The worst day of my life??

Well it has been awhile since I posted so I thought I would start to post again. My workload is down so now I have time. I’ll be in Scottsdale on Friday so I can watch my beloved Giants and I also decided today would be the first time I write about Game 6. I feel I’m completely over it. I’ve mentioned it from time to time, like when people ask me the last time I cried, but I’ve never gone over it in detail.

So a friend asked me if the 2002 Giants were my team, and I always say that I was more involved with the 2000 Giants just because 2002 was a busy year for me. I had just finished my first year of college and the Giants were starting to heat up. I was in high school for the 2000 team and I can still remember the first time I walked into Pacific Bell Park, ahh memories, I wrote a piece on it for the school paper, that didn’t get published. They did publish my piece on the Giants Rotation that year, so that was cool. Anyway here’s Game 6.

First pitch came and went and I truly believed it would all be over after this game, and in all reality it was. I had this feeling that we may have scored too much in Game 5 but that was my head talking. Only in filling out a bracket do you think with your head. Here it was all heart. I was thinking Ortiz was on his game, but so was Appier.  I didn’t think it at the time, but the Giants could have put the dagger into the Halo’s in the first. Two on, and Santiago pops up in foul territory. Back then I just shrugged it off.  After 3, I felt Ortiz was redeeming himself for his Game 2 start. He was mowing them down. Wow, 6 years later I can still see every pitch. 5th Inning. David Bell hits an infield single. Ok, we’re in business, now if Dunston can only move him over. Forget that, Dunston just gave us the lead. 2-0!! I can’t see Ortiz blowing this. Wild Pitch, we get another. 3-0!!

Ortiz throws two pitches that are hit well but stay in the park. Ok K-Rod vs. Bonds. Bonds struck out earlier in the series but said if he saw him again he’ll take him deep. Bonds plants it over the wall. Can somebody say MVP? It’s 4-0. It’s now the bottom of the 7th and the Giants have a 5-0 lead now. Anderson is ahead but grounds out on ball 3. We’re even getting the breaks. Glaus singles. No biggie. Fullmer singles. Here comes Baker. As soon as I saw Dusty, I thought bad move. But with a 5-0 lead I wasn’t worried. Not yet anyway. But lets look back on this. If there were no outs then I can see Dusty taking Russ out. I can even justify it. But there was one out. Spiezio had flied to medium center and grounded out to first. Fullmer is just as slow as Spiezio. One out, 5 run lead. World Series. I only said bad move because I was certain that Russ Ortiz was single handedly gonna win us that game, even if it was still 0-0 at that point. Ortiz wasn’t gonna give up anything.

As we all know the double play didn’t happen. Spiezio took Rodriguez deep for a 5-3 game. I am gonna say this…. I blame Felix Rodriguez for the game 2 loss, not the Game 6 loss, besides we were still winning at this time…. also, if Ortiz stays in, Spiezio hits into a double play and the Giants end up winning the game 7-2. Yes, we put up 2 more in the 8th and then the Angels get 2 in the bottom half. Then the real 8th inning happened and you knew it was over. I will never forgive Dusty for taking Russ out. To this day I regret taking all of my savings and selling all of my stocks and placing the money on the Angels in game 7. That was the biggest lock ever, bigger than taking Cincinnati in the 1919 series. It was even bigger then taking New York in Game 7 of the 1986 series. To be honest, I didn’t even watch Game 7. I experienced Game 6, what was the point of putting my heart through one more game. I’ve known when one of my teams were gonna lose the game but I always watched the game. Game 7 was the only one I couldn’t watch.

I know I’m in the minority with Giants fans here, but I will never blame Livo for Game 7. It was sad how he was run out of town. Without him, we don’t even get past Atlanta. It’s easy to say Kirk should have started the game, but I would have pitched Livo. It doesn’t matter now we all know what happened.