SAN FRANCISCO -- Game One of the 2012 World Series was played big, almost comedically so. Three homers from Pablo Sandoval on pitches most players would disdain as being beneath their scientific approach screams bigger than bigger than life.
So of course Game Two was very very small, almost to the point of being subatomic. Yes, the result was the same ? Giants win, 2-0, this time to take a lead of two-games-to-just-watching for the Detroit Tigers ? but the details that separated victory from defeat were subtle to the point of undetectable.
[INSTANT REPLAY: Giants ride Bumgarner to 2-0 series lead]
Madison Bumgarner, the starting pitcher who gave Giant fans the yips, stifled the Tigers on two hits over seven innings. The only threat the Tigers did mount ended because the Tigers, already sensing that scoring would be difficult, tried to get Prince Fielder to score from first on Delmon Young?s second-inning double. He didn?t, because Gregor Blanco, Marco Scutaro and Buster Posey made two throws faster than Fielder could cover the last 90 feet.
But the Giants, who nearly formed a Baseball Bugs conga line Wednesday night, had to get their runs in the tiniest way possible -- with a single, walk, line-hugging bunt and a double play grounder in the seventh, and then three walks and a sacrifice fly in the eighth.
[RELATED: San Francisco
Giants 2012 World Series page]
And both wins still look the same if you squint your eyes hard enough. At least that would be Brandon Crawford?s position.
The Giants shortstop handled more questions about his role in the Blanco/Scutaro/Posey relay (Blanco threw the ball over Crawford?s head to Scutaro, essentially) then about his double play grounder that scored Hunter Pence with the winning run. But since it was his best double play grounder ever, he talked happily about it, from the Blanco bunt that rolled just inside the third base line (?Oh, I thought it was a great bunt,? he laughed) to his own work.
?Frankly, I didn?t really know what to expect,? he said. ?I mean, I think I?d seen him (Tiger pitcher Doug Fister) a couple of times in Double-A, but that was it. I wasn?t trying to let a lot of things go through my head. I just tried to approach it as a two-strike at-bat.?
In other words, he walked to the plate with the bases loaded and nobody out in the second game of the World Series with the score 0-0 and thought of . . . well, nothing.
Okay, next to nothing.
?I sort of thought if I put the ball in play on the ground, they?d probably go for two rather than come home,? he said. ?I mean, I looked up, and they were playing back, so I sort of knew what they wanted to do.?
And to the Tigers? delight AND despair, he delivered that.
?We played double play depth because we felt that we couldn?t give them two runs,? Detroit manager Jim Leyland said. ?To be honest with you, we were absolutely thrilled to come out of that inning with just the one run, absolutely thrilled. I mean, we had to score anyway. You give them two, it makes it tougher, obviously, but we felt like we didn?t want them to open it up. We got the double play ball and we got out of it, and it actually worked really good for us.?
Well, except for the double play producing the only run the Giants would actually need. San Francisco scored again in the eighth, denying the locals the satisfaction of knowing that the last double play that produced the only run of a World Series Game was Game 7 in 1962.
Yes. The Bobby Richardson game. The one where the Yankees beat the Giants when Willie McCovey?s two-out line drive with Matty Alou at third and Willie Mays at second went right at Richardson, killing San Francisco?s chances of winning their first Series 48 years before they actually did.
So Brandon Crawford was denied a chance to bookend San Francisco baseball history because of Pence?s bases-loaded sacrifice fly off Phil Coke in the eighth. He was also denied a chance to be in on the relay that may have crushed Detroit?s spirits.
But he delivered the tiny little run that created the tiny little win that will disappear next to the comic-book win the night before. The win that counts just the same as the one before it. The one that sends the Giants to Detroit with a choke hold on a series that skewed heavily Tiger before it began.
And yes, in the World Series, wins come in one size. The one that fits all.
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