SAN FRANCISCO -- You say the San Francisco Giants might have to be pretty crazy lucky to beat Justin Verlander. You might be right, but you haven't seen pretty crazy lucky until you see the ball Hunter Pence hit on Monday.
The Giants can't win the World Series? Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder can launch home runs into the stratosphere, but neither one can hit the carom shot that knocked the life out of the St. Louis Cardinals.
For the second time in three years, the Giants are headed to the World Series. They took all the suspense out of Game 7 of the National League championship series in a hurry, scoring seven runs in the first three innings of a 9-0 victory and sending the Cardinals home to contemplate a miserable finish to a nice season.
The World Series starts here Wednesday, with the first Fall Classic between the Giants and the Detroit Tigers.
Matt Cain, the winning pitcher in an All-Star Game that provided the NL with home-field advantage in the World Series, carried a shutout into the sixth inning to become the winning pitcher in the game that put the Giants into the World Series.
Marco Scutaro, who batted .500 for the NLCS and .522 (12 for 23) after the Cardinals' Matt Holliday injured him in a slide in Game 2, had three of the Giants' 13 hits. Cain exacted the more traditional form of retaliation by hitting Holliday in the left arm in the sixth inning, with a seven-run lead.
On Monday, for the first time in the history of a franchise that opened for business in 1883, the Giants won a winner-take-all Game 7. For the sixth time this postseason, the Giants won an elimination game.
After St. Louis took a three games to one lead in the NLCS, the Giants outscored the Cardinals, 20-1, over the final three games.
None of the St. Louis starters — Lance Lynn, Chris Carpenter or Kyle Lohse — pitched into the fifth inning. The Cardinals surrendered seven unearned runs in Games 5 and 6, but unearned yielded to unbelievable in Game 7.
The Giants scored once in the first and again in the second, with hit-and-run plays helping each time. With Cain and Lohse struggling to find the strike zone at that point, the Cardinals were not buried by a 2-0 deficit.
The burial took place in the third inning. The Giants had the bases loaded with none out. Lohse had faced 13 batters and gotten six outs, and so the Cardinals summoned reliever Joe Kelly.
The first pitch was a 95-mph fastball. Pence swung, and the ball broke his bat. The ball appeared headed toward the hole between shortstop and third base, and St. Louis shortstop Pete Kozma broke that way.
But a fragment of the broken bat collided with the ball and redirected it up the middle. Kozma could not reverse himself in time, so what might have been a double play ended up a two-run single ... until center fielder Jon Jay overran the ball, then bobbled it, enabling the Giants to score another run and take a 5-0 lead.
After a single and a walk, the Giants again had the bases loaded. Brandon Crawford hit a slow ground ball to shortstop, and a charging Kozma had one play— at first base. But Kozma, in trying to stop the bleeding, threw home anyway — too late, and the Giants picked up another run.
bill.shaikin@latimes.com
twitter.com/BillShaikin
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