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SAN FRANCISCO–Throughout the year, the Giants have celebrated their 60th anniversary in San Francisco by welcoming back legends and heroes from all of their memorable teams.
The franchise honored World Series clubs, division title winners and record-setters like Barry Bonds with pregame ceremonies on the field. The Giants held the celebration for the 2014 championship team September 15, but for those who missed it, they produced an encore during Tuesday’s 5-4, 12-inning win over the Padres.
It took a seventh-inning rally ignited by pending free agents Hunter Pence and Gregor Blanco and a 12th-inning pinch-hit, walk-off single from Madison Bumgarner, but the Giants saved their most heartwarming tribute to the past for the final week of the season.
“I was in the cage just getting warmed up and they have these pictures and one of them was of our 2014 World Series championship and it had Bum and everyone hugging him,” Pence said. “I was like, ‘I don’t know, is this some kind of foreshadowing? I was like, ‘We’ll see.”
Though their best days are in the rearview mirror, Pence and Blanco kept the club driving straight ahead in the seventh inning of Tuesday’s comeback win. Five innings later, the Giants needed someone to pull the car off the road.
Manager Bruce Bochy settled on Bumgarner.
Hunter Pence explains how a moment in the batting cage foreshadowed Madison Bumgarner’s walk-off. pic.twitter.com/RDjFLIufkG
— Kerry Crowley (@KO_Crowley) September 26, 2018
“He’s a pretty good pinch hitter that you put up there that’s a pitcher,” Bochy said. “He smoked it, didn’t he? It’s good to end that one.”
After center fielder Gorkys Hernández led off the 12th with a triple, Bumgarner drilled a 103-mile per hour single past third baseman Wil Myers to send the Giants home as winners.
As teammates poured onto the field, infielder Alen Hanson raced at Bumgarner with a tub of Gatorade. Apparently, the pitcher famous for guzzling Budweiser after World Series wins doesn’t treat all beverages equally.
With a fierce stiff arm of the jug, Bumgarner let the world know how he feels about electrolytes.
“I can do without that,” Bumgarner said. “Just high five and go inside.”
Hanson doused himself instead and Pence let out a huge sigh of relief.
“(Bumgarner) was telling everyone he was going to kill them,” Pence said.
With the Giants trailing 3-2 in the seventh inning, Pence lined his second hit of the game up the middle against Padres reliever Robert Stock. The crowd rises to its feet each time Pence strolls to the plate, and it did the same for Blanco when he was announced as a pinch-hitter.
After falling behind 0-1, Blanco ripped a 99-mile per hour fastball into the left field corner, bringing home rookie Chris Shaw from third while Pence raced all the way around the bases to score the go-ahead run.
While both Pence and Blanco have designs on continuing their careers next season, it’s unlikely either player will receive an opportunity in San Francisco. It’s even more unlikely the duo will lead another rally together, but on Tuesday, the Giants took a break from worrying about the future and celebrated two players who have contributed so much to the franchise’s storied past.
“It says a lot about the character of those two guys,” Bumgarner said. “It’s tough to come at this time of year and compete and play as hard as you ordinarily would. But this is the time of year when you’ve got to look yourself in the mirror, go out and do your job and earn your paycheck and give the fans and the city and the team what they deserve.”
The win helped the Giants avoid their second straight 90-loss season, and while they aren’t jockeying for position in the National League West standings, they learned Tuesday they’ll still have an opportunity to impact the division race.
That opportunity will come in their season-ending three-game series against the first-place Dodgers this weekend.
With a 10-3 victory over the Phillies Tuesday, the Rockies closed their deficit to 0.5-games in the NL West. Regardless of how the top two teams in the division perform over the next two days, the Giants will have a chance to crush the Dodgers’ playoff dreams.
“Even if it’s not necessarily the kind of meaningful ball we want, it’s still meaningful ball,” Bumgarner said. “Anytime we play the Dodgers it’s a competitive atmosphere.”
Not much the Giants have done in the month of September has mattered. Their games this weekend against the five-time reigning NL West champions will.
So too will their goodbyes to Pence and Blanco, who didn’t take part in ceremonies honoring the 2012 and 2014 World Series winners at AT&T Park earlier this season. Eventually, both will be invited back to San Francisco and they’ll have the chance to walk out onto the field, wearing their rings with pride.
This year, though, Pence and Blanco felt they still had enough left in the tank to wear something else with pride. And on Tuesday, they felt pretty comfortable in those Giants uniforms.
