Dancing In The Rain

October 22, 2012 was the first time since 2002 the Giants played in a Game 7. That year the Giants were up three games to two in the World Series but lost Games 6 and 7 in Anaheim. Before that, the most recent Game 7 in Giants history was in 1987 when they lost to the Cardinals in St. Louis after being up three games to two, also losing the final two in St. Louis, getting shut out twice. In fact, as of 2012, the Cardinals were the best team in postseason history all time in Game 7’s with an 11-4 record. The Giants, on the other hand, were 0-5. It was also the first time in 50 years the Giants played in a Game 7 in San Francisco, so this was a pretty major game in Giants history. The night before the Giants won their 5th elimination game in a row, beating the Cards 6-1 behind a dominant 7 inning start by Vogey. The final game of the 2012 NLCS would be a rematch of Game 3 as Matt Cain would go up against Kyle Lohse. Lohse was 16-3 in the regular season and beat the Giants in Game 3, holding them to 1 run over 5.2 innings. But that was in St. Louis. Now, the stage was set for a Game 7 on the shores of San Francisco Bay for the first time since 1962, and the Giants were due for a Game 7 victory.

The Most Important Inning – Defensively

The most important inning for Matt Cain came quickly in the top of the 2nd. Much like the Game 5 Zito start, Cain was due to face Molina, Freese, and Descalso. Also similar to the Zito start, Molina and Freese both got on base to start the inning. In the Zito game, however, those 2 hits came on the first 2 pitches of their at bats. Here against Cain in Game 7, Molina singled to left on the 7th pitch, and Freese walked on the 8th pitch. They were grinding. Just trying to wear down Cainer. But they forgot one thing: Matt Cain is a horse. Descalso helped Cain out as he swung at a first pitch slider, chopping it to Belt who made a nice diving stop and throw to Crawford at 2nd base to force out Freese. With no chance for the DP, the Cards now had guys on 1st and 3rd with 1 out and Pete Kozma coming to the plate. Kozma only played 26 games with the Cardinals during the regular season, filling in for Rafael Furcal who was suffering an elbow injury. However, in those 26 games, Kozma batted .333 (24-72) with 8 extra base hits. In the NLCS the Giants’ pitching slowed him down to a .263 average to this point, but an extra base hit right here might make him a St. Louis Game 7 hero. As Cain started to deliver the first pitch, he stepped off and did that check on 3rd, check on 1st move real quick (which is now illegal), trying to catch Freese on first base sleeping. But, like every other time in the history of baseball, the move didn’t work. The true first pitch to Kozma was high fastball. Second pitch was a swing and a miss on a lazy slider that could have been smashed. Cain was lucky to get away with that one. The third pitch was the same slider just a bit higher called for a ball. 2-1 now to Kozma. Not the end of the world if you walk him here. Kozma swings and misses on a fastball inside for strike 2. Now Giants fans rise out of their seats, waving their orange rally towels, smelling a garlic fry covered strikeout. Cain looks in to Posey for too long and Kozma steps out. Big pitch coming. Once Buster and Cain are on the same page, Cain delivers and the 2-2 pitch is a ball in the dirt. Full count now.

On the next pitch a lot of stuff happens. Firstly, Descalso runs on the pitch with a good jump. Secondly, Kozma strikes out swinging on an 87 mph slider. Third, Posey jumps out of the crouch faking a throw to second base. Anticipating a throw to second, Molina takes a small step towards home plate. Without breaking stride, Posey fires to third base and throws a gem right to Sandoval covering. Molina dives back into third just before Panda slaps the tag on him. Sandoval, Cain, Buster, and 43,000 Giants fans all think Yadier’s out but third base umpire Greg Gibson emphatically raises his arms calling him safe. That was close! Buster almost Molina’d Molina.

Now the Cards had guys on 2nd and 3rd with 2 outs but pitcher Kyle Lohse was batting now. Should be an easy out for Cain, right? First pitch to Lohse is a slider that he chops foul past Panda, 0-1. Lohse steps out of the box like a hitter, thinking about this AB. Cain’s just trying to end this inning. Next pitch is a fastball blown right by him, strike 2. Fans get loud now. The third pitch is a fastball taken on the outside, but Lohse wanted to swing really bad. 1-2 now. Cain might be able to throw anything now. On the 4th pitch, Lohse hits a soft liner towards Crawford. Off the bat this looks like trouble. I remember watching the ball leave the bat and thinking “Oh no. That’s 2 runs” as it approached Crawford at deep short. Brandon, using every centimeter of his height, jumps straight up and snags it, stopping it from landing in the outfield grass and preventing a Cardinals lead. What a play from the Giants’ short stop (who wouldn’t win a Gold Glove until 2015). A single cheerio fewer for breakfast and that ball’s over his head. Craw’s catch might have made a difference in this game and helped decide which team would represent the NL in the World Series. Obviously the Giants scored 9 runs in this game so 2 runs in that spot for the Cardinals wouldn’t have changed the final score of the game, but it definitely cut the Cards’ momentum and pumped the Giants up.

The Most Important Inning – Offensively

Game 7’s are scary. So much rides on every pitch. Watching these games as a fan was a real work out. Having a 2-0 lead was great, but, in a game like this, you really want to stomp on them early to calm the nerves. The bottom of the 3rd inning started with the Giants up 2-0, scoring every inning so far and Lohse was at 38 pitches. Leading off the inning was the soon-to-be-named series MVP Marco Scutaro. So of course he singles to right field on the first pitch of the inning. On the next pitch Panda doubled down the left field line and the Giants were in business with Buster Posey coming to the plate. Buster would work a 6 pitch walk (great at bat candidate) to load the bases for Pence, and that’s all for Kyle Lohse.

In comes Joe Kelly who’s about to throw one the most famous pitches in Giants history. Hunter Pence digs into the box as only Hunter Pence does. The bases are loaded and he can really break the game open here with a homer, ball in the gap, base hit, or, as it turns out, a little broken bat grounder right at short stop. Kelly greets Pence with 94 mph in on the hands. It’s a great pitch and it breaks Hunter Pence’s bat. But this bat will not go gently into that good night. In fact, no human could have known this, but the super slow motion replay showed his bat hitting the ball 3 times! The ball essentially “rolled” off his bat which put some unearthly spin on the ball. Initially it appears the trajectory of this ball will take it to the right of Pete Kozma, but the english the broken bat put on the ball makes it curve to the right and Kozma never touches it! It rolls into shallow right center field scoring Scutaro and Panda easily. The ball almost stops rolling by the time Jay gets to it, and he over runs it allowing Posey to come all the way around from first base! Duane Kuiper may have said, “They all score!”.

It was now 5-0 Giants and Pence was on 2nd with nooooobody out. Belt swings at the first pitch and chops it over the mound. Kelly jumps for it with his barehand and it glances off, continuing up the middle. By the time Descalsco gets it, Belt reaches 1st with no play. It’s all Giants now. Gregor Blanco is up next and will eventually work a 7 pitch walk (great at bat candidate). The bases are now loaded up again for Crawford. Giants hitters must have had a talk and decided to attack early this inning because Crawford is the 5th guy to put the first pitch of the at bat in play this inning. This time, Craw hits a chopper over the mound that Kozma cuts off and comes home with it. With Pence’s speed, Kozma has no chance to get him at home and he scored well ahead of the throw making it 6-0 Giants. Man, are we having fun now!

Here’s Cain, batting with a six run lead. He will quickly strike out on 4 pitches for the 1st out of the inning (it took 22 pitches to get the first out). Back to the top of the order and it’s Angel Pagan with the bases still loaded. Like Blanco, Pagan puts up a hell of an at bat that ends on the 7th pitch as he rolls one right at Kozma. Kozma fields it but underhands it very high to Descalso at 2nd who has to reach way up to grab it, slowing down his ability to turn the double play. He gets a throw off to first but it’s late and in the dirt, Belt scores and it’s 7-0 San Francisco. What a half inning! Scutaro comes up again and works a walk and that’s all for Joe Kelly as he comes in and faces 7 guys giving up 2 hits, 2 walks, and 2 runs (the other 3R belonged to Lohse). Matheny would bring in Edwin Mujica and he’d get Panda to lineout to first to end the inning, but by that time this ballgame was over.

The 9th

Although the final 18 innings of this NLCS were all Giants, it was a battle to get here. There were one loss away from going home 5 times throughout the postseason already, and now they were 3 outs away from winning their 6th. An incredible journey for this team. The 9th inning started with Javy Lopez on the mound who came in to end the 8th inning by striking out Tony Cruz. As the inning started, so did the rain. It had been a perfect night at the yard, but now a huge downpour was expected. Hopefully Javy can make this a quick inning. Well, Kozma lead off and drew a long 7 pitch walk. Then it was Skip Shumaker who quickly went to 2-0. This inning was not moving quickly. Now it’s RAINING and there’s still no outs. Lopez eventually evens the count on him to 2-2, and on the 5th pitch gets Skip to chop one to Scutaro right near 2nd base who flips to Craw for the force out, 1 away. Now Jon Jay steps in the box as it starts to absolutely pour. Any other game would have gone into a delay, but not Game 7 with a 9 run lead.

As a fan, the 2010 postseason was a grind but it wasn’t like what we went through in 2012. Not only did the Giants have to play in so many elimination games but they lost the first two games of the postseason and had their backs up against the wall on the road immediately. But they kept finding ways to win. In both series’ against the Reds and Cards, I was preparing myself for the inevitable loss and end to our season but it never came. Giants fans were a mess by the time we got to Game 7. So when it started to rain in the 9th, it was as if 43,000 fans were cleansed of the blood, sweat, and tears they were covered in over the last 12 games. A shower to end all showers. The rain that fell that inning was the hardest I had ever seen it in any baseball game ever, but I also didn’t really care. No one did. 43,000 people were completely soaked but there were also 43,000 orange towels in the stadium so they were covered.

Is Jon Jay still batting? Lopez gets him looking on a ball right on the outside corner. I don’t know how anyone can hit a big league pitch in this deluge. Now Carlos Beltran digs into the swimming pool. Water up to his knees. Lopez starts him with 2 balls not close. Must be hard to get a good grip now. He’s thrown 22 pitches already, a lot for a lefty specialist, but Bochy really wants him out there for the final out. On a 3-1 count Javy misses way outside again and there’s 2 on and 2 out. That’s it for Lopez who now doesn’t need to hit the showers as he could have washed his hair out there if pitchers were allowed to have shampoo on them.

After another long commercial break while it continues to pour buckets we’re back with Romo on the mound to face Matt Holliday. Romo must have been able to grip the baseball because he gets a quick 0-2 on Holliday. The fans are loud now, drowning out the sound of the rain. The third pitch to Holliday is spiked into the dirt and goes all the way to the backstop moving the runners up. No matter. Let’s just get Holliday here. Romo comes set and throws a little slider on the inside that Holliday pops up. Romo turns and points at it while jumping in excitement. Scutaro waving his arms calling for it, backing up towards the grass, peering through giant drops of rain trying to lock onto the ball. Seconds later the ball falls into his glove and the Giants have won the pennant! They break into different jumping celebrations: one around Romo near the mound and another out near 2nd base with Scutaro as “Woohoo!” plays over the PA. Have you ever seen fireworks in the rain? Probably not unless you were there.

Odd Stats

Through the first 4 games of this series the Cardinals had outscored the Giants 18-15, but in games 5-7, the Giants outscored them 20-1 and 35-19 overall!

The Giants had finally won a Game 7 to boost their franchise record to 1-5 in Game 7s (they would do it again 2 years later). Kyle Lohse’s start was his worst of the year with a game score of only 24. He had only given up 5ER four other times all year and the Cards won all but one of those. The last time the Giants had won a game 9-0 was July 17, 2012 in a Zito start against the Braves.

Series MVP Marco Scutaro was on absolute fire those 7 games. His final NLCS line:

7 Games, 14-28 (.500), 6R, 4RBI, 3 2B, 2BB, 17TB, 1.140 OPS

In the NLDS agains the Reds he was only 3-20 (.150) and in the World Series he was held to just 4 hits in 16 at bats for a .250 average. He was seeing beach balls in the NLCS.

In this game when Cardinals’ batters put the ball in play on the first pitch they went 1-5. The Giants went 4-6 on the first pitch and all 4 hits came in the 3rd. In fact, 4 of the the first 5 Giants to bat in the bottom of the 3rd got a hit on the first pitch.

A Great At Bat

The bottom of the 3rd could have been far less fun without a great at bat from MVP Buster Posey. Buster came up with guys on 2nd and 3rd and nobody out (my favorite scenario). It would be very easy for a guy to come to the plate in this situation and try to do too much and end up striking out. But not Buster. This at bat started with a meeting on the mound about how to approach the Giants catcher. First pitch too him was low and away for a ball. Easy take for Buster and a gift. Buster has a big swing and miss on the 2nd pitch and fouls it off, 1-1. He was just under that one. The 1-1 is an offspeed pitch outside for ball 2. The 4th pitch of the at bat is the same pitch as the 3rd and the count runs to 3-1. Not giving in to a fastball, Lohse throws another offspeed pitch is fouled away. The final pitch of the at bat is a fastball way outside for the walk, loading the bases for Pence. It doesn’t seem like a great at bat in the scheme of things, but a younger or more aggressive batter might have swung at a couple balls right there and struck out or popped up. The fact that Buster only swung at strikes and was patient in such a huge spot really shows his intelligence in the box. You have Pence on deck, these runs aren’t up to you. Just keep the line moving. Although the Pence at bat is what everyone will remember, Buster allowed it to be as huge as it was. Plus Pence’s AB was only 1 pitch while Buster saw 6. Way to be, Bust!

Other Notables

This game was also notable for me as the woman who always sat behind us asked to take a photo of me and my dad after the Giants had won. To this day it’s my favorite photo of me and the old man as we soaked up another National League championship.

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Next Blog: 2012 World Series Game 1 – January 31, 2020