What is this all about?
Here are the top 5 August 23 moments in San Francisco Giants history.
Walk off 1964 home vs. Cards, we're 7.5 out, so it's not impossible we make a run, 2-2 in the bottom of the 10th, 2 out - a Dal Maxvill error on a Harvey Kuenn ground ball scores Jesus Alou with the winning run. 5 years and a 101 career OPS+ for Kuenn in San Francisco. He goes to the Cubs in the middle of the next season.
Walk off 1970 home vs. Cubs, we're 19.5 back, Ken Holtzman 1 hit us the day before, I'm a month from birth, Marichal throws a complete game 5 hitter, but we're down 3-2 with 2 out in the 9th, Frank Johnson pinch hits a two run single off of Phil Regan to send everyone home. Frank was bad, so of course he was a Pureblood, six big league seasons, all with the Giants. Career -2.6 WAR, OPS+ 52 as a backup OF. His last season is '71 when he has 4 hits in 49 at bats.
1978 at New York, half a game out on game 127 of this great, great, great 1978 season, 1-1 with 2 out in the 9th, Marc Hill doubles home the go ahead run off of Dale Murray, and 2-1 is the final score. We got Hill as a 22 year old from the Cards after the '74 season for Elias Sosa and Ken Rudolph; he backed up in '75-6 and became the starting catcher in '77. You can't say a guy with 2 and a half WAR in 14 years really had "career seasons" but both offensively and defensively '77 and '78 were the height of his career or at least his Giants run. He spent 6 seasons in San Francisco (OPS+ 74) and we sold him to the Mariners during the '80 season. Let's look at the career Giants OPS+ and PA for each of our starting catchers.
Schmidt 89, 1009
Landrith 84, 641
Bailey 114, 1096
Haller 114, 2744
Dietz 130, 1983 (Dietz could hit him some baseball)
Rader 89, 2011
Hill 74, 1370
Littlejohn 55, 540
May 99, 1384
Brenly 108, 2903
Melvin 74, 842
Kennedy 88, 918
Decker 66, 506
Manwaring 75, 2384 (that's a lot of PA for so little bat)
Lampkin 90, 290
Wilkins 88, 393
Johnson 101, 547
Mayne 103, 691
Estalella 105, 466
Santiago 92, 1466
Pierzynski 86, 510
Matheny 75, 662
Alfonzo 84, 387
Molina 89, 1827
Posey 136, 4142
1983 home vs. Phillies, 16.5 out, 1-1 with 2 out in the 8th, Darrell Evans hits a 2 run homer off of Al Holland and 3-1 is the final score. Evans had 414 career homers, which is a ton, this is 258, he only has four more as a Giant. The last two will come against Mike Scott and Orel Hershiser.
2001 at Montreal, a month ago we were 6 and a half out, that's now down to 1.5 (and up 1 in the WC) it's 5-5 in the 9th...but here comes that bad man...Barry Bonds pinch homers off Graeme Lloyd and we're gonna go on to win 10-5. This is number 55 of 73 on the year, Barry hit a dozen homers in August. It's 549 out of 762 on his career. Barry hit 4 pinch homers in his career, this is the third - the first two were against the Giants, off Joe Price in '88 and Bedrosian in '89. His last pinch homer is in 2006 against Billy Wagner. Bobby passes away 2 years from this game to the day.
See you tomorrow. Go Giants!
