SAN FRANCISCO — You’ll be able to’t say Giants outfielder Mike Yastrzemski doesn’t know his squad.
Earlier than the Giants’ dwelling opener on Friday, I requested him to outline what 2025 Giants baseball is.
“Hard-nosed baseball,” Yaztremski mentioned. “We play until the very end. You can see it in this clubhouse where every guy cares about winning more than they care about themselves.”
And as long as we do this, the outcomes will converse for themselves.”
It was the sort of remark that challenged me to not roll my eyes. I learn it as early-season ballpark bloviation — the empty platitudes that each group spews in March and April, when something might theoretically occur in a season.
However Yaz is a soothsayer.
The primary six video games of the Giants’ marketing campaign actually match his description.
However clearly the Giants had been saving the actually good things for Friday’s debut at Oracle Park — a 243-minute extra-innings affair that featured 4 ties, six lead modifications, a near-game-losing wild pitch, and a walk-off two-run single.
Sure, it’s early, however Giants baseball is actually torturous once more.
And whereas all of us catch our breath and pour ourselves a drink to recover from no matter that 11-inning contest was, let’s all admit that exhausting, laborious, and downright nervy is a major improve over boring — a attribute latest Giants groups have boasted in spades.
For a not-quite-sold-out crowd, having fun with the primary sport of Oracle Park’s twenty fifth season, Friday’s sport was one to each lament and keep in mind.
It actually wasn’t a day to overlook.
The Giants celebrated a quarter-century on the nook of King and Third Friday, bringing a few of the 2000 Nationwide League West winners onto the sector (2000 NL MVP Jeff Kent was conspicuously absent — perhaps he was cleansing his truck), for good measure.
“I still call it the new ballpark,” supervisor Bob Melvin mentioned of Oracle Park. “It still feels like a new ballpark. This place, Baltimore — they’re special places.”
He’s not incorrect. Is there a greater place to observe a baseball sport on the planet, significantly on a sunny, 65-degree day like Friday within the metropolis?
No sir. And you may’t persuade in any other case, even when a four-hour baseball sport may violate protocols within the Geneva Conventions.
However whereas the day was Chamber-of-Commerce good, and the result was, too, the Giants’ play on the diamond was something however.
Justin Verlander mustered solely seven outs in his first Oracle Park begin as a Large. The 42-year-old’s four-seam fastball — his 2024 bugaboo on which opponents hit .299 towards — was ineffective towards a Seattle group that sat on it. It left the Giants to make use of seven relievers, two of whom (Lou Trivino and Camilo Doval) had been hit with blown saves within the field rating.
Sure, two blown saves. As I mentioned, it was a wild sport.
And the Giants had been 5-for-27 with runners in scoring place earlier than Willy Adames — taking part in his first dwelling sport as a Large — drove dwelling two within the backside of the eleventh inning, with second baseman Tyler Fitzgerald blowing via third-base coach Matt Williams’ cease signal to attain the successful run.
Fitzgerald’s baserunning truculence will probably be remembered and appreciated for years to return.
The followers went dwelling completely happy, exhausted, and possibly sunburned. (Take it from somebody whose children are half-Scottish — that you must reapply each two hours, people.)
And sure a lot to the chagrin of commissioner of baseball Rob Manfred (who, given what’s occurring with the A’s in West Sacramento, is clearly on trip in a spot with out entry to MLB.TV — wait, that’s most locations today), it was a full, fulfilling day on the ballpark.
Was it torture — a model of Machiavellian baseball solely the Giants appear to play? Completely.
However a win is a win. That’s 5 in a row for the Giants, in actual fact.
Extra importantly, it’s the primary true reminiscence of the 2025 season.
And, as you might need heard, making reminiscences is that this group’s actual enterprise.
Initially Printed: April 4, 2025 at 6:54 PM PDT
