SAN FRANCISCO — Overcoming long odds and undermining common sense, the San Francisco Giants steamrolled over the St. Louis Cardinals on Monday night to claim a place in the World Series.
All month long, the Giants wobbled along the precipice of elimination. They earned a place in the National League Championship Series only by winning three consecutive games away from home against the Cincinnati Reds during a best-of-five division series. They forced a seventh game in this round only by fighting back from a three-games-to-one deficit against the Cardinals.
And now the Giants will compete for the World Series title after surging to a 9-0 victory in Game 7 before an announced crowd of 43,056 at AT&T Park, stamping through a game that featured all the tension of a bayside stroll, the manic energy of a rock concert. The final inning was played underneath a sudden downpour, and when it was over, the players danced on the sodden infield and took a victory lap along a warning track turned to mud.
"I'm still numb," Giants Manager Bruce Bochy said. "These guys deserve all the credit. They were determined not to go home."
The Cardinals came to San Francisco no strangers to high-stakes baseball, either. They won four elimination games last season on their way to a World Series championship, and they entered Monday's game with two elimination-game victories this postseason. But they could muster only one run over their final three games before collapsing unceremoniously in front of the overjoyed Giants fans.
"We got to this point by being the team that was hot and taking advantage of opportunities," said Mike Matheny, the Cardinals' manager. "But we just couldn't make it happen."
For the Giants, the victory capped what felt like a two-day party at their home stadium. After becoming only the second team to win six postseason elimination games in a single year, they will return to their home field Wednesday night to face the Detroit Tigers in Game 1 of the World Series.
The excitement, wonderment and disbelief Monday night seemed to reach a fever pitch during San Francisco's five-run third inning. With the bases loaded and nobody out, Hunter Pence came up against reliever Joe Kelly and conjured up a strange, swerving line drive that wrong-footed shortstop Pete Kozma.
"Apparently, it hit my bat three times," Pence said, smiling. "I swung really hard at a ball going really hard. It broke my bat. There you go. It's another one of those things."
The ball whipped an S-shaped course off his splintering bat, curling through the air, around Kozma's glove, and into the outfield, where it was bobbled by center fielder Jon Jay for a double.
The bases cleared. The crowd boiled over. The party raged on.
Brandon Belt reached on an infield single and Gregor Blanco walked, loading the bases again. Brandon Crawford chopped a ball up the middle and Kozma, a player who seemed at the center of the Cardinals' misery all night, made a questionable decision to throw home, where Pence scored easily. After pitcher Matt Cain struck out, Angel Pagan grounded to Kozma, who made a sloppy flip to second, allowing Pagan to beat the throw to first on a potential double-play grounder, letting Belt score.
The bases were still loaded when Pablo Sandoval lined out to end the inning, but the damage was inflicted. After 11 plate appearances, 4 hits, 2 walks, and 1 error, the Giants were up, 7-0.
"It's a dream come true, but there's one more step, and we've got to get ready," said Pagan, who scored the Giants' first run in the first inning. The Giants' blowout was topped off with Aubrey Huff's run-scoring double-play ball in the seventh and Belt's solo home run in the eighth.
Cain started for the Giants, and despite lacking his sharpest stuff, he provided five and two-thirds scoreless innings. He came closest to trouble in the second, when Kyle Lohse came up with runners on second and third and two outs and smacked a line drive that seemed headed for the outfield. Instead, it was snatched out of the air by shortstop Crawford, who was fully elevated and extended.
Minor crisis averted, Cain contributed to the offense in the bottom of that inning, putting the Giants up, 2-0, when his two-out line-drive single dissected the middle infielders and brought Blanco home from second base.
"I think says a lot about his makeup and how he competes, and he just found a way to get it done," Bochy said of Cain.
Cain was the recipient of wild appreciative applause in the sixth when he hit Matt Holliday in the arm, possibly looking for retribution for Holliday's rough takeout slide that injured second baseman Marco Scutaro during Game 2. Scutaro recovered to go 14 for 28 in the series and was awarded the Most Valuable Player trophy.
Two outs later, Cain was pulled from the game, and he was cheered again. It was another stirring moment for the right-hander, who pitched a perfect game this season and earned the victory in the All-Star Game.
Cain then watched the game's conclusion, enraptured as any of the fans, who only became louder as the rain intensified before the start of the ninth. "It doesn't rain here very often," Cain said. "That's definitely an intense way to get the 27th out."
The last out came, finally, and the Giants, after tiptoeing so many times on the brink of elimination, were splashing into the World Series.
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