Giants’ Cain throws 5 shutout innings in his final game.
Fitting end: Stellar start after being idle a month
Matt Cain was running on fumes. Everyone in the Giants dugout knew it. He knew it. “I was done,” Cain said. But he wasn’t, and no way was he going to retire on a four-pitch walk. So he gave the Giants one more out, then another. Finally, on his 73rd and final pitch, Cain threw a curveball to Padres pitcher Jhoulys Chacin, who grounded out to shortstop.
The Horse had galloped for the last time. He gave the Giants five shutout innings they did not expect in a 3-2 loss to the Padres on
Saturday to end one of the great careers in franchise history.
“Really, it’s pretty amazing what the man did today,” manager Bruce Bochy said. “I didn’t think he’d go five today with his lack of work. But he just had that will and determination to find a way to do it.”
Cain said he could not have gotten through it without the crowd of 40,394 at AT&T Park and his teammates.
“That didn’t have anything to do with me,” he said. “I was just riding their wave and enjoying it.”
Cain had not pitched since the final day of August, and here he was on the final day of September lasting long enough to qualify for a win that he did not get.
Naturally, Cain got “Cained” in his 331st and last start. The offense scored once for him. He will end his career with a record of 104-118, but everyone in these parts knows better. He had 109 no-decisions and left 44 of those with a lead.
More important are the three World Series rings, the perfect game, the third most innings and strikeouts by a San Francisco pitcher, and a stoicism that belied his ferocity.
Cain’s 1-0 lead disappeared on Wil Myers’ sixth-inning home run against rookie Reyes Moronta. The Giants led 2-1 in the ninth and were one strike away from fulfilling Cain’s goal of a team win when Austin Hedges hit an 0-2 pitch from Sam Dyson over Hunter Pence’s head for a double that scored the tying and go-ahead runs.
The defeat hardly mattered. It was all about that fifth-inning send-off.
“Guys were crying in the dugout,” Bochy said. “That’s how much they care about this guy.”
Moments later, when in-game television reporter Amy Gutierrez interviewed Cain, he began to cry, although he swore he did not lose it completely at any point.
“Not yet,” he said. “Maybe it will be more tomorrow. Right now I’m spent from just going out throwing.”
Bochy had planned to get Cain in the middle of an inning so a pitcher who had spent 16 years in the organization from draft day to retirement day could get the loudest of the umpteen ovations he absorbed.
The bullpen had been active since the third inning, and Derek Law was ready to go in the fifth when Cain threw four not-close pitches to Cory Spangenberg for a walk. Bochy emerged from the dugout and was booed. When he and catcher Buster Posey got to the mound, Bochy told Cain he could not remove him then, lest he be run out of town.
“At first I was thinking, no way this is how I’m going to do it,” Cain said. “He’s going to pull me out after walking a guy on four pitches. Man, that can’t be the way you end it.
“I just told him, ‘I’ll get you a couple more outs.’ ” He got three. As Cain walked off the mound, Bochy stepped onto the warning track and hugged him to let the fans know Cain had thrown the last of his 21,614 regularseason major-league pitches. Then came a Buster Hug.
Cain doffed his cap to acknowledge the crowd. He put the cap over his heart, waved it toward the fans and threw it into the stands before walking into the dugout.
There, a lineup of embraces awaited him, starting with the most emotional: pitching coach Dave Righetti. At the end of the line was Madison Bumgarner, who gave his mentor a bear hug.
Cain did not seem emotional as he sat alone by his locker before the game. Someone had spliced a montage of strikeouts throughout his career into a video that played on every clubhouse TV on a loop, until Cain had to change the channel on one set to watch something else.
Only when Righetti came by to go over the opposing hitters did the emotions strike. Putting on his uniform for the final time, he said, was a “grind.”
By day’s end, Cain was in the clubhouse with teammates sharing a toast. Hunter Pence, who drove in both Giants runs, said the mood was light, with a lot of “hip, hip hoorays.”
“Everything about this day was extremely emotional,” Pence said. “Even last night, I could feel the energy. I woke up in bliss just knowing he was starting. It filled all of us with some amazing emotions. We just love him so much.”
There were no onfield tributes to Cain. Those will come Sunday, on his 33rd birthday. He hopes to speak to the crowd. When Bochy was asked whether Cain might take the lineup card to the umpires before the game, he said, “Matt can do anything he wants. He can manage the game if he wants to. Obviously I haven't done too well.”
Cain laughed at the notion and said, “I think I’d be a terrible manager. If I were to do it I think I’d have to have Buster chirp in my ear the whole time about what exactly to do.”