This popped up among my sponsored ads on Facebook this morning:

If only all trivia questions were this easy. 74,861 people are surely disappointed this morning. OK, at least 74,861.

The baseball season is over and the Gints [sic] of San Francisco, with a different no-name team than the one that won the championship two years ago, swept aside the Detroit Tigers. The team that crushed the Yankees in four were themselves crushed in four. I barely had time to blink. I didn't even have Tim or Jim over. Poof. Over. Blah.

For a time I wondered if the Tigers, with mucho muscle in the middle of the lineup, would surrender the way the Dodgers surrendered to the Orioles in 1966: without scoring a run in the final three games. But then Miguel Cabrera hit a fly ball to right field that carried over the fence for a 2-1 lead, their first lead of the Series. “Was this what the Tigers needed?” I wondered. “A sense that God is on their side?” If it was, it didn't last. Three innings later, Buster Posey, he of the 12-year-old face, went deep the other way for a 3-2 SF lead. Four batters later (two Giants, two Tigers), Delmon Young tied it up, 3-3.

And that's how it stayed. The Giants got lead-off men on in the 7th and 8th but never brought them around. The Tigers got the lead-off man on in the 8th, with the meatiest part of a meaty lineup coming up, but they got shot down by Jeremy Affeldt, a journeyman remade in San Francisco into a premiere set-up man. Affeldt faced Cabrera, Fielder and Young and struck them all out. It was a Carl Hubbell moment. In 10 games and 10.1 innings this post-season, Affeldt has allowed five hits, no runs, and struck out 10. Fans in KC must be wondering who the fuck this guy is.

In the top of the 9th, the Tigers' Phil Coke matched him: 3 up, 3 Ks. But in the 10th, with two outs and a man on second, Coke was forced to face Marco Scutaro, another journeyman (10 years, .276 BA, .731 OPS), remade at trade deadline in San Francisco (.362 BA, .858 OPS), and again in the postseason (.328 BA); and of course Marco Scutaro, who surely has the most musical name in baseball, lined a single to center to make it 4-3. In the bottom of the 10th, against Sergio Romo, the new bearded wonder in SF, Austin Jackson struck out swinging, Don Kelly struck out swinging, and Miguel Cabrera, the best hitter in baseball, the first Triple Crown winner in a generation, struck out looking to end it. God doesn't choose sides after all.

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