A Game 7 straight out of ‘The Natural’
Of all the bad ideas in the history of sports, “Let’s taunt Bumgarner” is a real standout. That was the backdrop to Madison Bumgarner’s masterful reliefpitching appearance for the Giants in Game 7 of the 2014 World Series, an event that stands atop The Chronicle’s list of top moments in Bay Area sports over the past decade.
To be technical, Bumgarner came out of the visitors’ bullpen that night. To hear the romantics tell it, he emerged from a mist. There was a crackle of lightning when that gate swung open. He came from a fantasy, and from the past — baseball’s, and his own.
Romanticize it all you like, for it was just that magical — something only Bumgarner, with full support from his manager, could have pulled off.
Just three nights before, Bumgarner had shut down the Royals in Game 5 at AT&T Park, pitching a fourhitter with eight strikeouts and no walks over 117 pitches. The Royals simply stood no chance against his wicked lefthanded deliveries in what became the first World Series shutout in 11 years. (Flori
da’s Josh Beckett blanked the Yankees in 2003.)
That gave the Giants a 32 series lead heading back to Kansas City, but Game 6 did not go well. They got routed 100, giving local fans a reason to believe. Some of them, it seems, got a bit too cocky.
“There were two loudmouth Kansas City fans right above our dugout, screaming over and over, ‘Give us Bumgarner!’ And getting louder every time,” recalled Tim Flannery, the Giants’ now retired thirdbase coach, in an interview last week. “Well, I knew the setup had him being available for Game 7. Sure enough, from the very start that night, those same two knuckleheads started yelling, ‘Give us Bumgarner! We want him! Give him to us!’ ”
Tim Hudson was the Giants’ starter, and it quickly went sour. He didn’t get through the second inning, when the Royals scored two runs for a 22 tie, and Bochy called on Jeremy Affeldt to get the final out. Affeldt, who will go down with the most consistently great Giants over their threechampionship run (just two earned runs in 261⁄3 innings), got San Francisco through the fourth without incident.
Meanwhile, the Giants had taken a 32 lead in the top of the fourth on singles by Pablo Sandoval, Hunter Pence and Michael Morse. That’s right about the time Bochy made a call to the bullpen.
“Those fans must not have seen Bumgarner warming up, because they were getting louder than ever,” said Flannery. “Then all of a sudden, here he comes for the fifth. That bullpen gate opened up like a saloon door, and out walked our gunslinger. I got up on the top step of the dugout, and from about 6 feet away looked those two guys right in the eyes and yelled, ‘You got him now, motherf—s!’”
For Bumgarner, the idea of working on two days’ rest was a laughable concern. “I feel as good as I’ve felt all year right now,” he’d said after Game 5. “It usually doesn’t work that way. For whatever reason, everything started clicking the last two months.”
To a number of pundits in the press box, it seemed inconceivable that Bumgarner would actually pitch the last five innings. In the dugout, catcher Buster Posey said “there was hardly any conversation” between himself, Bochy and pitching coach Dave Righetti. “They weren’t putting great swings on him. I think everybody could see how good he was.”
“There’s no way I would take him out,” Bochy said. “I just jumped on that horse and rode it.”
Bumgarner threw 68 pitches, 50 of them strikes. He retired 15 of the last 16 hitters he faced and never went to a threeball count. Can you imagine an opposing manager describing his team’s chances as “hopeless”? That was exactly the word chosen by the Royals’ Ned Yost. The way center fielder Lorenzo Cain saw it, “We probably would have won if they didn’t have him. But they do have him.”
Writing in the New Yorker, the great Roger Angell noted that he’d witnessed the magnificence of every storied World Series pitcher since Lefty Grove in the 1930s, but that Bumgarner surpassed them all. “Bumgarner is composed out there, his expression mournful, almost apologetic, even while delivering his widewing, slinging stuff,” he wrote. “Sorry, guys: This is how it goes. Over soon.”
Things got a little tense in the ninth. With two out and nobody on, Alex Gordon drilled a shot up the leftside alley. Center fielder Gregor Blanco wisely let it bounce but misplayed the hop, and the ball rolled to the wall. Left fielder Juan Perez bobbled it for a moment, Gordon was heading for third, and it seemed for a moment that he just might score. But with Perez’s relay throw heading for shortstop Brandon Crawford, thirdbase coach Mike Jirschele waved the stop sign — wisely. Crawford deftly handled a short hop and was ready to throw out Gordon, with room to spare, if it came to that.
With the crowd in an uproar, it was left to Salvador Perez, the Royals’ heartandsoul catcher. Pondering a 2and2 pitch, Bumgarner had his mind that “Perez was going to want to do something big,” so he fired a fastball slightly out of the zone. Perez popped it up, Sandoval settled under it in thirdbase foul territory, and it was left for a few hundred Giants fans to enjoy the wild celebration taking place on the field.
“I feel privileged and blessed to say I was on a team with Bumgarner,” Affeldt said later. “You just don’t see that kind of performance anymore. You’re going to say, ‘Man, let me tell you what I saw.’ ” Morse thought it over, in between Champagne drenchings, and concluded, “It’s like the guy isn’t human.”
Bumgarner’s fiveinning relief stint wasn’t the longest for a starting pitcher in World Series history, but taking everything into account — seizing an unfamiliar role, working on two days’ rest, protecting a onerun lead the entire time, folks already attuned to his astonishing postseason career — it is widely considered the best. His final numbers for the 2014 postseason: 522⁄3 innings with a 1.03 ERA, allowing just 28 hits and six walks.
“I’m told that when he left the bullpen,” Flannery recalled, “he turned and said to the guys out there, ‘You all can put your gloves away. You won’t be pitching tonight.’ That’s Bumgarner. Humble humor, legendary pitcher, a beautiful soul.”