A Week at the Cove

Cody Ross is human. This much we know. We also know the history of the Giants on the road with a chance to close out a seven games series. Hint for the uninitiated: It's not good. In 1987, the Giants left for St. Louis up 3-2 and brimming with confidence. They had One Flap Down. They had Will the Thrill. They had Kevin Mitchell. And then came Jose Oquendo. In 2002, the Giants won Game 5 at Pac Bell 16-4 and went back to Anaheim up 3-2. They had Rich Aurilia. They had Jeff Kent. They had Barry Bonds. The Angels had a Rally Monkey and Scott Spezio. We all know what happened there. So what, if anything, sets Gigantes v.2010 apart from those two tragically flawed teams? Pitching. Lots of it. From the first out to the 27th, this is the best staff in the league. Philly has the horses at the top, but our 'pen and the critical 4th starter set us apart. They can throw Baby Roy and Cole Hamels. We can counter with Dirty Sanchez and Shotgun Cain. Timmy and Big Roy split their starts. MadBum stepped up with the relief corps and Juan U-RIBE! to best Blanton's Boys in Game 4. If the other two parts of the Big Three split again, we win this series, and we'll look back on that triumphant sac fly bat flip from Uribe as the defining moment. We won the game that was set up for us to win. The rest is a crap shoot. Let's hope Dirty's rolling 7's tonight...

Game 3

Tuesday's game is still a blur. I got the day off work but had to bang out a PowerPoint before I left from San Jo in the morning, so brunch with my season ticket partner was out the window. We just started drinking. There was a funky haze lingering over the entire Bay Area that gave me pangs of fear... The daytime start meant the extra tickets we'd purchased and put up on StubHub were virtually worthless. Ducats were going for less than face online, and the lot was no better. We ended up selling low and eating $30. But at least we know some real fans got in. We don't mess with the scalpers. This town is full of vultures, vultures everywhere... We entered just as the jet fighters were buzzing the yard and settled in right along with Matt Cain, who looked his usual stoic self. When Babe Ross broke the ice with an RBI knock in the fourth, a sort of calm settled over the Cove — a thunderous orange calm, to be sure, but a calm nonetheless. Funny, a guy on the mound who'd never beaten Philly facing a lineup stacked with power, and we were one confident bunch with a 1-0 lead. Huff Daddy and Freddy Sanchez upped that to 3-0 — with an assist from Chase Utley, who's become quite the reliable adventure at second base — Javy Lopez shut down the big bats, and Weezy sent the kids home happy. The postgame was marked with two dinners, three bars, old friends, new friends, and an assortment of adult beverages that conspired to send me home with a silly smile stuck on my face...

Game 4 (with a Game 3 flashback)

How classic was that? 21-year old rookie pitches his heart out. Offense scrapes out a lead. Bullpen squanders the lead. The bats come screaming back. The Phils punch in a run to tie it late. Walk off win in the ninth. Too many storylines for a team of reporters to cover... It started for me with the National Anthem. The previous day, I'd regretted for the first time my regular bathroom trip during "God Bless America". I'll be honest, I'm as patriotic as the next guy, but songs where the separation of church and state is so blatantly ignored only serve to aggravate my sensibilities. So I use the opportunity to relieve myself and try to make it back to my seat in time for "Take Me Out To The Ballgame". But on Tuesday, as I was letting it out, I heard a familiar crooning pumped through the PA. When I got back to my seat, my lady friend had a silly grin on her face. I'd missed Zooey Deschanel. Fudgcicle. Oh well, the result of the game made me forget my regret real quick. But later that night over dinner, some newbies to the scene wondered aloud who would do the anthem the next day. I told them I would be shocked not to see Huey Lewis and the News before this playoff run was done. The next day, around 4:50, I sent one of the newbies a tweet: Called it. Long story short, I had a good feeling about this game the whole way... Of course, the wives in the Phillies family section in front of us did everything they could to kill my buzz. As I've mentioned before in this space, our season tickets are perched at the top of Section 104, which just happens to be where the opposing team reserves tickets for their loved ones, friends, and hangers on. My ticket partner and I have been known to do a good amount of what you might call "ragging" on this section. But we always keep it clean, and we try to keep it intelligent. This being the NLCS, we had a lot of immediate family members below us, so tensions were already pretty high before a pitch was even thrown. The team had flown in bodyguards to watch over the section during the series, and San Francisco's Finest were flanking the aisles at all times. For three games, we sat in the safest section in the park. And we didn't get the boot once. A miracle, really. Course, it helps to know your usher and make nice with the bodyguards during the game. But nothing could've prevented one of the wives from losing her shit around the bottom of the fourth and turning to us with her middle finger in the air and the f-bombs flying. After that, it was on. I felt bad about it later, especially since we kinda made her cry, but we kept it clean, we kept it intelligent, and most importantly, we kept it loud. You simply don't make it personal with the fans in a hostile environment. They're lucky we didn't puke on them...

Anyway, some thoughts on the game: Guess Buster Posey didn't get the memo that Cody Ross is supposed to drive in the first run of every game in this series. Okay, seriously, how crucial was it for somebody to step up and have a game whose name does not spell Ssory Doc backwards? Four hits, two doubles, and the play of the game, receiving a short-hop seed from Aaron Rowand to tag out Carlos Ruiz and preserve the Giants' lead — for another moment at least. The kid has been pressing through his first postseason, but he looked like the Buster we know and love on this night, particularly in the ninth, when he stroked a single down the right field line to send Huff Daddy to third and set up the heroics from U-RIBE! Speaking of clutch, how about getting down 0-2 and fighting off a bunch of nasty s*** before reaching out to somehow pull a low-and-away changeup deep enough to left to plate the winner? Uribe's pretty much penthouse or outhouse, all or nothing, titanic whiff or jazz hands. So a sac fly is not the first thing you'd expect in this situation. I, for one, called a home run, but after he got to two strikes, I'd pretty much given up on the AB. Good thing he hadn't. On the way out of the park, I stopped on the Portwalk and lit up an American Spirit. The crowds spilling out of the Lefty O'Doul gate were still caught up in the glow. "UUU!" went the call. "RI-BE!" went the response. And it carried on into the dark of night. No time to party hearty this evening. Save it for tomorrow. Giants on the verge, and it's gotta happen in five, right?

Game 5

We were late getting in. That's where it started. Yes, we scored early and Timmy looked possessed, but something was just not right. Maybe it was the rain, a strange October drizzle that seemed to hang around like an unwelcome house guest planted on your couch and eating all your food. Then came the third inning. Timmy plunked Ruiz with two strikes, and that empty feeling that had been building all day in my stomach bubbled over. I knew we were going to lose. Even as we staged a comeback. Even as we put together chance after chance, I knew it was a futile effort. We were going back to Philly. Even the wives in front of us knew it to be true, and though we chanted for them to "Go back to Philly!" the night previous, now that seemed the embodiment of our worst nightmares. I sunk inside myself and got very quiet, came alive at the appropriate moments, but mostly tried to let the game, the moment, the season sink in. After all, that could be the last time I saw that field in 2010. That could be the last time I saw that team. I wanted to remember the fun times. I didn't want to think about this latest round of torture. As the Philly bullpen cruised through the final innings, I took it all in, and I made a pact with myself: if we screwed the pooch in the City of Brotherly Love, I would not allow it to dictate my mood for the next six months. I would take it like a man and brush it off my shoulder like Jay-Z. We'll see in the next couple days whether or not I have to live up to my end of this bargain with myself, and if I can...

BTW...

>  I'm loathe to pick apart losses, especially when shoddy defense was the key contributor to the defeat, but a lot of people harped on it, so I wanted to point out one thing from Game 5. Cody "Superman" Ross got nailed at third base trying to move up on a Panda flyout in the fourth, after he'd just knocked in the Giants second run with a double. It was the third out of the inning, a fundamental error on the basepaths, and with seemingly little upside should he have succeeded. But at the risk of sounding like a Cody apologist, here was my take on the spot: Uribe's up next. With two outs, Halladay either walks him to get to Lincecum or throws him nothing but 55-foot sliders until he strikes out. I'm thinking Cody Ross bet on the latter and figured he might score from third on a passed ball. So he took a chance, and Jayson Werth uncorked a perfect throw — the only way to ring up a fairly quick runner. Again, I can't excuse, I'm just trying to explain. The double play certainly sucked some momentum away from the home team, but I don't believe it affected the outcome...

>  Fact: The Giants are 0-2 this postseason in games when orange pom poms are the free giveaway.

>  So, how are the Giants doing on fulfilling my series prediction? Well, let's just say that baseball loves to obfuscate, which is precisely why I don't believe in attempting to predict it. I still hold to my call that the best scenario for a San Francisco victory was a five-game series, but I have to admit defeat nearly across the board. I was fairly spot-on in my call for Game 1. The boys "kicked the ball around" — as Marty Lurie would say — and made my Game 2 pick look like wishful thinking... which it was. Matt Cain did not disappoint my prognostication, but the offense did, and Game 3 kept me on course for an all-around win. Game 4 didn't play out quite like I expected, but then again, it didn't turn out like anybody expected. Game 5, well, f**k. So it's back to Philly. And since I didn't make a call for Games 6 or 7 because I didn't want them to happen, Here's my take:

Dirty has to win it tonight. The offense will get him three or four runs off Oswalt, who I don't believe can shut down the Giants three starts in a row (going back to August), but he's got to hold the Phillies in check. If he can keep them off the board through the first turn of the batting order — which is normally not too difficult for him — the bats can put some wind in his lungs and confidence in his heart, and we can run out the clock. If they get on him early and he s***s the bed, the bats are going to have to light up the night. But even J.T. Snow hit three homers in one game at the Bank, so maybe a shootout wouldn't be as lopsided as everybody thinks. If we go down tonight, I'd usually say we didn't have a chance in Game 7, but this Teflon Team has surprised me all year. Why should they stop now? It would be up to Matt Cain to get away from his flyball pitcher M.O. and keep these guys on the ground. If he can do that, we've proven we can get to Hamels. But in the end, I think this will all come down to the bullpens. And if it does, we've got a fighting chance...

>  Watching the game at home today. Probably alone. I don't know what it is, but something about going to a bar and watching with a bunch of rowdy fans has always turned me off. Probably because both times I did that during the '02 series, we lost the freakin' game...

Enjoy the torture, everybody.

The Last Tweet... (A new feature)

Oct. 20th, 2:19 PM
@ArcadeDreams The Sun wasn't going to come out today, but Cody Ross was cold. #sfgiants #NLCS