Sports: MLB Pros: San Fran's Giants 4, Detroit Tigers 3, 10 innings

New York Times (Oct

GIANTS 4, TIGERS 3, 10 INNINGS

With a Sweep, 

Giants Are Champions Again

Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

Sergio Romo after striking out Miguel Cabrera to win the World Series.

By ANDREW KEH

Published: October 29, 2012

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DETROIT — Rain and bristly winds swirled. A hostile crowd grew feisty as the home team stirred to life. And still the San Francisco Giants remained calm. For all they had gone through in these last weeks, this was nothing.

Related

• With Game and Title on Line, Romo Turns Up Heat on Cabrera (October 29, 2012)

• On Baseball: A Heaping of Smarts, a Dollop of Luck (October 29, 2012)

• Ontario City Shares Detroit’s Thrills (Tigers) and Ills (Auto Industry) (October 29, 2012)

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Charlie Riedel/Associated Press

Ryan Theriot scored the winning run in the top of the 10th inning.

The Giants defeated the Detroit Tigers, 4-3, over 10 tense and taut innings Sunday night to claim their second World Series title in three years. The game, played before an announced crowd of 42,152 at Comerica Park, provided a short dose of intensity to a series that felt like an anticlimax to the team’s otherwise stunning postseason run. After flirting dangerously close to elimination in their two previous series, the Giants were cutthroat and businesslike against the Tigers, finishing off them off in the minimum four games.

And now, this storied franchise, born in New York, packed and moved to California in 1958, has its seventh World Series title, its second since upending the Texas Rangers in five games in 2010.

“To be world champions in two out the last three years, it’s amazing,” Giants Manager Bruce Bochy said. “Believe me, I know how hard it is to get here, and I couldn’t be prouder of a group of guys that were not going to be denied.”

Bochy, 57, a former catcher with a languid mien, will be further acknowledged as one of baseball’s elite tacticians. He pulled all of the necessary strings, mixing his players, keeping them afloat as they faced a two-games-to-none deficit in the Giants’ National League division series and a three-games-to-one disadvantage in the league championship series. The Giants won their last seven games of the year, a feat they never accomplished during the regular season.

After the game, Jim Leyland, the manager of the Tigers, was emphatic that the trophy was in the right hands.

“Obviously there was no doubt about it, they swept us,” Leyland said. “So there was certainly no bad breaks, no fluke. I tip my hat to them. Simple, they did better than we did.”