SFGate/San Francisco Chronicle
The national press gave the Giants little chance to win this World Series and no chance to beat Cliff Lee on Wednesday. When that was conveyed to Matt Cain, the laconic starter said, "We'll just have to write a different story."
If 43,601 had not crammed into AT&T Park to witness the tale the Giants penned in Game 1, few would have believed it. They hounded and pounded Lee off the mound in a six-run fifth inning that shot them to an 11-7 win against the Rangers, the "hitting team" in this series.
What an unexpected score in such an unexpected season.
"If you threw a hundred bucks on it in Vegas, you'd be a millionaire," Aubrey Huff said.
The Giants got an important leg up. The Game 1 victor has won six of the last seven World Series and 11 of the last 13, though the Giants know the short end of that history. They took the opener in 2002.
Lee had not lost in eight postseason starts. This postseason, he had surrendered two runs over 24 innings. So forgive the rest of America if it failed to understand how a Giants team that scrimps and scraps for every run hammered the left-hander for seven (six earned) in 4 2/3 innings.
Lee had not allowed more than three extra-base hits in any postseason start. Freddy Sanchez matched that by the fifth inning in becoming the first Giant since Hall of Famer Monte Irvin in 1954, who attended the game, to collect four hits in a Series game.
The Giants broke a 2-2 tie with the six-run fifth, their biggest inning in a World Series since 1937. Two-out singles by Cody Ross and Huff gave the Giants a 5-2 lead and chased Lee, whose butt probably had not reached the bench when Juan Uribe slammed a three-run homer against side-winding reliever Darren O'Day.
Giants hitters did not seem overly impressed by their destruction of Lee, though they must have seen his comments Tuesday in which he dismissed their hitting prowess.
"When all is said and done, we just wanted to be up 1-0," Ross said. "It didn't matter if it was Cliff Lee or whoever. He is one of the best pitchers in the postseason, and we beat him."
Manager Bruce Bochy was so pumped about the Series he came to the park at 10 a.m. Two innings into the game, he probably wished he had slept in - until Game 2.
When Bochy's head hit the pillow Wednesday night, he had his first victory as a World Series manager.
Tim Lincecum went to sleep a winner after a shaky start. He allowed single runs in the first two innings with some bizarre occurrences on the field. He botched a rundown in the first inning when he thought two Rangers were standing on third base when there was one. He also surrendered the first run of the Series on a Vladimir Guerrero single off his left shin, the first of two balls to nail him.
For the first two innings, the Rangers looked like World Series pros, though this was their first Series game in franchise history, and the Giants looked nervous. Lincecum did not dispute that.
"Maybe a little bit, because it is the World Series," he said. "It's a first for a lot of us and a different kind of atmosphere. But you try to use what you've been through these last couple of series to help you through it."
The turning point was the third inning when two Texas mistakes allowed the Giants to tie the game 2-2. Third baseman Michael Young booted Edgar Renteria's leadoff grounder and Lee hit Andres Torres with an 0-2 pitch. Sanchez more than compensated for a pair of earlier baserunning gaffes by lining an RBI double into the left-field corner. Buster Posey then tied it with a single.
As Lincecum found his groove, the Giants busted loose in the fifth. Torres hit a one-out double and scored on Sanchez's third double. With two outs, the Giants went ballistic.
Pat Burrell was the only Giants position player without a hit, but he drew a walk, which might be tougher against Lee. Ross and Huff KO'd Lee with singles ahead of Uribe's home run.
Huff said the Giants' free-swinging ways helped against Lee.
"He's a strike-thrower," Huff said. "You don't want to get down 0-1, 0-2. Then he gets to the good stuff."
Though the Giants allowed seven runs, they held MVP candidate Josh Hamilton hitless in four at-bats. In fact, the 3-4-5 combo of Hamilton, Guerrero and Nelson Cruz went 2-for-13.
The Giants scored three runs in the eighth on an RBI double by Travis Ishikawa and scoring singles by Nate Schierholtz and Sanchez, the rally aided by two Guerrero errors in right field. They had 14 hits and led 11-4 but still went to Brian Wilson for the final two outs as the Rangers reminded everyone with three runs what havoc their offense can wreak.
When the 18-run affair was done, Wilson might have coined a motto to supplant "Giants baseball: torture."
"It's postseason baseball," he said. "Anything goes."
Trumping aces
The Giants have fared well against two pitchers hyped as nearly unbeatable in this postseason.
Cliff Lee, Rangers
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