SAN FRANCISCO – It is brief and illustrious, the list of baseball players who have hit three home runs during a World Series game: Albert Pujols, Reggie Jackson and Babe Ruth, who achieved the feat twice.
Now add to it Pablo Sandoval, the San Francisco Giants’ smiling, rotund third baseman, who slammed homers in his first three at-bats Wednesday to power his team to an 8-3 victory over the Detroit Tigers in Game 1 of the World Series.
Sandoval’s home runs came in the first, third and fifth innings, inciting hysterics from the announced crowd of 42,855 at AT&T Park and providing a surplus of support to Barry Zito, who pitched 5 2/3 innings to earn the win. Sandoval’s was only the ninth three-homer performance in postseason history.
“I still can’t believe it,” Sandoval said after the game. “When you’re a little kid, you dream about being in the World Series. But I wasn’t thinking about being in this situation, three homers in one game, you know?”
Almost as surprising as Sandoval’s outburst at the plate were the struggles of Justin Verlander, the Tigers’ strapping ace, considered by many to be baseball’s best pitcher. Verlander, who was 7-0 with a 0.69 earned run average in his previous seven starts, cast a long shadow upon the series well before it began, but it disappeared Wednesday afternoon as the sun set behind the ballpark.
Leading into the game, a popular train of thought ran that the Giants had only five winnable games at their disposable, so automatic was Verlander – a five-time All-Star, a former winner of the Cy Young and Most Valuable Player awards, and perennial strikeout champion – who would start twice for the Tigers.
But Sandoval and the Giants exploded such notions, pestering Verlander through a stunningly mediocre outing. He lasted just four innings, while giving up six hits, five runs and one walk, and striking out four.
‘’I think you start with giving the Giant hitters credit,” Tigers manager Jim Leyland said. “They’re very pesky, and obviously the big guy had one of those unbelievable nights that happen once in a while in a World Series.”
The Tigers had last played on Oct. 18, when they finished their four-game sweep of the Yankees in the American League Championship Series, and both Verlander and Leyland conceded that the pitcher, who threw to live hitters to stay sharp during his seven days of rest, might have been out of sync.
‘’I’m a creature of habit,” Verlander said. “You get a little bit out of your routine, but who cares? It’s the World Series.”
The Giants spent that time turning their home field into a feel-good outdoor festival site. And the collective love on display late Monday night, when the Giants and their fans celebrated the team’s World Series berth under a sudden, surreal downpour, was revived quickly Wednesday.
In the first inning, Sandoval, who hit a three-run triple off Verlander during the All-Star Game, fell behind to him, 0-2. But Verlander left a fastball high and flat, and Sandoval crushed it into the right-center field seats. It was only the sixth time in Verlander’s career that he allowed a home run on an 0-2 count.
‘’He’s one of the best pitchers in the big leagues,” Sandoval said of Verlander. “In these situations, you want to face the best.”
But Verlander was far from his best. It was almost alarming: The strikeout king could not put anyone away. In the third, Angel Pagan capped an eight-pitch at-bat by chopping a ball off the bag at third for a fortuitous double. Marco Scutaro then finished his own eight-pitch battle by slashing a run-scoring single to center, extending his hitting streak to 11 games.
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After him came Sandoval, who belted an outside fastball into the left-field stands for two runs and circled the bases with his right fist raised. Two home runs seemed unlikely enough, and in the fifth a split-second of stunned silence gave way to deafening cheers when Sandoval clubbed his third, this one off Al Alburquerque. In Sandoval’s fourth at-bat, he merely singled.
‘’It’s a tremendous night, a night I know he’ll never forget,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said of Sandoval.
Memories of the Giants’ championship run in 2010 made the night more poignant. Sandoval went 3 for 17 during those playoffs and played in just one World Series game, going hitless. And Zito was excluded altogether, left off the playoff roster, a fact that has made his renaissance this October fascinating.
‘’It’s definitely a cool thing that we’re both sitting up here after 2010,” Zito said, motioning to Sandoval after the game.
Zito, 34, embodied a sharp contrast to the power game of Verlander, flipping 72-mph curveballs and sneaking fastballs around the back alleys of the strike zone. He eased through the early going, talking to himself incessantly while on the bench and even contributed to Verlander’s misery by driving in a run in the fourth with a swing that resembled a tennis player’s backhand volley.
‘’He throws this when you’re looking for that, and vice versa,” Leyland said of Zito.
Zito gave up his only run in the sixth, when Miguel Cabrera ripped a run-scoring single to center field. Tim Lincecum ended that inning by coming in and striking out Jhonny Peralta, and he struck out four more over 2 1/3 innings. George Kontos, trying to finish the blowout in the ninth, gave up a two-run homer to Peralta.
The Tigers’ bullpen was more worrisome. Jose Valverde, the Tigers’ former closer who has been hit hard in recent weeks, began the seventh inning and gave up run-scoring singles to Scutaro and Buster Posey before being removed.
‘’You know, it’s a little bit puzzling, to be honest with you,” Leyland said of Valverde’s problems, which seemed like the team’s biggest headache this postseason.
But that was before Verlander turned shockingly normal Wednesday, before Sandoval swatted his way into one of baseball’s most exclusive groups.