what i watched last week
campbell’s soup can

when the germans bombed pearl harbor

I’m sure they do this at all ball parks, but I’m used to the one at China Basin, so I’ll talk about that. When the home team comes up in the bottom of the ninth, trailing with only three outs to go, we’ll often get an inspirational speech on the giant video board. Something like this:

Before today’s win-or-go-home game for the Giants against the Reds, Hunter Pence, who only joined the club at the trading deadline, had a few words for his teammates:

Look into each other eyes..now! look into each others eyes, I want one more day with you, it's the most fun, the best team I have ever been on … and no matter what happens we must not give in, we owe it to each other, play for each other, I need one more day with you guys, I need to see what Theriot will wear tomorrow, I want to play defense behind Vogelsong because he's never been to the playoffs ... play for each other not yourself, win each moment, win each inning, it's all we have left.

Tim Flannery posted this … it seems to be all over the web, shouldn’t be hard to find … and he added his own words:

For me an old coach it moved me like I have never been moved before ... purity, real, passion, soul. The last of the holdouts this Pence ... no arrows being shot, no hey look at me, no spotlight on me, no dance but "play for each other"... honor the game the game honors you … don't know where and when it ends, but tonight I was proud to be together as a team, in a hostile environment, with just us … brothers that play for the name on the front, not the name on the back.

You can find a lot of clichés in the above. Doesn’t matter. Several players commented that it wasn’t what Pence said, it was the way he said it.

Funny thing is, you’d be hard pressed to see any positive effects Pence had, at least on the team’s hitters. They only managed one hit through the first nine innings, scoring a single run on a hit batsman, a walk, a bunt, and a sac fly. The winning run in the tenth inning came via a single, a squibbler for another single, a passed ball, and an error. They looked a lot like the team that got shutout on Sunday.

But Ryan Vogelsong pitched the kind of gritty game Giants fans are used to. The bullpen rose to the challenge, as did Bochy, who finally resisted the temptation to put Mota in the game. And then Sergio Romo, little-known to most fans outside the Bay Area, who has been the team’s best reliever for at least two years, retired six men on a total of fifteen pitches.

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