How hawk feathers (might have) helped the Giants reach a third World Series

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Several years back, when the San Francisco Giants were unsure of who they were or what they had in them (or the organizational riches that awaited), one of their coaches had taken a long walk in the brushy hills behind Dodger Stadium. From among the coyote tracks and spent tall boys, he'd returned dusted from the knees down and having discovered three red-tailed hawk feathers.

Tim Flannery is a spiritual fellow who believes in powers of nature and purity and meaningful secondary leads. Which order depends on what time of day you ask him.

Anyway, he was sure these three hawk feathers – not two, not four, but three – meant something. The number of runs they'd score that night. Or wins over the next few nights. Maybe days 'til the apocalypse. This is how Flannery sometimes views the world, and it's awesome.

Well, since the day Flannery risked heat stroke and an embarrassing medevac rescue, the Giants are two World Series championships along, and will play for, yes, No. 3, beginning Tuesday night here. And since we've all pretty well decided the wild-card Giants are living on some dark voodoo-inspired plane in order to win baseball games, it might explain the three red-tailed hawk feathers from four years ago.

"Now you're thinkin'," Flannery said with a grin Monday afternoon.

Hey, it's as good a reason as any.

That and players, good players, of reasonably sound minds and mostly sound bodies, and stable leadership – general manager Brian Sabean for 18 years, field manager Bruce Bochy for the last eight – and everybody's ability to cut through all the silliness of being a ballplayer in order to focus on just being a ballplayer and winning ballgames. So, over three Octobers (give or take a day) in 2010, 2012 and 2014, the Giants are 30-11. Inside that, in one-run games they are 13-2. Of late, they are 8-2 in this postseason, in which they are 4-1 in one-run games, which, ask anybody, has as much to do with voodoo as it does a particularly capable bullpen and a guy willing to stand in the batter's box and fight for every last inch of the strike zone.

While San Francisco radio stations are stripping their playlists of a song called "Royals," in Kansas City they really should consider banning anything off Santana's album, "Supernatural."

The Giants, of course, find humor in this, while not completely dismissive of the possibilities. After all, it was only a couple years ago they beat the Cincinnati Reds after being down 0-2 in a division series and the St. Louis Cardinals after trailing 1-3 in an NLCS, and a lot of them were around for that bit of fairy dusting. And, heck, when the other team starts throwing the ball to the backstop or into their own bullpen, you start to have ideas.

It's baseball, where you have to hit a slider with a stick. Everybody needs a little, you know, somethin'-somethin'.

The Giants aren't alone, either. Team gets on roll, good stuff happens, team starts to believe, good stuff is expected, suddenly it's late October and team is busing to Game 1 of the World Series.

"I feel like the other team is riding that whole spirit, too," Giants pitcher Jake Peavy said. "We're the stepchildren in that spirit."

As for the validity in claims of dark magic, particularly as it relates to their offense, Peavy added, "We're amused by it. At the same time, we believe … that we're capable of getting it done, any which way. So, we don't think any of that is luck, voodoo or karma."

He did not sound at all defensive when he said this. And nobody said anything about luck or karma.

A Forbes story recently called the Giants bland and broke down the reasons, including Madison Bumgarner being a "soft-tossing lefty," (and yes he is left-handed) and both teams' run to the World Series having "been as much about luck as anything else," which shows, more than anything, why baseball writers don't write about IPOs.

Still, it's interesting, and it's a running theme to their recent Octobers, that theme running right along the parade route, at which point a grown man once waved a red thong he considered lucky and revealed, as he was quoted later, "Over time, it's actually gotten pretty comfortable."

(At least this postseason outlasted Josh Reddick's Underoos.)

That was Aubrey Huff in 2010. By 2012, a Detroit paper ran a story under the headline, "National writers say Giants have had all the luck vs. Tigers."

Well, here we are again. One website – not this one, so far – has called the Giants' recent run-scoring methods "bizarre magic," and we haven't even seen the wind-blown, sac bunt, fielder's choice, E-1 walk-off yet. It's scheduled for Game 3.

What's important is the Giants don't seem to care what anyone thinks about how or why they win, only that they do. Call it divine intervention or luck or Santeria or whatever, but almost every game they play in October, the other team loses. How lucky is that?

This is what happens, Hunter Pence said, when their 25 believes, and their families believe, and the coaches believe, and the community believes and when the circle gets large and impermeable, and then somebody goes out and pitches well. It's what happens when no home runs through four games of the NLCS becomes three in Game 5.

The center fielder, Gregor Blanco, said there would be times in the seemingly worst moments when the Giants' three outfielders would stand together in the outfield and talk. Maybe there'll be a pitching change going on, and the bases will be loaded, and there'll be none out. They'd discuss how the inning will end, with a pop-up and a double play, or a strikeout and a double play, even, yes, a triple play.

They'd come to an agreement, he said, and then one of them would say, "OK, let's all focus on that."

Blanco smiled.

"It's good for our minds," he said.

Sometimes it comes true.

Maybe it looks lucky some days. And maybe it is some days. And maybe the whole thing was foretold four years ago in a canyon where somebody was trying to tell us about three World Series championships. Either that or the three coyotes waiting behind the next bush.

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