Until Saturday, October 23 2010, I had never endured a game that felt as long, as torturous, as frustrating, and ultimately as euphoric as Game 6 of the NLCS did. Unlike most of the postseason that year, on this night I was out with friends at Gordon Biersch in Palo Alto so I had to rely on a tv at the other end of the restaurant and couldn’t hear any audio. Being a true Giants fan, I was trying to pay as much attention to the game as possible, inadvertently shutting out a lot of what was going on at our table. I was SO tense.

The 1st inning felt like the 8th. It didn’t help that Jonathan Sanchez had nothing left after throwing 208.2 innings until now. In the top of the 1st he threw 25 pitches and gave up 2 runs so it was an uphill climb immediately. The Phills and their fans were fired up. I could tell it was a rough atmosphere to be in just by seeing it on the TV. Philadelphia had the momentum after winning Game 5 in San Francisco and Roy Oswalt was on the mound who already beat the Giants 6-1 in Game 2 throwing 8 innings, with 3 H, 1R, 1ER, 9K. Scary. But the 2010 San Francisco Giants were battlers and they were about to grind out one of the best wins in franchise history. Let us talk about that.

The Most Important Play – Defensively

In the box score it reads: Line Drive Double Play: 1B, Victorino out at 2B/1B-SS

But it was so much crazier than that! The Giants had just taken the lead on the Uribe home run in the top of the 8th and Bochy was bringing in The Freak to pitch to Jayson Werth, Shane Victorino, and Raul Ibanez in the bottom half. Time to bite your nails. Timmy looked dominant as he handled Werth, striking him out on 5 pitches. Then things weren’t fun anymore. Victorino followed with a single after a great 8 pitch at bat, then Ibanez singled him to 2nd and it was time to freak out. That’s exactly what happened, Bochy took The Freak out. In comes Brian Wilson for the 5 out save.

Oddly enough for Wilson, 5 out saves weren’t that uncommon. He recorded 6 five out saves in 2010. So he was no stranger to the 8th. First pitch to Carlos Ruiz: strike. Whew. Looks like he’s got his control. Then Wilson throws the next pitch 3 feet in front of the plate that Posey makes a great stop on to keep the runners at 1st and 2nd. All right, maybe he doesn’t have it. Can’t anything come easy in this game? You couldn’t relax for one pitch.

Then something incredible happened. Miracles are not scheduled. Nor are they predicted. They just happen. Without warning. They can be in the form of a fireman being in the right place at the right time, avoiding a sure car accident, or a first baseman’s glove snagging a line drive. Tonight’s miracle came in the form of a line drive double play that ended the threat and the 8th inning. With a 1-1 count, Wilson threw a fastball that slightly jammed Ruiz, but he still got good wood on it. If statcast was around, we may have seen that the ball left his bat at 90 mph. Not an Aaron Judge liner, but hard nonetheless. This is where that miracle happens: it was RIGHT AT Aubrey Huff. Right at him! If he’s playing on the line that’s a base hit and the Phillies have just tied the game because Victorino (LOL) didn’t freeze! He took off for home and I have yet to see a replay that shows where he was or what he was doing. He was so far from 2nd that no camera caught him. Unbelievable. What a break for the Giants. If that ball had been 3 feet in either direction and the Phillies had comeback to win that game, we would have seen Matt Cain vs. Cole Hamels in Game 7. I am incredibly grateful I never had to watch that game. The second miracle of that play was that Huff didn’t throw it into left field. He took his time and got the force.

The Most Important Play – Offensively

It would be very easy to say that Juan Uribe’s solo homer in the 8th to give the Giants the lead is the biggest hit of this game. But I don’t want to take the easy way out. Let’s dive into an earlier play. A play you may have forgotten about. You know Uribe’s homer was our 3rd run, but how did we score the first two? Ground attack.

Now, I’ve already said that Jonathan Sanchez had nothing left, but, whatever ounce of energy he had was infused into his bat. He lead off the top of the 3rd with a 2 strike single that just barely eluded Utley. Utley will tell you he should have made the play, but it went as a hit as he never touched it. Then Sanchez’s base running came into play. With 2 strikes Andres Torres smoked a ball to deepest center field that Victorino almost made the catch of the postseason on, but he bobbled it and it fell up against the fence. Sanchez jogged into 2nd with Torres hot on his heels thinking he had an easy double (if Sanchez wasn’t on, Torres would have had a standup triple).

With Sanchez standing on 2nd, Torres had to scramble back to 1st at full speed, diving in just ahead of the throw. Come on, guys. Will nothing come easy tonight? If it seemed like every Giants batter had 2 strikes on him, you’d almost be right. Oswalt had 2 strikes on 16 of the 26 batters he faced. In fact, that’s how this 3rd inning got started. Sanchez saw 2 strikes, base hit. Torres saw 2 strikes, base hit. Now with 2 on and 0 outs, Freddy Sanchez came to the plate and bunted them over on the first pitch he saw, not waiting around for 2 strikes. And neither were Huff and Buster. Huff ripped a single right back up Oswalt to score Sanchez but Torres was hosed at the plate by Victorino, preventing a tie game. Now comes the the biggest play. With the tying run on 2nd and 2 outs, Buster swings at the first pitch and hits a little tapper to 3rd (something we all now know as a “Buster Special”). Placido Polanco charges in and throws to 1st on the run, but throws it wide, into Buster, pulling Ryan Howard off the bag. The ball rolls away and Huff scores from 2nd easily to tie the game!

It officially goes down as an E5 and the Giants tied it up (not the last time they would benefit from a huge E5 in a playoff game on the road)! If Buster doesn’t bust his ass up the line on that, Howard can catch that ball, tag him, and the inning’s over. Uribe’s 8th inning homer only ties it, and Game 6 goes to extra innings. With Jeremy Affeldt, Javy Lopez, and Brian Wilson already used by the 9th, it would have been very interesting to see what Bochy would have done in extras, while also thinking about who to save for Game 7. But the E5 tied it and we will never know.

Odd Stats

The strategy the Giants had in Game 2 against Oswalt was clearly to see a lot of pitches because in his 8 innings pitched, only once did the Giants put the ball in play on the first pitch. They let Oswalt get deep into the count, but that may have backfired because he had 2 strikes on 16 of the 30 guys he faced (16 of 26 in G6!). The difference in Game 6 was that the Giants put the ball in play on the first pitch 10 times and batted .600 when they did that. In all other at bats they were 7-31 (.226). All 3 of their runs scored on first pitch swings: Huff’s RBI single, Posey’s ball that went as E5, and Uribe’s home run. Speaking of Uribe’s shot into the first row, he was pretty clutch late for the Giants that year. 8 of his 24 big flies in 2010 came in the 7th inning or later and 4 of those either tied the game or gave the Giants the lead. Those were off tough pitchers in the likes of Jonathan Broxton, Heath Bell, and Clayton Kershaw. He also wasn’t a stranger to swinging early as 5 of his 24 jacks were first pitch ambushes. In 2010, Ryan Madson only gave up 4 home runs in 53 IP before Uribe took his first pitch deep. It was a great match up for the Giants as Uribe’s career totals off Madson now were 2-3, 2 HR, 3 RBI.

Great At Bat

The Giants put up some great ABs against Oswalt throughout this game.

That’s 56 pitches in 8 at bats! Those are great at bats. However, their outcomes didn’t score any runs, nor lead to any runs being scored. The at bat of this game was put up by the starting pitcher of this game: Jonathan Sanchez leading off the top of the 3rd. Although things were about to get worse for him in this game, it was already pretty bad. He had thrown a 25 pitch, 2 run 1st inning, settled down in the 2nd still throwing another 18, so he was 43 pitches deep before his first at bat. Then he was quickly down 0-2 to Oswalt who was CRUISING, having thrown 9 of 9 first pitch strikes, had a 2 run lead, and had only thrown 28 pitches before the 3rd. They were 2 pitchers going in opposite directions. Sanchez took the third pitch for a ball, a curveball that just missed. Not sure how he took that one and Oswalt looked upset he didn’t get the call, snapping his glove at the ball as it came back to him. Then fun things happened. The 1-2 pitch was a fastball on the outside that Sanchez put a nice, flat swing on and he shot it under Utley’s glove into center field for a hit! That’s right, Chase! How do you like that!?

That started the 2 run rally that tied the game and allowed Uribe to win it in the 8th. Huge. Great at bat.

Brian Wilson striking out Ryan Howard to end this game sent me running around Gordon Biersch giving high fives to strangers while recording with my phone. If you were there, I either apologize or would totally do it again.

Other Minor Notables

In 7 at bats against Roy Oswalt in the NLCS, Buster Posey saw 33 pitches.

Second place for Most Important Play of the game goes to Mark Gardner for keeping Affeldt in the bullpen when the benches emptied in the bottom of the 3rd.

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Next Blog: 2010 World Series Game 1

When I think about the best Giants games I’ve ever attended, there are several that come to mind. For a long time the greatest game I had ever been to was Game 5 of the 2002 NLCS when Kenny Lofton drove in David Bell to win the pennant. You may recall the Giants tied the game at 1 in the 8th on a Barry Bonds sac fly and won it in the 9th on the Lofton single. It would take 8 more years of torture for a game to surpass that one. When I talk about “good games” I don’t mean a complete ass whooping by the Giants where they score 7 in the 1st and cruise the rest of the way. A “good game” means the lead changed a couple times, there was doubt, anguish, shouting, clutch hits, and an exciting finish. With that in mind, let’s talk about the 2nd best game I have ever been to: 2010 NLCS Game 4.

The Most Important Play

There were huge moments in this game: Buster Posey’s 4 hits, Pablo Sandoval’s clutch double, Juan Uribe’s walk off sac fly, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. You might have forgotten about the most important play of this game. It came in the top of the 5th with 1 out and the Giants leading 2-0. Aaron Rowand had only started 1 game this postseason and it was the game before this. Rowand, 32 that year, played in 105 games and batted .230 with 11 home runs and 34 RBI. He was definitely in this game for his defense and in the 5th inning he showed it. After a great 7 pitch AB to lead off the inning, Ben Francisco smoked a liner into CF. Then on the 5th pitch of his AB, Carlos Ruiz lined a single into right to make it a very stressful inning for a young Madison Bumgarner (#ForeverGiant).

Joe Blanton, the opposing starter, then bunted them up to make it a 2nd and 3rd, 1 out situation. Bum needed a strikeout. But Shane Victorino (a nemesis of mine) had other ideas. Victorino lined the first pitch he saw into center field. Rowand came charging in and played the hop perfectly. Ruiz, not known for his speed, was trying to score and tie the game. But Rowand unleashed an almost perfect throw to Posey who picked the short-hop and tagged Ruiz right in the chest for the out. The crowd, who had just be silenced by Victorino’s hit, had erupted into euphoria by home plate umpire Wally Bell’s call. The 2-1 lead was saved and Victorino had not moved up to 2nd on the throw. It was huge!

Now there were 2 outs! For the moment, Rowand was the Game 4 hero. However, Chase Utley (an even bigger nemesis!) singled in the next at bat, then Santiago Casilla came in and gave up a 2 run double to Placido Polanco and the Phills eventually scored 4 times, taking a 4-2 lead. But Rowand’s throw still loomed large. If he had bobbled that ball or Ruiz was a little faster, the Giants would have gone into that 9th inning down by 1 to face Brad Lidge instead of Roy Oswalt.

Lidge was dominant for Houston in 2005 (42 saves, 3rd in NL) and closed out the 2008 World Series over Tampa. With only 27 saves in 2010, he didn’t have the numbers but he was still scary (Lidge would actually get the save the following night in Game 5). So Rowand’s throw eventually lead to Roy Oswalt taking the mound who the Giants had just seen 8 innings of in Game 2. So they beat him.

The Biggest Hit

It came in the bottom of the 6th in a great at bat from young, Mr. Pablo Sandoval. Heard of him? Remember he got paid $95 million by the Red Sox, broke his belt, then came back? Anyway, at this point in the game he was 0-2 with 2 groundouts and was looking to totally redeem himself. With Chad Durbin on the mound, Pat Burrell started the inning by not striking out and then Cody Ross flipped a little double down the LF line. In comes Panda with RISP and nobody out. He has to be productive. The at bat started with a bang as Panda ripped the first pitch down the right field line that appeared to hit chalk! But no! First base umpire Jeff Nelson called it foul! Bochy came out and argued with Nelson and right field umpire Ted Barrett to no avail. Replay was still a fantasy so Panda was robbed.

As a fan in the seats, it felt like this at bat was over now. That was our best shot. But, the Panda is a free swinger so anything can happen. Then he flailed miserably at a curveball in the dirt on the next pitch and was waaaaaay behind 0-2. Ugh. Can’t strike out here. 3rd pitch was in the dirt, a good take. Pablo then smoked the 4th pitch foul into the seats down the RF line, a much better swing. All right. He’s seeing it. Then it happened. Durbin threw a high fastball and Panda lined it into the left center gap passed Victorino and it rolled all the way to the wall! The Giants retook the lead 5-4 and the crowd was losing their freaking minds. Panda jogged into 2nd raising his arms up in the air and clapping his hands. A fantastic 5 pitch AB in his first start in the NLCS. The Giants winning probability went up 17 points on that double and it fired up the boys!

The Weirdest Thing

In the postseason, often times the pressure lies on the home run hitters or your ace starting pitcher. Not your rookies. Rookies are expected to be blinded by the bright lights of October. But this wasn’t the case for the soon to be Rookie of the Year Buster Posey. Those bright lights just made it easier for him to see the ball. Fresh off a hot series with Atlanta where he batted .375, Posey was actually struggling against the Philadelphia pitching. Through the first 3 games of the NLCS he was 1-11. But great games can come out of nowhere and that night Buster became the first rookie to have 4 hits in an LCS game. That’s weird! Buster went 4-5 that night with 2 doubles and 2 RBI, and had to put up a hell of an at bat against Oswalt in the 9th to do it. What a moment for the rook. The next 2 games in that series he went 0-7 so he wasn’t going to be MVP, but he impressed that night and played a huge role in winning that game.

An Odd Stat

Game 4 was the first time in 14 games (Sep 25) the Giants scored more than 4 runs (going 10-4). The Phillies, on the other hand, scored 7 runs or more in 5 of their last 6 games of the season and they outscored the Reds 13-4 in the NLDS. Even more interesting, the Phillies outscored their opponents in the postseason 33-23 and were knocked out of the playoffs! Hooray, Giants pitching! Oddly enough, the next time the Giants would score more than 4 runs in a game would be Game 1 of the World Series against Cliff Lee a week later.

Great At Bat

This was incredibly hard to choose. There were 3 incredible at bats I could write about (Panda in 5th, Buster in 9th) but there can only be one! The guy who wins at bat of the game came into this game in the 9th inning to play SS. Then he won it in his first plate appearance. You guessed it, Juan Uribe!

Ooh! Reebay! He doesn’t win it purely because of his sac fly. In fact, the outcome of his AB, if not for winning the game, wouldn’t have won it for him. But he grinded this one out. It was not a comfortable at bat. With the winning run on 3rd and less than 2 outs, he had to be productive. Oswalt was throwing fire, but Buster just showed that he was touchable. Easier said than done. The first pitch to Uribe was swung and missed at 95 mph. Great cut though. The next pitch was 4 inches from his face at 93, ball 1. Pretty sure Juan could smell that pitch. There was controversy on the third pitch when Uribe claimed it hit him. Replays couldn’t show it clearly, but it may have just hit the knob of the bat. Also, Uribe showed no signs of being in pain. Whatever. That would have just set up a force at every base. Better he’s still in the box. The next pitch was another fastball way inside that tipped off Uribe’s bat again. He should have been hit by 3 different pitches already! 4 pitches, 4 fastballs. Fifth pitch has to be a fastball too, right? Nope. Oswalt tossed up a little 83 mph slider that Uribe just flipped into left field deep enough to score Huff and win the ball game. You gotta be tough as nails to hang in there and drive that slider after those 3 face seeking fastballs. What a great at bat. Giants were now 1 win away from the World Series.

As stated above, Game 4 of the 2010 NLCS was the 2nd greatest game I’ve ever been to. I will write about the greatest game in a future blog. Stay tuned. All of the above photos are my own except for the shot of Buster tagging out Ruiz. Credit to the photographer.

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Next Blog: 2010 NLCS Game 6