eastbaybaseball

It was your typical Giants-Dodgers rivalry game. It was a pitcher Brad Hennessey stealing his first base and scoring the go-ahead and eventual winning run. It was Brian Wilson striking out Manny Ramirez with a 100 MPH fastball. It was centerfielder Aaron Rowand making a golden play with his putout at home to prevent a run from scoring. It was Derek Lowe throwing seven shutout innings. It was Matt Cain throwing six shutout innings. It was great defense by the Giants and couple good plays by the Dodgers. In the end, it was a game of tradition, with Rich Aurilia hitting the game-winning single in an 11-inning affair in a 1-0 Giants victory. Rich Aurilia, who is the last remaining player from the Candlestick days, thought he might welcome the young guys to this heated rivalry and on-going tradition. He was the right guy up in the right spot for the Giants in this rivalry game. Aurilia enjoyed every second and minute of it as he said “it is always fun to beat up on those guys (Dodgers).” Basically, every Giants-Dodgers game is meaningful no matter if one team is in contention and the other is out of contention. It was a big game for the Dodgers and with that loss, their lead shrunk in the NL West to 2 1/2 games with 6 games to go. And their magic number remains at five. So the Giants take on the Dodgers for one more three-game series that could be huge and very meaningful. After avoiding Giants ace Tim Lincecum all year since the third game of the season, the Dodgers get to see Tim Lincecum on the final day and game of 2008 season at AT & T Park. And facing off against Timmy is young phenom Chad Billingsley. So it should be an exciting game to watch. We will see how meaningful it is in the next few days. Hopefully, it will be a big game where Giants and Lincecum could be spoilers to Manny and the Dodgers playoff hopes and World Series aspirations.

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