Giants win at Boston in 15 innings
BOSTON — Hall of Fame slugger and Red Sox legend Carl Yastrzemski stood on the grass at Fenway Park on Tuesday afternoon and explained that the Giants were causing him to lose sleep.
Carl insisted he watches all of his grandson Mike’s games with the San Francisco Giants until the final out and still wakes up at 6:30 every morning.
The grandfather was thrilled to see Mike on Tuesday when the Giants arrived in the Eastern Time Zone, but Carl, 80, didn’t go to bed any earlier. The Giants and Red Sox locked horns in a 15-inning, five-hour, 54-minute marathon that lasted past midnight and into Wednesday morning and finally ended when the relative of another Hall of Famer retired the Red Sox.
Eleven innings after Mike Yastrzemski homered in his Fenway Park debut, Giants reliever Dereck Rodríguez, the son of catcher Ivan Rodríguez, pitched two scoreless innings to finish off a 7-6 win.
“I made sure to keep my head up, look around and just soak it all in because you don’t really get an ovation at an opposing park for your home run,” said Yastrzemski, Giants win in 15 innings at Boston.
who received loud cheers from Red Sox fans.
There weren’t many fans left at all when Giants pinch-hitter Alex Dickerson hit a sacrifice fly to score Donovan Solano in the top of the 15th inning to give the Giants their fourth different lead.
Twenty-four pitchers combined to throw 547 pitches as the two sides teamed up to use 50 players.
The Giants set a franchise record by using 13 pitchers and tied a franchise record set in September, 1989 by mixing in 25 total players in Tuesday’s game. Manager
Bruce Bochy got a workout strolling back and forth from the dugout to the mound, but earned his 1,999th career win and will now have 11 games to secure his 2,000th victory.
“I wanted to get my 10,000 steps in and I was a little behind,” Bochy said.
When the stands were mostly full at Fenway Park on Tuesday, Yastrzemski and his fourth-inning solo home run were the talk of the town.
“I was so excited,” rookie pitcher Logan Webb said. “As a starting pitcher, you try to stay even-keeled in the dugout and couldn’t help myself. I was really excited to see that.”
When the stands were mostly empty, a ridiculous run of pitching changes and missed opportunities were all fans of either team were left to think about. The Giants held a four-run lead after five innings and a onerun lead headed to the bottom of the 13th inning, but bullpen miscues cost the Giants chances to end the game without exhausting nearly their entire pitching staff.
Kyle Barraclough, the Giants’ 12th pitcher of the game, walked in the game-tying run with the bases loaded in the 13th inning, but escaped the frame by inducing a groundout that extended the evening.
The bullpen woes nearly took the spotlight off of Yastrzemski, who toured the Green Monster on Tuesday with his grandfather before receiving cheers and ovations before each plate appearance.
“The crowd reactions all night were incredible,” Yastrzemski said. “I can’t thank them enough for being supportive and just showing me some love when I’m on the opposing team. It’s unheard of.”
With one sweet swing in the top of the fourth inning, Yastrzemski redirected a 96-mile per hour fastball from Red Sox starter Nathan Eovaldi and launched his solo shot into the center field seats. The homer bridged generations of baseball fans, including some at Fenway Park who remembered watching Carl during his 23-year, Hall of Fame career.
It also made Mike the eighth rookie in Giants franchise history to hit at least 20 home runs in a single season and the first rookie to do so since Dave Kingman blasted 29 in 1972.
“To hit a home run, No. 20, that’s quite the night for the kid,” Bochy said. “I couldn’t be happier for him.”