The 40th Anniversary Trip, Part III - AT&T Park

A part of the San Francisco portion of our recent trip was devoted to taking the guided tour of the home of the San Francisco Giants, AT&T Park.

Whenever rankings of major league baseball parks are complied and published, you usually see AT&T Park and PNC Park listed at the top of these lists.  Now being a Pittsburgher and a Pirates fan, I will probably never concede that any place is better than PNC Park, but I have to be honest with you, AT&T Park is really nice, and I can see how this place finds its way to the top of many lists.  

You begin your tour from the Giants clubhouse store, work your way through various lounge areas and concourses, and take an elevator to the top level, whereupon you are directed to your first glimpse of the actual playing field, which is the picture you see at the top of this post.  It is called the "view level", and the view is spectacular, although it was enshrouded in fog the day we were there.  

Even from that top deck view, you get the sense that you are really close to the field, so the intimacy that is such a great part of the charm of PNC Park also exists in AT&T Park.

As you can see, we were ready for some action:

Of course, it would have been nice to actually see a ball game that day, but it was January, after all, and on the tour, we did see more of the Park than we would have if we were there on a game day.  Oh, and you can see by the cap I am wearing that I did spend some money in that Clubhouse Store before the tour began.

Here are some of the highlights:

The outside walls of the ball park feature plaques of a Giants "Wall of Fame".  I took pictures of these three Pirates nemeses of my youth:

For what it is worth, there is a plaque on this Wall for Bobby Bonds, but no such plaque for Barry Bonds, yet.

Inside what would be the equivalent of PNC's Lexus Club, you find these really beautiful  baseball murals.  The murals are huge, and these photos do not do them justice.

Throughout the Park, the Giants pay tribute to their history, including their roots in New York, but it is dominated, as you would expect, by one man.  Both on the outside, 

and the inside.

The tour takes you into the clubhouses and, on this day, the visitor's dugout, where I got the chance to channel my inner Clint Hurdle.

And I was also able to get some pictures of me with Giants heroes past

and present.

I am most grateful to Marilyn for forcing the issue of a tour of the ball park.  How many wives would do such a thing?  However, we both really enjoyed the two hours that we spent there. It was a worthwhile touristy thing to do, even in our limited time in the city.

San Francisco is really a terrific town, and I have detailed the rest of our visit in a post a few days ago.  A great town to visit, and one I would love to see again some time, and maybe on that next visit, the Giants will actually be playing a game that night.

MadBum, Hodges, and....Peter Pan and Social Media

Selected Short Subjects.....

Sports Illustrated announced yesterday that San Francisco Giants pitcher Madison Bumgarner will be its Sportsman of the Year for 2014.  Regular readers know that I stand in awe of the post-season performance, and in particular, the World Series performance of Bumgarner throughout this past season's MLB Playoffs and World Series.  I made a case that Bumgarner is the greatest World Series pitcher, over the course of a career, in all World Series history, and I got very few arguments when I did so.

This is one year where Sports Illustrated most definitely got it right.

********

The Golden Era Committee of the Baseball Hall of Fame made their long awaited announcement yesterday, and the results were somewhat surprising: Nobody was elected by the Committee to the Hall of Fame.  Not Jim Kaat, not Richie Allen, not Minnie Minoso, and not Gil Hodges. Nobody.

Just as I predicted, Facebook erupted with rancorous posts and comments from the legion of Gil Hodges supporters out there.  As for me, I am going to try to follow the advice of friend Joe Risacher and stay out of Hall of Fame debates.  To those in despair over this, I say, as might Aaron Rodgers, Relax.  The sun will come up tomorrow, Obla Di Obla Da Life Goes On, and be very thankful that the biggest problem in your life is whether or not some ball player is or is not in his sports's Hall of Fame.

********

Like many of you, I watched NBC's live telecast of "Peter Pan" last Thursday evening.

It was a pleasant enough experience.  Allison Williams, with whom I was completely unfamiliar, was charming enough in the title role, Christopher Walken was miscast as Captain Hook and seemed to phone it in, and there was the cachet of seeing a live performance on television that made it intriguing to watch.

All in all, as I said, a pleasant viewing experience.  Like so many things on TV these days, NBC promoted different hash tags in the corner of the screen throughout so that viewers could Tweet, Facebook, and use other forms of social media as they watched the show.  Out of curiosity, when the show was over, I went to Twitter and entered some of the hash tags to see what people said, and I was shocked, although perhaps I shouldn't have been, over the viciousness and meanness of the comments made.  I didn't tote them up, but if I had to guess, I would say that barely one in twenty comments had anything good to say about the show, and no one stopped with a simple "I don't like it".  Their comments had to be mean, vicious, and snarky to the nth degree.  I mean, if the show is THAT bad in your eyes, why are you even watching it in the first place?

It made me resolve to be a lot more cognizant of some if the things that I put out there on Twitter, Facebook, and, yes, The Grandstander.

Oh, and one last comment on Allison Williams.  In addition to being attractive and talented, she has to have the most beautiful set of teeth that I have ever seen.  Honest to God, her teeth were absolutely dazzling.  Beautiful choppers!

The World Series and Madison Bumgarner

I cannot let any more time pass by without a salute to the Giants historic, or at least quasi-historic, World Series victory, their third such title in the last five seasons (see The Grandstander of October 11, 2014).  It is a remarkable feat in this era of wild cards and multiple tiers post-season playoffs.  A dynasty?  Yeah, I would say so.

I will also point out this quote from The Grandstander's World Series preview from October 21:

Okay, you want a prediction.  I'll give you the Giants to win in six games.  The biggest reason for that will be the ace pitcher of the Giants, Madison Bumgarner.  He has been completely dominant in the post-season, and I believe that he will be the difference between the two teams.

Well, it took seven games, not six, but otherwise, as the saying goes, I believe I had that.

And how about that Game Seven?  Really, it was everything you would have wanted in a seventh game, and when you tie in the performance of Series MVP Madison Bumgarner, pitching five innings of near flawless relief on only two days rest, you have, as Sam Spade might put it, the stuff that dreams are made of.

Much was made off the World Series performance of Bumgarner, not only in his other worldly 2014 Series, but of his total World Series performances when his 2010 and 2012 records are included.  That got me to thinking, so I decided to do a little comparison shopping to see just exactly how Bumgarner compares to some of the greatest pitching performances in the history of the Fall Classic.

I make no claim that this list is all-inclusive.  I just picked some of what I knew, without giving it too much deep thinking, to be among the greatest pitching performances in World Series history. I am sure that there are many that I have left out, but I think this is a pretty good list.  In some instances, I included just one World Series (a couple of the pitchers were only in one Series), and in some cases, I included both a single season, and a pitcher's complete World Series record.  I also confined this ONLY to the World Series and did not include Divisional and LCS records.

Here you go:

Pitcher	Season	Games	IP	W-L	Save	ERA	K	BB	WHIP
Madison Bumgarner	2014	3	21	2-0	1	0.43	17	1	0.476
	Career (3 WS)	5	36	4-0	1	0.25	31	5	0.528
Christy Mathewson	1905	3	27	3-0	0	0.00	18	1	0.519
	Career (4 WS)	11	101.2	5-5	0	0.97	48	10	0.836
Babe Adams	1909	3	27	3-0	0	1.33	11	6	0.889
Mickey Lolich	1968	3	27	3-0	0	1.67	21	6	0.963
Bob Gibson	1967	3	27	3-0	0	1.00	26	5	0.704
	Career (3 WS)	9	81	7-2	0	1.89	92	17	0.889
Sandy Koufax	1965	3	24	2-1	0	0.38	29	5	0.750
	Career (4 WS)	8	51	4-3	0	0.95	61	11	0.825
Lew Burdette	1957	3	27	3-0	0	0.67	13	4	0.926
Randy Johnson	2001	3	17.1	3-0	0	1.04	19	3	0.692
Whitey Ford	1960	2	18	2-0	0	0.00	8	2	0.722
	Career (11 WS)	22	146	10-8	0	2.71	94	34	1.137
Mariano Rivera	Career (7 WS)	24	36.1	2-1	11	0.99	32	8	0.963
Babe Ruth	Career (2 WS)	3	31	3-0	0	0.87	8	10	0.935

You can draw your own conclusions form this, but here are some of mine:

• For a WS career, that 0.25 ERA of Bumgarner's is the best.  Ever.
• For one single WS, I don't think anyone is ever going to top Matty's performance in 1905.
• But if you're an "analytics guy", it needs to be noted that Bumgarner's WHIP in 2014 is better than Matty's of 1905.  In fact, it is the best such number on this particular list.
• It was hard to choose which single Series of Koufax' to select here.  He was the MVP in both the '63 and '65 Series.
• As a Pirate fan, I am glad that Whitey Ford didn't get a third start in 1960.
• That Babe Ruth guy was some ball player.  I heard that he could even hit a little.

So as to the original premise, I think that we can presume that if Madison Bumgarner never throws another pitch, or if his career fizzles out beginning in 2015, it is safe to say that he most definitely now belongs in the pantheon of All-Time World Series Greats.

All that said, if you were a manager, and had to pick ONE pitcher to start ONE game with everything on the line, who would it be?  

I'm still picking this guy:

The World Series Is Here!!!!

The 2014 World Series begins tonight!!  Magic words, indeed.

Once upon a time, the World Series was THE biggest event on the sports calendar.  In the minds of many, it still is the biggest event in sports, but even the most die hard baseball fans have to concede that that is no longer the case.  The reasons for that are, as Chuck Noll might have put it, many and they are great, but that is the subject for another time.  For now, however, let's talk about this upcoming addition of the Fall Classic.

I cannot remember a time when the playoffs leading up to the Series have been as dramatic and exciting as the two wild card games and four series that have produced the Kansas City Royals and San Francisco Giants as opponents for the Championship.  (OK, I concede that one of those Wild Card games wasn't all that dramatic.  Traumatic, maybe, but not dramatic.) I can only hope that the World Series will continue serving the drama that we have seen thus far, and I am truly hoping that this one goes the distance and produces what to me is the greatest event in sports: a Seventh Game of the World Series.

I usually develop a rooting interest in one team or another over the course of a post season.  Oft times, that rooting interest is produced by a fervent dislike for one of the teams.  Not so in 2014.  In my mind, there a lot of reasons to root FOR either team, and not any compelling reason to root AGAINST either of them.  All things being equal, I will usually choose the National League team to root for, and the Giants give an additional reason, for me anyway, in that they are seeking to win their third World Series title within a five year period.  As I detailed on this Blog in post a few days ago, such a feat has been done before, but it is, apart from the New York Yankees, still a somewhat rare feat.  The last time it was done by a non-Yankee team was when the Oakland A's won three consecutive Series from 1972-74. So, the historical excellence of such a feat intrigues me.

The Royals, on the other hand, are a great story. A small market team that has been in baseball's wasteland for 29 seasons gets a wild card spot, and precedes to compile an 8-0 record in the Playoffs to make the Series.  I mean, who can't root for an underdog like that?

So let's just go to the Cliche Closet and just "root for a great Series".

Okay, you want a prediction.  I'll give you the Giants to win in six games.  The biggest reason for that will be the ace pitcher of the Giants, Madison Bumgarner.  He has been completely dominant in the post-season, and I believe that he will be the difference between the two teams.  I also believe that this simply amazing run of the Royals cannot sustain itself to produce another four wins, and there is the chance that KC manager Ned Yost will do something to screw things up.

One more thing.  There has been much gnashing of teeth among the baseball purists over the fact that, because the both LCS ended early, there has been a four and five day layoff for the teams, and that this will somehow cause the players to get stale and rusty leading up to the World Series.  Are you kidding me?  Both the Giants and Royals have played over 170 games since April to lead to this point, and in four off days, they have all gotten, fat, lazy, and unprepared?  Please, give me a break on that one, or should I just say...

PLAYYYYYY BALLLLLLLL!!!!!!