Bruce Bochy yet again making the right moves to get Giants to the World Series

"Hey."

It was Bruce Bochy. He was smiling crooked, which might have had something to do with the bottle in his right hand. His hair was matted and shining. His shirt was damp and hung from his shoulders like a drunken groupie.

Bochy's Giants were going to the World Series, a habit of theirs. They'd done this one a little different than the last, different than most, also a habit. For one, they'd gone hundreds of at-bats at a time without hitting a home run. Until Thursday night, they'd not homered in the National League Championship Series. So, there may or may not have been something in a column here about their offense resembling a "dime-store squirt gun," not a knock (who doesn't love a dime-store squirt gun?) but an observation, and Bochy had chuckled about that just Thursday afternoon.

Then, when only some batter's box offense, some one-swing offense, was going to beat the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 5, the Giants had popped three home runs in the same game. And even those were utterly Giant-ish:

Joe Panik, the zero-heart-rate rookie, hit one home run in his first 288 at-bats as a big leaguer, including this postseason. He homered in the third inning off Cardinals horse Adam Wainwright.

Mike Morse, who'd had five at-bats since August and who was facing Pat Neshek, who'd allowed two home runs to right-handed hitters in the regular season, had one pinch home run in his career. He homered in the eighth inning as a pinch-hitter.

And Travis Ishikawa, the first baseman turned emergency left fielder who might just have been switched out of the game by then, homered to end the NLCS in the ninth inning.

Three swings from three unlikely places. Three home runs that rose from the magical dust of opposite-field mentalities and base-path chaos and Pablo Sandoval backhanding that curveball a foot off the plate past third base.

So, yeah, back to Bochy and the loopy smile and the kind of eye contact that warns you what's coming.

He raised his arms and brought some big, heavy, devastating, invisible piece of weaponry to his shoulder. He pointed this rifle, let's make it a Howitzer because that sounds big, to the ceiling.

"Boom," he said. "Boom. Boom."

He laughed, because he was as surprised as anyone. Not surprised they won. That's not it at all. The Giants, his Giants, seem to find a way. You have them figured out, however, put them in a column alongside a number or a trait or an expectation, you have them, say, as dime-store squirt guns … and they blow that out of the sky, too.

"These guys," Bochy said, "they're incredible."

Funny thing about the Giants and Bochy, but come the postseason every series ends with the other guys talking about how they hadn't played their best, and the other manager walks away looking as though he'd been overmatched, and maybe that doesn't have as much to do with them as it does the Giants and Bochy. In the ninth inning Thursday night, Bochy recognized that his best reliever, his closer, just didn't have it, and he replaced him. About the same time, much of the world recognized that the Cardinals' most unlikely reliever, their long man, just didn't have it, and he lost the game.

"That's on me," Mike Matheny admitted.

Sandoval, one of the Giants' few threats for boom, had knocked a leadoff single. The game was tied. Pinch-run for Sandoval there and buy the risk of his spot in the order coming up once or twice in an extra-inning game, maybe more. Bochy could have left him there. He could have gone safe, let Sandoval reach second, where Sandoval would have to score on a single, and pinch-run for him then. But when Sandoval singled against a clearly sodden Michael Wacha, there was a sense the Giants were about to win, and Bochy must've felt it too, because he sent Joaquin Arias to first base, gained a step or two if necessary, and sat his cleanup hitter for however long the game would go. The game – the series – went three more hitters. And Arias, turned out, could've crab-walked home, assuming Jake Peavy didn't tackle him first.

"Boch seems to have the right touch in the right spot," said Peavy, who loves Bochy enough for the whole roster. "I know it sounds like a broken record, but the man's special. Write up his Hall of Fame plaque now, please."

He enters his fifth World Series, fourth as a manager. He'll play it as he always does, masterfully massaging outs from a well-rounded bullpen, fielding players who don't often doubt that his way is the best way, and containing the moments that get away from others. His left hip doesn't work quite right, his left knee has undergone three surgeries, his right ankle was fouled a decade or so back in a motorcycle accident, but he likes the way he feels. None of it hurts, he said, and the doctors told him he wouldn't need surgery until it did.

So he bounced around with all the grace he could manage Thursday night, entertaining friends and family and front-office types in his office as a party raged in the clubhouse. They tell the rookies at the start of October that the playoffs feel a little different, but the guy on the top step won't be. On that they can rely.

"It's going to get heavy," third-base coach Tim Flannery said. "And it's going to be hard to breathe. And the manager it going to let it rip."

"Hey."

Boom… Boom… Boom.

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