World Series Fare

Barry Zito. Barry Zito is a hero. A HERO, I tell you. I'm trying hard to think about what I would have said if you'd told me I'd be saying that come October, after the first game of the season that I took Smunch to...that one where we got there late, Barry Zito was pitching and by the time we arrived (in the middle of the first inning) the score was already 4-0. Mind boggling, really.

If you'd told me that they'd be playing the Detroit Tigers..the team of Prince Fielder and Miguel Cabrera...in the World Series and that Zito would be pitching against Justin Verlander. I would have laughed. It wouldn't have been a pretty laugh either.

That's my extra long-winded way of saying that just two days after Smunch and I witnessed that epic Game 7 at AT&T Park, the Giants won the first game of the World Series against the mighty Detroit Tigers, behind another stellar start by Barry Zito. I think it was the 14th start of his in a row that the team won. They never lost another one that Barry started after the one Smunch and I went to.

I don't tweet. But if I did, perhaps I would have cottoned onto the #RallyZito hashtag. I don't really know. I'm far too old fashioned for such things. Look at me. I have a BLOG for goodness sakes!

Pablo Sandoval hit three home runs that night...two of them off Verlander. As Mike Krukow would say, "Ownage is ownage." Pablo "Kung Fu Panda" Sandoval OWNS Justin Verlander. It's as simple as that. It spawned silly pictures, like this one:

The Giants won, 8-3.

And the rest of the series? Well...It was all just about as mindblowing as Barry Zito, actually. On Monday, Smunch and I were there to see if our team could make it. Less than a week later, on Sunday, in fact, they were the World Champions. By Halloween, there was a parade down Market Street.

What? What just happened???

Our team wasn't supposed to make it out of the NLDS after being down 2 games in a best of five series and heading out to Cincinnati. Our team wasn't supposed to make it past the NLCS when they were down 3-1 in a best of 7...where they were still in St. Louis and would have to win three games in a row. And then there was gonna be Justin Verlander. Heh.

Madison Bumgarner shut the Tigers out 2-0 in Game 2 on Thursday. He'd struggled at the end of the season, but held it together for this one big night. The Giants left for three games in Detroit. On Saturday, for Game 3, I made "Rally Enchiladas" in honor of Ryan Vogelsong's favorite pre-game dinner. Gosh, they were yummy.

And the pitching wasn't too bad either. Vogelsong also shut the Tigers out 2-0...on their home turf.

Of course, it wasn't just the starting pitching. There were so many amazing defensive plays. How 'bout that relay Gregor Blanco made from left field, missing his cutoff man, but hitting Scutaro who was backing up Brandon Crawford at third, then Scutaro throwing a shot to Posey to tag Prince Fielder out at the plate? How about any number of Brandon Crawford's crazy defensive plays? I swear that guy's arms have elastic in them. And Blanco was plain incredible out there too.

So, that left Sunday, when I decided it was only appropriate to have hot dogs and apple pie with our baseball. Now all I need is a Chevrolet.

Matt Cain started Game 4. I don't know what he eats or does for luck. He was driving golf balls off home plate before his perfect game. I suggested we go mini golfing, but we didn't really have time.

The game was a whole lot more tense than the previous three. If you peek at the score in that photo of the TV, it's the top of the 8th with the score tied 3-3. But our friend Marco Scutaro, Mr. Clutch, came through yet again. DH, Ryan Theriot got himself his first hit of the game and had been sacrificed over to second. Somehow, you just knew, when Scutaro came to the plate that this game had an excellent chance of being over. I've never seen anyone on the planet hit in the clutch like Scutaro. So, when he hit the ball, I had a lot of fun watching the look of joy on Theriot's face as his hand slid across homeplate.

Then in was Sergio Romo's turn. He struck out two before Miguel Cabrera came up. Romo throws a wicked slider and he'd thrown all sliders until his last pitch to Cabrera...a fastball that Cabrera watched as it flew over the plate.

SWEEP. And then there was a parade on Halloween. I wasn't there...again. It was Halloween. I had pumpkin math to teach and a costume parade to attend. My favorite kids will always trump my favorite team...

In the Meantime

The title of this post suggests there has actually been a "meantime" in the past couple of weeks. Sometimes there is only time when you make the time. I wanted to create some of that time on Smunch's birthday to do something he really wanted to do. I picked him up directly from school that day, dropped Mam off with a friend and headed to a somewhat nearby city to...well...stand in line with a bunch of other orange-and-black-clad people. Why not, right? Apparently, that's how Smunch and I roll these days.

Of course, our initial spot in line was nowhere near where I took that picture. It was all the way down the street...and around the corner. After standing in line for five on ten minutes, Smunch said, "Maybe we should go." To which I said, "You wanted to come and I drove you all the way here, so we're going to stay here for half an hour and see how fast this line moves." It was roughly 3:30 in the afternoon...time for the line to start moving.

The line moved quite a bit and although I was sensitive to making my newly minted nine-year-old stand in line for his birthday, I knew this was something he really wanted to do...and O.K., I kinda wanted to do it with him. Oddly, I spotted the guy I sat next to at the World Series ahead of us in line. I wish I'd said 'hi', but it seemed weird. We stayed in line and took little trips up to the front to catch a glimpse of our ultimate goal.The line was going to close at 5:30 and it was starting to get late. It was right about 5:25 when we finally reached the front. Yay!In approximately 10 seconds, we were shuffled along, out of the line and headed home.

Was this worth it? You bet!

On the way home, we stopped off by Kara's Cupcakes and Smunch got to choose his festive dessert for the evening. Then we zipped over to his favorite restaurant, where we met Daddy and Mam for a birthday dinner...which was cut short by the ill-considered need to get to a Mavericks team meeting...which ran totally late.

We got home around 8:30 (half an hour past Smunch's bedtime). He'd been gone from the house since he left for school that morning. He scarfed a cupcake, brushed his teeth and went to bed.

I'm not sure that made for the most fabulous birthday ever. I'll have to see what he thinks when the photo of us with the World Series trophy arrives in the mail!

Where's Waldo?

Epic Win

After their Halloween game, the San Francisco Giants were up 3-1 in the World Series. Game 5 was on Monday. It was a rematch between Tim Lincecum and Cliff Lee...the two aces (although I'd argue the Giants have more than one). You can bet that our family watched or heard ever single minute of it.

It ended up being just what the pundits said the first game was going to be...a killer pitcher's duel. And it lasted into the seventh inning...which was not all that long really. When two pitchers throw that many strikes, the innings just fly by. Not a single batter made it past first base. And then? Then Buster Posey hit a single, Cody Ross hit a single and Aubrey Huff, the Giants' red-rally-thong-wearing first baseman, bunted for the first time in his major league career. He was out, but Posey and Ross were on second and third. Pat "the bat" Burrell struck out, just like mighty Casey. And finally, Edgar Renteria came to the plate. He's one of the elder statesman of the Giants. His biceps muscle is completely torn, such that it has actually rolled down inside his arm. In his rookie season with the Florida Marlins, he drove in the game winning run in game 7 of the World Series. He was rumored to be talking about retirement. He took a couple of balls from Cliff Lee and swung at the third. It looked so much like a fly ball. And the outfielders ran back and back until the ball slipped over the wall in the left center field.

Three runs. Any Giants fan knows that's all Tim Lincecum needs. He gave up a solo home run to Nelson Cruz in the bottom of the inning, but blew through the 8th and despite looking like he could finish it out, he gave it up to The Beard, who made his job look easy...not something he's known for.

And it was over. I took no pictures, but there was plenty of jumping around in our family room. And a happy, happy little boy went to sleep that night.

I'm having a hard time detoxing from my overexposure to Giants baseball. Hundreds of thousands of people showed up in downtown San Francisco yesterday to welcome their team back home with a "ticker tape" (aka confetti) parade. I was not among them. I wanted to be there...so badly. But I just couldn't convince myself that it was reason enough to pull Smunch out of school again...it seemed like the wrong message to send. And I couldn't fathom going without my little baseball buddy. I watched on TV, tears streaming down my face more often that not. And yes, I realize how silly that sounds. It just got to the point this year that I felt like I kinda knew these guys just a little bit. And this is what they live for. In many ways, it's a silly, shallow thing that they do...going out there and hitting a ball with a stick. But great sports teams have a way of galvanizing people. And it's so much nicer to have that kind of connection with someone than connecting through some kind of disaster.

It's been a fantastic baseball season. I'm going to be so sad to see some of the players leave before next year...as always happens. But the older I get, the more I understand how nothing lasts forever. All I can say is that I'm glad I was there to see these guys play while they were here.

A Memory Made

Major League Baseball's 2010 World Series started on October 27th. It became a series between the San Francisco Giants and the Texas Rangers, who had beaten the New York Yankees in six games to earn their spot on the big stage.

The deception started the previous day, October 26th, when I casually mentioned to Smunch that I was going to pick him up early from school so we could go have his bottom braces installed.

He refused to wear his Giants gear to school to celebrate the Giants' first World Series in eight years, despite my admonishments. The first thing I did when I picked him up was hand him his Giants jersey. He was confused. I confessed...Although you can't tell, the moment of realization involves the cameraman (Daddy) holding up two pieces of paper.

Daddy had gotten a bonus from work a week or so earlier. He decided that he'd like nothing better than to spend it on sending his wife and son to create the memory of a lifetime together. I wasn't about to refuse.

So, I made Smuch put on his gear and we zipped over to the train station.The scene at the park was like nothing I'd quite experienced before. It was crowded outside. It was "smushy" getting in.The NLDS game was crowded, but we'd had seats in the somewhat (although not terribly) exclusive club section, where there are fewer crowds when it comes to getting food and such. This time, we had better seats, but getting there was no picnic. I'm sure the people in the seats next to ours thought I was moving in with all the jackets and blankets I'd brought. I shouldn't have. We never needed them.

John Legend sang the national anthem.And once that was over, this guy started pitching...in his first World Series game...our first World Series game...against the Rangers' ace, Cliff Lee...who had never lost a postseason game in his illustrious career and had won the World Series with the Philadelphia Phillies just a year earlier.During the first inning, this guy... second baseman, Freddy Sanchez, hit his first double of the night...a night when he would hit a historic three doubles in his first three World Series at bats. And in a huge surprise, that Smunch failed to appreciate, when the first inning was over (and the Giants were down 1-0, so Smunch was failing to appreciate a lot of things), this man stepped out onto the field...and began to sing. I left my heart...in San Francisco.... I couldn't believe our luck. Tony Bennett, aged, but still in full voice, sang his most famous song and we were there to hear it!

The people who sat around us were fabulous. One waved a big flag, that may have hit me in the head a few times...but someday, when I get around to watching the television coverage, I'll know just where to find us. [Update: Smunch just started watching that game again this morning and found us in the crowd right away. Oh my gosh, we really were there!]

One of the reasons the Giants/Rangers matchup was so interesting (aside from the Lincecum/Lee matchup) was because of these two guys.The guy catching for the Rangers is Bengie Molina, a beloved former catcher for the Giants. He got an enthusiastic welcome back when they introduced him that night. The guy at the plate? That's Buster Posey, the Giants' rookie catcher. They traded Molina to the Rangers to bring this guy up from the minors and get him behind the plate. Turns out, as much as I truly miss Bengie, it was a good tactical move. Posey has been awesome and is favored (at least in some circles) to win the National League Rookie of the Year award. Bengie taught him well, when he arrived in San Francisco.

Although this game was billed as a super duper pitching duel between two unquestionable aces, it turned out to be a slugfest instead. After the second inning, the score was 2-0 Rangers and I had a grumpy little boy on my hands. I didn't dare ask Daddy how much he spent on these tickets, but I know it was more than Smuch could appreciate. And much more than I'd have been willing to spend on a noisy evening with a grouchy kid. No, I wasn't thrilled either, but it was O.K.

In the third inning, something funny happened. The Giants scored, the game was tied and my happy Smunch returned. All our neighbors were thrilled to be high-fiving the happy little boy bouncing around in his seat. He was totally into it once the Giants dug out of their hole.And the high fives kept coming too. The Giants scored 6 runs in the bottom of the 5th, including a towering 3-run homer by Juan Uribe. It was loud, it was happy. Smunch and I were happy too.The score was 8-2. And then it was 8-4. It certainly wasn't Timmy's performance from his game against the Braves, but he hung in there for 5-2/3 innings. It was something to behold. Tony Bennett came back out for a lovely rendition of God Bless America during the 7th inning stretch, followed by the crowd lustily singing Take Me Out to the Ballgame. So much fun tradition around baseball...and so much more fun when you're at the World Series...and winning.

Somewhere in there, Smunch announced that he had to go to the bathroom. Having already gone on a hotdog run, I knew it was going to be a slog through the crowd. And I knew there were crazy long lines for the bathrooms. We ended up trekking halfway around the park...and then I ended up making him go in the women's room with me. The upside of all that was that we got to take a good look at this:That's McCovey Cove, so full of kayakers and boats that you could nearly walk from the park to the other side. And there's the sidewalk crammed with people...outside the ballpark in the middle of the game. I suppose they were hoping to catch a peek through the windows down there. I doubt they succeeded.

Brian "The Beard" Wilson, the Giants closer came out to warm up in the bottom of the 8th, but the Giants scored three more runs and his services rendered unnecessary, he returned to the dugout. In the top of the 9th, however, it seemed like the Giants went through every reliever they had while giving up three more runs. Finally, The Beard reappeared...and shut the game down. World Series win #1 for Tim Lincecum.It may not have been pretty, but it counted just the same. And Smunch and I? Well, I dunno how pretty we were, but we had one of the best mommy/son date nights ever!