Yesterday
Here are the the top 5 June 29 moments in San Francisco Giants history.
1959 at Dodgers, the second San Francisco team nears the mid way point of the season, 2 games out of first place and starting a series in LA against a Dodger team standing in between them and the first place Braves, this one goes 4 hours, Jim Davenport leads off the 13th with a homer off of Stan Williams to put us up 5-4, we'd win the game 6-4. 13 Giants seasons, 1501 games, never played for any other team. This was a particularly bad year with the bat for Davenport, he got 509 plate appearances and had a 74 OPS+.
1961 at Philadephia, in the middle of a 5 game series with the Phillies, the night before we played a five hour 15 inning game that ended in a tie, we're 4 games out of first playing a Thursday doubleheader, this one also goes extra innings - Willie Mays leads off the 10th with a homer off Frank Sullivan to put us up 8-7 and that will be the final score. Mays hit 3 in this one, career homers 297-99. He'll hit #300 at Wrigley in less than a week.
Walk off 1962 home vs. Phillies, we're 24 games over .500, but incredibly, half a game out of first place for this one, it goes a dozen innings and Billy O'Dell pitches every one of them, Ed Bailey ends it in the bottom of the 12th with a homer off of Jack Baldschun. We got Bailey from the Reds (he once threw out Mays trying to steal 3 times in one game) the year before for Bob Schmidt and Don Blasingame, an in season starting catcher swap. Bailey came in hitting, a 121 OPS+ in '62 and then a 167 OPS+ in '63. Coming off that '63 season we moved him to the Braves in the Felipe Alou deal. We got him back a year later in a deal for the winning pitcher from this game, O'Dell - and then traded him again, just a couple of months into the '65 season to the Cubs.
1973 at Houston, we're 11 over but 5.5 games out of first, trailing 3-1 in the 7th when Bobby Bonds hits a pinch grand slam off Jim Ray to put us up 5-3, we'd tack on 9 in the 9th and win it 14-3. It's Bobby's 2nd of 7 career slams, his first was his first ever homer, five years before almost to the day, against the Dodgers.
Walk off 1980 home vs. Dodgers, we walked off LA the day before in a 3 and a half hour game and this is the first half of a Sunday doubleheader, with 2 out and a 3-3 score in the bottom of the 9th, Willie McCovey wins the game with a pinch hit double to right-center off Bobby Castillo to score Rennie Stennett. It's the last great moment of his career, McCovey had already announced his reitrement and would play his last game a week later.
See you tomorrow. Go Giants!
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