally, hat for hat.

"Our way of saying thanks,’’ Bochy would point out. “And we’re 1-0 with that hat.’’

The Giants were sending a message. Specifically, two messages: One, we’ve got your back, 49ers. (Or should that be we’ve got your hat?) And two, we’ve almost got the division, Dodgers.

It’s over, the National League West race, even though technically it’s not, and so even if the Giants absolutely couldn’t blow it, they’re saying all the right things about not easing up.

More significantly, they’re doing all the right things to prove they’re not easing up. Instead, they’re revving up.   

They clubbed the Colorado Rockies, 9-2, Thursday afternoon at AT&T Park, a sweep of the four-game series, an eighth win in the last nine games.

These are party days at the ballpark, from the pre-game organ solos – just like in the 1950s – to Pablo Sandoval rediscovering the home run to the seventh-inning Beatles’ recording of “Twist and Shout,’’ one of the great rock songs anywhere, anytime.

"Every single day, 41,000 people excited for us,’’ said Sandoval a short while after the one single day in his career in which he hit home runs both righthanded (in the first with no one on) and lefthanded (in the fourth with two on).

"We play hard for them.”

They’re playing hard and well and entertainingly. The unassailable idea that sport is intended to be tumultuous merriment is carried to the max every game at AT&T, where there’s laughter in the dugout and rejoicing in the stands.

At the so-called old man’s game, the crowds are young and joyful, singing, dancing, cheering.

"We are happy, not satisfied,’’ said Sandoval, the Panda. Until Wednesday, he hadn’t hit a home run in weeks, 161 at bats going back to July. Now he’s hit three in two games.

"We are loose and having fun.’’  He stopped momentarily. “But it’s not over yet.’’

Yes it is. Before the Dodgers played the Nationals, Thursday night, the Giants’ magic number was four, meaning any combo of four Giants wins and Dodgers losses would make San Francisco champions of the West. You think that’s not going to happen?

Bochy, managing his hat off – or on – was asked if he would watch the Dodgers-Nats game.

"No,’’ he answered. “I’m probably going to have dinner, to be honest with you.’’

There’s a man with perspective. A man with intelligence, not that we weren’t previously aware. A night off in the City by the Bay — why waste it watching a ball game?

He’d already been involved in a rewarding one.

Already had seen Barry Zito pitch well enough often enough to get the victory and, when he was removed in the sixth – “He hates it when I come out there,’’ said Bochy -- to get a standing ovation.

Had seen Marco Scutaro, the pickup of the year, at age 36 set a career season mark with his 175th hit (he added another) and raise his batting average to .301.

Had seen the Giants bat around and score six runs in the fourth, when Sandoval and Buster Posey hit back-to-back home runs and Zito had a fine sacrifice bunt that drew an appreciative cheer from a turnout as into the nuances of baseball as it was the taste of the garlic fries.

"The mood, tempo and spirit of the club are very good,’’ said Bochy. “That’s the way it’s been for a couple months. We did a great job on the road. Now we’re playing well here. This club has a lot of character. We’re having fun, keeping it loose.’’

Why be uptight when Matt Cain is zooming along, when Tim Lincecum appears to finding his immediate past, when Buster Posey, the presumptive MVP, is batting .335, when the Panda has found his stroke, when Barry Zito, the man the public despised, has a 13-8 record and receives standing o’s?

"The crowd and that enthusiasm,’’ Bochy said. “The adrenaline. We run on it. These guys feed off that. They’re (the fans) as happy for our success as we are.”

You need to win in sports, and the Giants the past few years have been winning. But there’s more. There’s the realization by management that people want to have a good time, and in the majors’ best ballpark, they must. Or there wouldn’t have been 159 consecutive announced sellouts.

You have to tip your hat to them, no matter if it says 49ers or Giants.