Mad Bum

So just over 4 years ago whilst family holidaying on the West Coast of the US we went to our first ever Baseball Game to watch the San Francisco Giants.

Timmy Lincecum was starting pitcher for the Giants and watching him pitch in his prime caught my whole attention and desite my lack of baseball knowledge or experience – I knew what I was watching was something other, where the best of sporting performance and art become one. The control, the deception, the precision, the athleticism for me was every bit as awe inspiring as watching a fine ballerena, what I saw that night was beautiful.

So from that moment I’ve followed every game of the Giants at a distance, and caught the occasional game on screen. I’ve watched as the team that had failed to achieve for so many years have out classed the rest. From that moment what has enthralled me is not the home runs but the pitching duels.

In the early hours UK time the final game of this seasons World Series - Game 7 of 7 played out. Game 6 had seen the Kentucky Royals trounce the Giants 10-0 to even the game count 3-3, in the real world that should have been the coup de grace. The Giants starting pitcher stutured and spluttuered, the Royals were going to make hay again but there was one improbable but written in the stars intervention that was going to change everything, the Giants hoped, the Royals feared.

Maddison Bumgarner presented as the country boy come good has pitched an October unlike any other before in the games long and storied history. Baseball followers love their stats and Mad Bum was out breaking all the records.
Now the usual thing for the starting pitchers is to rotate and play every 4-5 games such is the toll on the arm and the need for precision, speed and control, rest is vital. A season that runs to the end of The Series runs to over 160 games, night after night, these guys earn big bucks but they earn them.
On only 2 days rest, having seen the starting pitcher withdrawn after less than 2 innings the Giants warmed up the Big fella from NY county, I suspect at that moment the Royals began to experience the dying of hope.
He came out and pitched 5 innings of no run relief, he continued his almost unhittable October. Somehow with one final out required in the 9th, an opposition player hussled his was to 3rd base – one run to tie, the world series, more post season pitches than anyone before. Mad Bum has ice running through his veins whilst the rest of the particiapating and watching hoards are reaching fever pitch, he pitches, the ball is hit, it goes up and hangs in the air for an age and falls and is held by Panda Sandoval, history is made.

I know in the moment of these dramatic wins in sport there is a temptation to attribute the win or the moment to some kind of greatness, which really is about the emotion of the moment. When the dust settles on this though I think despite the feats of others, despite the clear sum of the parts being more than the parts that typifies the Giants, this story will be told for generations – the story of the series when Mad Bum’s arm, his fast ball, his change up, his curve ball, his unreal bewildering slow curving ball, his focus, his stamina, his strength, his power, his ice cool nerve carried the World Series.

Not the beauty of Timmy the artist but Maddison Bumgarner, a man above men, a feat like no other.