Former 'Canes Win World Series Title with Giants

Nov. 1, 2010

Arlington, Texas – Two former UM baseball players, Pat Burrell and Aubrey Huff, captured a World Series title Monday night, helping the San Francisco Giants take down the Texas Rangers with a 4-1 count in the series. For the Giants, the title is their first since 1954.

Game 1 Recap: The national press gave the Giants little chance to win this World Series and no chance to beat Cliff Lee on Wednesday. When that was conveyed to Matt Cain, the laconic starter said, “We’ll just have to write a different story.”

If 43,601 had not crammed into AT&T Park to witness the tale the Giants penned in Game 1, few would have believed it. They hounded and pounded Lee off the mound in a six-run fifth inning that shot them to an 11-7 win against the Rangers, the “hitting team” in this series.

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Game 2 Recap: Reasonable people in an enlightened era do not believe in fate and destiny, do they? This is the age of supercomputers, not the supernatural. So, when Ian Kinsler’s fifth-inning drive to center field hit the top of the fence, bounced straight up and came back to Andres Torres instead of going over for a home run, it was just topspin, right?

Tell that to the faithful who have waited their lifetimes and their parents’ lifetimes for a championship, who see the Giants two wins from ecstasy after Thursday’s 9-0 thrashing of Texas and now believe that 2010 has to be their year because it somehow is ordained.

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Game 3 Recap: There are few unimportant choices in a World Series. With a championship on the line, any pitch, any managerial move, any decision to take an extra base or stay put could spell the difference between a lifetime of contentment or second-guessing.

The Giants’ first loss of the 2010 World Series on Saturday night might have boiled down to one pitch called by Buster Posey, a low and inside fastball that Jonathan Sanchez tried to sneak past rookie first baseman Mitch Moreland in the second inning.

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Game 4 Recap: The Rangers had not played in the World Series before, and now their experience could be coming to an end, right here at their park. After Sunday night’s 4-0 loss to the Giants, Texas trails three games to one in the best-of-seven series.

“It’s pretty simple,” Texas second baseman Ian Kinsler said. “We win, we move on (to Game 6); and we don’t, we go home.”

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Game 5 Recap: There stood pitcher Matt Cain, at 26 the longest-tenured player on the 2010 Giants, raising the circle-of-flags trophy above his head on the field so hundreds of San Francisco fans who refused to leave the Rangers’ ballpark could see it.

How long the faithful have waited to hear those words – not years, but generations. The Giants moved to San Francisco in 1958 and had not touched that trophy until Monday night, when they beat the Texas Rangers 3-1.

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Game 1 Recap: Quietly, the Giants have been cultivating their cute image. “Castoffs and misfits,” Bruce Bochy called his boys.

You didn’t know whether the Giants should be saluted or quarantined.

The media (this one included) has gratefully taken the Dickensian story line and run with it, and the Giants were happy for that to happen. Nobody likes to be the fat-cat steamroller.

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Game 2 Recap: The Giants’ ballpark swelled with nostalgia in Game 2 of the World Series on Thursday night. The sentimental look backward started with a scoreboard video of Bobby Thomson’s 1951 “Shot Heard ‘Round the World,” complete with Russ Hodges’ iconic call of “The Giants win the pennant, the Giants win the pennant …,” followed by ceremonial first pitches from Thomson’s daughters.

Then Matt Cain took the mound in his old-school high black socks, with wind tugging at the flags in a faint approximation of life at Candlestick Park, and the whole effect dragged the team all the way back to … 2010.

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Game 3 Recap: Sorry 49ers, but you’re yesterday’s news. Giants general manager Brian Sabean declared San Francisco “a baseball town,” adding that the Giants’ “ballpark experience now is like an East Coast city. It’s Boston. It’s New York. It’s Philly and Chicago. All of a sudden, we became the place to be. It wasn’t this way in 2002. It’s a pure baseball experience. The manager, coaches and everybody on the field can’t believe where this crowd’s coming from or how much support they give. It’s the place to be, no matter if you win or lose.” Sabean recalled the crowd amping it up several notches beginning the first day of the final homestand.

The Delta pilot who flew the Giants to Dallas on Friday flew his 747 back to San Francisco to pick up 340 team employees (and guests) and bring them to Dallas on Saturday. Ownership picked up the tab, just as it did in the 2002 Series. Not as big of a deal back then. Staffers bused to Anaheim.

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Game 4 Recap: How festive of Brian Wilson to get into the Halloween spirit, donning that bushy black beard so he could dress as Bluto from “Popeye,” and talking like a vampire.

The Giants had just beaten Texas 4-0 in Game 4 on Sunday night, behind a historic performance by man-child Madison Bumgarner, when Wilson contemplated the heady notion that his team can win the World Series tonight.

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Game 5 Recap: It took the Giants 19,193 days to bring a World Series championship to San Francisco, five decades of pent-up hope passed through generations that erupted in horn-honking, stranger-kissing, heart-pumping delirium Monday night.

There were tears of joy and surprise as fathers hugged sons and mothers whispered in children’s ears that they would never, never forget this day.

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