Thursday, April 27, 2017

I’ve been meeting with a small group of guys on Thursday mornings since late 2002. None of them are big baseball guys, but they are gracious and good listeners. I don’t always talk baseball, but I couldn’t contain myself this morning. I had three great baseball moments that had to be shared.

I’ve been waiting since opening day for a game like last night’s 4-3 Giant win over the Dodgers. Granted it was not a game for the ages, (it’s only April) but it was the best game yet this year. Obviously there is a lot of baseball left in this season, but this game might well end up being the game I remember most when I think of 2017. In my youth, I might have viewed this game as perhaps the moment when a disappointing season turned around. What I have seen from the Giants thus far makes it hard for me to believe that, but I will savor the memories until they fade.

Three players and three moments helped to wash away some of the frustration of the previous 14 losses in 21 games. And if six games out of first wasn’t bad enough, add to that a series of costly injuries. Stuff happens in baseball, I just wasn’t aware that stuff included dirt bike accidents involving your best pitcher. But I digress…

I was listening on the radio last night while helping my wife Brenda move some furniture. With a Giant Dodger game on TV, listening to the radio, and moving furniture are both indicators that the season is not going well. After five innings the futility appeared to be continuing. The Dodger led 3-0 and the Giants were hitless. At the end of six, the only change was that the Giants had picked up a hit. Then came the first of the three magical moments. In the seventh inning rookie Christian Arroyo, playing in just his third big league game, hit his first home run, driving in Buster Posey to make it a one run game. His mom, in the stands, celebrated while deftly hanging on to her plate of nachos. Athletic skill must run in the family.

Enter Michael Morse, of 2014 Giant lore. His dramatic eighth inning pinch hit home run to tie the game with St Louis in the NLCS, helped to propel San Francisco to their third World Series in five years. (Of course you can’t mention that game without a salute to Travis Ishikawa and his walk off game winning home run). That post season may well have been the high water mark of Morse’s career, which included his, go ahead RBI in Game 7 of the World Series victory over Kansas City. He was out of baseball last year and almost on a lark, accepted an invitation to the Giants spring training camp. The invite to Morse came from the Giants General Manager Bobby Evans while both were attending the wedding of former Giant teammate Hunter Pence, (more on Pence later). Morse was close to making the team when he suffered an injury. He decided to stick with it and was playing in the Giants minor league system when he got the call on Monday past. In an appearance strangely similar to his 2014 post-season heroics, Morse again pinch-hitting in the eighth inning, crushed a home run to tie the game at 3-3. It was his first at bat since being called up and the results were as thrilling as they were improbable.

So after fireworks in successive innings, the game remained tied into the bottom of the tenth. With the bases loaded and nobody out, up came, unquestionably the Giants most unique player. What Hunter Pence may lack in artistic grace, he more than makes up for in character and intensity. If you have played the game, you will know how difficult it is to handle a high fastball and if you are prone to offer at such a pitch, the strategy is to keep throwing the ball in that location and even a little higher each time. Dodger pitcher, Ross Stripling was fully committed to that approach. After a swinging strike and a foul ball, Pence had fallen behind in the count. He would work Stripling to a 3-2 count, fouling off four more high fast balls, and then on the tenth pitch of the at bat, he hit a sacrifice fly to give the Giants an amazing come from behind win.

Three players, three memorable moments; for a rookie who will tell his grandkids about his first home run, for an aging veteran who now knows why he decided to try it one more time, and for the wild eyed, emotional heart of the Giants who showed all of us one more time that being conventional might be overrated and that’s why he absolutely never gives up. As one friend, a former college teammate of mine said of this game, “It had everything that I love about baseball.” I know what Jim means, this game made me smile.

And thanks to my Thursday morning group for letting this Giant fan relive these three moments. Perhaps it is fleeting.  The Giants lost today 5-1 in ten innings, but that’s okay. This one was good enough to enjoy just a little longer.