The Giants win the Series, the Giants win the Series, the Giants win the Series...

It was October 3rd, 1951 at the Polo Grounds in New York.
The Giants had trailed the Dodgers by 13-1/2 games in August and wound up in a dead tie at the end of the regular season. Bobby Tompson hit a home run, called "The shot heard round the world" (it was actually only a 279-foot line drive shot) and play-by-play guy Russ Hodges yelled, "The Giants win the pennant" 13 times in a row.

But they didn't win the Series. The Yankees did. It was their 3rd in a row and 14th overall. The Giants were back in 1954, facing the Cleveland Indians. The Indians won 111 games in 1954, but were swept in the World Series by the Giants. Neither team had won since.

Until tonight.
The Giants moved to San Francisco in 1958, the same year that the Dodgers went west. The Dodgers won it all in their second year in LA, beating the White Sox. The Giants were a different story. They lost to the Yankees again in 1962 (5th time), then lost to the A's in 1989 (the earthquake series, 3rd loss to the A's), then lost to the Angels in 2002.

Go ahead, mess with Texas
The Rangers, meanwhile, had been around since 1961, originally as the replacement Washington Senators, then moving to Arlington in 1972. Never won a pennant before this year. No team from Texas has ever won the World Series. The Texas total of non-winning seasons (combining the Colt 45's/Astros and the Rangers) is now at 87 and counting. Note that it's longer than the now-forgotten drought of the Red Sox.

So it wa a 56-year wait.
Tim Lincecum, who looks like the murderer kid last season on "Desperate Housewives," is fun to watch. I mentioned in an earlier post that I saw him play several times on Cape Cod for the Harwich Mariners. And Buster Posey, the shortstop-turned-catcher for the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox in the Cape League, becomes the first rookie ever to hit cleanup in the World Series. Then there's Edgar "Rent-a-wreck" Renteria, who was horrible for the Red Sox in 2005, but got the walkoff hit for the Marlins back in 1997, and as a Cardinal hit the Series-ending tapper back to Foulke when the Sox won in '04. He hit the home run that was the difference tonight. So congrats to the Giants.

The real fun already happened.
That was in October, when the Red Sox knocked the the Yankees out of 1st place on the final day of the regular season, then the Rangers knocked them out of the playoffs. Any year when the Yankees last game is a loss is a good season.