Henry Schulman SFGate/San Francisco Chronicle
The Giants serenaded their thirsty fans with the perfect anthem before the first pitch of the 2010 World Series. The song they piped through AT&T Park was U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."
The search lasted more than half a century and seemed so futile at times. Finally, the team and its long-pained fans have found what they were looking for. For the first time since the Giants moved to San Francisco in 1958, they are the champions of baseball.
The Giants won the 2010 World Series against the Texas Rangers four games to one, ending it with a 3-1 victory on a slightly chilly Monday evening at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.
The unlikely hero for a Series winner that few predicted was Edgar Renteria, an injury-plagued shortstop from Colombia who declared he expected to retire after the season and whose two-year $18.5 million contract was ridiculed because the Giants gave it to a player thought to be washed up.
Renteria joined the pantheon of World Series greats when he hit a three-run homer against Cliff Lee with two outs in the seventh inning to break a 0-0 tie.
Actually, Renteria already had a seat in the temple. In 1997, then 21 years old and a big-leaguer for less than two seasons, he won a World Series for Florida with an 11th-inning single in Game 7 against Cleveland.
Tim Lincecum, the two-time Cy Young Award winner whose photo adorned the cover of the Giants' 2010 media guide, allowed three hits and struck out 10 in eight innings in the most important win of his 26-year-old life.
The Series ended with closer Brian Wilson on the mound, as usual, retiring the final hitter. He struck out Nelson Cruz swinging to set off a celebration sure to rock the Bay Area for long time. After all, everyone had generations to plan it.
With the first toast, revelers could bid good riddance to the ghosts of failures past.
Willie McCovey's line drive to Bobby Richardson in 1962, the earthquake sweep in 1989 and the Game 6 collapse in 2002 - their power to spook the faithful is gone, defused by an accomplishment that few in baseball thought the Giants could achieve in a season in which they did not even secure a division title until the 162nd game of the regular season.
The Giants leaped atop one another in celebration of the final out was a sight that many Northern Californians feared they would not see before they themselves became ghosts.
The championship is the sixth in franchise history and first since 1954, when Willie Mays roamed center field of the Polo Grounds in New York and led the team to a four-game sweep of the Cleveland Indians.
Lincecum and Lee gave viewers the great pitching duel they were expected to provide in Game 1, when Lincecum was shaky and Lee was worse. The Giants stung him for seven runs in an 11-7 win.
Game 5 was a bare-knuckle pitching brawl with neither man giving any quarter until Cody Ross and Juan Uribe opened the seventh inning with singles.
In a perfect symbol of the team concept that defined these champions, Aubrey Huff, the Giants' biggest power hitter all season, advanced the runners with his first career sacrifice bunt.
Pat Burrell struck out for the 10th time in 12 at-bats in the Series for the second out before Renteria built the count against Lee to 2-0 and drove a cut fastball into the bleachers in left-center field for his second homer of the Series and the biggest of his life.
Cruz cut into the lead in the bottom half with a solo homer to left, which ended a string of 18 scoreless innings by Giants pitchers. Lincecum then walked Ian Kinsler, but he struck out David Murphy and former Giant Bengie Molina to preserve the two-run lead.
Both pitchers shot out of the chute better than they did in Game 1. Lincecum was particularly sharp, inducing weaker outs.
He did not have a strikeout until the third inning then struck out the side. He did not allow a hit until Michael Young's leadoff single in the fourth, a groundball through the middle, and struck out two of the next three Rangers to keep him at first base.
Against Lee, the Giants stuck with their same schematic from the first game, when they attacked him early in the count. In Game 1, the left-hander left a lot of pitches over the plate and was roughed up. He did a better job locating in Game 5, though the Giants hit some bolts for outs.
With Andres Torres at first base and two outs, Lee raised his glove to spear a Freddy Sanchez line drive to steal a hit and end the top of the third.
Buster Posey worked Lee for 10 pitches in the fourth inning before grounding out on the 11th.
Next time Posey batted, with Freddy Sanchez on base and two outs in the sixth, it looked for a moment as though the rookie had given the Giants a 2-0 lead with a high drive to right. But Cruz tracked it down at the wall to preserve the scoreless tie.
Box Score
No comments:
Post a Comment