Bumgarner reunited with Wall of Fame gang
SAN FRANCISCO >> Aside from the letters that ran across the front of their jerseys and the rings that now decorate their fingers, the three former Giants who will be honored outside AT&T Park today don’t share many similarities.
Matt Cain, Ryan Vogelsong and Brian Wilson were all righthanded pitchers, All-Stars and key members of pitching staffs that led the Giants to world championships, but they took distinctly different paths to their new place on the Giants’ Wall of Fame.
There are few ways to contextualize their place in Giants history together, but there is one common thread among the three pitchers whose plaques on the Wall of Fame will be unveiled today.
They all pitched on the same staffs as Madison Bumgarner, who took the loss in a 3-1 defeat despite throwing eight innings Friday against the Brewers.
“If I have the same line as I did tonight, and we win the game, I’d sleep like a baby, Bumgarner said. “If you lose, you’re staring at the ceiling until five in the morning. We’re here to win games.”
Bumgarner allowed two earned runs Friday, but the Giants offense mustered just six hits and one run in the loss.
“You’d like to think that it’s going to come around, but you’re at
a point where it’s got to happen now,” manager Bruce Bochy said. “You can’t keep saying there’s a lot of baseball. The margin of error is getting smaller and smaller.”
Bumgarner’s road through the organization was most similar to Cain’s, so it should be no surprise the two became fast friends.
“Right from the start when I got here, he was somebody that you wanted to be around and you gravitated toward,” Bumgarner said.
Bumgarner was a victim of the treatment Cain received all too often throughout his career on Friday, as the left-hander threw five scoreless frames before allowing runs in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings.
Milwaukee took a 2-1 lead in the seventh on an RBI groundout by Orlando Arcia, but the heavy-lifting was done by second base- man Hernán Perez who led off the inning with a single, stole third and then scored on a grounder hit directly to third baseman Evan Longoria.
Throughout his tenure in San Francisco, the Giants rarely rewarded Cain for his efforts with strong run support. The club didn’t do much for Bumgarner on Fri- day, as Buster Posey doubled to lead off the second inning and came home on a Brandon Crawford double to leftcenter.
Since 2005, Cain and Bumgarner are the only two players to throw a pitch for the Giants before their 21st birthday. It’s a reminder of how quickly they achieved success in the major leagues, which Vogelsong can’t relate to.
The well-traveled righty was out of a big league job after 2006, as his 5.86 career ERA to that point wasn’t attractive to major league suitors. Five seasons later, after stops in Japan, the Venezuelan winter league and Lehigh Valley with the Phillies’ Triple-A affiliate, Vogelsong reemerged with the Giants and represented the club in the 2011 All-Star game.
“It takes a different breed of guy to be able to do that,” Bumgarner said. “Not many people could do that. I’m sure the road he took makes him all the more appreciative of the success that he had and the things he got to experience and be apart of. It’s pretty special.”
The Giants won all seven of Vogelsong’s postseason starts.
“I think stories like that are more special than a guy that just comes up and he’s here and has a good career or whatever,” Bumgarner said. “That kind of story I think is way cooler.”
While Cain and Vogelsong possess a number of common traits, it’s impossible to compare them to Wilson, whose four-season stint as the Giants closer was often as entertaining as it was nerve-wracking for fans to watch.
Wilson collected 171 regular-season saves with the Giants, but his finest moment came in the postseason when he struck out Nelson Cruz to clinch the club’s first World Series title since the franchise moved west to San Francisco.
“He had a different lifestyle and that was no secret,” Bumgarner said. “I don’t know if me and him had a whole lot in common, but here at the field he was just as good of a teammate as you could have. A great teammate.”
The trio of honorees may have led different lives inside and outside of baseball, but they all contributed to the most successful run in franchise history.
Bumgarner will sit in the audience for today’s ceremony, but he knows he’ll eventually be reunited with old friends. A plaque is in his future, regardless of what happens from here.