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Friday Slide Show: World Series 2012 Share This on LinkedIn   Tweet This   Forward This

21 October 2022

October 2012 was a big month around here. We had a Samsung EX2F here for review. And on Wednesday, Oct. 14, the World Series (or World Serious, as Ring Lardner used to call it) opened here with the Giants hosting the Detroit Tigers.

We had the bright idea of taking the bus down to the stadium with the Samsung, walking around before the game to get a few sample shots and posting a story with the images before the game started.

So off we went on the 43 Masonic down to Forest Hill Station where we waited a long time for a T streetcar to get us to the Embarcadero. We gave up on the T when an L arrived. It would take us down to Fourth St. where we could catch a 30 Stockton with rabbit ears (running on an electrified line).

But the Fourth St. trolley lines, we saw as we surfaced on Market St., had been cut for construction. So we grabbed an antique street car originally from Philadelphia and rode it down Market St. to the Embarcadero, which still left us a long walk to the stadium.

That gave us the chance to take a few photos of the crowd marching along with us to the game.

Wouldn't you know it, though, that as soon as we fired up the Samsung, it reported a card error. And in our haste we hadn't brought another SD card.

Your intrepid reporter was not going to be done in by fate, though.

We took the card out. We examined it. It was actually an SD holder for a microSD card. We took it apart. We blew on the pieces to clean away any dust. We intoned a special incantation and blew into the card holder on the camera. We reassembled the thing and tucked it snugly back into the camera.

Bingo, we were in business.

As we approached the festive and sunny stadium, we thought about buying souvenir programs for the nephews and nieces but we realized we couldn't carry merchandise and shoot the crowd at the same time. Sorry, guys.

We walked around the stadium and then hopped a West Portal shuttle, getting off at Forest Hill and beating the bus up the hill on foot.

We managed to write a short piece that included the escapade with the balky SD card, accompanied by a smaller selection of images than we're presenting today. And we got it posted on the company site just minutes before the first pitch. Just like we, uh, planned.

Nobody else had anything like it. Not just photo sites but any sites.

Later that night, we made some notes about the game:

Quite a game. Which I follow on the radio with the TV muted.

Zito pitches out of trouble in the first and Sandoval rocks Verlander for a home run to center. In the second, the Giants score again. Zito keeps the Tigers off the board and in the fourth, another eruption, with Sandoval hitting a two-run shot to left. And so it goes.

In the end, with Lincecum in relief of Zito (striking out five of the seven he faced), they win 8-3 (a ninth-inning tip of the ball off Pagan’s glove inadvertently sends it over the centerfield fence for a Detroit homer). And Sandoval has three consecutive homers followed by a single.

The Giants would sweep Detroit (becoming the last team to sweep a Series) to win their second World Series in San Francisco in three years. As someone who never forgot McCovey's game-tying line drive being snagged by Yankee second baseman Richardson to end the 1962 World Series with two Giants still on base in the bottom of the ninth and trailing by just a run, that was a joy that could not be spoiled.

You may never have read about the microSD card. An editor at headquarters deleted that paragraph after Samsung complained the next morning that we had the temerity to write the camera reported a card error. Only a few weeks later we would leave the company and subsequently decide, in a matter of days, to continue doing what we loved doing -- here at Photo Corners.

And two years later, the Giants would return to the World Series, winning their third championship in five years, and we would get to repeat our walk around the stadium, writing it up without any outside editing. And with a better camera.


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