BOX SCORE
SAN FRANCISCO ? It was a moment to soak in, and be soaked in.
Small lakes formed between third base and shortstop. Water drained in sheets from both dugouts. The Giants were one out away from completing their second three-game resurrection this postseason, and claiming their fifth NL pennant in 55 seasons since leaving the Polo Grounds, and all anyone could think was, ?Get me inside and out of this rain!?
?No big deal,? bench coach Ron Wotus said. ?We were all going to get wet after the game, so it didn?t matter.?
The Giants did make it back to their clubhouse after Sergio Romo got a pop-up from Matt Holliday, series MVP Marco Scutaro saw it through the fat drops and then he punched the sky as they celebrated a 9-0 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals at AT&T Park.
[BAGGS' INSTANT REPLAY: The Giants win the pennant]
Then it was time to get good and soaked indoors. Sergio Romo scampered about, holding a souvenir newspaper and yelling, ?The Giants win the pennant!? Ryan Vogelsong got blasted with eye-stinging champagne as a ski visor the size of night-vision goggles sat atop his head. Outside the ballpark, thousands of car horns blared and a city buzzed once again over their focused, passionate team that held onto belief when everyone else let it slip like a curveball in the rain.
There was no dampening this party.
?That just didn?t make any sense,? said winning pitcher Matt Cain, and we think he was talking about the rain, and not a team that has now rattled off six win-or-go-home victories against the Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds to tie the 1985 Kansas City Royals for the most in a single postseason.
They did it by outscoring the Cardinals 20-1 over the final three games ? a Barry Zito gem at Busch Stadium that proved to be the turning point, followed by determined outings from Vogelsong and Cain in front of the loudest crowd in baseball.
They did it with a bullpen that allowed a grand total of two runs over the six elimination games.
They did it by relying on Scutaro, who hit .500 to earn NLCS MVP honors, and Pablo Sandoval, who was at his irrepressible best when the Giants needed him most.
And they did it by refusing to let anyone count them out.
?We?re a little numb right now, to be honest, with our backs against the wall as long as they?ve been and to do this,? said Giants manager Bruce Bochy, after his gang of Gideons blew their horns. ?This is a special group. They have that ?never say die? attitude. They didn?t want to go home, and they found a way to get it done.
?These guys just got on track at the right time. It?s all about pitching. It starts on the hill. And I think Zito just sent a sense of confidence throughout the staff that we can do this, and they followed each other.?
Bochy will have to figure out a Game 1 starter to oppose the Tigers? incredible Justin Verlander (can there be any doubt it?s Zito?) as well as a designated hitter for Games 3, 4 and 5 of the World Series at Detroit. Those are probably not the questions he had in mind when the Giants arrived in Cincinnati two weeks ago, down 0-2 in the series. When Bochy presented the lineup card to Reds manager Dusty Baker that day, he said something along the lines of, ?We?re embarrassed. We hope we can give you half a game today.?
The Giants somehow managed to win a Game 3 in which Homer Bailey allowed one hit and struck out 10, and then rattle off two more in a ballpark where the Reds hadn?t been swept in a three-game series all season. And after losing three of the first four to the Cardinals, the Giants had to do it all over again.
The Cardinals had their own magical ability to cheat death, with six elimination victories over this postseason and last. Yet the hitters who put together so many smart, hungry and amazing at-bats to erase a 6-0 deficit in Washington were never able to land a kill shot against the Giants.
By the end, it was obvious: The Giants had taken a professional, polished opponent and gotten into their domes. They found their weakness ? an appetite for high fastballs ? and overfed them like Perigord geese.
?There?s adjustments all the time,? said Giants catcher Buster Posey, ?and I just think the pitchers did a great job making those adjustments.?
Not only did the Giants win the first Game 7 in their all-time history, but they clinched their first postseason series in front of the home fans since the 2002 NLCS ? also against the Cardinals.
Mike Matheny was the St. Louis catcher who couldn?t reach back to tag David Bell as the Giants walked off with the pennant. This time, Matheny was the Cardinals? rookie manager delivering the concession speech in the interview room.
?It?s about the team that?s hot and we got on a cold streak,? Matheny said. ?We got to this point by being the team that?s hot, but we just couldn?t make it happen these last two games. We tip our hats to the Giants. They had all aspects of their game going, and capitalized on opportunities.?
Kenny Lofton was the player whose single brought home Bell. On Monday night, Lofton threw the ceremonial first pitch. But unlike that series, there were no late lead changes, no late-inning drama. The team that scored first won six of seven games.And so the Giants didn?t merely take possession of the NL pennant by badgering Kyle Lohse?s flat stuff and hit-me slider in three innings. They purse snatched it.
And they didn?t just pitch their way through this three-game gauntlet. They mesmerized the Cardinals so thoroughly that when Matt Cain made mistakes at the belt, he didn?t pay for them. An absolutely masterful defensive game ensured it, with shortstop Brandon Crawford?s backpedaling, leaping catch of Lohse?s line drive in the second inning serving as the cover art for that album.
?That,? said Cain, ?was a real, real bad pitch by me.?
Crawford knew it was over his head. And if he didn?t catch it, he knew two runs would score to put the Cardinals ahead.
"I didn?t think I could get it,? Crawford said. ?I couldn?t really turn. I just had to go straight up.
?Everything slowed down. You feel like you?re in the air a little longer than you probably are.?
By the end, after Scutaro raised his NLCS average back to .500 and Sandoval barreled up a few more pitches and Hunter Pence hit the freakiest bases-clearing, broken-bat hit you?ll ever see, only the finishing touches remained.And as a sellout crowd prepared to erupt in celebration, the skies opened up.
Javier Lopez stood on the mound in the ninth, gamely trying to keep the ball dry. Infielders stepped out of rapidly forming puddles. At second base, Scutaro tipped back his head, closed his eyes and opened his mouth, in a cinematic pose.
It was the cleansing sensation of freedom. Their backs are not against the wall any longer. Now the World Series is coming to San Francisco, and the Giants are free to move in any direction.
?The best part was how our fans were cheering it,? Pence said. ?They were cheering the downpour.?At shortstop, Crawford, with no kayak at his convenience, wondered how he would ever manage to field a ground ball and throw to first base.
?It kind of summed up the whole postseason,? Crawford said. ?It never rains like that in San Francisco. A little mist, maybe. There?s standing water all over the place. I didn?t know if I?d have been able to make a play.?
Said Vogelsong, as he watched the Old Testament-quality storm from the relative security of the dugout: ?I was praying, `Please, please, let us get a pop up, or a strikeout. Please.?
Sergio Romo got Matt Holliday, of all people, to hit one in the air. Scutaro saw a speck of white through a sky of water.
?Please, I?ve got to catch this ball,? Scutaro told himself. ?I got kind of lucky. When he hit it, the rain stopped a little bit. A couple minutes earlier, maybe I don?t catch it.?
He did, and the Giants drenched themselves outdoors, indoors, and everywhere in between.
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