Ten years since Madison Bumgarner did the thing

A World Series performance nobody wants to forget.

It’s perhaps a cruel irony that on the night when the Los Angeles Dodgers can win the World Series — and, potentially, kickoff a dynasty for the 2020s — we have the chance to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Madison Bumgarner’s heroic effort pitching in relief in Game 7 to clinch the most recent World Series win for the San Francisco Giants.

That was a surprising postseason run in and of itself and while it stood to reason that the championship group was closer to an ending than it was in the middle of a long tail of success, it’s still a bit surprising that a decade later we’re still yearning for those good times in such large measure.

And what times they were. In the moment, the 2014 championship felt like a culmination, and Madison Bumgarner’s unprecedented achievement not just a cherry on top but the crowing achievement of the franchise’s successful pivot from Barry Bonds to a new young core that could win it all. Bumgarner was the last in a rascally line of ace-level starting pitchers to come out of that development group, and his postseason dominance is one of the reasons we’re still yearning for these championship days at all. To use recent slang: dude posted.

Despite a starting pitching staff that was injured/on fumes/at the end of their competitive pitching abilities, Bumgarner reminded them — and us — that they were the San Francisco Giants: when they get to the postseason, they win. At least, that’s how it was for a minute.

He allowed just 1 run in 21 innings, and pitched a shutout in Game 5 to give the team a 3-2 series lead. The Kansas City Royals were relieved they didn’t have to face him again in the series. Oops.

Here was his scouting report for that playoff run:

That night, Grant Brisbee posted to this very site:

Madison Bumgarner, the high school pitcher drafted when the Giants were desperate for a college hitter, the pitcher who lost his fastball and was going to be relegated to the what-if of prospect purgatory, the pitcher who was neck and neck with Tim Alderson on the Giants’ prospect lists for a while, the pitcher who already had two stellar World Series starts and victories before he turned 24. He was already a World Series legend, something to put on the dust jacket to get you to buy the book, not a footnote. Then came Game 7.

Then came Game 7.

We’ve seen a lot over the five years, most of it things we were sure we’d never see. Then came Game 7. There will be a century of World Series highlights between now and 2114, and they’ll still be talking about Madison Bumgarner.

It’s the best postseason we’ll ever see from a Giants pitcher. From start to finish, this postseason was a cornucopia of amazing Madison Bumgarner moments. Then came Game 7.

The Giants won the 2014 World Series. They needed exactly one great starting pitcher to do it. It was enough.

It wasn’t just a memorable, it was a transformative one.

Back in 2018, SB Nation’s Secret Base did a deep dive on the relief outing specifically, linking the causes of Bumgarner on the mound and getting Salvador Perez to pop up for the final out. It’s as impressive an editorial effort as Bumgarner’s pitching that night:

And that’s the thing about these big moments: they don’t happen out of nowhere. The chain of decisions and sequence of events are critical. Personalities, talents, luck… it’s the confluence of these factors that lead to championships. Really, success itself is the same.

It was a night that cemented the legacy of Madison Bumgarner and Buster Posey in MLB history. As soon as the next postseason you saw teams resorting to Bumgarnering their starters in any length of series. Meanwhile, Posey’s three titles lifted an arguable Hall of Fame resume to inarguable status and gave him enough juice to become a billionaire (possibly) as well as the credibility (at least with Giants fans) to become the team’s top baseball executive.

Regardless of your favorite World Series team from the 2010s (I’m partial to 2012), this night made a fantasy sound like an obvious reality. The Giants were a dynasty, and had winning three championships in five seasons jumped the Giants into the league’s elite? Could they start to compete year in and year out for a title?

As good as it sounded, we know that sustained success in baseball is all but impossible save for only a few teams. The Yankees, yes. Their fans are about to endure a humiliating defeat at the hands of Shohei Ohtani Freddie Freeman, but there’s going to be an unwavering expectation by them and even ownership that they’ll be back next year. The Dodgers, of course, have been striving to have a permanent seat in the LCS or World Series. The Astros, Phillies, and Braves are a few others looking to do the same. The Red Sox fandom though their team would be in this group, too, until their ownership decided against it because, well, it’s more profitable to try only a little versus a lot.

I never thought I’d live to see the day the San Francisco Giants won a World Series, and then they won three. A decade ago we celebrated the Giants achieving a successful rebuild designed to set them up for long-term success. Maybe it was our greed as fans that thought “long-term” meant decades, but ten years on all we’re left with is a reminder of what was.

“Don’t be sad that it’s over, be happy that it happened,” makes a lot of sense, but on an anniversary like this one, my main thought is, “That was cool, now they should do it again.”

Nobody knows — especially the Giants — what it will take to return our favorite baseball team to prominence or even competitiveness and least of all when that might come about; but, the memory of when they were great is still palpable and I think that’s what’s made us all a little nutty the past few years. One night ten years ago, when hope was fading fast, one man came to our team’s rescue. That’s why when Buster Posey offered to save the Giants, we had no choice but to hug him.

Of course, what happened then has no bearing on today. Bumgarner’s dominance only exists in our memories and the record books now. It’s a totem for instant happiness. It has no bearing on the future. Bumgarner made new memories for people who had trouble rinsing off 2002 and 1989 and all the disappointments in between. The next generation of great Giants won’t have the responsibility of karmic correction, though, only the responsibility of building off of a legacy of the greatest pitching performances we’ll ever see. Good luck, future Giants!