July 10 - Top 5 Moments in San Francisco Giants History

What is this all about?

Yesterday

Here are the top 5 July 10 moments in San Francisco Giants history. I think this is the third time that we've had 5 different decades represented.

1960 home vs. Cubs, we're 8.5 out, we're down 3-0 with 2 out in the 7th, Dave Philley pinch hit a 3 run homer off of Don Cardwell to tie the score.  We'd win it 5-3. Philley was 40 years old in 1960; he broke in with the White Sox in '41, he fought in World War II.

Okay, this is good.  In 1941, one of Philley's teammates was Ted Lyons, now Lyons broke in back in '23, he played with Eddie Collins.  Collins broke in back in '06, he played with Monte Cross.  Cross broke in back in 1892 with Baltimore, a 19 year old John McGraw was on that team, so was George Van Haltren, Van Haltren joined the Giants  in '94, where he played with Roger Conner and Monte Ward, who were on the very first Giants team back in 1883.  This is gonna be good....

  

Original Giants Conner and Ward played with Van Haltren.

Van Haltren played with Cross (and McGraw)

Cross played with Collins.

Collins played with Lyons.

Lyons played with Philley.

Philley, on this 1960 team, played with McCovey.

McCovey, in 1980, played with Bob Knepper.

Knepper, in 1990, played with Will and Matt and Robby - and those 3 all played with Barry in '93.

Barry played with Matt Cain in 2007 - and Matt Cain is, at the time of this writing, a current Giant, in 2017.

135 years of Giants baseball.  There you go.

1979 at Montreal, we're 11 games out of first place, this is a 4 hour game on a Tuesday night in Montreal, it's the 13th inning - bases loaded, 2 out, 7-7, Terry Whitfield gets hit by a Woodie Fryman pitch to drive in the go ahead run.  We win 11-7.  Whitefield took over the starting left field job in '78, largely kept it until 1980 although began to give up at bats to Larry Herndon eventually.  We opened the decade with Ken Henderson in left, he kept it until '73 when the job belonged to Gary Matthews, in '77 Darrell Evans spent a year as the left fielder and then the job was Whitfield's.

1983 home vs. Chicago, 10.5 out of first, here's a Sunday doubleheader against the Cubs, game one is 3 and a half hours long, Joel Youngblood broke an 8-8 tie with a run scoring single off of Bill Campbell in the 8th.  We won the game 10-8.  This was Youngblood's first season in San Francisco, he played a ton as a superutility guy in '83 and it was by far his best Giants season with the bat, he had a 138 OPS+.  Youngblood spends 6 years in San Francisco, playing more than 600 games as a Giant.

Walk off 1994 home vs. Philadelphia, as it turns out, there's only a month left in the season, we're 8.5 out and looking for a four game sweep of the Phillies, this is our last walk off win of the year, almost 50,000 paid at the Stick for this Sunday afternoon, it took a Darren Lewis 9th inning homer to send the game into extra innings - and in the bottom of the 10th, the score 1-1, Jeff Reed plated Davey Martinez with a 2 out single off Doug Jones. Reed spend 3 years as our backup catcher, this is the second - he was good enough in '93 and '95, but this season was a catastrophe, he hit .175, had an OPS+ of 32.  It's the worst season of his 17 year career.

2004 home vs. Diamonbacks, it's game 88 on the year, we're half a game out of first place, on May 16 we were 8 games out, 6 weeks later we were 3 games up, and this is 2 and a half weeks after that, scoreles with 2 out in the 5th, JT Snow hits a 2 run homer off of Brandon Webb.  We win the game 3-1.  Unfortunately, we never make up that half game, this is as close as we'll get the rest of the way. JT Snow owned Brandon Webb - 10 hits in 25 at bats, that's a .400 BA, 3 of those hits were homers, Snow had a 1.420 lifetime OPS against Webb.

See you tomorrow.  Go Giants!