Inside the pivotal at bat that led to the Giants winning Game 3 of NLCS on a walk-off error

SAN FRANCISCO – Before the baseball would skitter down the right-field line, before Brandon Crawford would score the final run with such ease, before the first postseason error walk-off since Buckner and before the San Francisco Giants fell down and laughed over another ridiculous way to win a playoff game, there was 0-and-2.

There was a Diablo wind Tuesday afternoon, and there were weird hops, and the best catcher in the game was relegated to bullpen duty, and Rob Schneider fluffed the AT&T Park crowd before Game 3 of the NLCS, and then what followed 10 innings later was 0-and-2, which was most important of all.

And Juan Perez, a Dominican-born outfielder who'd moved to the Bronx when he was 13 or 14, he couldn't quite recall which, and several years later went to Boston to tell Manny Ramirez he too would be a big leaguer someday (to which Manny replied, "Good luck"), he thought back at that 0-and-2 and said, "I was really mad."

He hadn't seen a lot of 0-and-2 counts since his debut two Junes ago, 21 at-bats in all, and had hit .143 in them. So 0-and-2 was not good. It was especially not good given the situation – runner at first base, none out, tie score. And not good given one of the reasons Perez had a place on the postseason roster was for his adeptness at bunting and therefore avoiding 0-and-2 counts.

"That's one of my jobs here," he said.

Most every day Perez goes to the batting cage under the stadium – whatever stadium – with coach Tim Flannery, and Flannery feeds a pitching machine with baseballs and Perez turns his feet and flattens the bat and taps those baseballs 15 feet, sometimes 25, sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right.

"Imagine yourself," Flannery will tell him, "full house tonight, ninth inning, you gotta get the bunt down."

Thunk-tap. Thunk-tap. Thunk-tap.

"He can be a good bunter," Flannery said Tuesday evening. "It can get a little heavy out there for young guys."

If the Giants were going to beat the St. Louis Cardinals on Tuesday and run up a 2-games-to-1 series lead, it seemed that Juan Perez, coming up on his 28th birthday, not yet even 100 major-league games behind him and here to bunt, was going to have to give himself up against Cardinals lefty Randy Choate. A four-run lead had been spent over nine innings. The 10th inning had come. Choate had walked the leadoff hitter – Crawford – on eight pitches. Along came Perez with orders to sacrifice Crawford to second base. He looked down the third-base line to Flannery, who confirmed it. Choate throws from that funky angle, sinks it hard, but all Perez had to do was lay a bat on one of those things.

"There's a different spin out of his hand," Perez said. "A little underhanded."

Choate threw to first base. He threw to first base again. He got the ball back and set himself over the rubber. Perez squared around. Choate delivered a sinker and Perez fouled it off. He delivered another, and Perez fouled it again. The crowd groaned.

Man, 0-and-2. Everybody hates 0-and-2.

"I was really mad at the second one," Perez said.

Perez figured he had one more shot.

"I thought, 'I will do it,' " Perez said.

He glanced at Flannery, who first looked to manager Bruce Bochy, who signaled to Flannery that the bunt was off. An out here without a base might kill the inning. Two lefties followed Perez. Choate is murder on lefties.

"Those first two efforts I didn't like," Bochy said. "He can run. He's not an easy double-play guy. I took it off."

Flannery told Perez to hit away. Perez is a .212 hitter in the past two seasons, over 189 at-bats that comprise his big-league experience. He hit .170 this season. He had, however, rolled a single to center field just Sunday night, in Game 2.

But, 0-and-2, this is different. This is vulnerable. This is seconds from failure. Free to swing, Perez saw four more pitches. He fouled two. And on the last, one final sinker, he swung and got some bat barrel on that ball and flung it into short left field.

Yeah, a lot happened after that. Gregor Blanco came to bat next, he too to bunt, and fouled off a sinker – "You think about that bunt, big game, that's what passes through your head," Blanco said later. "You think to just move your feet, relax, see the ball" – and the next one he tapped back toward Choate.

"It was easy. It was right there and I blew it," Choate said.

"Errors happen," Cardinals manager Mike Matheny said. "That's it."

That's when the Giants, technically speaking, won the game. That's when they scored their final run, beat the Cardinals, 5-4, and went home happy. Of all the stuff that happened Tuesday afternoon, and there was plenty, that's the moment – Choate coming off the mound, Blanco racing toward first, Choate heaving the ball wide of first, Crawford scoring in a crowd – that resonates.

But first there was the leadoff walk, and then there was Juan Perez at 0-and-2, the worst count ever, believing he had just one more chance to get that bunt down – thunk-tap – and instead got the hit that would, he said, "make me feel better," and now stands as, "My best at-bat in the big leagues."

That's a long way from 0-and-2.