OAKLAND — Matt Chapman did not hit, walk or charm his way to second base. He was placed there in the 10th inning Sunday afternoon.
You might not care for the automatic runner rule in extra innings. You might loathe it with every fiber of your being. You might react with revulsion whenever something contrary to the concept of fair play is given and not earned. Your gag reflex might be triggered when you think of all the influence that some can wield merely because they were born into scoring position.
Those people have never known the feeling of having their dreams dashed. So how can they fully experience what it means to triumph over odds, to persevere through adversity, to love something so imperfect, to experience the promise of shared joy that makes all the shared pain worth it?
Sunday’s game was not the finale for the Oakland A’s at the Coliseum. There are a few more weeks left. Plenty of seats are available. But Sunday’s game was the finale for the San Francisco Giants in Oakland. It was the last true Bay Bridge game in a rivalry that began with a four-game series in 1997 and featured its share of highlights: Eric Byrnes hitting for the cycle in San Francisco in 2003, Jarrett Parker launching three home runs at the Coliseum in 2015, Tim Hudson and Barry Zito bringing their careers to a touching if messy denouement. Heroes were made. Star careers were minted. Matt Cain was a 21-year-old right-hander searching for answers in 2006, on the cusp of being sent back to Triple A, when he threw the one-hit shutout at Oakland that served as a springboard to a career of consequence.
Those kinds of performances and outcomes could have happened against any other opponent. But they might have resonated a little deeper when they came against their Bay Area counterpart. For the Giants and their fans, the A’s would never be the Dodgers. The rivalry couldn’t be reduced to oppositional hate. It would always be more complicated than that. Family squabbles usually are.
There were attempts over the years to imbue the rivalry with a bit more manufactured hype and heft. A trophy was created and never really caught on. For the most part, though, this was an interleague rivalry that always meant more to fans than the players — unless those players grew up in the Bay Area or had the experience of wearing both uniforms.
Chapman is one of those players. So is Mark Canha. Giants manager Bob Melvin has a nearly unmatched grasp on Bay Area baseball history, having grown up on the Peninsula and having played in the East Bay at Cal and having suited up for the Giants in the 1980s and having spent 11 seasons giving signs from the green and yellow home dugout at the Coliseum.
Melvin arrived at the Coliseum at 7:15 a.m. Sunday. He ran the stadium steps and purposely wore white shoes with his road uniform and he did not designate the lineup exchange to one of his coaches. He acknowledged the finality of the morning even while he erected the emotional walls he’d need to push through trying to win a game and retain some hope of reaching October baseball.
And so, in the minutes that followed the closing drama of the Giants’ 4-2, 10-inning victory — after Chapman scored on Jerar Encarnacion’s home run and Michael Conforto added another; after the A’s used an error, a single and a walk to load the bases in the bottom of the inning; after new Giants closer Ryan Walker struck out three consecutive batters to strand all of them while flexing and screaming his way into a final handshake line; after Canha paused to fill a paper cup with infield dirt; after Chapman, who won three Gold Gloves at the hot corner here, literally picked up third base and took it with him; after all of those final flourishes — Melvin could finally let the emotions run through him.
“Don’t you kind of expect a game like this to end this place and this series between the Giants and the A’s?” said Melvin, as reporters crowded into the visiting manager’s office. “It almost had to happen like that.”
Un último recuerdo del Coliseo pic.twitter.com/882ALTDUgo
— SF Gigantes (@SFGigantes) August 19, 2024
This ending, of course, didn’t have to happen at all. The end of nearly five decades of Major League Baseball in Oakland, the most happening place in the game in several of those years, all seems avoidable and unnecessary. A’s owner and Gap scion John Fisher is reminding every baseball fan that owners are only stewards of civic institutions when they decide it serves them. When they decide it serves their interests better to lock in a future as a perpetual revenue-sharing recipient, broken hearts and broken promises are collateral damage.
For as much as Fisher is the archvillain in this story, let’s not totally absolve the neighbors. The Giants, with their ownership’s decades-long siege mentality over territorial rights in the South Bay, had a role to play in this final result.
The Giants and A’s will play again next season, of course. The schedule for 2025 is already out. The A’s will play at the Giants’ waterfront ballpark May 16-18. The Giants will learn what it’s like to take batting practice in Sacramento’s triple-digit heat — and play a road game in their own Triple-A affiliate’s home stadium — when they travel to Sutter Health Park for a holiday weekend series July 4-6.
But Sunday afternoon’s game was the final time both teams would compete in their shared backyard. And the stakes mounted as the Giants and A’s traded zeroes.
The Giants had six baserunners in the first six innings and four of them ran into outs. They were caught attempting to steal second base two times. Encarnacion was thrown out attempting to stretch a single. Every attempt at manufacturing a run ended up with a shoe caught in the gears. Mike Yastrzemski popped up a safety squeeze attempt. Tyler Fitzgerald was doubled off after A’s pitcher J.P. Sears broke up a tea party of confused infielders and made a lunging catch of a popup.
“Trying to manufacture a run, score a run however we could,” Melvin said. “It didn’t look good for a while.”
The Giants remained in the game because Blake Snell continued his nearly unhittable run on the mound. He pounded strikes, exacted count leverage and constricted one out after another. The A’s scratched him for a run on three hits in the sixth, but the inning was minimized in part because of a defensive contribution: Yastrzemski made a strong throw from right field to cut down a runner attempting to go from first to third.
Heliot Ramos put the Giants on the board in the seventh inning with his 18th home run. (Lachlan Cunningham / Getty Images)
When Heliot Ramos finally got the Giants on the board, tying the game with a booming, 448-foot home run that smacked the green facing high above the center field fence, Snell held fast in the bottom of the inning. He threw a series of competitive misses while walking two batters to load the bases but responded by striking out Max Schuemann and, after getting a high strike on a 3-0 count to Daz Cameron, he coaxed a ground ball to escape.
A’s manager Mark Kotsay received a warning from plate umpire Emil Jimenez after the strike call. When Kotsay complained some more following the first pitch in the bottom of the seventh, Jimenez ejected him.
The stalemate persisted after both teams used their closers. Mason Miller blew away three batters in the ninth. Ryan Walker, who stepped in for demoted right-hander Camilo Doval, made quick work of the A’s in the bottom of the ninth.
And so Chapman, who made the last out against Miller in the ninth, served his duty and jogged to second base to start the top of the 10th. Chapman was understandably cautious when Encarnacion lifted his deep drive to right field. The Giants already had made four outs on the bases, after all. So Chapman’s first impulse was to go back to second base to tag up.
Instead, Encarnacion’s ball cleared the fence, Chapman trotted home and a frolicking Encarnacion followed him around the bases. Bay Area baseball fans, many of whom share blood relations, engaged in the familiar repartee: chants of “Let’s go Giants” partially drowned out by dissatisfied groans.
If the ball had struck the wall for a double while Chapman’s foot was adhered to second base, it might have resulted in a close play at the plate. It was a difficult read in the moment and a mix of emotions. When you’re not sure if it’s really gone or not, sometimes it’s hard to know how to feel.
(Photo of Jerar Encarnacion: Lachlan Cunningham / Getty Images)
