Baseball Reflections

The Giants are in the World Series!!

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PHILADELPHIA - OCTOBER 16:  Manager Bruce Boch...
Image by Getty Images via @daylife

The Giants eliminated the Phillies in six games to win the 2010 National League Championship to go on to the World Series to play the Texas Rangers. I must state that I did get tired and annoyed with the announcers Joe Buck and Tim McCarver, who frequently derided the Giants, and couldn’t believe that the Giants could beat the the powerful Phillies.
The Giants did beat the Phillies with vim, vigor, and veracity. The Giants out-pitched the Phillies when they had to, and out-hit them when they needed to. Giants manager Bruce Bochy did out-manage Phillies manager Charlie Manuel to get the Giants successful match-ups throughout the the whole six game series. I don’t think that I’ve seen a more brilliant job of play-off managing and player execution than I saw in the NLCS.
I do think that this Giants team has made an arrangement with Bay Area cardiologists to make sure that the hearts of Giants fans are working and functioning, mine included. There has never been a better example of this than in Game 6 of the NLCS. Jonathan Sanchez gave up two first inning runs, and melted down in the third inning with an altercation with Chase Utley. (Sanchez and Utley did have previous history.) The Giants bullpen of Jeremy Affeldt, Madison Bumgardner, Javier Lopez, Tim Lincecum and Brian Wilson shut down the Phillies the rest of the game, and did not allow them a run, while stranding multiple Phillies base runners. The Giants got the runs that they needed to win on a base hit by Aubrey Huff, an error by Phillies third baseman Placido Polanco, and an opposite field home run by Juan Uribe, just enough to win.

Cody Ross - Giants beat Phillys 6-5 in game 4 ...
Image by Steve Rhodes via Flickr

After seven months of Giants baseball, I am still expecting this Giants team to crash, and it hasn’t happened yet. I thought that after the Giants lost Game 5 at AT & T Park that the Giants might go back to Philadelphia and phold (fold). It happened in 1987, and in 2002, but it didn’t happen here, and not with this team.
Now, the Giants are picked by the national media to lose to the Rangers. They are the underdogs. I have come to accept and relish the underdog status of the Giants, along with the constant “torture.” I have also started to think that there just might be a big orange and black parade down Market Street ( and not for Halloween) to end at the Civic Center in San Francisco, and I might actually get to see it.
As I said at the start of this season….Dare to dream….so close and yet, so far away.

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