Giants complete World Series clean sweep

The 2012 World Series concluded with an 89-mph fastball over the middle of the plate, the sort of pitch that ends up over outfield fences as often as it does in catcher’s mitts.

Buster Posey squeezed it, still a little surprised it had arrived there, because that meant Miguel Cabrera, the game’s best hitter, had watched it go by, knees buckling ever so slightly, as though he wanted to genuflect to Sergio Romo, who had the stones to feed him that pitch at that moment.

It took Posey the slightest moment to compose himself. And then he ran like a madman to join in the fury that soon would engulf him.

Over the last month, as they first played can’t-be-killed zombies and then ran roughshod over the American League’s finest, the San Francisco Giants have forged any number of identities. They wore their intangibles of fighters and scrappers, gamers and grinders, like they meant more than just words. They embraced their ability to defy defeat and couldn’t explain it but for the sort of survivalism needed to advance in October. And, finally, they made official at Comerica Park what had been obvious from the outset of the World Series: The Giants are this season’s baseball champions.

A 4-3 victory that completed a 4-0 sweep on Sunday night over the Detroit Tigers cinched the Giants’ second championship in three seasons, a feat as noteworthy for its accomplishment as it is its foremost oddity: Only Posey remains from the starting line-up of the 2010 clincher. He was at the centre of this one, too, poking a key home run, guiding starter Matt Cain through trouble and, best of all, allowing Romo to shake off the slider he asked for.

It’s so easy to forget that five days earlier, when this series began, the Giants were generally regarded as underdogs, beaten down by comebacks against Cincinnati and St. Louis. They won six elimination games, Detroit had plenty of rest to line up their rotation and while it wasn’t a fait accompli, it wasn’t going to be like this, either, not anything close: not just a sweep but a dismantling, an embarrassment, a most thorough ass-kicking, the first World Series blanking in five years. Even though Posey had every right to keep the ball, he wanted manager Bruce Bochy to decide who would get the final glory out of this amazing run.

There were a lot of choices.

When asked why he gave that final ball to Bochy, Posey said: “It was not a fun decision to make.”