It's Not Over, 'Till It's Over.
Mark Purdy:
Like the man said, Giants baseball is torture
By San Jose Mercury News – Mon Oct 11, 1:09 am ET
Mark Purdy
ATLANTA -- Prediction for today: The Giants will show up here at Turner Field for their next game. Their locker-room sound system will be playing the sounds of a dentist's drill. Their uniforms will be covered with poison ivy sap. And they will be forced to take the field by trotting across a bed of flaming hot coals.
None of that could be any more cruel than what the Giants endured here Sunday -- or any more cruel than what their fans have endured throughout this playoff series with the Atlanta Braves. Could it?
"You're living on the edge," said Giants manager Bruce Bochy.
No, they are living on the edge of a razor blade that is on the edge of a cliff that rests above the edge of a pond filled with the stomach acid and curse words being churned out by Atlanta manager Bobby Cox.
The Giants, just as advertised, are a team that turns torment and angst into a scheduled daily activity. Sunday, they took a 1-0 advantage into the eighth inning. Then they blew the lead. Then they un-blew it, by coming back in the top of the ninth to score two runs and defeat the Braves 3-2.
This gives the Giants a 2-1 lead in the best-of-five series. And they should be paying inning-by-inning royalties to one of their broadcast voices, Duane Kuiper. Over the summer, after yet another gut-twisting close game, Kuiper coined the phrase: "Giants baseball -- torture!" It has become an unofficial team motto.
"Certainly by no means do we ever want to be tortured out there," said outfielder Aubrey Huff, who drove in Sunday's tying run. "It just seems like every game "... everything's so stressful. You know what I mean?"
We know what he means. All three games in this series have been decided by one run. All three have come down to the final pitch with the outcome in utter doubt. Anyone want to bet that it happens again today in Game 4? Anyone want to bet that it doesn't happen?
This season, the Giants played in 52 games that were decided by one run. They played in 28 more games that were decided by two runs. And they won 33 times after they entered the seventh inning either tied or behind on the scoreboard.
All of that prepared them for what's happening now, said rookie catcher Buster Posey.
"It probably helps us in that kind of situation like tonight," Posey said. "There wasn't a lot of panic in the dugout."
The truth is, amid the anguish, there is a lot of great strategic baseball machinery humming away. For example, Atlanta mounted its scoring rally in the eighth inning when, through a series of lineup maneuvers, Cox was able to get the exact matchup he wanted -- namely, Braves left-handed pinch hitter Eric Hinske against Giants right-handed reliever Sergio Romo. Hinske hit a two-run homer over the right-field wall, and the Braves had their 2-1 lead.
But then Bochy dealt his own cards in the top of the ninth. He sent up pinch hitter Travis Ishikawa to draw a walk -- and Ishikawa scored the tying run after singles by Freddy Sanchez and Huff.
Then up came Posey, who would illustrate another wicked aspect of postseason baseball -- namely, that sooner or later, a team's weakness is always exposed. In Atlanta's case, that was second baseman Brooks Conrad, filling in there because of injury. He already had committed two errors Sunday when Posey slammed a ground ball that went directly between Conrad's legs and drove in Sanchez for the Giants' eventual winning run.
Nothing out of the ordinary for this team.
"It's experience that you're able to draw on," Bochy said of learning to win late. "It's the way we play. If you play enough tight games, guys get accustomed to it. They know how big every pitch, every play, every at-bat is. In the ninth inning, the way they grinded out at-bats, that's pretty impressive off some tough pitchers. They found a way to get it done."
And here's how eerie it is getting. Sunday was Oct. 10. Ishikawa's uniform number is 10. In other words, No. 10 scored the winning run on 10-10-10. Not saying. Just saying.
"If I help the team win," Ishikawa said, "then I love close games."
On this Giants team, there's a lot of love going around.
Contact Mark Purdy at
[email protected] or 408-920-5092