By John Murphy
March usually signals the start of the major league baseball season, but the coronavirus crisis has scuttled that.
Minus that excitement, let’s review Game 7 of the 2014 World Series. That was my San Francisco Giants (yes, I’m the owner) at the Kansas City Royals.
I lived in San Bruno then and was hosting my boyhood pal Keith Larsen, now the Menlo School basketball coach. I bought some Chinese food for the occasion.
The chop suey was good luck, too, as the Giants scored two runs in the second inning. But then KC tied it in the bottom of the inning and the fear enveloped me. I had flashbacks to the Giants’ 2002 collapse against the Angels.
The announcers were also getting on my nerves, so I popped a Natalie Merchant cassette into my boom box.
“Murph, no audio?” Larsen said, referring to the baseball game.
“I need 10,000 Maniacs,” I said. “They soothe me.”
The Giants nudged ahead 3-2 on Michael Morse’s RBI single in the fourth. But the Royals were scary good and every time Lorenzo Cain came up I was convinced he was going to hit the ball 500 feet.
Fast-forwarding (I have cassettes, remember) it came down to Giants ace Madison Bumgarner in relief against Salvador Perez with a man on third and two outs in the ninth. The tension mounted.
Six high hard ones later, Mad-Bum got Perez to pop up to Giants third baseman Pablo Sandoval, who joyfully squeezed the final out.
Unleashing all our pent-up energy, Larsen and I danced around the room and high-fived. Then I grabbed a meat tenderizer and started banging on a brass gong I keep for such occasions.
I don’t know what the neighbors thought, but we didn’t care. We were the champs.
Main Street Dog 