SAN FRANCISCO — You can’t say Giants outfielder Mike Yastrzemski doesn’t know his squad.
Before the Giants’ home opener on Friday, I asked him to define what 2025 Giants baseball is.
“Hard-nosed baseball,” Yaztremski said. “We play until the very end. You can see it in this clubhouse where every guy cares about winning more than they care about themselves.”
And so long as we do that, the results will speak for themselves.”
It was the kind of comment that challenged me not to roll my eyes. I read it as early-season ballpark bloviation — the empty platitudes that every team spews in March and April, when anything could theoretically happen in a season.
But Yaz is a soothsayer.
The first six games of the Giants’ campaign certainly fit his description.
But clearly the Giants were saving the really good stuff for Friday’s debut at Oracle Park — a 243-minute extra-innings affair that featured four ties, six lead changes, a near-game-losing wild pitch, and a walk-off two-run single.
Yes, it’s early, but Giants baseball is truly torturous again.
And while we all catch our breath and pour ourselves a drink to get over whatever that 11-inning contest was, let’s all admit that exhausting, laborious, and downright nervy is a significant upgrade over boring — a characteristic recent Giants teams have boasted in spades.
For a not-quite-sold-out crowd, enjoying the first game of Oracle Park’s 25th season, Friday’s game was one to both lament and remember.
It certainly wasn’t an afternoon to forget.
The Giants celebrated a quarter-century at the corner of King and Third Friday, bringing some of the 2000 National League West winners onto the field (2000 NL MVP Jeff Kent was conspicuously absent — maybe he was cleaning his truck), for good measure.
“I still call it the new ballpark,” manager Bob Melvin said of Oracle Park. “It still feels like a new ballpark. This place, Baltimore — they’re special places.”
He’s not wrong. Is there a better place to watch a baseball game on the planet, particularly on a sunny, 65-degree day like Friday in the city?
No sir. And you can’t convince otherwise, even if a four-hour baseball game might violate protocols in the Geneva Conventions.
But while the day was Chamber-of-Commerce perfect, and the outcome was, too, the Giants’ play on the diamond was anything but.
Justin Verlander mustered only seven outs in his first Oracle Park start as a Giant. The 42-year-old’s four-seam fastball — his 2024 bugaboo on which opponents hit .299 against — was ineffective against a Seattle team that sat on it. It left the Giants to use seven relievers, two of whom (Lou Trivino and Camilo Doval) were hit with blown saves in the box score.
Yes, two blown saves. As I said, it was a wild game.
And the Giants were 5-for-27 with runners in scoring position before Willy Adames — playing his first home game as a Giant — drove home two in the bottom of the 11th inning, with second baseman Tyler Fitzgerald blowing through third-base coach Matt Williams’ stop sign to score the winning run.
Fitzgerald’s baserunning truculence will be remembered and appreciated for years to come.
The fans went home happy, exhausted, and probably sunburned. (Take it from someone whose kids are half-Scottish — you need to reapply every two hours, folks.)
And likely much to the chagrin of commissioner of baseball Rob Manfred (who, given what’s happening with the A’s in West Sacramento, is clearly on vacation in a place without access to MLB.TV — wait, that’s most places these days), it was a full, fulfilling day at the ballpark.
Was it torture — a brand of Machiavellian baseball only the Giants seem to play? Absolutely.
But a win is a win. That’s five in a row for the Giants, in fact.
More importantly, it’s the first true memory of the 2025 season.
And, as you might have heard, making memories is this team’s real business.
Originally Published:
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