As the San Francisco Giants stormed Detroit’s Comerica Park celebrating their second World Series in three years, a lot came to my mind as to what an impressive road it took for this team to get here. They tied a Major League playoff record by winning six games where they faced elimination, a few of their pitchers looked to have their careers derailed only to surge back with a vengeance and they reached the top while deciding not to use their most efficient hitter during the regular season.
Back on August 5, the Giants were dealt a devastating blow when it was announced that their star outfielder Melky Cabrera received a positive testosterone test. As per league policy, Cabrera was suspended for 50 games effective immediately. While the Giants had other weapons in the lineup, their quest to hold off the hated Los Angeles Dodgers for the National League West division title became much more of a challenge. At the time of his suspension, Cabrera led the league with 159 hits and a .346 batting average through 114 games. Despite the suspension, Cabrera played in enough games in 2012 to be eligible for the National League batting title. Melky, however, had other plans and to his immense credit, withdrew his name from the running stating that it wouldn’t be fair if he had won the title.
Nevertheless, the Giants began life without Melky and it wouldn’t be easy. Eccentric closer Brian Wilson was injured, starting pitchers Barry Zito and Tim Lincecum were each struggling with many skeptics wondering if it was the end of the road for both, even though the latter is six years younger than the 34-year-old Zito.
All season long, the NL West leaders were run by an ensemble cast. When he was traded from Colorado mid-season to the Giants, second-baseman Marco Scutaro joined his fourth team in three years but led his new club in batting average with .362. Catcher Buster Posey, a front-runner for Comeback Player of the Year after an injury-plagued 2011 campaign, led the way in the home run department as he hit 24 long balls, a frighteningly low total for a team leader in said category. Along with outfielders Angel Pagan and Hunter Pence, first-baseman Brandon Belt and the one they call Kung Fu Panda, third-baseman Pablo Sandoval, the Giants were content with what they had and despite doubt from experts around the league, were able to win their division. Their chances in the postseason, however, were a different story.
By the time the postseason was about to start, the Giants received a shot in the arm as Melky Cabrera’s 50-game suspension had just ended. With that news, naturally, manager Bruce Bochy wouldn’t hesitate to welcome him back with open arms. That, however, wasn’t so as Bochy decided against bringing Cabrera back. As illogical as the decision seemed, the Giants players did develop quite the rapport with each other in the weeks when Cabrera was away — so why mess with a good thing? Either way, to leave Melky Cabrera off San Francisco’s postseason roster was nothing short of asinine to pretty much anyone and everyone. To make matters worse, the Giants were quickly on the brink of elimination as their opponent, the upstart Cincinnati Reds (led by Toronto native Joey Votto) held a 2-0 series lead in the National League Division Series.
After losing 5-2 and then 9-0 in front of their home fans, the Giants had to give it their all as the series shifted to Cincinnati for the final three games. With the naysayers chorusing “If only they had Melky,” the Giants had their work cut out for them. After allowing a run in the first inning of Game 3, pitcher Ryan Vogelsong, a man who had spent a decade touring the minor leagues and Japan, shut the Reds down before his team capitalized on a fielding error in the 10th to extend the series. San Francisco won the next night with a convincing 8-3 win to tie the series and the next night, thanks to a Buster Posey grand slam, won the series with a 6-4 victory. It may have seemed like wishful thinking to believe that the Giants could persevere without Melky Cabrera but they did and if they looked to continue their success (or, if you will, luck), they had to face another resilient bunch, the defending World Champion St. Louis Cardinals, in the National League Championship Series.
After the Cards took a 3-1 series lead, the negativity resurfaced around San Francisco again. Without Melky, the Giants could do no good. To make matters worse, the Giants started Barry Zito for Game 4 whose career had never been the same since leaving Oakland in 2006. Despite having a better 2012 where he went 15-8 with a 4.16 ERA, few were convinced the former Cy Young winner could prolong San Francisco’s season. But Zito worked nearly eight innings of shutout baseball while striking out six as the Giants won 5-0. Not only did the Giants win the final two games, they won both in convincing fashion never surrendering a lead, winning 6-1 in Game 6 and 9-0 in Game 7 to book their ticket to the World Series. Unlike a few nights earlier, very few were voicing any concern about an absent Melky Cabrera.
In the World Series, the Giants met the Detroit Tigers. Despite not winning baseball’s biggest prize since 1984, the Tigers were a team on a mission having made quick work of an overmatched New York Yankees club in the ALCS. Plus, with ace Justin Verlander on the mound and the always-intimidating Prince Fielder at the plate, the Detroit Tigers were chosen as the favourites to win the series. Yet while the Giants weren’t exactly missing Melky, they had to be wary of another Cabrera. During the regular season, Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera had become the first player in 45 years to win baseball’s Triple Crown and with his dominance against Oakland in the ALDS and the Yankees most recently, there was no sign of the Venezuelan slowing down. To make matters worse for the Giants, they had to start Game 1 against the aforementioned Verlander who won 41 games over his last two seasons winning both the AL Cy Young and MVP in 2011 and will most likely win the former again in 2012. With all that said, even with the lineup they boasted, without an offensive threat like Melky Cabrera, the Giants had no chance against Detroit’s ace. The G-men would have none of it.
In Game 1, San Francisco did what few teams have done this year or last: they rocked Verlander for five runs and six hits over four innings. Detroit’s ace looked anything but as Pablo Sandoval became just the fourth player in Major League history to hit three home runs in a World Series game. While Barry Zito was great, Tim Lincecum, whose confidence had been shaken in recent years, came on in relief to restore some of that confidence — and he did just that, holding the Tigers at bay en route to an 8-3 Giants win. While there was no offensive clinic in Game 2, pitcher Madison Bumgarner left Tiger batters scratching their heads as the Giants won 2-0. The two wins marked the first time two lefty-pitchers teammates had won the first two games of a World Series since Ron Guidry and Tommy John of the Yankees did so in 1981. As talented as Melky Cabrera is, the Giants were continually showing everyone that his absence didn’t faze them at all.
After the series shifted to the Motor City, the Giants never missed a beat as they won 2-0 to take a 3-0 stranglehold on the Fall Classic. San Francisco’s performance in Games 2 and 3 also marked the first time a team earned consecutive shutouts in the World Series since the 1966 Baltimore Orioles who went on to sweep the mighty Los Angeles Dodgers sending legend Sandy Koufax, at the tender age of 31, into retirement.
When the 2012 postseason first started, many experts and sports pundits across the continent thought that as long as Melky was sidelined, the Giants were to be all but eliminated before the first pitch. Yet, the Giants didn’t just win — they made history with each of their players contributing something significant along the way. After trailing 3-1 in their series against St. Louis, San Francisco went the next 56 innings without even trailing let alone losing.
Their win in 2010 marked the first time the Giants won the World Series since 1954 (three years before they moved to San Francisco) but 2012 was in many ways just as special as it marked a rare occasion where a team had won a championship with such a vengeance despite showing the sheer bravery (or to some, stupidity) to sit their most productive player the whole way through. And now after defying all the odds, the San Francisco Giants have swept the high-octane Detroit Tigers en route to another World Series crown.
In the realm of sports, children are taught at every age that it doesn’t matter how skilled a player is. If he or she doesn’t have the right attitude or worse have the audacity to cheat, then they don’t get to play and that the team, win or lose, is better off without them. To those teachers, coaches and parents who teach children that integrity stands above all else in the face of adversity, the 2012 San Francisco Giants are living proof that winning is measured by character not talent.
So, the next time your little one is upset because little Jimmy isn’t allowed to play after not finishing his homework or skipping detention even though he is the team’s leading home-run hitter, you can simply educate him or her that as long as you have enough players who believe in themselves and everyone around them like Barry Zito who was thought to be past his prime or Tim Lincecum who has proven that with his slender non-athletic frame, you can’t judge a book by its cover or Buster Posey who rebounded from a forgettable 2011 or Pablo Sandoval, the 2012 World Series MVP, who has the ability to save his best for last, then anything — and I do mean anything — is possible. When you remind a child or anyone in need of a pick-me-up, simply think of the 2012 World Champion San Francisco Giants and you cannot go wrong — I guarantee it.
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Ryan Cowley is a writer at Toronto Standard. Follow him on Twitter @RyanACowley.
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