What is this all about?
Yesterday
Here are the top 5 July 13 moments in San Francisco Giants history. 5 different decades.
Walk off 1958 home vs. Braves, second place Giants - first place Braves, we're one game out in our first ever San Francisco season, it's a Sunday afternoon at Seals, with an out in a 5-5 game in the bottom of the 9th, Felipe Alou singles home the game winning run off of Ernie Johnson. The Giants signed Alou 3 years prior, he comes west with the club and this is his rookie season, in fact - this is Alou's 29th game in the bigs.
Walk off 1967 home vs. Houston, 5 games out, coming back from the break, a McCovey homer in the 9th got us to extras, in the 10th Hal Lanier scored the winning run on a Sonny Jackson error. It's McCovey's 213th homer, McCovey hit 8 career homers in the bottom of the 9th to either tie the game or put his team ahead. The next day, Eddie Mathews hits his 500th career homer against us.
1995 home vs. Houston, we're in the midst of a swoon, we were 1.5 back less than two weeks before but now return from the All Star break six games out of first. We go a dozen innings against the Astros, ending with a Bonds walk off single off of Jim Dougherty to win it 6-5. Just another run of the mill 170 OPS+ for Bonds in '95. If you're looking for his decline phase it never comes, Barry never has an OPS+ below 150 once he turns 25. He leads the majors in OBP as a 42 year old in 2007 and can't find a job in 2008.
2000 home vs A's, the first year at the new ballpark, we're 3.5 games out of first and hosting Oakland, a Bonds homer had us up 2-1 in the 6th, the A's had the tying run at second - Russ Ortiz got Matt Stairs to fly out deep to left, and then Barry threw out Miguel Tejada trying to tag up and go to to third. We won the game 4-2. Ortiz was 21 when we drafted him in '95, he came up in '98 and was moved into the rotation. This is his worst San Francisco campaign, an ERA+ of 85. After '02 he was sent to Atlanta for Damian Moss and Merkin Valdez, he won 21 with the Braves in '03 to finish 4th in the Cy Young race and completely fell of the cliff in 2005, he never approached even decency after '04. Ortiz came back to San Francisco for a dozen inauspicious games in '07 and actually finished his big league career as a Dodger in 2010.
2014 home vs. Diamondbacks, 9 games over .500 and trailing by a half game, a month earlier we had a ten game lead and now that's all gone, Sunday afternoon rubber match against the Snakes, down 1-0 with 2 out in the 5th - Buster Posey hits a grand slam off of Vidal Nuno, we win this one 8-4. As of this writing Posey has 4 career grand slams, this was his second (Piazza hit 14, so Posey won't catch him). Madison Bumgarner also hit a grand slam in this one, the first batterymates to hit slams in the same game.
See you tomorrow. Go Giants!
