Small Minds-Small Pleasures (Part Two)

My shrine to the Giants

Small Minds-Small Pleasures (Part Two)

“I don’t know what to do!…I am as light as a feather. I am as happy as an angel. I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man…” Charles Dickens, “A Christmas Carol”

Madison Bumgarner

As you have undoubtedly heard by now, whether you wanted to or not, the San Francisco Giants won a ball game Wednesday night, and all is right with the world. All is right for least for 48 hours, anyway, when the Giants travel to Chicago, to oppose a team that has been anointed since day one of this season as this year’s most likely world series winner.

The Giants sent the New York Mets home Wednesday night, with one swing of the bat, and still one more dominant performance by a guy now recognized as the greatest major league postseason pitcher who ever played the Game.

Conor Gillaspie  hammered a ball over the right-center field wall with two on in the top of the ninth, and Madison Bumgarner came back out to the mound in the bottom of the ninth, to nail down his second complete-game shutout in as many Wild Card appearances.

There is no precedent for this kind of dominance in a major league baseball uniform. We saw Travis Ishikawa send the Giants to the World Series in 2014, with his three-run blast against the St. Louis Cardinals, and now we have seen Conor Gillaspie send the lads on to the National League Division Championship Series, against the Chicago Cubs.

But it was the same dude, Bumgarner, who was hurling the shutout in both of those Wild Card games, having now extended his scoreless streak in must-win postseason games, to twenty-three consecutive innings. The number is staggering by any and all standards, which is why that term “best in MLB postseason history,” has been bandied about so much.

If you got it, flaunt it.

The reality is Madison Bumgarner does not flaunt it-he just gets it done. He is quick to deflect attention away from himself, and reacted in a painfully embarrassed

way when asked by Buster Olney, after the game, what he would like his legacy to be.

Embarrassed because the question asked him to focus on himself, instead of on the team, he shrugged and said, “I don’t know; to be known as a winner?” he suggested, as though anyone would ever question that.

Madison Bumgarner, no “d” to be found in his surname, has been a central cog of the Giants’ three recent World Series Championships, along with his battery-mate, Buster Posey, so his name is already synonymous with “winner.”

And I am as giddy as a drunken man as a result.