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Yesterday
Here are the top 5 July 6 moments in San Francisco Giants history
1966 home vs. St Louis, we're 18 over .500 and 1.5 up in the NL, down 2-0 in the 8th, 2 on, 2 out, Willie Mays hits a 3 run homer off Don Dennis as we are gonna win this one 3-2. This is the year it starts to slip for Mays, he's 35 years old - the year before he led the majors in everything, homers, OPS+, total bases, his 185 OPS+ at the age of 34 was the high mark of his career, but this is the first step down, the OPS+ drops to to 149, the homers drop to 37, they'll drop again the following season. He's still great, he's still Willie Mays, but the four best seasons of his life were the prior four seasons, this is the 8th best - still worth 8 and a half WAR, he finished third in the MVP race - but from the distance of history you can see that this is the year it starts to happen.
1972 at Philadelphia, we're 16 games under .500 and 16 games out of first in the west (the Phillies were worse, 21 under .500 - this unattractive matchup had less than 5500 paid on a Thursday night at the Vet) two outs in the 10th, Tito Fuentes triples home two runs off Woody Fryman and we win the game 6-4. Fuentes (one of the last players out of Cuba prior to the embargo) finished third in the Rookie of the Year race in '66 as our shortstop (Tommy Helms won) he moved to second in '67 but couldn't hit enough to stay with the big club and spent much of the next 2 seasons in the minors. Fuentes was a utility player in '70, although he got a ton of at bats, and in '71 took over at second base where he stayed through the '74 season, never really hitting much but fielding well enough to make him reasonable at the position, if not particularly helpful. We send him to the Padres for Derrel Thomas after the '74 season. Thomas then takes over at second in '75 and '76, Rob Andrews gets the job in '77, Madlock in '78 and '79, he's dealt for Rennie Stennett who is our second baseman in '80, and then in '81 we sign Joe Morgan.
1985 at Chicago, we're 19 games under .500 and just a million games out of first place, 16 games out, we trailed 4-3 in the 8th but a Manny Trillo homer tied it up - and at 4-4 in the 9th a Chris Brown homer off of Lee Smith puts us up 5-4 in a game we'd win 6-4. Trillo was both a former and future Cub, he finished third in the Rookie of the Year race in '75 as Cub second baseman, we got him 9 years later as a 33 year old in '84, signing as a free agent to replace Joe Morgan as our starter at second in '84 and '85 (Trillo is the bridge between Morgan and Robby Thompson) and in the offseason we're going to trade him to the Cubs. He couldn't hit for us (particularly this year) but caught the ball okay.
1989 at Pittsburgh, we're 15 games over .500 with a 1.5 game lead in the west, John Smiley goes all 10 innings for the Bucs, allowing only 8 baserunners, it's 1-1 with 2 out in the top of the 10th when Brett Butler homers to right with what turns out to be the game winner. It's Butler's second of three seasons as the Giants center fielder and leadoff hitter. This is Butler's 35th career homer and the only one he'd ever hit in extra innings. Butler hit 13 homers as a Giant.
Walk off 2011 home vs. Padres, it's game 88 on the season so we have hit the back half, and despite a 3 game losing streak we maintain a one game lead in the west. It took 4 hours, in the bottom of the 14th, Nate Schierholtz broke a 5-5 tie with a walk off homer off of Pat Neshek. It was a big day for Nate, who added a second homer and a double. Schierholtz was our starting right fielder in both '10 and '11, we sent him to the Phillies in a deadline deal in '12 as part of the Pence trade. This was his 15th career home run and the only walk off he'd ever hit.
See you tomorrow. Go Giants!
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