The San Francisco Giants are the reigning World Champions of Major League Baseball. This is the first time in my entire life I have been able to make that statement. I could have said it in 1989, had the crossbay rival team Oakland Athletics not swept the Giants in a ho-hum World Series whose most dramatic moment was the Loma Prieta earthquake that hit Candlestick Park just moments before the players were to take the field for Game Three. I could have also said it in 2002, had the Anaheim Angels not overcome what seemed like a safe 5-0 Giants lead in the final innings of Game Six to force a seventh game.
No, in 2010 the Giants really did win it. A hundred thousand more qualified writers than I could tell you why they won. Most of them will tell you it was because of superior pitching, which is quite a compliment when your vanquished opponents include the likes of Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee, two of the best arms the modern game has ever seen. To be fair, this analysis isn’t entirely wrong; the Giants do have some great pitchers. But the fact of the matter is, you can’t win a game unless you actually score more points than the other team does.
Game Six of the National League Championship Series between the Giants and the Philadelphia Phillies might have been tied and gone into extra innings, for example, if not for Juan Uribe’s eighth-inning solo home run. That single score, added to closing pitcher Brian Wilson’s brilliant demolition of Philadelphia’s best hitters, secured the Giants their first National League pennant since 2002. The World Series was won in a similar fashion - this time, it was Edger Renteria’s three-run homer against the Texas Rangers in Game Five, again combined with Wilson’s shut-down pitching in the game’s final inning.
Great pitching and clutch hitting - so why shouldn’t the Giants repeat in 2011, am I right? Except… well, Juan Uribe is with the hated Los Angeles Dodgers now, and Edger Renteria has found a new home with the Cincinnati Reds. As for that closer? Brian Wilson is on the Disabled List, with a back injury. Great!
In the offseason, though, the Giants made a few moves that should help out. They acquired veteran Miguel Tejada, formerly of none other than the Oakland Athletics, at shortstop, and gave a lot of work to up-and-coming minor leaguer Brandon Belt, not yet twenty-three years of age. (The work paid off; Belt, to the surprise of many, made the team’s opening-day roster, and is expected to be the team’s everyday first baseman.) Both Tejada and Belt should add some pop behind the plate, in addition to the already formidable hitting power of Buster Posey, Aubrey Huff, and Pat Burrell.
All in all, the Giants are expected to at least be competitive in the National League West Division in 2011. (For what it’s worth, living baseball legend Hank Aaron thinks they’re going to return to the World Series.) Personally, as long as they don’t sink like a stone, I expect this to be one fun baseball season.
Not that there is no reason to worry - in 1989, they won the National League pennant and made it to the World Series, then placed third in the N.L. West the following year. In 1998, the year after their only postseason appearance of the ’90s, they finished nine and a half games behind the San Diego Padres in their division. And, although they made it to the playoffs two years in a row in the 2000s (2002 and 2003), their 2004 season was a heartbreaker, as they lost the division to the hated Dodgers.
Speaking of the Dodgers, the Major League season officially begins in just half an hour or so, as the Giants visit their longtime rivals (dating back to when both teams were in New York, women couldn’t vote, and the number-one world power was the British Empire) in Los Angeles. San Francisco’s two-time Cy Young Award winning pitcher Tim Lincecum squares off against young L.A. pitcher Clayton Kershaw. It’s a shade under 80 degrees here in south Sacramento, and I’m about ready to crack open a beer, lean back, and watch the defending World Champions try to repeat. Yes, baseball season has arrived.
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