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Sergio Romo after striking out Miguel Cabrera to win the World Series.
DETROIT — Rain and bristly winds swirled. A hostile crowd grew feisty as the home team stirred to life. And still the San Francisco Giants remained calm. For all they had gone through in these last weeks, this was nothing.
The Giants defeated the Detroit Tigers, 4-3, over 10 tense and taut innings Sunday night to claim their second World Series title in three years. The game, played before an announced crowd of 42,152 at Comerica Park, provided a short dose of intensity to a series that felt like an anticlimax to the team's otherwise stunning postseason run. After flirting dangerously close to elimination in their two previous series, the Giants were cutthroat and businesslike against the Tigers, finishing them off in the minimum four games.
And now, this storied franchise, born in New York, packed and moved to California in 1958, has its seventh World Series title, its second since upending the Texas Rangers in five games in 2010.
"To be world champions in two out the last three years, it's amazing," Giants Manager Bruce Bochy said. "Believe me, I know how hard it is to get here, and I couldn't be prouder of a group of guys that were not going to be denied."
Bochy, 57, a former catcher with a languid mien, will be further acknowledged as one of baseball's elite tacticians. He pulled all of the necessary strings, mixing his players, keeping them afloat as they faced a two-games-to-none deficit in the Giants' National League division series and a three-games-to-one disadvantage in the league championship series. The Giants won their last seven games of the year, a feat they never accomplished during the regular season.
After the game, Jim Leyland, the manager of the Tigers, was emphatic that the trophy was in the right hands.
"Obviously there was no doubt about it, they swept us," Leyland said. "So there was certainly no bad breaks, no fluke. I tip my hat to them. Simple, they did better than we did."
Leyland and his team were left without answers after falling flat when it counted most. Their performance will produce discordant echoes of their trip to the World Series in 2006, when they lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in five games. After beating the Yankees in four games the previous round, the Tigers became the third team to sweep the championship series before being swept in the World Series.
"There were a lot of beautiful things that happened this season," said Prince Fielder, who went 1 for 14 during the sweep, "and unfortunately we have to end it with a loss in the World Series."
It was a cagey confrontation, the final game, with runs appearing in sporadic bursts, all momentum undercut with swift counterpunching. The Giants jumped ahead in the second inning, but were leapfrogged by the Tigers in the third. The Giants barreled in front again during the sixth, but the Tigers tied them up in the bottom of the frame.
The starting pitchers, the Giants' Matt Cain and the Tigers' Max Scherzer, battled a chilly, windy night and stood their ground. They left the game at an impasse, but after the mound was bequeathed to the bullpens, the relief pitchers refused to bend either, sending the game into extra innings.
The game turned, finally, in the 10th. Ryan Theriot led off with a single off Phil Coke and moved to second on a sacrifice bunt. One out later, Marco Scutaro, who finished the postseason with 21 hits, looped a ball into center field. The crowd gasped as it fell for a single.
"When I saw it, I said: 'Please, get down. Don't stay up,' " Scutaro said of his hit. "When I saw it drop, it was, 'Oh my God.' What a feeling."
As the ball plopped into the outfield, Theriot raced around third and then raised his arm in triumph as he slid across home plate. In the dugout, his teammates pummeled his helmet with their fists. The title felt in their grasp.
Then one final image of the powerful Tigers' sudden futility at the plate was sealed in the bottom of the inning, when Sergio Romo, the Giants' bearded closer, struck out the side. For the last out, he set down Miguel Cabrera, winner of the league triple crown, catching him looking at an 89-mile-per-hour fastball, right down the middle of the plate.
Romo clenched his fists and pumped them in front of his chest. Seconds later, his teammates engulfed him.
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