Given the circumstances, it still doesn’t feel like a true Opening Day. In fact, this was the first Opening Day morning that I forgot to put on Giants socks, underwear, shirt, jersey, and hat. I put on regular clothes and walked around like some normie. But how can you have a meaningful Game 1 without fans in the seats? What about the jet flyovers and the giant American flag? With no fans, the smell of hot dogs and garlic fries won’t float over the field either. Other than fresh cut grass, it will lack the sights, sounds, and scents of baseball. It’s baseball in a sterile environment (which I guess is a good thing).
Category Archives: Giants
Ranking The Top 10 Openers At Oracle Park
Let’s rank the 10 best home openers at Oracle Park! The Giants have been really good in the home opener going 14-6 and outscoring opponents 94-76! In two different stretches they won 6 in a row: 2001-2006 and 2009-2014. There’s been 3 walkoffs and even a 1 hitter thrown into the mix. Let’s count them down.
End Of An Era
Everyone will remember the Conor Gillaspie 2 run triple in the bottom of the 8th off of Aroldis Chapman, but few will recall what happened in the very next at bat. Anytime you’re facing Aroldis Chapman you don’t just have an at bat, you survive an at bat. They should hand you a t-shirt when you get back to the dugout.
Getting Familia With Gillaspie
The first thing Gillaspie does is walk into the box, spit on his hand, and rub it the dirt. No batting gloves. A man’s man. Familia is at 17 pitches now and he’s only got 1 out. Giants have guys on 1st and 2nd. Conor takes the first pitch at 96 mph on the inside corner for strike 1. All he’s seen is gas tonight. He steps out of the box and rubs his right hand in the dirt again. Long time between pitches here.
Magnificent Madison’s Game 7 Masterpiece
Now things get crazy. Buster calls for the offspeed low and away and Bum puts it there, but Gordon is able to get good wood on it and he flips it into shallow right center field. Blanco comes charging in but decides too late that he can’t get there and the ball skips past him! Perez wasn’t really backing him up, instead was next to him, probably hoping he was about to hug him. Instead, he finds himself sprinting after the baseball that’s rolling all the way to the wall. He finally reaches it up against the fence but then drops it and it rolls 6 feet away from him!
A Royal Shutout
The difference between Bumgarner’s pitching and the rest of the Giants rotation was stark. With Bum on the mound you knew the Giants were going to win. It was the other days that made you pull your hair out. If he was a Disney character, he’d be Beast of “Beauty and the Beast”. Game 1 proved the Royals couldn’t hit him. But this was their second chance. Now they’ve seen him and can adjust. In Bum’s career he’s never pitched twice in the same World Series. To this point in October, Bumgarner’s started 5 games and has held opponents to a bleak .162 average. In those 38.2 IP his ERA is an incredible 1.40. I think the scientific world calls that Absolute Dominance.
The Best Game I Have Ever Been To
I recall this moment fondly. I was with my dad and 2 family friends in our seats in section 105. We had had those seats since the ballpark opened in 2000 and little did we know that we were about to witness the greatest moment in the history of AT&T Park.
Marathon
The innings would roll by as pitching started to take over. Neither team looked like they wanted to win this game anymore. I’m a fairly superstitious fan, especially in the postseason. Once I sit down, I can’t move anything or change the way I’m sitting, or as it turns out, turn any lights on. This game started at 2:38pm on a lovely Saturday afternoon. By the time we reached the top of the 18th inning, it was about 8:30 at night and dark out. So here I was on the same part of the couch sitting in pitch black as Brandon Belt dug into the box.
Pirates Get Bummed Out
What an at bat from the short stop. I’ve never seen a HR shut more people up instantly than Craw’s 4th inning slam. Volquez went change up, fastball, curveball, curveball and B Craw was all over that second curve. That place was absolutely silent as Brandon rounded the bases but I, and thousands of Giants fans across the country were jumping in unison. That’s all MadBum would need.
Top 10 Hunter Pence Shots
It was announced on February 7, 2020 that Hunter Pence had resigned with the Giants in a move that caught all of us off guard. In celebration of this glorious day, here are my Top 10 photographs of Hunter Pence as seen from section 105.
Ten. Twelve. Fourteen. 