Yesterday
Here are the top 5 July 14 moments in San Francisco Giants history.
1985 at Pittsburgh, it's game 88, we're 17.5 out of first so the season is over, 2-2 in the 5th inning, David Green homers off Rick Rhoden, we win this one 7-3. It was Green's 2nd homer as a Giant, he only hits 3 more. 11 were arrested from a fight in the stands the night before.
1991 at Philadelphia, we're 14 games out of first place, which is too many games to be out of first place, we got 22 hits at the Vet on a Sunday afternoon, with 2 out in the third we were down 3-2, Matt Williams hit a 3 run homer off Danny Cox - we win this game 17-5. 11 total bases for Williams here, he hits a second homer and triples. Meanwhile, Will Clark has 5 hits and 7 RBI. A good Sunday in Philadelphia, the most runs an opponent ever scored at the Vet.
1994 at Montreal, 7.5 out, coming into Montreal riding a 4 game winning streak, but facing Pedro Martinez and an Expos team that was 21 games over .500. We were up 3-1 in the 5th when Darryl Strawberry hit a grand slam off Pedro, we're gonna win this one 8-3. Strawberry played just 29 games with the Giants in '94, had an OPS+ of 110, hit 4 homers, this was his first and his second comes the next day. It's Strawberry's 6th career grand slam. Strawberry also singled and doubled in this one, his fifth game as a Giant and what turns out to be his best Giants performance.
2005 at Los Angeles, were 10 games off the lead, 1-1 in the 7th, 2 on, 2 out, Omar Vizquel hits a 3 run homer on an 0-2 pitch. We're gonna win this one 4-3. Vizquel was a Giant for four years, the first two good enough to hold down the starting shortstop job, the last two pretty abysmal (Vizquel's Giants OPS+ was 75, and while he was still a good fielder, that bat just shouldn't keep you in any lineup). This was his first year in San Francisco, he was 38, came over as a free agent from Cleveland where he had spent 11 seasons. He was our shortstop through '08, after which he went to Texas. Vizquel played until he was 45, his last year was 2012. This was Vizquel's 68th career homer.
2011 at San Diego - it's game 94, we've got a 3 game lead in the west coming out of the break, we spend 4 hours at Petco, It took a 9th inning Aubrey Huff homer off Heath Bell to get us to extras, now it's the 12th, 1-1, bases loaded with 2 out, Mike Fontenot works a walk against Luke Gregerson to give us a 2-1 lead and we'd go on to win 6-2. Bell had pitched in 99 games since giving up a home run.
See you tomorrow. Go Giants!
