Giants make fans, seagulls happy by beating Rockies in 18 innings

Tom Gatto

Giants make fans, seagulls happy by beating Rockies in 18 innings image

The seagulls that often feast at Oracle Park had some unexpected company Friday night — the Rockies, the Giants and a few thousand fans who stuck around to watch 18 innings of April baseball.

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The birds came upon the San Francisco marathon about an hour before it ended at 3:50 a.m. ET (12:50 a.m. PT) Saturday with the Giants victorious, 3-2.

In the spirit of not dragging out things further, a few quick points about the game:

— Giants 38-year-old backup catcher Erik Kratz drove in the winning run on a fielder's choice grounder in the bottom of the 18th — after being behind the plate for all 265 of his team's pitches on the night.

"I got a second wind there in the 17th inning," Kratz joked to NBC Sports Bay Area's Amy Gutierrez in a postgame interview.

"When you're not swinging it well, you have to be able to pick the guys up defensively," Kratz added. He went 0 for 6 on Friday and is now 2 for 19 (.105) for the season.

"For Kratzy, it was quite a game for him," Giants manager Bruce Bochy told reporters in his postgame presser.

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— Nine Giants pitchers combined to strike out 24 Rockies batters. Fans in the right-field corner seats ran out of "K" cards after No. 21, so spectators stood in to represent 22, 23 and 24.

— Rockies catcher Chris Iannetta struck out four times after entering the game in the ninth inning. "It's hard . . . to get the (golden) sombrero when you didn't start the game," Giants broadcaster Duane Kuiper said on the NBC Sports Bay Area telecast.

— One guy who had it worse than Kratz behind the dish (and Iannetta at it) was plate umpire CB Bucknor. The much-maligned arbiter saw 503 pitches total (Colorado hurlers threw 238). He also made the right call in ruling Iannetta took his foot off the plate as he tried to complete a forceout of Brandon Belt, whose leadoff double in the 18th set up the winning rally.

— Colorado scored both its runs in the fourth inning off Giants starter Drew Pomeranz. One of the runs came in on a balk.

— The Giants are pretty good at this two-games-in-one thing:

— San Francisco pitcher Dereck Rodriguez pinch-hit, but Madison Bumgarner did not. Then again, Bumgarner is scheduled to start Saturday's afternoon game (1:05 p.m. PT), so his availability was limited at best.

Tom Gatto

Tom Gatto Photo

Tom Gatto joined The Sporting News as a senior editor in 2000 after 12 years at The Herald-News in Passaic, N.J., where he served in a variety of roles including sports editor, and a brief spell at APBNews.com in New York, where he worked as a syndication editor. He is a 1986 graduate of the University of South Carolina.