The 1st Thread/The S-Thread #1 For 10/29/12: A Giant Team Spirit

Image from MLB.com  

All for one and one for all could be phrased in postseason baseball as 25 for one and one for 25. The San Francisco Giants of 2012 were an embodiment of that altruistic team spirit.

The Giants weren't even slated to make the playoffs this year in the National League, and endured many pitfalls with key players and figures that would have made it a nutty thought that they would be the last one standing in Major League Baseball this year.

Unlike the 2010 team that showed how talented the nucleus could be for a successful next decade for the Giants, this Bruce Bochy lead squad represented how an underdog deals with adversity about as well as any example in team professional sports I can ever remember, and certainly in the 16 years of me closely watching this great sport.

Unlike 2010, Brian Wilson was gone for the season.

Unlike 2010, Tim Lincecum was miserable.

Unlike 2010, they didn't have to deal with a steroid scandal wiping out their best offensive player (at the time) in Melky Cabrera.

And like 2010, they had to deal with Barry Zito still failing to live up to that mammoth contract he signed.

Despite all those glaring negatives, they created new positives to overcome later new major inauspicious, where they came back from the brink of elimination six times in two series with four of those wins on the road. Hell, with the Reds favored to win the series and taking the first two games in San Francisco, the Giants could have easily been dead.

But this team, exhibited by its superstar catcher and now leader Buster Posey overcoming his own massive adversity with his devastating knee injury last year, would not buckle at any moment the time was the roughest for them.

It's one thing when your team's stars lead you to a championship. It's another and more powerful thing when guys the casual fan would not even know are equal in being key protagonists as their marquee names.

The fact that Ryan Vogelsong and not Lincecum or Matt Cain was the best pitcher on this team, that Marco Scutaro became one of their clutch hitters, and that Sergio Romo became the face of a great bullpen in the absence of Wilson shows how incredible every player's mentality on this Giants' roster was.

And how many elite superstar hurlers would have swallowed their pride and sacrificed for the team to pitch out of the bullpen in the postseason like Lincecum did?

Lincecum, Cain, Posey, the biggest stars on the team, embodying a full perspective not about themselves but about the overall collective of the unit. The unit having any guy on its roster perform like a star player on any night.

3 stars for all 25 guys, and 25 players for one team, one franchise, one city. Another championship.

Image From San Francisco Chronicle