Giants culminate up and down season with surprising World Series win

There was a day near the end of June on which a San Francisco Giants fan would have told you the boys in orange and black had no chance to be World Series champs again. The Giants had surrendered a 10-game lead in the NL West in an epic midsummer collapse, frankly the type of collapse that you don't expect a team to rebound from. The Giants were nearly no-hit on June 29. It was a Sunday. The Los Angeles Dodgers tied them in the standings. Surrendering first place was bad. Surrendering it to the Dodgers was like your wife leaving you for the guy you hate the most in the world. I remember this day well because I was driving for three hours, listening to San Francisco-based radio station KNBR the entire time. Giants fans were calling in, acting like they'd reached doomsday. One caller even suggested the Giants should fire manager Bruce Bochy.