Baggarly - Giant splash: Bondsian blasts, World Series parades, and other thrilling moments by the Bay

Contents

Introduction

I f youve seen a fair number of Giants games at AT&T Park, here are a few questions for you:

Whats the greatest moment you witnessed over the past 15 seasons? When did you react with the most elation, the most passion, feel the most emotionally spent? When did you hug the most total strangers, or yell your way to your worst case of laryngitis? When did the ballpark buzz the loudest and fill your eardrums so close to bursting?

Those were the questions I asked myself as the concept for this book came together. For some major league franchises, there wouldnt be much debate. A no-hitter here, a playoff win there, maybe a four-run comeback in the ninth.

When the Chicago Cubs celebrated the 100 th anniversary of baseball at Wrigley Field in 2014, they commissioned a 400-pound cake from a bakery in New Jersey. It cost thousands and required a forklift to move. The media gorged on the photo op. Nobody gorged on the cake.

It was found the next day, unceremoniously thrown in a dumpstera perfect metaphor for a team that spent 100 years in a beloved ballpark without once bearing witness to a World Series championship.

The San Diego Padres have never thrown a no-hitter in their 45-year history. The Giants have no-hit them three times in the past six years.

In other words, Giants fans have had it pretty good.

Its only when you begin to recount all the history-making, record-breaking, pennant-clinching events at the corner of Third and King that you start to understand what an embarrassment of baseball riches Giants fans have witnessed in San Francisco, especially in the last decade and a half since the team moved to its splendid ballpark on the lip of McCovey Cove.

Since 2000, the little patch of green in China Basin has played host to a perfect game, two no-hitters, an All-Star Game, a trove of milestone homers, a new standard for power in a single season, the coronation of an all-time home run king, and three pennant-grabbing victoriestwo of them won in delirious, walk-off fashion and a third amid a Biblical downpour.

And, of course, three World Series ring ceremonies.

Thats a full and glorious century for any franchise. Giants fans saw all of it in just 15 years. It has to be considered among the most successful, eventful stretches in the history of any major league enterprise. And it did not happen in an inhospitable, wind-whipped concrete cauldron of a ballpark. It happened in a charming, cozy yet frenzied environment that is the envy of baseball, with its brick arcade and Coke bottle and splash hits and sellout crowds that hover so close to the action they nearly cast a shadow over it all.

Their brick-and-steel home on McCovey Cove is such an idyllic wonder, Giants fans would be spoiled if their team were merely competitive every so often. Theyve been able to cheer so much more than that. Its a cake with layers upon layers of icing, as thick as the crowds that lined all three World Series parade routes.

As a beat reporter covering the Giants since 2004 for the Oakland Tribune , San Jose Mercury News , and Comcast SportsNet Bay Area, Im trained to see the team through an impartial lens. But almost anyone who covers baseball for a living begins his or her relationship with the sport as a fan, and to some degree, that experience informs and directs the coverage. Youre writing for fans, after all. You have to connect with them.

The Giants made that so easy. From my seat in the press box, I didnt just connect with fans. I felt them. There were countless nights when the stadium pulsed and reverberatedin a non-seismic way, of course. There were so many grand events to cheer, so many red-letter days, unforgettable feats, and brilliant stars.

You had Barry Bonds splashing his way to the single-season home run record in 2001 along with all those milestone markers on his controversial countdown to Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron. (Nos. 500, 600, 660, 661, 700, 715, and 756 all came at home.) You had Tim Lincecum bursting onto the scene, at once a slacker and an achiever, winning Cy Young Awards with an explosive fastball and gymnastic delivery. You had Jonathan Sanchez throwing one of the most unlikely no-hitters in history to break a 33-year drought, you had the stoic Matt Cain embracing perfection for one night in June, and you had Lincecum, even as the arc of his career had descended steeply downward, throwing his no-hitter when he and his fans could savor it most.

Above all, you had a five-decade vigil of waiting and hoping finally end when a band of misfits charged to a World Series title in 2010 that continues to make no sense years after it happened. Then you had a retooled team, led by The Reverend Hunter Pence, a Kung Fu Panda, and a redemptive Barry Zito, climbing to the top again in 2012. And just when you thought the even-year phenomenon was a trite joke, a 2014 team that limped into October as a wild card and dispatched four playoff opponents as Madison Bumgarner lifted everyone on his broad back to the 27 th out of a Game 7 victory in Kansas City.

This book project had gotten off the ground several months before that night at Kauffman Stadium, when the Giants clinched their third World Series title in five seasons and stamped Bruce Bochy as a Hall of Fame manager. The plan was to tell the story of the 15 greatest games in 15 seasons at AT&T Park. When a third parade ended on the steps of City Hall, we solved the problem the only sensible way. The Giants added more chapters to their franchise history. So did we.

In these pages, youll find the 19 most significant games witnessed at Pacific Bell/SBC/AT&T Park, plus a 20 th chapter highlighting the best of the rest. The first part of each chapter provides the setup; the second part delves into the drama. Although the games are presented in chronological order, and some chapters carry into the next one, it might be helpful to think of this book as more a compendium than a continuous narrative. Youre encouraged to skip around if you like. Rank them, if you feel so compelled. There are no wrong answers.

Of course, there is one obvious drawback to this books format: the Giants clinched their three World Series titles in Texas at the Ballpark in Arlington, at Comerica Park in Detroit, and at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City. Each time, the ultimate celebration happened in road grays, without a single bent blade of grass back home.

Even so, its staggering to think how many great moments have happened in front of frenzied, orange-splashed crowds in just 15 seasons in China Basin. From the story of the ballparks construction to No. 756 to Cains perfection to Sandovals three-homer opus in Game 1 of the World Series to Marco Scutaro drinking in a downpour to Travis Ishikawa roaring around the bases as a modern-day Bobby Thomson to Bumgarner lassoing one October lineup after another, we present to you the greatest games on the shores of McCovey Cove.

So far, anyway.

Maybe someday, the Giants will clinch a championship at home. Now that would be icing on the cake.

1. The First Game

Youd better bring your glove if you come to this ballpark. You are going to be right on top of the action.

Peter Magowan

Tuesday, April 11, 2000

Home opener vs. Los Angeles

I n the late 1970s, the San Francisco Giants were as close to irrelevant as any major sports franchise could be.

They struggled to draw 3,000 fans on weeknight games. The fan experience at Candlestick Park, with a frigid wind whipping through the shivering stands, was miserable. By the 1980s, theyd given up trying to market the unmarketable and instead tried to get fans to embrace the awful, hot dog wrapperblowing experience by handing out a badge of honorthe Croix de Candlestickand encouraging them to boo an anti-mascot called Crazy Crab.