Affeldt stood by his locker after his save clutching a television screen-grab of the moment. He did not hit the "print" button.
"The coaches tend to do that to me quite a bit," Affeldt said, before launching into his defense with, "Dude, that slider was going to hit me."
This is what winning teams do. They laugh at themselves and one another. They turn negatives into positives. One week into the season, the 5-1 Giants are looking like masters at the trick.
Take Tim Lincecum, who improved to 2-0 and struck out 10, his 20th double-digit strikeout game in 92 big-league starts. He pitched seven innings in a frigid wind following a storm that wiped out the planned 2000 Giants reunion ceremony and delayed the first pitch of the ballpark's 10th-anniversary game by more than four hours.
No biggie for Lincecum. He just rode out the delay with a nap and some Golden Tee.
In the first inning, he surrendered a two-run Brian McCann homer to right-center into the teeth of that wind to spot Atlanta a 2-0 lead. Not once last season did Lincecum allow a homer at AT&T Park.
McCann's shot into the arcade seemed implausible against that wind until Pablo Sandoval crushed his own homer to right in a three-run eighth inning that widened a 3-2 Giants lead.
"Pablo did it later in the game and it went farther, so that made me feel better giving up that one," Lincecum said of McCann's homer, the only runs the Braves scored until Jason Heyward hit his second opposite-field shot in two days, against Affeldt in the ninth.
This game might be remembered less for Lincecum's strikeout wizardry - he fanned the side in the seventh to end his 108-pitch night - or even the lousy weather, but rather as the night that Sandoval finally found his stroke in 2010.
Sandoval was in the thick of all three scoring rallies. In the fourth, he tripled into Mirabelli Alley almost 10 years to the inning after the former Giants catcher tripled into the same gap to inspire its name. Sandoval then scored on an Aubrey Huff single.
Sandoval also singled to start a two-out rally against Kenshin Kawakami in the sixth. Huff walked, Mark DeRosa drove in Sandoval with his first home hit as a Giant, and the Giants took a lead when Heyward's ensuing throw bounced off a sliding Sandoval at the plate for an error that allowed Huff to score, too.
"I think this game for me is the start of the turnaround for me to help the team," said Sandoval, who said he liked playing in conditions seemingly better suited for a polar bear than a Panda.
Even without much help from Sandoval, the Giants won five of their six games. It was one week out of 26, but a very promising one.
"There's a lot of baseball left, but we did what we wanted to do," manager Bruce Bochy said. "We got off to a good start. I hope it will carry us for a while."
Briefly: Rich Aurilia told several reporters he formally has retired. ... Eugenio Velez made a nice over-the-shoulder catch of Troy Glaus' wind-blown popup to end the eighth inning. ... Lincecum had to bench the only cap he has worn in the majors because the Giants are wearing orange-billed caps on Sundays this year.
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