Almost impossible to believe that, with all of the legendary players that have at one time been on their roster, that this is only the 7th WS appearance for the Giants and that they have only their 1911 Championship to show for it. If they want to finally add to that, they’ll have to do it without elder statesman Willie Mays, lost for the season, although his has been more of an emeritus role these past few years with the emergence of McCovey and the arrival of guys like Bonds and, perhaps the final ingredient to their mix, Tommy Harper. Harper has given them the spark good clubs need at the top of their lineup, hitting 281 with 18 homers and swiping an astonishing 97 bases (just 2 shy of the all-time record). Combine that with a quite underrated pitching staff led by Gaylord Perry and Juan Marichal, and the San Franciscans finally look to have the sort of balanced and deep rota that brings success to a club.
Still, they’re going to need to earn it against a Twins club that has shown it doesn’t need Killer Killebrew belting moonshots to be effective. Theirs is a smaller brand of baseball now, led by the soon-to-be-great-if-not-already Rod Carew and Tony Oliva, along with Bob Allison, and they have a couple of young pitchers in Tom Griffin and Jim McAndrew who have really snuck in under the searchlights.
So this is a matchup of two fairly similar groups who will beat you with timely hits and good pitching but also put the ball into the seats where needs be. For which reason I see this being a long series full of twists and turns that will eventually result in a Giants win in six or seven.