It was a Game 7 for the ages
If you’re a fan of any sport you know that a Game 7 in any Championship Series is a big deal and a rare treat. Even if you don’t really like the sport, you still feel obligated to be interested in how the game turns out or watch it.
With everything on the line, both teams have worked so hard to reach this point. The entire season, the whole grueling postseason comes down to just one game. No one can really be sure how it’s going to turn out, because anything can happen, and it usually does.
This year’s World Series between the San Francisco Giants and the Kansas City Royals went to a Game 7. But what you may have not known is that it was making for one of the most interesting Game 7’s that baseball has seen in a very long time.
Let’s set the stage. It was the immovable object going against an unstoppable force. Home teams just don’t lose a Game 7. The Giants don’t lose elimination games. Something was going to have to give, and we were going to have the opportunity to watch it.
There have been nine World Series in the past three decades to go seven games. The home team has won all of those nine games. Not since Pittsburgh won at Baltimore in 1979 has a visiting team won a seven-game series.
The Kansas City Royals, a team that hasn’t been in the playoffs since 1985 when they won a championship in a Game 7 at home against the St. Louis Cardinals, is a young team which was writing their own Cinderella story straight to the top.
They seemed to be a more explosive offensive unit than the Giants.
But the Giants had a secret weapon that the Royals, nor any other team, would have probably been able to conquer.
Madison Bumgarner had what will arguably go down in history as the greatest pitching performance in a World Series. He had a record of 2–0 with a Game 7 save, pitched 21 innings, giving up nine hits and one walk while striking out 17.
He unleashed his inner demigod and put the entire city of San Francisco on his back as he solidified himself as a postseason legend at 25. The Giants defied the odds and won Game 7, because that’s what they do.
The Giants also got a big postseason push from key players such as Pablo Sandoval and Hunter Pence.
They were both one hit shy of tying the all-time hit record for a single World Series.
The team bounced back from a 10–0 loss in Game 6, which sent chills down the backs of every Giants fan who is old enough to remember what happened in 2002 when the Giants lost Game 6 to the Angels. Anaheim won in 7 games.
But this time, the Giants got a parade in San Francisco for the third time in five years.