Ann Killion: Drawn-out win has all the feel of a game in fall
Fouled off. Again and again. And again. Seven times in all. On eleven pitches.
But when Andrew McCutchen got ahold of the 12th pitch and lofted it high into the left-field bleachers, with his sixth hit of the day, he had just etched his signature into Giants-Dodgers lore.
Sure, it was the first Saturday in April. Just the seventh game of the season. It was two teams simply trying to get back into the groove, back into rhythm, after an unexpected and unusual two-day break.
And it became something epic.
In the bottom of the 14th inning, more than five hours after the game started and after the Dodgers had taken the lead and looked on their way to a win, McCutchen won the game with a walk-off three-run home run.
He rounded the bases and was mobbed by his new teammates. Doused with water. When the Giants got into their clubhouse, the rowdy celebration could be heard through the walls, as though it were a playoff game. A college championship.
“We jumped around and screamed a little more,” McCutchen said.
Welcome to the Giants, Andrew McCutchen.
“It’s one of these Giants-Dodgers games that will be talked about,” manager Bruce Bochy said. “It had everything.”
Including a guy who just figured out the quickest way to endear himself to his new city.
Never turn your back on the Giants-Dodgers rivalry. Before the game both Bochy and Dodgers manager Dave Roberts seemed concerned about making sure their team got back in rhythm after Friday’s rainout.
They need not have worried. Both teams came out hitting.
The energy in the ballpark was high and became even more electric as the game went on. There was a blue invasion of Dodgers fans. The left center bleachers were packed with them, apparently with a traveling fan group that goes by the name of Pantone 294 — the color of Dodger Blue. Giants fans, who have made a habit of invading other ballparks over the decade, seemed a little upset by the takeover.
But by the ninth inning when Hunter Strickland was battling the top of the Dodgers order and everyone — in either blue or black — was on their feet, it created an atmosphere more suited for the postseason than the first week in April.
McCutchen was right in the thick of it, with hits in the first (a double), the fourth (he scored), the fifth, the seventh, the twelfth.
“I got pitches and I hit them,” McCutchen who was 2-for-24 (.083) coming into the game but raised his average to .258 with his first career sixhit game. “That’s what I was able to do today. Swinging and making contact.”
Baseball is governed by the law of averages, so you might have thought those wouldn’t be working in McCutchen’s favor when he came up in the bottom of the 14th, after the second rendition of the day of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”
Yasiel Puig had scored in the top of the inning to give the Dodgers a 5-4 lead. But Kelby Tomlinson led off the bottom of the inning with a single. Joe Panik followed with a single and Tomlinson whipped around to third. There were no outs, and all McCutchen needed to do was get a deep fly ball to tie the game. He did more. “He’s just a great hitter,” Bochy said. “The heart that he showed at that at bat, he fought off some really tough pitches.”
Facing right-handed pitcher Wilmer Font, who was elevating fastballs, McCutchen dug in for a battle.
“I like to look at it as controlled aggression,” he said. “I fought them off until I got comfortable.”
And he looked comfortable on pitch No. 12. He knew right away that the game was over.
“Oh, yeah, when you hit a home run, you know how it feels,” he said. “It felt good for sure.”
McCutchen is businesslike. He’s fitting into his new clubhouse after spending his first nine seasons with the Pirates, and it’s a different place than his last one, where he was the most important player and set the tone. He knows it’s a long season and he knows that, as much as Saturday felt like an important game, it probably wasn’t in the big picture.
“It’s more for the fans honestly than anything,” he said. “The fans have been awesome. And for the ones who stayed around to watch the game, to be able to do that in front of this fan base, was great.”
The last Giant to have six hits in one game was Brandon Crawford, in August 2016.
“I’ve had six in a row before, but never in one game,” McCutchen said, looking slightly amazed at the thought.
It was epic. It was memorable.
It was only April. But it felt like more.