The Occasional Tendown Nov 25-Dec 8 2012

Dear Internet:

Have you read Gone Girl?  If you haven't read Gone Girl, don't even finish this week's Tendown; Gone Girl's so good you don't want it to stop.  You're wasting valuable Gone Girl time by continuing even to read this sentence.  If you make it past the picture I'm going to assume you've read Gone Girl.




145 is here. This is Tendown 146.

(At #11 is the winner of the Amazing Race.  If you don't want it spoiled, don't go that far)

1. Costas



Gun control has become the new third rail; Bob Costas has been gliding through professional broadcasting since the 1970s and now he's Hanoi Jane.

Two elements of this interest me (1) you haven't seen a major American sporting event since 9-11 that wasn't a sloppy kiss to the military industrial complex, so let's hold off on the "stick to football" images.  The only wall of separation between politics and sports that anyone ever wants is between sports and political views that you don't hold and (2) Bob Costas always makes political statements.  Costas has been on the front line of the declaration that union intransigence is largely to blame for the "steroid era" (which, he also argues, renders the accomplishments of the players suspected invalid) that the legacy of Marvin Miller, who passed away a week prior to the murder-suicide that prompted Costas's commentary, includes a labor/management hostility that harmed baseball and prevented union leadership from capitulating as quickly as should they have on drug testing.

That's not perceived as political, arguing that a monopolistic employer in an entertainment industry should have the power to conduct suspicionless bodily searches of its labor force and that a union which would balk at that is excessively confrontational. It's not perceived as political because its so ubiquitous - of course private employers should gather the urine (or blood - how can we find out about HGH without blood!) of their employees.  Since 1987, the percentage of private sector employers engaging in drug testing is up 140%; it's an area of what we previously thought of as private space, like employers requiring polygraphs or personality tests, that we've just ceded with very little fight to corporate power.

Your phone and computer use can be monitored; you can be told not to smoke when you're in your own home; cameras can be installed in every corner of your workplace; you can be fired for what you read, for your facebook posts; you can be, as we found out in the most recent election, told for whom you should vote if you'd like to remain employed.

Most of us don't have union protection - the decline in union membership is (I'd suggest) causally related not only to the increased encroachment in personal space taken by private employers but to our thirty year stagnation in real wages of the working class and unprecedented upward redistribution of wealth and accompanying political influence.  But baseball players do have a union- and because of Marvin Miller they had robust protection; too robust for the sports intelligentsia led by people like Bob Costas, who used Miller's death to criticize the degree to which the baseball union acted as impediment to drug testing.

No one noticed.  I have no image to accompany the line "stick to baseball Bob - and leave our bodily fluids alone".  That's because the political content of the pro drug test/anti union view offered in sports analysis is hidden in plain sight right along with the all of those Blue Angels flyovers.  Costas drew heat for saying "gosh, there sure are a lot of guns in the US" because any statement outside of the most rabidly right wing view on gun ownership is now considered outside of mainstream political thought.  The answer given by Democrats to the charge "Obama's trying to take away our guns" has been, "not in any way."  That answer's true.  It's not going to save any lives, but it's true.

Perhaps the value of drug testing those who operate nuclear power plants outweighs the loss of privacy enough to balance the equities in favor of that testing (although you'd probably still want union leadership to fight it; because if union leadership can't put your interests first, then who will?) but determining if a ball hit 400 feet would have been hit 390 feet without the benefit of steroids probably doesn't reach that level of national importance (and certainly shouldn't for union officials elected by the membership to assert the very rights that they were asserting).  The head of the Baseball Writers Association of America  is Susan Slusser; her argument that PED users should not be in the Hall of Fame is that the ballot instructs voters to consider:

                                         "integrity, sportsmanship, character"

and that PED use would appear to be disqualifying.  That's the Costas approach as well, "when in doubt, keep them out."

That's doubt over steroids, and presumably human growth hormone - which are politically chosen to be the "bad" performance enhancers, as opposed to amphetamines, a litany of painkillers, stem cell injections, beta blockers, Lasik, and a gaggle of lotions and potions that baseball players have been having applied to them since the 1800s.  All of those, deliberately selected to enhance performance, are given the label "good" performance enhancers and therefore fine - you can shoot a guy up with an epidural on the on deck circle but rubbing "the cream or the clear" is enough to mean someone's entire career effectively did not happen.

That seems a challenging distinction - but Slusser makes it:

There is something about hiding in a bathroom and injecting an illegal substance that alters body chemistry that seems so much more subversive and character warping. There is great secrecy and shame associated with steroid use, because it is so clearly wrong. Players know they are doing something dishonest and illegal. There was never, ever that sense with amphetamines.
 Amphetamines, see, were illegal to take, and certainly enhanced performance, but it was done out in the open - so it's fine.  They could pop them right in the training room - they didn't have to do them in a (shudder) bathroom stall.  Politics isn't politics if its in plain sight.  Speed was out in the open, therefore it couldn't have been wrong.

Consider the results of the statutory construction Slusser gives to the language of the character clause in the Hall of Fame ballot: even if we accept that the good PED/bad PED distinction, we're left with the historical truth that confessed cheats like Gaylord Perry, known Klansmen and confessed murderers like Ty Cobb, and guardians of the segregated framework that warped baseball statistics far more than any drug ever taken like Cap Anson are all in the Hall of Fame - but Barry Bonds won't be, because he took a prescription drug without a prescription in the wrong part of the clubhouse.  You want to encapsulate a hundred thirty years of major league baseball in 3 words: Segregation, Speed, Steroids - and it's only a few names chosen to be tied to the last one whose careers are wiped out.

Finally, a thought I've yet to hear verbalized, meaning that it's by definition unreasonable.

If we were to accept the sports analysts argument that we must consider "integrity, sportsmanship, character" when making out the Hall of Fame ballot - why doesn't that ever work in someone's favor?  Where is the Slusser column that JT Snow, a mediocre ballplayer but a helluva good guy, deserves to be in the Hall of Fame?  Who showed more character than Curt Flood - standing alone to challenge a system in which baseball players were chattel?  If the character clause is really how we are judging the merits of who deserves Hall of Fame inclusion, as opposed to selecting the very best players who ever lived, then why is that not ever reflected in the voting in any way beyond sportswriters just enacting retribution or attempting to maintain professional relevance in a world that has passed them by?

2. 20 Years Ago Yesterday

20 years ago yesterday the greatest baseball player in the history of the National League saved baseball in the city of San Francisco by signing with the Giants. I wish I could say I wasn't going to financially support the Giants until the organization properly acknowledged Bonds's contributions with a statue like the one they did of Mays, but Christmas is coming and I've got World Series merch to buy.

46 years ago his dad was making 6 grand a year playing in our outfield, that was the year Marvin Miller became head of the players union.

The Hall of Fame without Bonds and Miller is just a room with plaques.

3. Don't Go Hunting with Robin Yount


Maybe we need a gun control commentary (or a review of his hall of fame membership) about Robin Yount.

4. Politics is Everywhere
A good piece about the ubiquity of micro-militarism.

To maintain support for militarism on a large scale, people must be propagandized.  They must be made afraid of alleged enemies abroad; they must be told, as often as possible, that the U.S. is, unlike all other empires in history, concerned only about promoting freedom and democracy when it uses military force; they must be led to see military service—of which the essence is obedience, not courageous independence—as noble and heroic.

Some of the cultural practices through which this management of consciousness occurs are easy to see.  The martial-spirited national anthem is sung en masse before sporting events.  Military jets are flown over crowded stadiums.  College basketball games are held on air force bases and aircraft carriers.  Films and TV shows (e.g., “Stars Earn Stripes”) celebrate the skill and virtue of U.S. soldiers.  G.I. Joes and other military toys fill whole aisles in big box stores.

Micro militarism is harder to see.  An individual instance can look like nothing more than an expression of support for people who have given several years of their lives, and perhaps their entire futures, for national service.  The intentions behind many acts of micro militarism are good.  But intentions do not determine consequences.

When militarism is squeezed into the small cultural spaces of everyday life, we are subtly reminded, again and again, that war and violence and soldiering are normal.  We are thus being taught that war and violence and soldiering are not political matters subject to contention or debate.  The message is that war and violence and soldiering are normal parts of who we are and what we do as a people, and anyone who questions this is beyond the pale—unpatriotic, a traitor.

5. But Don't Rub Christian Slater's Nose in It.
Because Florida rejected his ballot.

6. Half of Republicans Think ACORN Stole the Election for Obama.
To be fair, Republicans believe in lots of things that don't exist.

7. It's Time to Start Thinking About the Academy Awards
This Grantland piece gets you started.

8. Kobashi

The greatest professional wrestler who ever lived, Kenta Kobashi, announced his retirement yesterday.

I watched four star matches since last we spoke:

Elgin v. Richards: ROH TV, December 4
Nakajima v. Tanaka: Diamond Ring, September 4 1/2
Low Ki v. Devitt NJPW, November 4
Nakamura v. Anderson NJPW November 4

9. Have You Read?  Do You Know?

They had a Freaks and Geeks reunion.  Here's the oral history.  Here's what would have happened to the characters.

10.  Just 'cause...



Special Bonus #11

Yay Beekmans!  

That's all for this time.  I'll be back next time.  If there is a next time...

Your pal,

Jim

NFL Picks Dec 9 2012

Last week is here. I'm 92-83-2

My Bowl picks will be next week; I'm over .500 ATS in each of the 4 Bowl seasons picking in this space.

Redskins -2.5 Balt win
Panthers +3.5 Falcons win

94-83-2

The 2012 San Francisco Giants Postseason - Part 2

Part I was here.

When we last left, the 2012 San Francisco Giants had become the first team to win a National League Division Series after trailing 2-0 to earn a spot in the NLCS against the defending World Champion Cardinals.  This was the first time in over half a century that the previous two World Series Champs had met in the postseason. 

The Cards were the better club, not by a lot, but with a five game regular season Pythagorean advantage, if you were picking, even if you were an unrepentant Giants fan, you’d pick St Louis. 

And after the first four games, with the Giants down 3-1 and Barry Zito on the mound, it looked like you were right.

The 4^th youngest starter ever to win a World Series game is Madison Bumgarner, and he got the ball in Game One.  For most of the season that would have been appealing, in his 8 starts between July 13 and August 20 Bumgarner had 56 innings pitched and gave up 12 earned runs (1.93 ERA) – but on August 20 Bumgarner threw 123 pitches and seemed to leave his arm on the Dodger Stadium mound.  

In his final seven starts of the season he pitched 36.2 innings giving up 24 earned runs (5.97).  The Reds smacked him around in Game 2 of the NLDS and here he was again.

Six earned runs in less than 4 innings later, he was out of the game and we had dropped Game One.

2011 World Series MVP David Freese hit a two run homer in the second, and even though Bumgarner escaped without further harm after putting two more runners on, we went to the bottom of the inning with only a 31% win expectancy.  If there’s one message I’d like you to take from these recap pieces, it’s that you want to score first in a baseball game. 

The score was unchanged going to the 4^th, and you already know that’s turning out badly – doubles by Daniel Descalso and Pete Kozma. Single by Mr. Chief Justice Jon Jay (I’ve never actually heard anyone call Jay that, but they should) and a homer by the man every Giants fan expected would beat us to death in this series, Carlos Beltran (he was our deadline deal in 2011; he was fine, but given his age and contract status our giving up Zach Wheeler, the top prospect in the organization, was a prima facie crappy decision) made it 6-0, the Cards win expectancy was 96%, Bumgarner was out of the game and we were effectively down in the series.

The Giants fought back in the bottom; singles by Marco Scutaro/Hunter Pence/Brandon Belt got us a run, a triple by Gregor Blanco/double by Brandon Crawford got us 3 more, and it was 6-4 with Tim Lincecum, who seemed to return to form in his NLDS relief appearances, coming to the mound.

Lincecum was good again – two hitless innings – but we only had two harmless singles left in our bats – and 6-4 was the final.

27 home innings in the playoffs – the Giants had led in none of them.

In 2009 Ryan Vogelsong had a 4.54 ERA for the Orix Buffaloes.

In 2012 he started Game Two of the NLCS.

And he was up early, Angel Pagan became only the second man ever with two leadoff homers to begin a game in postseason history; an advantage the Giants relinquished in the second, when Chris Carpenter doubled home Kozma.  1-1 into the 4^th when Belt blooped a double/Blanco poked a single/Carpenter threw a ground ball away/Pagan walked to load the bases with two outs/Marco Scutaro hit a single to left that cleared the bases when it was kicked by Matt Holliday.

Earlier, Scutaro was leveled by a Holliday takeout slide that had the series taken a different turn would have marked the Cardinal left fielder as one of the great villains in Giants lore.  But now it was 5-1 through 4 and with a 92% win expectancy the Giants were about to level the NLCS at 1.  Vogelsong went 7, never really getting touched, and the Giants added two in the 8^th on a single by Ryan Theriot.  Theriot replaced Scutaro, making this the first time in postseason history that two players at the same position for the same team drove in multiple runs in the same game. 

I time shift virtually everything I see on television; when you set a DVR for a baseball game the default time is for a three hour recording.  I always bump that an extra hour. 

Game 3 of the NLCS ended nearly 7 hours after it began. 

Matt Cain v. Kyle Lohse in St Louis for Game 3; San Francisco scored first – a third inning leadoff single by Pagan/double by Scutaro/groundout by Sandoval scored a run and made it 1-0.  Beltran beat us again, even from the bench; an injury kept him out of the lineup in Game 3 and his replacement, Matt Carpenter, hit a two run homer that flipped the game in the bottom of the third. We left two on in the fourth, the fifth, the seventh – they tacked on a third run just before the nearly 3 and a half hour delay and we never put another runner on base. 

The winner of Game 3 wins a best of 7 series over 70% of the time.  And that was St Louis.

We needed Lincecum in Game 4; the two time Cy Young Award winner, the guy with a career ERA under 3 against the Cardinals, the guy who had only given up 3 hits in nearly 9 innings of bullpen in the playoffs thusfar. 

We got the other guy.

Four batters into the game we were down 2-0 (single by Jay/walk by Carpenter/single by Holliday/sac fly), we went into the 2^nd with only a 29% win expectancy and it was time to think about the offseason.  Pence cut the lead in half in the second with a homer but Lincecum didn’t escape the fifth, double by Carpenter, single by Holliday, single by Yadier Molina; we left the inning down 4-1, with only a 12% chance to win the game, and with all of the confidence rebuilding Lincecum did out of the bullpen having unraveled completely – not only were we about to lose to the Cardinals, but both Bumgarner and Lincecum looked to be headed to the winter broken in some indefinable way. 

The Cards cut up the pen to pad the lead, 2 in the 6^th; 2 in the 7^th.  Sandoval hit a two run homer in the 9^th and we were down 3 games to 1. 

With Barry Zito on the mound.

In MLB history, 76 of the postseason series went 3-1.  65 times the team with the lead went on to win.

So that’s where we were.  In St Louis against the defending champs, down 3 games to 1 just a matter of days after crawling back from a 2 games to none hole with three road wins.

Sometimes, I think in a 1.21 jigowatts type of way, of how I would approach sports wagering if I woke up having returned from the future.  Even were I holding the latest edition of Grays Sports Almanac and reading that the 2012 World Series Champions had been the Giants, I’d have a helluva hard time actually putting down all the money in my wallet down 3-1 on the road with Barry Zito the last Giant 

guarding against elimination.

Incidentally, in that scenario do you hook up with teenage Lea Thompson even though she’s your mom?  Where are we on that?  Am I too old to tell that joke?  That’s a new concern; I’ve looked for the funny most of my life, and I recognize that with age I lose my feel for the ball; it’s less that I can’t find what seems funny to me, but more that I can’t be certain that translates to anything that anyone out there might care about.  I used to act when I was an undergrad; a year ago or so was the 20^th anniversary of a show I did that opened up a new theater complex they built on campus.  In the hallways backstage were old cast pictures; I’d look at them sometimes, dated photographs, wondering what  became of those actors, how distant and remote and irrelevant and yesterday they seemed. 

They did a revival of the show I was in for that 20^th anniversary; meaning there was an actor two decades younger than I am playing my part – looking at my photograph, wondering for a fleeting moment what happened to me and then quickly not caring even a tiny bit.  I’m from the past.  I went to college before there was an internet.  I didn’t own a computer all through law school.  I don’t need the DeLorean to go back to the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance, I’m still there, in a fading green room photograph at my alma mater.

With his Cy Young ten years in the rear view mirror, Barry Zito may have felt like he was from the past as he took the mound in Game Five.

He was good enough early, the Cards loaded the bases in the second, but the pitcher, Lance Lynn, ground into a double play.

Lynn, himself, was better – striking out a half dozen of the first eight Giants to come to the plate.

Better, at least, until the fourth, an inning from which Lynn wouldn’t emerge.  Singles by Scutaro/Sandoval led off the inning, an out later, Lynn looked to get an inning ending double play of his own, but threw a Pence chopper off the second base bag that plated the game’s first run.  After the second out, singles by Crawford and Zito (the only bunt single of his career) scored three more; we were up 4 and went into the bottom of the inning with an 87% expectancy to keep the series alive. 

And Zito held it there; St Louis put a man in scoring position in their 4^th, but then not again until the bottom of the 9^th, after Zito had given way to the bullpen and Sandoval had homered for the final margin of 5-0.

I was beginning my senior year of high school in 1987; as a Bay Area transplant living in rural Ohio, the dominant characteristic that people associated with me was my public devotion to all matters San Francisco.  You know Boston Rob from Survivor?  That was me; take away the fame, the couple of million bucks, and the charisma – I was the guy in the Giants cap.  In 1987, for the first time in my life, we were a game away from the World Series, up 3 games to 2 and headed to St Louis needing to win 1 to close it out.

We didn’t.  It was as painful an event as I had gone through in my first 17 years.  The statute of limitations has probably expired on teacher/student gambling, as I may have lost a wager with the varsity basketball coach.

A quarter century later the circumstances were reversed; we were down 3-2 but headed home.  And now I was the varsity basketball coach.

Okay, that part’s untrue, but in the movie version where I travel back in time to bang Lea Thompson, perhaps that’s my character arc.

What is true is that prior to 2012, the number of teams who won 4 road elimination games in the same postseason is none, and it wasn’t anymore. 

What is also true is Game 6 was over early.

Vogelsong struck out 9 to win his second game of the series; a Scutaro walk/Sandoval double/groundout got us started with a run in the first, and we added three the following inning that put it out of reach: Belt triple/Crawford walk/Kozma run scoring error/with two outs a Scutaro double/Sandoval single that made it 4-0 and put our win expectancy at 93%.

The Cards picked up a run in the 6^th, we got it back in the 8^th. 5-1 was the final and we were about to host the first seventh game in San Francisco in 50 years.

Winning Game 6 flipped the math - Over the past 35 postseasons, 14 previous teams had won a Game 6 at home to force a Game 7 with 13 of those 14 teams then going on to win Game 7.

Make that 14 of 15. 

Down 3 games to 1, the Giants outscored the World Champion Cardinals 20-1 in the last three games of the NLCS.  9 of them came in Game 7.

1^st: Pagan single. Scutaro single. Sandoval run scoring groundout.

2^nd: Blanco single.  Moved to second on a groundout. Cain run scoring single.

It’s only the second inning.  It’s only 2-0.  Our win expectancy going to the top of the third was 74%. 

Score first.  This is what I’m saying.

3^rd: Scutaro single. Sandoval double. Posey walk that ended Lohse’s season. 

Hunter Pence then triple hit (not hit a triple, he hit the ball three times) a game ending, bases clearing broken bat ground ball up the middle that knuckled toward the bag in a way that you’re unlikely to see outside of Rose Park in Mishawaka. We tacked on two more and exited the third up 7-0, with a 98% chance to go return to our second World Series in three years.

We got one more in the 7^th and a Belt homer in the 8^th, staving off an increasingly heavy rain long enough to win 9-0. 

Win what? 

The pennant.  The Giants Win the Pennant.  Again.

  

My 2013 MLB/NFL Hall of Fame Ballots

You can pick 10.  I did.

1.       Barry Bonds – the second greatest player ever

2.       Roger Clemens – the second greatest pitcher ever

3.       Mike Piazza – the second greatest catcher ever

4.       Jeff Bagwell

5.       Tim Raines

6.       Alan Trammell

7.       Craig Biggio

8.       Edgar Martinez

9.       Mark McGwire

10.   Rafael Palmeiro

c  The Veteran's ballot has one absolute no brainer, Bill Dahlen.  

   Curt Schilling's on the ballot; he doesn't crack my top 10 so I can't vote for him this year, but he's a Hall of Famer too.  Three men no longer on the ballot - Bobby Grich, Lou Whitaker, Rick Reuschel - all should be Hall of Famers and they would have gotten my vote.  I don't believe anyone else currently on the ballot would get my vote in any season; I think the cut off is between Schilling (in) and Larry Walker (out).


The Pro Football ballot is harder.  At least 4 and no more than 7.

    1. Michael Strahan
    2. Warren Sapp
1  3. Jonathan Ogden
    4. Tim Brown
    5. Cris Carter
    6. Larry Allen
    7. Aeneas Williams
   
   
      I think that's my ballot.  It's tough.  I don't know that any of the semi-finalists are necessarily not Hall of Famers outside of Tasker.  I don't think I'd put Terrell Davis in the HOF.  I don't know that I have a great
      argument for Carter/Brown but not Reed.  I really don't know there's a great argument for Allen and not Shields.  I'm fairly certain about the top 3; I think those three WR all all HOF'ers, as are Allen/Shields and Mecklenburg/Williams.  If I could pick 10 I'd feel better about who was being left off at 11th than I do about
      8th.  I'm still torn among Shields/Allen/Williams for those last two spots.  I've got some of my guys in the semi-finalist list - Roger, Haley, Eddie D.  I think Roger and Charles are both borderline guys; everyone on the rest of the list outside of the guys already mentioned and maybe John Lynch who would be my 11th pick is a borderline guy.  If they got in it would be great and a reasonable selection; if they didn't it's not a Ken Anderson-sized crime.  I have boundless affection for Eddie, I don't know that he's a Hall of Famer. I don't really have any interest in non players in the Hall outside of the most obvious selections.




   

The 2012 San Francisco Giants Postseason - Part I

2010 was the worst year of my life.

My dad died.  My house got foreclosed.  My baseball team won the World Series for the first time ever. 

You wait your whole life to win the World Series – and when you do there isn’t enough room in your brain to enjoy it. 

2012 has been (with apologies to the perfectly reasonable admonition made by Albert Brooks in Broadcast News) the best year of my life. I got married. I left a crappy job to take the best one I ever had.  My baseball team won the World Series. 

It feels pretty good.  If you have the means, you should go to there. 

For those who missed any of the 11 requisite playoff wins, maybe your cable was out for example, I was able to catch each game.  Let’s go to the videotape.  

The Giants lost the first two in the NLDS at home against a superior Reds team (their pythagorean record was solidly better; if you were picking…even if the Giants are your favorite team… you would have picked the Reds to advance) then needed to go to Cincinnati and sweep 3, which the Reds hadn’t allowed all season. 

Season’s over, right?

Matt Cain entered with a postseason scoreless streak of 21+ innings and he got beat in Game One. Cain gave up a 2 run homer to Brandon Phillips in the third.  Baseball’s a data rich endeavor; there’s enough baseball history that we know even that early in a baseball game, that home run gave the Reds a 72% probability that they were going to win the game.  When you’re watching game one of the NLDS and see that Phillips homer; if you say “not really a big deal, it’s the third inning of game one” – you’re wrong, you’re about to go down 1-0.

Which we did – Jay Bruce homered in the 4^th and Cain was gone after five.  Buster Posey, soon to be named NL MVP, homered to lead off the 6^th, but when you’re down 3-1 with no outs in the bottom of the 6^th, you still have only a 22% chance to win the game.  Santiago Casilla took that 3-1 deficit into the ninth inning and expanded it giving up 3 singles and a wild pitch.  Add in a passed ball and the Reds took a 5-1 lead into the bottom of the 9^th.  We loaded the bases with one out against Aroldis Chapman, but only managed a run and lost game one on a Posey strikeout.

That ended a streak of 8 straight Giants Game One postseason victories; San Francisco had never won a playoff series after losing game one and the Giants organization hadn’t done it since ’21.  That’s how quickly a short series can end – Phillips hits that game one 3^rd inning homer and you’re in a hole the franchise hadn’t climbed from in more than 90 years.

And then we got 2 hit and lost Game Two 9-0.

Raise your hand if you had the Giants winning the World Series after Game 2 of the NLDS.  I’m as big a Giants fan as I know, my hands are down.

Well, they’re at the keyboard, but you get the point. The season was over. 

Ryan Ludwick homered off Madison Bumgarner in the second, and when the Reds got 4 singles in the 4^th, scoring 3 more runs, their win probability went up to 89%.  We had only a Brandon Belt single by the top of the 8^th when Cincinnati ripped Jose Mijares and Guillermo Mota for five more runs.  A Posey 9^th inning double was our only other hit of the night.  We were down 2-0 and traveling to Cincinnati.

9-0 was the largest postseason shutout defeat in the 130 year history of the Giants organization.

It’s over.  Right?  Come on.  Only one team ever came back in a five game series after losing the first two at home, the ’01 Yanks.  Our season rested on Ryan Vogelsong, with a career ERA in Cincinnati over 5.00.

We got only one more hit in Game 3 than we did in game 2.  Do you see what I’m saying?  We got 3 hit on the road in an elimination game.

How did the season not end there?

It got bad quick; 3 first inning singles and a walk got the Reds a run and moved them to 64% win probability for the ballgame.

We evened it up without a hit in the third on a walk, a hit by pitch, and a sac fly.  When Vogelsong got through the bottom giving up only a couple of walks, it was the latest point in any game of the series so far that we weren’t losing.

This was not a close series is the point I’m making.  We were getting our ass beat. 

We didn’t get our first hit of the game until a Marco Scutaro single in the 6^th; Scutaro had a terrific last two months since coming over from Colorado, but had done less than zero in the NLDS to that point; a quiet bat in a line of quiet Giants bats.

Jeremy Affeldt took over in the bottom and gave up a couple of baserunners – but that 1-1 tie remained until former Dodgers closer Jonathon Broxton got the ball in the 10^th inning (if you’re unaware – the Giants don’t like the Dodgers.)

So, understand where we are –the Giants were getting one hit in Game 3 after getting two hit in Game 2, but greeted Broxton with back to back singles to open the 10^th, by Posey and Hunter Pence (who was unable to get down a bunt earlier in his at bat). Back to back strikeouts looked to close out our inning – but a passed ball and a Scott Rolen error on a weak Joaquin Arias ground ball scored what would be the winning run.  Scott Rolen is one of the great defensive third basemen of all time; 8 Gold Gloves, over 20 wins above replacement defensively for his career; he’d be a Hall of Fame candidate if the electorate understood the value of playing the type of third base that Rolen played.  But that’s past tense, now Rolen is just a guy hanging onto a job that shouldn’t be his any longer; in this instance, taking advantage of former Giants manager Dusty Baker’s weakness for veterans and playing at the expense of NL Rookie of the Year Candidate Todd Frazier. 

Sergio Romo locked down the bottom of the tenth – and we stayed alive.

We struck out 16 times.  And got only 3 hits.  All singles.  In an elimination game.  On the road. The Giants were 5 for 61 in games 2 and 3 for a batting average I don’t feel like computing, but it’s tiny.

How did the season not end there?

The Wild Card was added in ’95, 21 times a team had gone down 0-2 in the NLDS.  21 times that team had lost the series.

The Reds best pitcher in 2012 was Johnny Cueto, but he got hurt early in Game One, forcing a shuffling of the rotation – that meant using Mike Leake in Game 4 against Barry Zito, one of the all time biggest free agent busts in MLB history.

Leake wasn’t up to it.  He gave up a leadoff homer to Angel Pagan to begin the game. The first postseason leadoff homer in the history of the franchise.

Zito wasn’t up to it.  He walked three in the first to tie the score. 

And it was game on.  Gregor Blanco hit a two run homer in the second, we went up 3-1.

Zito gave one back with a homer to Ludwick, and after a two out walk to Dioner Navarro he was out of the game, replaced by George Kontos, who was replaced an inning later by Jose Mijares, who then gave way, with 2 out and 2 on in the 4^th, to 2 time Cy Young Award winner and the very worst pitcher in the major leagues in 2012, Tim Lincecum. 

He got out of the inning and then we opened it up in the fifth.  Double by Arias.  Double by Pagan. 4-2 Giants.  And when Pagan scored after a sac fly, it was 5-2 Giants and we had an 82% probability to win the game and even the series.

Lincecum got the Reds in order in the bottom, but gave one back in the 6^th.  5-3 good guys headed to the 7^th.

Where we put it out of reach.  Double by Arias.  Double by Scutaro.  Only his second hit of the series. A 422 foot two run homer by Sandoval.  8-3 Giants and that’s the final score.  Lincecum threw both the 7^th and the 8^th, 4+ relief innings with six strikeouts for Lincecum, the winning pitcher for Game Four.

We had 8 extra base hits in Game 4.  More than any game in the regular season.

Winner take all Game 5.  Our first winner take all game in a decade. 

That would be game 7 of the 2002 World Series.  Not a great result that. The guy in the wristbands in the other dugout might remember. 

In 130 seasons the Giants franchise never had a perfect game.  Not Mathewson or Hubbell or Marichal.

If we had gone .500 in 2012, Matt Cain’s perfect game in June against the Astros still would have made it a memorable season.  I assume you’re like me; somewhere around the fifth inning if your guy hasn’t given up a baserunner you start thinking about it and with increased excitement after each out.  And eventually, hundreds/thousands of times, win or lose – that excitement fades.  Matt Cain threw a perfect game in 2012, it was one of the greatest moments in Giants history and it would have made any outcome during the regular season worth it.

But the thing is we didn’t go .500 – we won the NL West and after consecutive road wins had forced a Game 5.  Matt Cain on the mound against public enemy number one for Giants fans dating back to his brash days as a San Diego Padre when he (among other intemperate comments) signed a baseball “I Hate SF” Mat Latos. It wasn’t just rhetoric – Mat Latos has whipped us; 11 career starts and an ERA of 2.19. 

So many deep breaths.

Both sides put two men on in the first – no runs scored.

There wasn’t another hit until the 4^th, when both sides singled – no runs scored.

A dead even game in a dead even series going to the fifth inning of Game 5 – when we ended them.

Blanco single through the left side.

Crawford triple into the right field corner.  His first hit of the series.

An error that made it 2-0.

Scutaro walk.

Sandoval single.  Bases loaded.

Posey hits a 434 foot grand slam.  And it’s 6-0 and over. This was only the 4^th grand slam in a winner take all double elimination game in MLB history. I lived in Ohio for many years and would take a trip to Cincinnati each season to watch the Giants come to town.  I had some crappy nights at Riverfront.  Every single one of them got erased in that moment; in some pocket of the space-time continuum a teenage version of me is taunting that entire Reds crowd.   Loved it.  Loved it. 

Cain gave up 3 and the Reds left two on in both the 7^th and 8^th; Romo gave up 1… in the 9^th  at 6-4, with 1 out, 2 on and Jay Bruce up – there was a real white knuckle “did I celebrate too soon” moment – but the Reds were out of bullets; Romo survived a 12 pitch at bat, and the score held.

Somehow, someway – the Giants were alive.

And nearly as quickly – dead again.  Down 3 games to 1 to the Cardinals with Barry Zito on the mound….

(end of Part I.  A cliffhanger!)