On a cream-white Oracle Park wall that leads up from the lower field box to the 300s reads a quote.
Now it is done. Now the story ends. And there is no way to tell it. The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled intervention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again.
Pulitzer Prize winner Red Smith wrote that on Oct. 4, 1951 to describe Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ‘Round The World” that sent the New York Giants to the World Series and the Brooklyn Dodgers home. Seventy years later, the inexpressibly fantastic is back — this time not in New York but on the shores of McCovey Cove. A new story, or at least a spinoff version, has launched.
Reality once again seems too good to be true with a cosmic NLDS matchup between the Giants and Dodgers — their first-ever official playoff meeting. And while preseason prognosticators deemed a Giants season like this statistically, “utterly impossible,” San Francisco now leads the defending world champion Dodgers 1-0 in the series thanks to a dominant 7.2 scoreless innings from starter Logan Webb.
Webb reached double-digit strikeouts for the third time in his young career, and for the first time in a shutout. He exited to a standing ovation after putting up numbers only Tim Lincecum and Madison Bumgarner have for the Giants. Home runs from Buster Posey, Kris Bryant and Brandon Crawford gave Webb and the Giants a cushion as SF started this historic season in convincing fashion, with a 4-0 victory.
The matchup felt inevitable. The two best teams in baseball, intrastate rivals with decades of history. A regular season series split 10-9 in favor of the Giants, but 80-78 for LA in aggregate runs. Both the front office brain trusts, managers, and key players like Jake McGee and Alex Wood with ties to both franchises.
The Giants-Dodgers NLDS, their first official playoff meeting ever, was so destined to happen that Giants outfielder Mike Yastrzemski said he didn’t even need to watch the NL Wild Card game to know who SF would host. Nobody in SF’s clubhouse was surprised with the outcome, starter Kevin Gausman added. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said the rivals meeting “is what baseball wants.”
Then here it was, played into existence over the course of a baseball season.
Steve Young and Jerry Rice led “Beat LA” chants before first pitch. Twenty minutes later, Buster Posey and the Giants started making good on their pleas.
Posey got the green light in a 3-0 count against Walker Buehler and drove a high and outside fastball 382 feet the other way. His blast hit the top of a water tower atop the arcade, as close as any right-handed hitter has ever come to a Splash Home Run. His two-run shot was eventually fished out of McCovey Cove by a fan with a net.
The Game 1 starting pitching battle, too, lived up to the billing. In the Giants’ corner, Logan Webb “aw shucks”ed his way to his first postseason by transforming his pitch arsenal and becoming an undisputed ace seemingly out of nowhere. Opposite him stood Walker Buehler, the young Cy Young candidate and World Series champion riding a streak of nine consecutive playoff starts allowing two or fewer earned runs.
The latter entered confident enough to crack open beer bottles with his teeth and speak openly about the value of walking batters in the playoffs. The former playful and loose enough to joke about his home run trot and said the nerves of big games reminds him of Friday Night Lights back when he was quarterbacking Rocklin High.
Webb pounded the strike zone and missed bats, throwing 64 of his 92 pitches for strikes. In one stretch between the second and third innings, he struck out four of five batters he faced — three of which came on punch-out sliders.
He clenched both his fists and yelled when Tommy La Stella magically flipped a double play ball up the middle to Brandon Crawford to end the fourth. He tried to scream over the Oracle Park crowd, to no avail, after striking out Trea Turner to end the sixth inning and strand Corey Seager at second.
After surrendering a one-out double to Will Smith in the top of the seventh, Webb fanned Matt Beaty and Cody Bellinger in succession for his ninth and 10th strikeouts. One start after his legendary seven-inning gem that included a home run, Webb (7.2IP, 5H, 0ER, 10K, 0BB) one-upped himself with the most dominant start of his young career.
Buehler, meanwhile, recovered from Posey’s first-inning bomb with five scoreless frames. The first five times he started against SF this year, Buehler recorded a 0.79 ERA. But he struggled in the sixth meeting, and by the seventh, the Giants knew all-too-well what was coming. The Cy Young candidate still struck out five and gave the Dodgers a chance, but Kris Bryant tagged him for a solo home run in the seventh to knock him out.
Buehler and Webb could meet again in Game 5. If Webb’s brilliance didn’t already, that might kill the art of fiction.