The San Francisco Treat

So it turns out I rooted for Giants after all, and I am very pleased with the outcome, as the "misfits and cast-offs" wrapped things up last night 3-1, with Tim Lincecum out-dueling Cliff Lee, and the Giants winning the series 4 game to 1.

The factors that ended up weighing most heavily on me were the oddball nature of the Giants, exemplified by Lincecum, perhaps the most unlikely big-time athlete in all of professional sports (aside from placekickers in the NFL). He looks like the kind of guy who, when I was in high school, would hang out in the smoker's lounge, wearing a flannel shirt, a wool cap, and oversized construction boots, and would be classified as a "burnout." I would love to hear how Lincecum fit in the jockocracy when he was in high school, a long-haired hippie in a world normally ruled by crew-cutted guys who beat up nerds for sport. He hails from Bellingham, Washington, the same home town as Kurt Cobain. Long may their freak flag wave.

I also began to root on a geographic basis. Who was I kidding? San Francisco, home of the Summer of Love and Harvey Milk and the Grateful Dead, versus Texas, breeding ground of crackpot politicians, a state that broke off from Mexico because Mexico wouldn't allow slavery? Sure, there have been good things that came from Texas, like Molly Ivins, Willie Nelson, and the bat colony under the Congress Street Bridge in Austin, but the bad outweighs the good, and it was on visible display during the games in Arlington. I thought it wouldn't affect me, but seeing George W. Bush, grim and sallow, watching his Rangers lose, was a pleasure.

In the end, it was all about pitching. Game Five turned on one bad pitch--the 2-0 toss that Lee threw to Edgar Renteria in the seventh inning. Much of this morning's second-guessing was about Texas pitching to Renteria, with first-base open and runners on second and third, and lightly-used Aaron Rowand coming up. Lee's first two pitches, both high and wide, seemed to indicate he was not going to give Renteria anything to hit, but then he served up a fastball in Edgar's wheelhouse, which he deposited just over the left-field wall for a three-run dinger. Aside from Nelson Cruz's homer in the bottom of the frame, Texas could get nothing going against Lincecum, and went down meekly in the ninth against the bearded one, Brian Wilson.

Renteria is in special company. He had the game-winning hit in 1997, a much more dramatic affair, as it was the bottom of the tenth and walk-off win for the Marlins over the Indians. But a game-winning hit is a game-winning hit, and now he joins Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, and Yogi Berra as the only players to get game-winners in two different World Series clinching games. Renteria may retire after this season. If he does, what a way to go out.

I imagine the Rangers, and their fans, are spending today wondering, "What happened?" Mostly it was due to good pitching beating good hitting, but in the intangible world of steely-eyed resolve, the Rangers blinked first. Bruce Bochy out-managed Ron Washington, who didn't use his bullpen well and should have never put Vlad Guerrero in the field. Evaluating managerial moves is all done in hindsight, of course, but I got the sense if Bochy and Washington had sat down at a chessboard, Washington would have sweat bullets, and constantly put his hand on a piece, taken it away, and repeated the cycle.

For the first time, a World Series comes to San Francisco. Today the cultural values of that city may take a beating at the polls nationwide, but for one night, it's 1967 all over again. As Eric Burdon sang, "The children are cool, they don't raise fools, it's an American dream, includes Indians too."