Kershaw better but his relief stumbles
S.F.: 4 runs with 2 outs in 9th
LOS ANGELES — Magic Johnson, in the midst of his long and heated rivalry with Larry Bird, predicted that one day the two would be best of friends, two old men sitting on a porch playing checkers.
You get the impression that Madison Bumgarner and Clayton Kershaw could be like that someday, way down the dusty road when they’ve both been put out to pasture.
On Monday night, the two great lefties were not friends. They were spittin’, clawin’ rivals, both of them with a lot to prove, each trying to position his team for playoffs.
Kershaw won this matchup, but the Giants won the game, a comeback 5-2 stunner. They trailed 2-1 with two outs in the ninth.
“He was better than me tonight, for sure,” said Bumgarner, who went six innings, “but we were better than they were, just on this night.”
The Giants, who simply cannot score at Dodger Stadium, finally could. Nick Hundley’s pinch-hit, two-out, basesloaded single off Scott Alexander gave the Giants a 3-2 lead.
Gorkys Hernandez followed with an RBI single off Alexander, and the Giants got their final run on an error by first baseman Max Muncy.
It was a huge win for the Giants, who came sooo close — as in, one out — of losing the opener of this 10-game road trip and slipping six games behind the second-place Dodgers. If the Giants make it to the playoffs, this will be a night they remember with great fondness.
Kershaw was close to vintage Kershaw, in fact. The top seven Giants in the order went 1-for-21 against him. But Bumgarner did his job, gutted it out and kept his team in the game, then sat back and watched the rally happen in the ninth.
Kershaw, the Dodgers’ ace of aces, pitched eight innings of one-run ball, giving up four hits, striking out nine. On Kershaw’s 110th pitch, with the 45,225 fans on their feet, pinchhitter Hunter Pence hit a nubber to the left side. Kershaw pounced on it, spun and nailed Pence at first. Then Kershaw walked off the field with attitude, his work done.
Kershaw also drove in the game’s first run with a flukey tweener in the fourth. In the fifth, Justin Turner slammed a first-pitch Bumgarner cutter into the left-field bleachers.
Bumgarner gave up two runs and seven hits. He watched the top of the ninth on TV in the clubhouse.
“That was pretty good watchin’,” Bumgarner said.
Monday night was the 11th time Bumgarner and Kershaw faced one another in their careers, the most of any two active pitches in the major leagues. Each team had won five games. The lefties bring out the best in one another.
It’s like Bumgarner and Kershaw started the game singing a duet: “Neither one of us wants to be the first to say goodbye.”
Bumgarner (4-4) and Kershaw (5-5) are .500 pitchers this season, but their duel Monday was high-level, high-stakes hardball.
Was it a message or just “howdy” when Bumgarner knocked Kershaw off the plate in the fourth inning with a high and tight 0-1 heater? If so, Kershaw said hello back, slicing a high pop to short left field, which resulted in a collision between Hernandez, the left fielder, and shortstop Brandon Crawford. Kershaw’s double drove in the game’s first run. Crawford came out of the game after hitting a flyball in the fifth.
In the sixth, Bumgarner lined a single to left on a Kershaw slider, usually not his friend, sending Steven Duggar to third, and Duggar scored on Andrew McCutchen’s ground ball to close the gap to 2-1.
Kershaw won the sing-off, but not the game.