Giants vs. Cardinals NLCS: San Francisco reaches World Series with big win in Game 7

SAN FRANCISCO — There are a thousand tiny moments in a baseball season, several thousand more in a baseball career. Most fade into summer nights, becoming part of the makeup of the men who play this game, generally unnoticed. Others, though, come in the crispness of October, with towel-waving, full-throated fans surrounding a diamond on which every play will be analyzed.

The San Francisco Giants’ overwhelming 9-0 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 7 of the National League Championship Series on Monday night was a compilation of so many men, each enjoying his moment. Matt Cain, the veteran starter, pitched the Giants into their second World Series in three years with 5² / ₃ innings of scoreless ball. The Giants got hits from all nine of their starting players, runs from seven of them. Four relievers allowed the Cardinals little hope.

And at the heart of this: The Giants played their sixth game of this postseason which, had they lost, they would have started their offseason. They came back from a three-games-to-one deficit in the NLCS, and they will host the Detroit Tigers in Game 1 of the Word Series on Wednesday because of that uncommon, flirt-with-disaster resilience. In the final three games of this series, they outscored the Cardinals 20-1.

“I love every single guy in there,” said second baseman Marco Scutaro, who had three of his 14 NLCS hits Monday and was named series MVP. “We’ve been in this situation before, and we came through. We did it again, and we’re National League champs.”

Those achievements can’t be taken away from the Giants, who had never won a Game 7 in team history. “This is a special group,” Manager Bruce Bochy said.

But the moment that turned this game — and yes, a nine-run game can have a turning point — is one that will follow Pete Kozma into the offseason and, potentially, beyond. It came in the third inning, with the bases loaded and nobody out, and the Cardinals trailing 2-0, having just lifted starter Kyle Lohse.

The hitter: right fielder Hunter Pence. The reliever: hard-throwing Joe Kelly. Kozma is the Cardinals shortstop, a former first-round pick who is in the majors — and therefore, at the crossroads of a Game 7 — because of an injury to starter Rafael Furcal in August. Kozma’s postseason started splendidly, and he delivered a signature moment: the two-run single that completed St. Louis’s logic-defying comeback against the Washington Nationals in the fifth game of their division series.

But here, Kozma faced a different moment. Kelly’s job was to get Pence to hit a groundball. And on his first pitch, a 95-mph fastball, he did just that. The pitch was so effective it shattered Pence’s bat.

“That’s exactly what we were hoping for,” Cardinals Manager Mike Matheny said.

Kozma, watching the ball off the bat, broke to his right. And in that moment, his role in the game, the series and this postseason changed. The ball, somehow, hit Pence’s still-breaking bat again. And then, ever so slightly, once more. It changed directions.