The Giants can’t be the Padres in the present day and they seem to have struggled with them for most of the decade, but for one brief instant almost a decade ago, the Giants looked really slick and exciting against the boring old Padres, when they turned a triple play.
Of course, the triple play we’re all thinking about is this one from last season... but in my scouring of 10 years ago info, I stumbled across this bit of Giants history that I had forgotten about. At the time, it was the first triple the Giants had turned at home since 1980... also against the Padres. There’s a lot of random trivia associated with this game (May 30, 2008), but for the moment, let’s watch the play and see what we can conjure up in our own minds...
Unfortunately, Major League Baseball has scrubbed this video from its MLBAMory banks, so here’s an extremely pixelated, almost completely unwatchable video replay from which I will try to cobble together a play by play:
Well, you’ve got Matt Morris pitching to Vinny Castilla and he... chip shots? it to a kid on top of another kid’s shoulders wearing a long Giants jersey... and they somehow throw it over to Shawon Dunston, who launches it to Ron Wotus who is in the process of falling over from laughter as he realizes he’s covering first base for some reason...
Okay, the Giants actually lost this game 7-3 in 13 innings. It wasn’t a textbook Caining, but a Caining nonetheless. The Padres starter for the game was Greg Maddux. And that was actually Kevin Kouzmanoff (!) grounding it to Jose Castillo (!!!) who touched third and threw to Ray Durham (!!!!) at second base, who slung it over to John Bowker (!!!!!) at first base. And that’s Keiichi Yabu on the mound. So, yeah, I was wrong...
The other bit of the story is that Yabu’s translator was also the bullpen catcher and after being given the special ball mixed it with the other balls. He simply didn’t realize that it was the ball. So... it was lost to time. I really can’t think of a better summation of the Giants in 2008.
What will be the big metaphor of this season?
Enjoy the basketball game.