Giants win ugly, the only way they know how
Ugly baseball is so much better than no baseball at all, especially for the San Francisco Giants, who are now on the verge of a World Series berth. Then again, the Cardinals might disagree.
Baseball is supposed to be beautiful. The double steal, the triple, the hit and run. The parabola of the majestic homerun and of the knee-buckling curveball. It’s one of the reasons why so many of us love this game. These are, objectively, beautiful things. Ralph Waldo Emerson told us that we should “never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting.”
If beauty is God's handwriting, who was responsible for the sloppy penmanship if the Giants' 6-4 win over the Cardinals in Game 4 of the NLCS? The come-from-behind victory, in which the Giants rallied from a 4-1 deficit, was more like the Devil's ransome note.
Ugliness defined this game. It started early, as Cardinals center fielder Jon Jay dropped an easy fly ball. (It was inexplicably scored as a double). Giants center fielder Gregor Blanco dropped a ball as well, and Matt Adams flopped around, splayed on the ground like a beached manatee, at first base for the Cardinals. Both starters scuffled too, as Ryan Vogelsong and Shelby Miller were pulled before completing four innings. Worse, they struggled slowly.
Still, there is much to recommend in ugliness. The very definition of winning ugly, Hunter Pence, starred for San Francisco, reaching base three times and scoring once. Bruce Bochy’s questionable decision to hope Vogelsong could avoid disaster yet again led to his aggressive hook, which gave us three innings of Yusmeiro Petit dominance (four strikeouts, two baserunners). Petit has now thrown a nine-inning, two-hit shutout this postseason, and should the Giants make the World Series, some will argue he should be added to the starting rotation.
Adams (two hits, one RBI) and his ridiculously thick body gives beer leaguers hope that they might still have the bat speed to at least dominate in slow-pitch softball. Cardinals first basemen had fewer assists to second base this year than any team in baseball (with nine, they were the only team in single digits) and now we know why: They don't know where it is. Pence's awkwardness on the field reminds us of how he has become one of baseball's best outfielders in spite of the spinal condition that could have derailed his career before it even started. The Giants rightly took all the ugliness they could to help them get just a game from their third World Series in five years.
Ugly isn’t a problem when it’s helping you win. Ugly isn’t a problem when it’s beating the opposition into submission. Ugly isn’t a problem when it leads you down the path to something divine. NLCS Game 4 had many problems, chief among them that it took almost four hours to complete.
Still, with perhaps as few as five games remaining before we are done for the season, we will take what we can get. Ugly baseball is still infinitely better than the nothing I've endured for the past week, and that awaits us all winter. That's one of the reasons why, while I'm so happy for the Royals and for their fans who endured so much losing to get here, I'm sorry we won't see any more ALCS contests. Beautiful or ugly, we don't want to miss another opportunity this October to see what God, or whomever, has created for us. I'm already starting to miss baseball.
If they don’t win Game 5 on Thursday, the Cardinals are going to miss it too.
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