Bay Area News Group - Comeback Kings: The San Francisco Giants Incredible 2012 Championship Season

Introduction by Alex Pavlovic

The band of misfits gave way to a band of brothers, driven by the simple desire to spend one more day playing the game, one more day together on the diamond. On their final day as a team and surely it will be the last as no team, however great, returns the next spring fully intact the 2012 San Francisco Giants paraded down Market Street with a World Series trophy for the second time in three years.

The short trip down Market capped a long, improbable journey, one that seemed at its end numerous times between April and October.

During their stunning run, the Giants, a team with a heavy Latin presence, embraced the Spanish word pelea, meaning fight.

We fight like an upside-down cat, leadoff hitter Angel Pagan said.

As it turned out, they had nearly as many lives, too.

The Giants could have folded in April when closer Brian Wilson was lost for the year, or in mid-August when All-Star left fielder Melky Cabrera was suspended, or a week later when the Dodgers swung a set of blockbuster trades in an attempt to deliver the knockout blow. Instead, the Giants ran away with the division.

They could have surrendered in October when twice they found themselves one loss from elimination. Instead, sparked by a fiery Hunter Pence speech, they pushed their chips to the center of the table. If they were going to go down, they were going to go down fighting.

Pelea!

These guys come out with their slingshots and rocks and theyre going to fight you, third base coach Tim Flannery said. These guys just believe.

The Giants believed when they fell behind two games to none in the National League Division Series before stunning the Cincinnati Reds by winning three straight games on the banks of the Ohio River. They believed when they fell behind three games to one in the National League Championship Series, only to outscore the St. Louis Cardinals 20-1 over the next three games.

In the World Series, the Giants were brimming with belief.

They beat Tigers ace Justin Verlander in Game 1 and beat him badly, Pablo Sandoval leading the way with a historic three-homer night. They won the next two games by not allowing a run, the first back-to-back Series shutouts since the legendary Baltimore Orioles staff blanked the Dodgers three straight in 1966. They completed the sweep with a 4-3 victory that was absurdly emblematic of their season, fighting back from a deficit to win on a 10th-inning single by Marco Scutaro, the journeyman infielder who became a giant star after his July 27 acquisition.

The Giants had every answer against Detroit, just as they had an answer to every challenge that arose along the way.

Giants center fielder Angel Pagan congratulates Ryan Theriot. In the starting lineup as the designated hitter, Theriot scored the winning run in Game 4 of the World Series. (Gary Reyes/Staff)

Everyone counted us out four or five times, pitcher Ryan Vogelsong said. I think its the perseverance through the whole season thats where we draw the confidence that its not over until the last out is made.

Their mettle was tested the first week of the season when Wilson, the man who clinched the final out of the 2010 World Series, needed reconstructive elbow surgery for a second time. The entire bullpen, led by charismatic right-hander Sergio Romo, picked up the slack.

In all, the Giants made 18 trips to the disabled list, two by Sandoval, who missed 53 games with first a hand injury and then a hamstring strain. Looking for a temporary solution at third base, General Manager Brian Sabean made a trade that barely registered on the national radar, sending minor league infielder Charlie Culberson to Colorado for Scutaro. The deal came to be known as a blockbuster, as did Scutaro, who earned that nickname while leading the teams late charge into the autumn. In October, he also became forever known as MVP of the National League Championship Series.

The Giants could have been excused for packing it in when Cabrera was suspended, for looking back on their series of misfortunes and determining that it just wasnt their year. Manager Bruce Bochy had a different idea: Focus forward, he told his players, and they did.

Needing to win an unprecedented three straight road games in the LDS against Cincinnati, Bochy delivered another speech before Game 3. Then Pence stood up in the cramped visitors clubhouse and started bouncing around like a linebacker.

Look into each others eyes, Pence screamed. I want one more day with you. We must not give in. We owe it to each other. Play for each other!

The Giants came out of the rally throng (as it was termed by our Daniel Brown) and toppled the Reds, then stunned the Cardinals, becoming the first team in MLB history to reach a World Series by winning six elimination games. The Tigers proved to be no match.

Posey, coming off the gruesome home plate collision that ended his 2011 season and threatened his career, punctuated one of the best seasons ever by a catcher with a grand slam that downed the Reds. Barry Zito, the long-beleaguered pitcher so out of sync in 2010 that the Giants left him off the postseason roster, won two of the biggest games in franchise history with dominating performances. Tim Lincecum shook off an unimaginably rocky season to become a shutdown reliever in October.

By the time the Giants were done throwing haymakers, their hands were being fitted for championship rings.

Giants pitcher Matt Cain, who allowed three runs during his Game 4 start in the World Series, celebrates the final out of the seventh inning. (Nhat V. Meyer/Staff)

Sergio Romo

#54

Pitcher

Border Town of Brawley Celebrates Romos Success

By Elliott Almond October 27, 2012

The outside world seems so far away from the dusty town Sergio Romo calls home. Located at the floor of California, Brawley is an economically depressed community of 25,000 residents surrounded by fields of sugar beets, melons and lettuce.

But this week the Great Beyond feels a lot closer as the lovable Giants reliever employs his wicked slider against the Detroit Tigers in the World Series. Romos emergence as San Franciscos savior is amplified in this desolate region where the mien tilts decidedly south to the Baja scrublands a short drive from here.

He put Brawley on the map, said Rusty Garcia, a member of the citys district board of education. Even people who dont know him have adopted him. Everybody has this little glow.

Brawley needed a folk hero about now. A swarm of earthquakes in late August damaged buildings in Imperial Valley, including Brawley Union Highs auditorium that is now closed for a year. Then two separate fires in recent weeks destroyed a 60-year-old family run furniture store and a bar in downtown.

No wonder the bartender at Las Chabelas Mexican restaurant rang a bell Thursday night as soon as Romo got the final out to preserve the Giants 2-0 victory in Game 2. Among the patrons leading cheers were Mayor George A. Nava and state assemblyman V. Manuel Perez (D-Coachella).

A few hours earlier, Romos high school coach, Pedro Carranza, stood in a blazing autumn sun at Eddie Wiest Field watching his three-time defending league champions run through drills.

Its not the game but what it represents, Carranza said. I dont think Sergio understands the magnitude of what hes doing.

Baseball has been part of the fiber that has connected this tortilla flat valley for generations. That has never wavered, though Brawley is a football town with the requisite imagery of Friday Night Lights.