Buster Posey hits a walk-off home run, Giants win

Buster Posey hit a walk-off home run on Wednesday night, keeping the Giants ahead in the chase for a playoff spot and vaulting Bruce Bochy ahead of Tommy Lasorda on the list of all-time managerial wins.

There's a lot of Internet out there, and you seem like a busy person. That's all you need to know. You can move on if you want.

Or, if you wanted to bask ...

The Bochy/Lasorda bit is like something that would come up at the very end of a triumphant '80s movie, just before the credits roll. TV Tropes calls it the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue. Posey hits the dinger. He rounds the bases. He steps on home plate. FREEZE.

Buster Posey went on to make nine All-Star Games and win two MVPs. He was a three-time World Champion.

Aw, that's a nice note to leave at the end of the movie. Was wondering how he was going to turn out.

Bruce Bochy eventually passed Tommy Lasorda in managerial wins.

Ha ha, great. Good over evil! Love those kinds of stories.

Tommy Lasorda was just bit by a mosquito. Right on his eyelid.

Jeez, hope he's ...

Tommy Lasorda, now behind Bruce Bochy in career wins, has a super-itchy eyelid, and even though he tries to be strong and keep from scratching it, every time he blinks, it starts itching again. He's walking around the house yelling unintelligibly about calamine lotion.

Love those kinds of stories.

But back to the important stuff. There's something about a loss to the Rockies at AT&T Park. It's like buying a ticket to watch the Globetrotters and seeing the Washington Generals win. Don't take offense, Rockies fans, the Giants are the Generals when they play in the farcical air of Cloud City. In San Francisco, though, the Rockies usually swing like Wesley Snipes in Major League, unless they're particularly awful and swing like Wesley Snipes in The Fan. All of them. There's usually one jerk who doesn't get it -- looking at you, Morneau -- but the rest of them are on board. You lose at our place, we lose at yours.

Go back to the beginning: The Rockies started Franklin Morales, who's had trouble holding onto his job as a starting pitcher for the Rockies, which is like a guitarist getting bounced from an Allman Brothers tribute band for dicking around with his slide too much. Like, that guy must have been really bad. Yet there he was, starting and dominating against the Giants, holding them in check. Even when the Giants took the lead with Morales out of the game, it never felt like enough. The good work from Morales kept the game close.

When Justin Morneau hit his double in the ninth, there was no way the Giants were going to win.

There was a runner on second, no outs. There was going to be a grounder and a fly ball. A wild pitch and a single. A single and another single, both of which just got through two good defenders on the left side. Then LaTroy Hawkins, undead closer, was going to control-bully the Giants in the bottom-half of the inning, and you were going to be sad.

Instead, give credit to Santiago Casilla, who didn't get as mopey as I would have, getting the three outs he frantically needed. Then came a hard-earned walk from Angel Pagan and Buster Posey.

Oh, Buster Posey. For the second night in a row, we marvel at what it's like to have that guy back. It was always the secret key to the season. When you think of 2012, you think of Marco Scutaro and Barry Zito pitching the game of his life and Pablo Sandoval shaming Justin Verlander and all sorts of things, but it's probably not possible without Buster Posey having one of the greatest second halves in history. It wasn't the best second half in Giants history, even -- that position has been filled -- but it was a dominant hitter in peak form, carrying his team where it wanted to be.

"What if that guy came back?", the dirty peasants like us wondered. "Even if just for a month or two?"

When Posey came up from the minors, I was slightly obsessed with the idea of him hitting a walk-off homer. I've probably mentioned this, but it's entirely true. When he would come up in the ninth with the ability to win the game, I was convinced that it would mean something. It was going to be some weird passing of the torch, even if I didn't know who was going to pass the torch. Joe Carter or something.

Except the walk-off homer never came. The Giants won in 2010 because of Posey. They won in 2012 because of Posey. There was a grand slam of some note ...

... but there was never a walk-off. The obsession waned. Suddenly, it wasn't about some sort of arrival message. It wasn't about anything. It was about walk-offs being rad and Posey being rad and you know what's rad? Rad people doing rad things. He finally got there in 2013, hitting one off Ronald Belisario, goggled sub-amphibian.

Posey has two, now. Both of them were glorious and well-timed. This one still has a chance to mean something lasting in the context of a playoff hunt. Blown saves are always worth it if they lead to a walk-off. Doubly so if the walkoff comes on a no-doubt homer. Triply so if Posey is the guy hitting them.

What if Buster Posey gets really, really hot?, the masses cry.

It looks like this.

★★★

Boy, the decision to take Tim Hudson out was weird.

There's no need to dwell on it: Buster Posey hit a dinger. Look, it's right here:

But it's still a weird decision.

Start with Hudson. He was splendiferous. He was everything he was in April and May, when we all figured the Giants had stumbled into something unexpected and unbeatable. There were a surprising number of sinkers and breaking balls left up for such a dominant outing, but that's our Rockies team on the road!

/studio audience laughs

Still, dominant. Hudson rolled through the ninth with just 87 pitches. He was going to be the second complete game for the Giants ... until Santiago Casilla came in.

Look, I get the idea of keeping pitchers fresh, especially the ones who used to have Walkmans and know who Dan Cortese is. But this is so very unlike Bochy. Pitchers with 100 pitches get to finish a dominant outing. Pitchers with 110 pitches get to finish a dominant outing. Pitchers with 87 pitches get to pitch the 10th if it goes that far.

As usual, I'll assume something behind the scenes, a common ache or pain that we're not privy to. But if it was just good job/good effort, let's get it to our dominant closer, that seems silly.

There's a video of Buster Posey hitting a dinger up there, though. It's probably a better use of your time to watch that 12 more times than think about different bullpen permutations and implementations. The Giants won the game against a team in the middle of a horrible season! The Giants won the game against a team in the middle of a horrible season! The Giants won the game against a team in the middle of a horrible season!  Hoooorrrgh, they're going crazy, they're going crazy, they're ...