Gaylord Perry StatueLast Sunday, I paid a visit to the new statue at AT&T Park: Gaylord Perry, who spent the first decade of his career in a San Francisco uniform alongside Juan Marichal as a mainstay of the Giants pitching staff during the 1960s. Perry’s most famous pitch was a spitball, which he discussed at length in his autobiography, and he indulged in some humor during the unveiling when he hid Vaseline jars underneath the chairs of the dignitaries who attended. Not a surprise that Perry, also enshrined in Cooperstown, finally joined his teammates in bronze at the ballpark, but it also occurred to me that as distinguished a group as they were, there were several Giants in the lineup that day who owned as many if not more World Series championship rings as all of their bronzed forefathers combined. I point this out because there will come a time after this current dynasty of Giants has retired when there will be a question of memorializing them in bronze as well. I wonder where they will put them all. It’s already getting a little crowded.
The Giants haven’t been on my radar much for the last month, mostly because I haven’t been able to bear to watch the debacle their season has been since the All-Star break. Only the mediocrity of the Los Angeles Dodgers, their primary competition in the National League West, has kept the Giants at or near the top of the division. Nor was I hopeful that I would see anything different last Sunday. The pitcher for the New York Mets, Noah Syndergaard, had picked up where he left off from his successful 2015 season, even if his team hadn’t. On the other hand, the pitcher for the Giants, Jeff Samardzija, one of their expensive free-agent signings over the winter, had spent over two months in a funk after a 7-3 start through May. I hoped that Samardzjia would at least keep it together long enough to make the game interesting and not burn out the bullpen, which has had its own share of troubles.
Jeff SamardzijaSamardzjia, to his credit, rose to the occasion, pitching six no-hit innings before giving up two runs in the seventh on a tremendous home run by Yoenis Cespedes, which landed on the walkway behind the left field bleachers. Very few balls make it that far. Syndergaard, for his part, regularly hit 98 mph on the radar gun and allowed only one solid hit all evening, a single by Joe Panik, so once Cespedes put the Mets ahead, the game was pretty much over. I would have preferred a victory, but I didn’t feel too bad as I left the park. If the Giants are going to contend going forward, they need Samardzjia to be the pitcher they thought he would be when they signed him. He certainly has sufficient talent, hitting 94-95 mph on the gun in his own right, and perhaps his Sunday performance indicated that he may have found himself again. One can only hope, because time is starting to run out on the Giants in 2016.
