Giants week in review: Another legend lost and a series win against the Dodgers

The year is 1961. The internet hasn’t been invented. There are no cell phones. I’m not even sure the world has color yet. Because of this, my mom and her friends are bored. Someone says, “Hey, the Giants are flying into SFO tonight. Let’s go greet them,” and a tradition was born. My mom and her friends drive out whenever they can to welcome the Giants back from road trips.

I’ve heard the story a hundred times by now, and it’s always punctuated with the same regret: “I can’t believe I didn’t bring anything for them to sign. Not even once! They knew me. They knew me and all of my friends after a while. But I didn’t even bring a baseball once.”

Sorry, Mom, but that makes it even cooler. They drove to see the Giants, to get as close as possible, and to let them know that they were appreciated. They didn’t want anything in return, except for some proximity and a license to gawk for a little bit. They just wanted to see them up close, to see them get off the redeye from Mt. Olympus. There’s Willie Mays. There’s Willie McCovey. There’s Juan Marichal. And, of course, there’s Orlando Cepeda.

Except that’s only a legendary quartet in 1961 with the benefit of hindsight. Here’s the introductory paragraph from a wire service article about Willie Mays in 1961:

Wonderful Willie Mays, who was booed unmercifully his first three seasons in San Francisco, finally has the fans in love with him.

Giants fans booed Mays because he wasn’t Joe DiMaggio, and the locals were still in the middle of a weird, bitter argument they’d invented in their own brains a few years earlier. It wasn’t just Mays they were uncertain about, either. Marichal was in the middle of his first full season, a year away from his first All-Star Game. McCovey was the Rookie of the Year in 1959, but there were injuries and general weirdness after that. According to “A Flag for San Francisco,” a recap of the Giants’ attempt to win a pennant in 1961, there were a lot of questions about McCovey after he started the ’61 season slowly. He almost got sent back to the minors in May, and he wasn’t convinced he belonged in the majors yet. Neither were a lot of the fans.

That left Cepeda as the only unambiguous, fully homegrown baseball deity in the eyes of San Franciscans in 1961. They’d have to shake off the stupid and learn to appreciate Mays. They would eventually be convinced and convinced again by McCovey, and Marichal’s Hall of Fame career was just beginning. But Cepeda was fully formed from the second he got to San Francisco. He broke in with the Giants in 1958, and his first major-league home run came in the first Giants game on the West Coast. He was a superstar right away.

You can tell how much energy Cepeda brought to the sport, to the city, by his nicknames. He was Cha-Cha. He was The Baby Bull. He was charisma, the kind of superstar who could make Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley pay tribute to him.

My mom and her friends were there to see all of the Giants, but Cepeda was the biggest draw back then, guaranteed. What an energy he brought to baseball right when San Francisco was looking for it. What a presence he commanded. What a talent.

It’s been a rough month for the Giants, and their fans, emotionally. But another way to think of it is that this franchise is impossibly lucky, impossibly blessed. What legends they’ve shared with us. Cepeda will be missed, but he’ll never be unappreciated.

The Dodgers came into Oracle Park and … lost a series???

It’s true. The Giants had Logan Webb starting one of the games, which was an advantage, but they also had to count on two different Johnny Wholestaff games, with a bullpen that was already gasping for air. They still won the series. Tyler Glasnow came into the series with a 2.00-something ERA, and he left with a 3.00-something ERA. James Paxton came into the series with a 3.00-something ERA, and he left with a 4.00-something ERA. The dominant Giants offense and that bandbox of a ballpark will do that to a pitching staff.

There were multiple heroes over the weekend, but take some time to reflect on how good Spencer Bivens was. If he lays an egg, the Giants aren’t just losing the series, they’re asking Landen Roupp to throw way more innings than he probably should coming back from an injury. They’re doubling up on outings from pitchers they didn’t want to use again, and they’re tripling up on outings from pitchers they definitely didn’t want to use again.

Bivens solved all of those problems. The shoulders and elbows in the bullpen smelled like hot tar and regret before the game, but the most exhausted pitchers got a day of rest before the off day.

Spencer Bivens was FIRED UP after striking out Ohtani 😤 pic.twitter.com/vc0vOkBZn7

— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) June 30, 2024

The performance got me thinking: Spencer Bivens, starting pitcher? It’s ludicrous, except … maybe it isn’t. He lives off the sinker, but he also throws a sweeper about a quarter of the time. He has a changeup. With a few tweaks, maybe he’s not that different from Jordan Hicks, who’s been one of the best surprises of the season.

Once you’re there, it’s not a leap to wonder about Randy Rodríguez, starting pitcher. He’s really working on that changeup, and when it works, it’s filthy.

While I love the transition that Sean Hjelle has made from fifth-starter candidate to invaluable reliever, it’s not wacky to wonder about his final destination on a pitching staff. Might be a starter. Although I loved it when he was the long reliever. So danged literal.

My guess is that all of them will settle down and build long careers in the bullpen, but there’s a chance that the Giants can construct some sort of old-timey, 1950s bullpen out of them, where they’re half-starters, half-relievers, like Hoyt Wilhelm or Mike Marshall the year he won the Cy Young Award. (Maybe 25 percent of Mike Marshall that year, let’s be realistic.)

In a week where the Giants had a 5-2 homestand and took a series against the Dodgers, it’s easier to appreciate players like Bivens and Rodríguez. Yeah, maybe this season hasn’t been a total disaster. Maybe there are positives to appreciate and more to look forward to.

Here’s a baseball image that I’d never seen before and probably won’t again

Not sure how many hours I’ve logged watching baseball by this point. Almost certainly more than I spent at my high school. So, so many hours. But this was the first time that I’d seen a batter break his bat and then carry two separate shards with him to first base. I’ve seen players break a bat and carry the handle in both hands. I’ve seen them carry a handle in one hand. But two separate pieces, one in each hand?

Put some champagne on ice, some scientists are about to announce a breakthrough in the field of brokenbatology. Call the Swedes. Get a Nobel Prize warmed up.

Jail

No jury. No trial. No due process.

Jail.

Bunt of the year (so far)

I don’t want to get overly dramatic or hyperbolic. I was there when Terrell Owens and the Packers cried together (for different reasons). I’ve watched Steph Curry do things no mortal should do, like get a double-bang from Mike Breen. And I watched Travis Ishikawa hit one into right.

But it’s possible that my favorite thing in sports is a perfect bunt to maintain momentum and whip the crowd into even more of a frenzy. That’s it. That’s all I want from my sports. Except I want to be surprised. The idea of a bunt can’t be telegraphed. Like, say, a situation where there are two runners on, nobody out, and a 3-1 count.

Shout out to home-plate umpire Dan Iassogna, the real 2012 World Series MVP. What a performance.

After a mustachioed Matt Chapman hit a leadoff double and got a dejected crowd believing again, Thairo Estrada perfectly executed one of the best plays in all of professional sports. He laid down the perfect sneak-attack bunt. Then the Giants won. They had to at that point.

If a bunt makes you think of Grégor Blanco, you know it’s good.

The pitcher who threw the pitch that Blanco bunted? Drew Smyly, who also took the loss against the Giants last week. We throw around the terms “Good Giant,” “Giants Legend” and “Forever Giant” a lot around here, but let’s be very clear about this: Drew Smyly, Giants Legend.

Home run of the week

Again, we’re judging these based on natural beauty and general aesthetics. An upper-deck homer in the ninth inning of a 14-2 loss would have a strong chance to win.

So does a walk-off homer against the Dodgers get bonus points? I’d like to think they don’t, and that this is an honor that’s unencumbered by emotion or circumstance.

Which means it’s pretty cool that Brett Wisely’s home run wasn’t just the prettiest homer of the week, but it also happened to be the homer that got the Giants a win against those rascally Dodgers.

For the purposes of this section, though, just focus on how pretty the home run is. Left-handed homers on back-foot-breaking-balls-that-don’t-quite-get-to-the-back-foot are always gorgeous. When those home runs are hit in the most beautiful ballpark in the history of the sport, then clank off some bricks, as water sprays into the air and various Dodgers trudge off the field with furrowed brows and slumped shoulders, they might even be a little better.

It’s possible that I’m biased.

No, upon further reflection, I’m not biased. Those are just the prettiest home runs the sport has to offer. At the very least, that one is the home run of the week.

(Top photo of the Giants’ tribute to Cepeda on Friday: Kelley L Cox / USA Today)