When Jeff Kent ripped a Jarrod Washburn delivery into the seats to give the Giants a 1-0 lead in the 3rd inning, it was more than the first run of the World Series - it was a harbinger of things to come. And those things began coming just two innings later, when Rick Aurilia drove another Washburn fastball into the seats for a 3-1 lead, and they kept coming when Barry Bonds followed suit in both the 7th and the 9th, and Reggie Sanders added another in the final inning, as San Francisco ran away to a lopsided victory in the Series opener. Five home runs left the Angels' pitching staff a bit shell-shocked, and their hitters didn't fare much better as Schmidt spun a complete-game three-hitter which was only blemished by a 4th inning run that scored only with the help of a Benito Santiago passed ball. Kent finished the evening with four hits, and Bonds with five RBI, as the fulcrum of a thirteen-hit attack. San Francisco 9-13-0, Anaheim 1-3-0. [scoresheet] [broadcast]
The Giants got off on the longball foot quickly again in Game Two, as Sanders whacked one out of the field of play with two out and the bases empty in the 2nd to put the Giants ahead, but Anaheim answered quickly with a Troy Glaus double and two singles to tie the score in the bottom of the inning. The ball didn't remain in the park for long, however, as Kenny Lofton hit the seventh SF homer in twelve innings with one out in the top of the 3rd. A walk and two singles got the Angels even again an inning later, but Sanders hit his second home run of the game (and third of the Series) in the 6h, right behind a J.T. Snow RBI double, to give the visitors a 5-2 lead. Brad Fullmer, who reached base four times, homered in the bottom half to shrink the ANA gap to two runs, but three Giant relievers combined to ground the Angels with three hitless innings that closed out the game. San Francisco 5-7-0, Anaheim 3-10-0. [scoresheet]
Groundhog Day was more than three months away, but Anaheim had seen this movie before and could see winter coming for them, and quickly. Perhaps no one should have been surprised, when Ramon Ortiz brought his MLB-leading 40 home runs allowed to the mound to face a Giants lineup that had left the yard eight times in two Series games, but within the first four batters San Francisco had belted two more four-base hits (Kent and Bonds going belly-to-belly) and scored four times without Ortiz recording an out. Kent (four RBI) homered again in the 2nd to make it 5-0 Giants, and there seemed no road back for the Angels in front of a devastated crowd at Edison Field. They scored twice in the 4th and once in the 6th, to get within 5-3, and put the first two men in the 7th, but Darrin Erstand's sharp grounder down the #B line was turned into a 54 double play by David Bell - Salmon barely beating the throw to first to avoid a triple play - and this seemed to knock the last bit of stuffing out of the home team as they went quietly the rest of the way before a two-out 9th-inning rally came to nothing. San Francisco 5-11-0, Anaheim 3-7-1. [scoresheet]
The Angels really needed a fast start to restore some confidence, for both themselves and the crowd, but they only sent the minimum nine men to the plate in the first three frames while the Giants were mking life miserable for Lackey. Four singles in the 1st gave San Francisco two runs, and three walks (including a none-out intentional pass to Bonds) led to three more scores in the 3rd. When Aurilia and Bonds doubled for a 6th run in the 4th, it was clear that Anaheim just had no answers to blunt the Giant attack while, at the same time, they could barely raise a whimper against the off-speed offerings of Rueter. Two singles in the 4th were quickly erased by a double-play ball and the Angels could manage only one more hit until two men were out in the 9th inning. Just to add an exclamation point, Kent hit his fourth homer of the Series (on his fifth hit of the game) in the 8th as Rueter cruised to a five-hit complete-game shutout that swept Anaheim aside to clinch the Series. San Francisco 7-13-0, Anaheim 0-5-1. [scoresheet]
This was a complete and utter beatdown almost from the first pitch; Anaheim pitchers couldn't keep Giant hitters from sending the ball out of the ballpark, while their own hitters could barely muster a .500 team OPS. San Francisco had almost as many extra-base hits (20), and scored more runs (26), than the Angels had hits (25) and had more home runs (12) than than ANA had either runs (7) or walks (9). Sometimes, you just run face first into a buzzsaw. [Series stats]
While Barry Bonds was the focus of both the media and the scouting reports coming into the Series, and did absolutely nothing to prove that focus unwarranted (6-for-11, three HR, eight RBI, seven BB), Giants 2B Jeff Kent put on nothing short of one of the greatest postseason performances in baseball history. Thirteen hits in eighteen at-bats (.722 avg) with three doubles and four home runs (1.556 slg), producing seven runs scored and six batted in.
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