Kuzul

Edgar Renteria told ESPNdeportes.com that the Giants one-year, $1-million contract offer is insulting. To that I say if an employer wants to insult me with a million dollar salary, bring it on. 

Now, in truth, that is not a fair comparison as I am not a professional athlete. And, to be fair, Renteria is probably worth more than that, especially when you consider a backup catcher like Henry Blanco just signed for the same amount. 

But look, it is bad form to come out and publicly complain about a king’s ransom when we’re knee-deep in an economy that has left many of us scratching for every last dollar and even worse, unemployed and in foreclosure. 

Face it, there will always be a huge divide between the world in which pro athletes and movie stars live in vs. the world we John Doe’s reside. To us, one million dollars is more money than most of us will ever make in a lifetime of toil. 

To them it is almost tip money. 

It is getting very difficult to relate to today’s athletes when the minimum salary in MLB is $414,000. Of course, that disparity exists in the other major sports as well, so this is not just an indictment on baseball. 

Still, for Renteria to come out and say “That offer from the Giants was a lack of respect. A total disrespect,” is a lack of respect to the working men and women. 

Renteria should keep his thoughts to himself or simply say that the offer wasn’t enough. But to say that playing a game for a paltry million is not worth his time only serves to further alienate the fans from today’s pro stars. 

Look, we are not naive; we understand that sports is a business and that all the talk about playing “for the love of the game” is usually pure nonsense that is said for P.R. purposes. 

But please spare us the pity party. 

On the one hand, Renteria is only stating what many players in his situation would be thinking. 

But that’s the point—think, man! Don’t spew the “woe is me” drivel while parading your insulting million-dollar offer in front of people who are suffering mightily in this economy. 

While we’re struggling to find enough money to give our kids Christmas presents and keep a roof over their heads, this guy is complaining that a million dollars is “disrespectful.”

Again, this is not meant to be a discussion about the worth of Renteria relative to other players. This is about knowing when to keep your mouth shut. 

“Thank God I’m well off financially and my money is well invested,” said Renteria. 

Yes, thank God Edgar—we’re all proud that you have been able to survive on the $80 million-plus you have earned in your career.  

Meanwhile, we bring our lunches to work in brown bags and shop at Aldi’s. 

“To play for a million dollars, I’d rather stay with my private business and share more time with my family,” Renteria said. 

You know what? If that’s the way you feel, do us all a favor and go home, Edgar.

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MLB rumors continue to heat up the hot stove—or at least New York City—as we inch closer and closer to February.

And that magical date when pitchers and catchers report.

Around baseball, it’s actually been a somewhat quiet offseason for player movement. No free agents of note have signed, with the exception of the reports that former Yankee Javier Vasquez will sign with Florida.

But not even the much-coveted Jayson Werth and Carl Crawford have been in the news as much as Derek Jeter’s very public contract talks with the Yankees have been.

There have been conflicting reports about the terms that Jeter is demanding. The Yankees have taken a very hard line in negotiating, and as of this posting, there is still no deal.

Much less publicized, but just as—and maybe more—alarming, is that the great closer Mariano Rivera is also without a deal and on the free-agent market.

Eventually, when it’s all said and done, both are expected to remain Yankees.

But, for the sake or argument, here are some options to replace two of the more celebrated players to ever wear the pinstripes.

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The San Francisco Giants are looking to rebuild the left side of their infield after winning the world series with a combo of Edgar Renteria at short and Juan Uribe at third base.

This duo led the Giants with a series winning solo homer over the Phillies in game six on the road by Uribe in the NLCS and a three run shot by Renteria in the heart of self-proclaimed ‘God’s Country’ to win the World Series.

Renteria was under contract with a team option for 2011 and was due to make over $10M. Even though Renteria won the World Series with one shot, his health concerns and overall durability over a 162 game season is highly questionable. So the Giants smartly elected to pay off the $500K that declines the option and ends the contract, as the Giants needed that money to keep Aubrey Huff, who just signed on for another 2-3 years and is making Renteria’s old salary.

It would be great to sign Renteria on as a role player that is more appropriate for the Giants’ budget. Clutch players like him are evidently worth their weight in gold come championship time. That’s probably not an option though as Renteria has publicly stated he wants to end his career in either St. Louis or Florida.

Uribe on the other hand is younger, nearly as clutch, a club favorite (U-Ribe!), and with Renteria at short, that whole left side was shut down to right handed bats trying to find a hole.  

Uribe is a free agent and was offered type B arbitration by the San Francisco Giants. This means if another team signs Uribe, the Giants are at least compensated with a draft pick from the signing team. This move was made in an attempt to protect Uribe from other clubs while getting the price for Uribe the Giants are willing to pay; $5.5M-$6M.

Then the Giants’ rival Los Angeles Dodgers entered the picture and are courting Uribe to fill their own holes with oft injured short stop Rafael Furcal and third baseman Casey Blake contract ending after this season.

When a lesser known Juan Uribe left the 2005 World Champion Chicago White Sox to take more money in San Francisco, White Sox Manager Ozzie Guillen said that he will be your (team’s) best shortstop, your best second baseman, you best third baseman. Guillen was right as Juan Uribe has contributed as much as anyone to the Giants over the years.

So if Uribe goes because the Dodgers outbid the Giants, then the Giants are left with a glaring hole or two that will be filled with either free agency or by trade or both.

This is where Miguel Tejada comes in and a return to the Bay Area is the perfect fit for the veteran batsman. Tejada is a veteran plate presence who works counts and gets timely hits. Last season, he was one of the better players for the Padres late in the season against the Giants. A bat like his in the lineup has ripple effects on an entire lineup.

He is a solid infielder and still makes great plays at shortstop. If the Giants decide to trade for a shortstop like Jason Bartlett, then Tejada could shift to third as Bruce Bochy demonstrated last season how important it is to have a flexible lineup that can match up against different sorts of teams.

Lastly, Tejada is an iron man. He’s available to play every game from spring to winter year in and year out and Tejada will provide the consistency that was missing from Edgar Renteria, while providing the flexibility and pop that will be missed if Uribe leaves.

This is really the only area of the team where the Giants are in rebuilding mode. Making the right decisions at short stop and third base will make the Giants a better team than they were last year. Miguel Tejada is a step in that direction

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World Champion San Francisco Giant’s shortstop Edgar Renteria had a great World Series, with seven hits in 18 at bats with two home runs and six runs scored and a .412 batting average. The five time all star delivered a three run go ahead home run in the top of the seventh inning of game five and was named World Series Most Valuable Player. Good work, but it seems that Renteria save his best work for the off season, where his contributions to his home country of Columbia are becoming  second nature.

When Renteria returns to his hometown of Barranquilla, Columbia on Thursday he is asking that the planned parade and parties in his honor be canceled and all the funds be donated to the thousands of his fellow country men and woman that are the victims of recent flooding. The port city in northern Columbia has been ravaged by floods recently, with an estimated 900, 000 people being left homeless. Renteria said that “there are more important things back home” other than parades and parties.

Some may argue that parade and parties would help people take their minds off of their troubles, and in some cases it does, but it seems that Renteria chose to use his great World Series as a platform to raise awareness rather than celebrate. It is a tough judgement call but sometime people need monetary help more than moral victory.

In 2003 Renteria and his brother Edison created the Colombian Professional Baseball League, it is owned by the Renteria Foundation, and other major league players such as Orlando Cabrera have owned teams.

In baseball the saying goes”hitting is contagious”  and with people like Edgar Renteria doing his part in a small Colombian community hopefully someday we can say that “generosity and common courtesy for our fellow man is contagious.” Sometime it is little gestures of good will and common sense that make a big difference in peoples lives. Although a parade would have been a great diversion for a few hours, the food and everyday necessities that these people might get with monetary help will last a lot longer. Lets hope that others follow Edgar Renteria’s lead and make stories like this the rule and not the exception.

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English romantic poet and literary critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge is credited with coining the phrase “suspension of disbelief.”  

The term describes the requirement a work of fiction places upon a theoretical audience member or reader to willfully accept as truth certain fantastical or implausible elements contained therein.

This aesthetic imperative enables us to become invested in alternate realities we know to be false, and use the shadowy truths and broad archetypes we find so appealing in fiction to simplify the dizzying complexities of our own empirical reality.  

Now, let’s be honest: Major League is as far-fetched a film as they come. The parallel universe created here—familiar to us because it speaks a well-known language of baseball, complete with well-known team insignia—provides the framework for the ultimate underdog story.  

Fueled by the multiplication of unlikely events, the narrative pays the debt that every suffering baseball fan believes he’s owed.

But in a much larger sense, it follows the blueprint drawn up by the deepest desires of humanity.

We take tremendous comfort in the story because it expands the limits of what Man, even in his most wretched state, is capable of.

The elevation of the lowest common denominator empowers the human imagination to reach heights untalked-of and unseen, fulfilling our eternal hope that the lives we lead eventually break loose from the shackles of mundane monotony we’re so accustomed to wearing.  

Prince Hamlet tells us that fiction holds the mirror up to nature; and so it does.  

But fiction can also increase our appreciation for the beauty of nature’s reality.  

The 2010 San Francisco Giants were branded as “misfits” and “outcasts” early in their playoff run. Against all odds, they became World Champions, triumphing twice over teams they weren’t supposed to beat.

The formula is familiar. The Cleveland Indians in Major League provide a bare-bones model for misfit champions that our own beloved Giants flesh out.  

Only when we move from the fictive to the real, we transform our implicit contract of “suspended disbelief” into the power of “sustained belief.”

So let’s get started, shall we?

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Some professional athletes just can’t say goodbye to the game. Quarterback Brett Favre won’t go away. He should have hung up his spikes when his days with Green Bay came to a close. But, even in his late 30s, he couldn’t ride off into the sunset. Since then he has played for both the New York Jets and Minnesota Vikings, and, combining both off and on the field issues, he has damaged his reputation.

I can understand why Favre is still playing. No matter what sport is being played every athlete believes they still have something to give. It’s rare to see players still playing at Favre’s age of 41, especially football, and especially as a quarterback.

If I were playing baseball as a 35-year-old, I would be looking for a multi-year deal. It wouldn’t matter if I hit .210 this past year and was a liability in the outfield. It’s the love of the game that makes it so hard to let go.

Edgar Renteria, the 35-year-old who won the World Series MVP for the San Francisco Giants this past season, hit the biggest home-run in franchise history since Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” and is now a free-agent.

He contemplated retirement, but has decided not to, electing to play at least one more season. Obviously he has the right to play for as long as feels he can. He’s coming off a tremendous performance, and there is no doubt he can still swing the bat and play defense at short.

He has his second World Series ring, having won his first with the Florida Marlins in 1997 as a baby-faced kid. When he received his World Series MVP trophy he was teary-eyed, and understandably so.

To be in this position after making three trips to the disabled list during the regular season had to be overwhelming. To make such an impact in bringing a championship to San Francisco must have been surreal. To end a career on that note would have been an excellent way to go out. But the game keeps calling.

On one side of the equation it has to be tough to hang up the spikes after such an extraordinary performance. As a player you think you can contribute similarly over the course of an entire season.

But Renteria, who had his 2011 team option worth $9.5 million declined, is unattached. That is why decision to keep playing is hard to figure, especially after his superb conclusion to 2010.

If he is re-signed by San Francisco for a lesser amount, plays in a reserve role, mentors their youth, and returns for the Thrill of the Grass, I could understand his decision to put off retirement. But to test free-agency, potentially look for a lucrative contract, and risk struggling in his swan song is hard to fathom.

Yet, as a friend said, “He’s got the rest of his life to be retired. If he has talent and his body can hold up, keep after it. Playing is all he knows.”

“True. I’m just afraid he’s going to go to a team like the Rays and hit .230 next year. But I’d have a tough time giving it up, too.”

His decision is a surprising one, considering he’s accomplished what most players can only dream about, but it is neither wrong or right. He wants to keep playing the greatest game there is, to succeed once more in hopes of hoisting another championship trophy.

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Life for the last two World Series MVPs has been overrated.  Winning the trophy has been like a mini-Madden jinx for these players.    

MVP Edgar Renteria helped the San Francisco Giants earn their first World Series title since 1958.

Without his tiebreaking homer in the last game, the Giants may not have won.  It was the second World Series-winning hit of his career.

To thank him, the Giants let him go.

The Cardinals should go try to entice him back to St. Louis before the Cincinnati Reds sign him.  The Reds own a patent on scooping up ex-Cardinals.

A two-time World Series champion, Edgar Renteria had his 2011 contract option rejected by the Giants on Nov. 4.  For the Barranquilla, Colombia, native, the option was worth a reported $9.5-10.5 million.

San Francisco bought the veteran major leaguer out for $500,000, according to reports.

No longer a million dollar baby, Renteria turns 36 years old next Aug. 7.  He’s no spring chicken, but he is still a million dollar ballplayer—ask Cliff Lee. 

Renteria has been missed in St. Louis since 2004.  The Redbirds got horrific production and youth-type mistakes from their shortstops most of last season.

He is a clubhouse leader who is batting .287 for his career and is still more clutch than many younger players.  In fact, he’s probably forgotten more of his clutch hits than the current Cardinals shortstops have made.  In 1997, he hit a walk-off single in the seventh game of the World Series—in extra innings in his sophomore season—with two outs.

A 15-year veteran this season, he was on the disabled list for much of 2010.  He played in the fewest games he ever has.  The Giants almost left him off the playoff roster, but they’re glad they didn’t.

Now he has a big decision to ponder.  The temptation to walk away on top of his game —like many pro athletes wish to—may be too much to allow any team to sign him.     

“It’s always hard to think about retiring,” he said after the Giants’ World Series victory parade.

Not many teams are in the market for aging ballplayers.  Derek Jeter is 35 years old, and his contract negotiations with the Yankees could get messy, according to Hal Steinbrenner.

Hideki Matsui was let go by the Yankees after he won the 2009 World Series MVP.  He was 35 years old.  Matsui signed with the Angels, and they didn’t make the playoffs. 

It wasn’t his fault; in 2010, he batted .274 with 21 home runs and 84 RBI.

Q: Will what happened to the Yankees befall the Giants in 2011? 

A: Most likely.  The Yankees let Johnny Damon walk, too.  Now the Giants are looking at the same scenario: losing a World Series MVP and another important cog in the offense.  

Both organizations put the squeeze play on the money for their World Series MVPs.  That’s a big reason why no one should be expecting the Giants to repeat.

While they may have strong pitching, they could be losing two of their best bats.

Giants shortstop Juan Uribe will turn 32 in January—allegedly.  He has a $3.25 million contract, but free agency is pending. 

The Cardinals need a big-time bat to replace Ryan Ludwick’s. 

Uribe is probably more of a slugger than any middle infielder the Cardinals ever had.  Listed at 6’0″ and a generous 230 pounds, he is built like a running back.  He hit .248 with career highs of 24 home runs and 85 RBI in 2010. 

He lost his starting job with the White Sox to Alexei Ramirez in 2008.  Nobody else wanted to sign him until the Giants gave him a minor-league deal. 

He earned his current contract after batting .289 with 15 home runs in 122 games for the Giants.   

Albert Pujols’s contract is the team’s first priority, and it should be.  Pujols is possibly the best player baseball has seen in the last 15 years.  He wants to win, but he needs help.

The Cardinals opening day starting infield, other than Pujols, hit a grand total of 11 home runs last season.  11.

Pujols re-upping with the Cardinals could hinge on who else the Redbirds sign. 

I hope Tony LaRussa finally learns (1) to feature Brendan Ryan in a reserve utility role, and (2) that Skip Schumaker isn’t a championship-caliber leadoff man.

Under hitting instructor Mark McGwire, last season, Schumaker batted .265 with five home runs and five stolen bases.  He fanned more than he walked. 

Ryan batted .221—a big drop from the .295 he hit in 2009.

Uribe could possibly play third, shortstop or second base, and Colby Rasmus could be groomed for leading off.  If the Cardinals were to sign Renteria and Uribe, they would be adding much needed offensive punch.

By signing Renteria, who hit .330 in 2003 for the Redbirds, the Cardinals would add clutch hitting off the bench.  His veteran leadership skills and winning ways would bring the Cardinals’ quiet swagger back.

Besides swag, both Uribe and Renteria would add solid defense at third—something the Redbirds sorely lacked nearly all of last season.

I want to hear what you all—my seasoned readers—want to comment about.  What do you think about Renteria/Uribe wearing the birds on a bat in 2011?

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On Thursday, just three days after he was named World Series MVP, the San Francisco Giants bought out the final option year on Edgar Renteria‘s contract, making him a free agent.

While this may sound cruel on the surface, it should be noted that the Giants‘ postseason hero has been seriously pondering putting an end to his 15-year career.

If this is the end, Renteria will be remembered as an above-average shortstop whose career is defined by the heroics that bookend either side.

An early add-on for the Florida Marlins in 1996, he averaged .309 in 102 games and was second on the NL Rookie of the Year ballot. His numbers tapered off a bit in 1997, but he became a clutch player, hitting extra-inning walk-off hits five times in the regular season. He would repeat those heroics in the World Series, getting the series-clinching hit in the 11th inning of Game 7.

He’d survive the fire sale, and steal a career-high 41 bases in 1998, but was ultimately traded to the Cardinals in 1999. He would go on to lead the Cardinals to four postseason appearances.

Renteria had a career year in 2003, hitting .330 with 100 RBI. His best playoff season with St. Louis would come in 2004, when he hit .457 in the NLDS and .333 in the World Series, but he would be on the wrong end of the final out as they were swept by the Red Sox.

He was traded to the Red Sox in 2005, but the Boston media rode him hard for “underperforming,” even though he scored a career-high 100 runs. They, in turn, sent him to the Braves in 2006, where he repeated his 100-run performance. He hit .332 in 2007, but missed 38 games due to injury.

His last few years were marred by injury. He missed 24 games in 2008 with the Tigers and 38 games in 2009 with the Giants. He missed over half of this year, but recovered enough of his form to make the Giants’ playoff roster.

He got hits in two pinch-hit at-bats in the NLDS. He slumped against the Phillies in the NLCS, then turned it on in the World Series, hitting .412, including the series-clinching home run in Game 5. In fact, he hit two home runs in the 2010 World Series. Not historically a power hitter (135 regular-season HR in 15 seasons), he previously only hit one home run in the postseason.

Edgar Renteria may not have had the flashiest of careers as a whole, but he will be remembered fondly for his clutch moments, especially by the Marlins and the Giants. If this is the end, then it is a career he can be proud of.

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The San Francisco Giants won their first World Series with a 3-1 Game 5 victory over the Texas Rangers. It was the first title for the Giants franchise since 1954, four years before they moved from New York.

Giants SS Edgar Renteria, who was talking retirement just five weeks ago, tells teammate Andres Torres that he’s hitting the long ball. And he did just that. In the seventh, Renteria took a Cliff Lee 2-0 cut fastball for a ride, a three-run home run that silenced the 52,045 in Arlington. His heroics were awarded, as he was named World Series MVP in a 3-1 World Series-clinching victory.

“I got confidence in me, but I was joking like I’m going to get it out. But it went out. I got confident, looking for one pitch. So he threw the cutter and it came back to the middle of the plate,” Renteria said.

Renteria’s heroics are nothing new, though. His 11th-inning walk-off RBI single for the Florida Marlins won Game 7 of the 1997 World Series, and he became only the fourth player in MLB history to drive home the winning run in two clinching games, joining Hall of Famers Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio and Yogi Berra.

The Giants won the way the best teams do—strong, young pitching. They also received a ton of support from what many deem “castoffs and misfits,” which was essentially a collection of short-term rentals, releases and waived players from around the league. No Giants player ranked in the top 10 in any significant statistical category during the regular season.

It didn’t matter that the Giants weren’t headlined by a big-name superstar, as they had a handful of unlikely saviors throughout the postseason—Cody Ross, Juan Uribe, Aubrey Huff, Freddy Sanchez and now Renteria.

“For us to win for our fans—it’s never been done there with all those great teams—that was a euphoric feeling. All those (former players) were in the clubhouse so many times and they were pulling for these guys to win. They helped us get here,” manager Bruce Bochy said.

Much credit is due to RHP Tim Lincecum, better known as “The Freak.” He out-dueled Lee (how often does that happen?) not once, but twice. He went eight strong, gave up just three hits and two walks while striking out 10. He’s now able to add a World Series trophy to his two NL Cy Young awards.

“You know what it is? It’s called being a gamer. Walking into the clubhouse today, the guy’s as loose as can be, joking around. Same old Timmy. You’d have no idea he had the opportunity to go out and win Game 5 of the World Series and win us a World Series championship. You saw it from the get-go. He had swing-and-miss stuff all night. Cruz hit a pretty decent pitch out. And he bounced back and got us out of there,” said Buster Posey.

The question now is can they do it again? A team consisting of castoffs and misfits wasn’t supposed to get this far in the first place, but now, it’s quite possible that a repeat is in the cards.

With an offence that ranked 17th of 30 teams in the bigs with just 697 runs scored during the season, this unlikely championship team has proven that there is no blueprint to success in the MLB.

Around the fanbase, it has proven that baseball is one of the greatest sports for playoff unpredictability, where the best team doesn’t always win, but rather, the one that happens to be playing best at the time.

Taking a look at this team’s roots, there is a ton of homegrown talent. Buster Posey and Pablo Sandoval, for example, are two of the club’s few homegrown position players, whereas the pitching staff was created predominantly through the draft—Madison Bumgarner went in the first round 10th overall (in 2007), Lincecum, 10th overall (in 2006), Matt Cain 25th overall (in 2002), Brian Wilson (24th round in 2003) and Jonathan Sanchez (27th round in 2004).

As for their “castoffs and misfits,” a lot of their bats came from second or third markets—so much credit is due to the club’s scouting.

When all was said and done, it came down to their starting pitching. Lincecum defeated Lee in Games 1 and 5, while their other young starters, Cain and Bumgarner, won Games 2 and 4. The trio did an incredible job of putting the Rangers bats to bed—the heart of the order, OF Josh Hamilton, DH Vladimir Guerrero and OF Nelson Cruz, who homered their way past the Tampa Bay Rays and New York Yankees in the postseason, were a combined 7-for-54 in the Series, which includes Nelson’s solo shot that got the Rangers their only run in Game 5.

Wilson retired those three batters in order in the ninth, finally punching out Nelson at 9:30pm CT, initiating a celebration 56 seasons in the making.

One has to love the story behind this team—specifically, for Wilson. It’s the same routine for the creator of “Fear the Beard”—after recording the final out of a ball game, the closer turns away from the plate, crosses his forearms in front of his chest and quickly looks toward the sky. It’s an MMA-style signal that he says he adopted to honor both his late father, who passed away from cancer when Brian was only 17, and his Christian faith.

“This one was the most special, sure. It showed that hard work really does pay off. That’s what my dad always taught me,” he said.

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They’ve been called Torture, The Dirty Dozen, The Misfits, The Cast-Offs, The Scrapheap Gang, The
Bad News Bears, The Little Rascals and compared to virtually every underdog team in sports history.

For the video accompanying this article go here.

But now they’ll ultimately be known as the 2010 World Champion San Francisco Giants.

For a guy like me who was born and raised in San Francisco and grew up idolizing the Giants, it feels amazing to say.

This team of colorful, diverse, outspoken, crazy characters was indeed a team of destiny.

The Rangers lineup inspires much more fear than the Giants. Cliff Lee was thought to be immortal until the Giants proved otherwise.

The Phillies are a much better team on paper. They’ve got seven all stars in their lineup and a supremely dominant three headed pitching staff. Halladay threw the first no-hitter in the postseason in decades, then a no-name cast-off, Cody Ross, made him look junior varsity.

It doesn’t make sense—at all.

If the Atlanta braves don’t lose Billy Wagner, Martin Prado and Chipper Jones before the playoffs the Giants don’t beat them. Period. Because then Brooks Conrad isn’t on their roster and all those eighth- and ninth-inning comebacks don’t happen. Something miraculous had to happen. And it did.

Miracle after miracle happened, over and over, and no one could even attempt to explain it except with theories of heart and Divine Intervention.

It’s too bad a lot of the country didn’t follow the 2010 Giants and learn their story. It’s a great one, like Boston having their 3-0 comeback against the Yankees and then winning it all. Just a great story.

Sports stories like this one just don’t happen that often.
 
There is story after story of guys on this team who all faced extreme humility and fought back against adversity with the notion of team as their North Star as they overcame every obstacle on their way to World Series glory.

Instead of telling them all, I’ll just tell the most unbelievable one: Cody Ross. A few months ago he wasn’t even a Giant, and he was then, in fact, a strategic acquisition to prevent him from going to competitor San Diego

But more amazingly, Giants fans disliked him a few months ago.

Not like we dislike anyone in a Dodger uniform, but like we dislike Casey Blake for mocking Brian Wilson, or Vicente Padilla for nailing Aaron Rowand.

Ross flipped his bat at Matt Cain after smacking a dinger off him in July. Cain glared at him all the way around the bases, then struck him out swinging his next at bat.

Had that game versus Florida not been close Cody Ross would have gotten a Cain fastball in the ribs. And Giants fans would have loved it.

Has that ever happened before in the history of baseball? A guy goes from hated prick to irreproachable playoff hero in the same year?

It’s the kind of story that fiction writers make up and people laugh at because it’s so implausible and ridiculous. Yet that happened. That happened to the 2010 Giants.

And so in the end, there can be no logical explanation. The Giants played better defense in the playoffs than they’re capable of.

They got more clutch hits in the playoffs than they did in the regular season.

They had a higher percentage of late inning comebacks in the playoffs than they did in the regular season.

Yeah, we’ve always had great pitching, but we didn’t do play like this in the regular season.

We’re 11-4 in the postseason. That’s the best we’ve played all year.

Other teams players got injured. Invincible pitchers suddenly turned mortal. The San Diego Padres lost 10 games in a row, which must have had a probability of less than one percent.

We won game one of each playoff series and never trailed at any time. Everything went right.

The 2010 Giants shouldn’t be the world champions of baseball. But that they are is a reason to believe in something greater than ourselves for anyone out there looking for a reason.

Maybe that sounds like a cliche, but sports isn’t at its greatest when great competition leads to entertaining and dramatic finishes, it’s at its best when great contests tell the amazing, unbelievable and miraculous stories of regular human beings.

That’s what the Giants are: A regular and very flawed group of guys that somehow rose above themselves and played as a TEAM.

And I believe it is a miracle.

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