Have mentioned it before, but I'm a long-time Giants fan, going back to the days of Mays, McCovey and Marichal. Started rooting for them as a kid, about the same time I picked the Rams and the Lakers. I grew up on the East Coast, so none of this was due to "hometown" connections. Those teams (and players) just clicked for me. I chose
them, etc. etc.
Okay. So the Giants, as baseball fans know, had this crazy second half swoon, after being arguably the best team in baseball in the first half. They went from 6.5 games ahead of the Dodgers to end the season at 4 games down. At one point during the swoon, if memory serves, the Dodgers were up 8, but then the Giants closed the season well. So, yet again, the Giants faced an elimination Wild Card game, this time against the surging Mets.
Great pitchers' duel between
Madison Bumgarner and
Noah "Thor" Syndergaard. Both big, hard-throwing pitchers, though "Thor" is more powerful. He can top 100 mph and is young enough to average 98 with his fastball through a full game.
To make a long story shorter, he was crushing the Giants. They couldn't hit him. He shut them out and shut them down, striking out 10. After 7 innings, it's a scoreless game, but the Mets coach, Terry Collins, much to my delight and the great relief of the Giants hitters, decides to pull him and put in Jeurys Familia instead, even though Thor still was dominating the Giants. In the 9th inning, Conor Gillaspie hits a three-run homer and wins the game for the Giants. As I'm cheering this on, I'm thinking, Syndergaard doesn't give up that homer, if they had kept him in through 9. Bochy, for the Giants, decided to keep Mad Bum in for the full game, and he held the Mets scoreless. He played it old school and it payed off.
