How Madison Bumgarner willed Giants to another unlikely World Series title

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – As Madison Bumgarner said, "It don't matter which way you come from."

Then they all sang "Fire on the Mountain" by the Marshall Tucker Band, not the whole song, mostly just those four words when they came around, because it was playing over the sound system in that sloppy happy room, and it is Bumgarner's preferred tune, and those were the only words most of them knew. If Bumgarner was singin' it, then they were singin' it too.

No, it don't matter. Not if you come by way of 88 wins, or a wild-card game all the way across the country, or through clouds of doubters and long odds and at the end of October a road game in front of the world that maybe few believed you could win.

It don't matter.

"When you get out there," Bumgarner concluded, "it's the same thing."

It's baseball. That's what the San Francisco Giants are good at.

They are World Series champions again. In a few days short of four years, at the end of five baseball seasons, they have won three of these, Wednesday night by a score of 3-2 at Kauffman Stadium in a riveting Game 7 carried by Bumgarner. On two days' rest, Bumgarner pitched the final five innings of this series, retired 15 of the final 16 men the Kansas City Royals sent against him, and was the dominating, relentless and doggedly humble MVP.

"You know what?" Bumgarner said. "I can't lie to you anymore. I'm a little tired now."

He laughed.

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In 109 previous World Series, there has not been anything quite like him. He pitched 14 of the final 27 innings and did not allow a run. Those innings were the last of his 52 2/3 in the postseason, a record. The way the Giants play, the way they win, is what makes them different. Bumgarner is what makes them better. His ERA in this World Series – 0.43 – was the lowest (with at least 15 innings pitched) in 49 years. His 0.25 ERA across his three World Series is the best ever.

And after two starts and two wins, the last a shutout Sunday night in Game 5, Bumgarner rose from his chair in the right-field bullpen Wednesday night. It was the top of the fifth inning. The Giants held a 3-2 lead, because Royals reliever Kelvin Herrera had thrown a perfect two-strike pitch to Mike Morse in the fourth inning, a fastball that arrived near Morse's hands at 99 mph, and Morse had shoveled that perfect pitch into right field to score Pablo Sandoval.

The bullpen gate opened to start the bottom of the fifth. Bumgarner stepped across a threshold of tawny clay. The Giants had their lead, narrow as it might have been. They'd already been through their starter – Tim Hudson – by the second inning, and their best postseason reliever – Jeremy Affeldt – after that.

The manager, Bruce Bochy, had said he assumed he'd have Bumgarner for 40, maybe 50 pitches. There still were five innings to pitch. There still was a World Series to win or lose, right then, on that field, surrounded by those stomping, screaming people, the evening air gone chilly.

Bumgarner hadn't pitched in relief since the 2010 NLCS. He'd made three relief appearances in 2009, his rookie season, the year before these Giants – the ones we see carrying trophies around – were born. He'd relieved once in the Eastern League in '09 as well.

[Photos: Giants celebrate third World Series title since 2010]

So he entered the field at a jog. He slowed when he ran out of grass and then, like, ambled the rest of the way to the mound. He patted his left forearm, then his right, with the rosin bag. He kicked, scuffed and scratched at a mound that was not fresh, but pitted with the spikes of four others, not including pitching coaches and managers, and there were plenty of those, too.

It don't matter which way you come from, he'd say later, and he held a baseball in his hand, found his catcher, and went about winning a ballgame. Maybe he'd last an inning or two. Maybe three. He didn't know. Bochy didn't know.

"I wasn't thinking about finishing the game or how many innings I was going to go or pitch count," Bumgarner said. "I was just wanting to get outs. We were able to do that for the most part. And that's it."

The first batter he faced, Omar Infante, singled. The 16th, Alex Gordon with two out in the ninth inning, singled. And then that ball skipped past center fielder Gregor Blanco and rolled to the fence in left-center field, and left fielder Juan Perez kicked that ball a little ways toward left field, and by the time that ball returned to the infield, Gordon was standing on third base.

Bumgarner would throw six more pitches, Nos. 63 through 68, all of them to Salvador Perez. The last, one of those 93-mph fastballs that tends to crowd a right-handed hitter, came in high, skipping across the top of the strike zone, and Perez swung. The ball came off his bat, rose sharply to Bumgarner's right, and Sandoval eased into foul territory and waited.

At the end of seven months of baseball games, a second-place finish in the NL West, a wild-card win over the Pittsburgh Pirates and series wins against the Washington Nationals and St. Louis Cardinals – all of whom might have expected better of themselves – Bochy said he had a single thought: "Pablo, please catch this thing."

Bumgarner fell into Buster Posey's arms. When they disentangled, Bumgarner went to a knee and bowed his head.

It'd been a long time since anybody had seen anything quite like Bumgarner, and maybe the only folks who had an idea Bumgarner might actually be standing there at that moment were the 24 others who threw their gloves into the air and met at that very same mound.

Three nights after he'd thrown 117 pitches, he'd thrown 68 more. They were just as precise. They were just as forceful. They were just as effective, if not more.

"I was staying away from him every inning because I was hoping he wouldn't go, 'I'm starting to get a little tired,'" Bochy said with a grin, "because there's no way I would have taken him out unless he would have told me that. We just got on this horse and rode it."

[Related: Madison Bumgarner is from a place that's nicknamed 'Bumtown']

Pitching coach Dave Righetti watched closely, made sure Bumgarner stayed in his mechanics, kept the ball out in his fingers. He watched 68 pitches like that. The last looked as clean as the first.

That's how it happened again. And they stood again in a strange clubhouse in a distant city – it was Arlington, Texas in 2010, Detroit in 2012 – wearing ski masks and loopy grins. Their manager paraded into the room holding another trophy over his head. They made their toasts to what they'd become, this funny little team that, hey, may or may not be a dynasty, whatever that is, and it makes no difference to them.

They'd been built on a platform of a 92-win team in 2010, Bochy's fourth season in San Francisco. They'd won those 88 games in 2014, which made them 164-160 over the past two regular seasons. They'd found just enough pitching, and by one enough runs, and played to the last inches of this season, until that baseball found its way again into Madison Bumgarner's hand and, finally, into Pablo Sandoval's glove.

Maybe there was something in what Carlos Santana – the musician and original supernatural – had riffed on a couple years back. He was in their dugout in San Francisco, and a few of those 'tweener Giants were listening, and Santana told them, "You win with collective intangibles," adding, "You have to learn to get out of the way of yourself."

So they did.

And maybe it doesn't always look quite right, the Giants arriving as they do at times at odd angles, but, well, you know what they say:

"It don't matter which way you come from."

It only matters where you're standing at the end.