Fans revel in Giants’ Series win, but not all are peaceful
SAN FRANCISCO — They cheered every strike and pop fly together. They booed every pitch called as a ball in unison. Then, when victory was theirs, an orange and black sea standing shoulder to shoulder roared as one.
Giants fans gathered in the streets of San Francisco uncorked the champagne, lit bonfires, danced in a mosh pit and hugged strangers on Wednesday as their team scored its third World Series win in as many championship appearances, a triumph as comfortable as the warm October air and made all the more gratifying by its arrival at the end of a seventh, winner-takes-all 3-2 game.
“I knew they were going to win. It’s the Giants. They do this all the time,” San Francisco native Barbra Norris, 54, said of the team’s odds-defying win in an away game played the night after a crushing shutout in Kansas City.
In some areas, the atmosphere grew rowdier as the night wore on. One person received a non-life threatening wound from being shot in the arm, police spokesman Gordon Shyy said. Officers made “a handful of arrests” during the revelry that was blocking traffic around Civic Center, in the Mission District and on Market Street within walking distance of AT&T Park. Officers were working to move the celebrants out of the streets, Shyy said.
Across from San Francisco City Hall, where the exterior lights had been glowing orange all week, more than 9,000 people gathered in an outdoor plaza where the city had set up a Jumbotron and a vendor sold hot dogs but no beer.
“You come out here to feel the pulse of the city. When it’s the seventh game, you want to get the vibe,” Geoff Goselin, 61, said as he watched the game through the branches of sycamore trees that partly obscured the giant screen.
The diverse crowd sang “Let’s Go, Giants” whenever their counterparts 1,800 miles away rooted for the home team and chanted a prophetic “M-V-P” whenever Giants ace Madison Bumgarner took the mound.
“Bumgarner is the beast, the man,” Aden Bacus, 41, shouted after the exhausted pitcher secured a series of strikes on the heels of giving up a gasp-inducing triple. “I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t nervous there at the end.”
The San Francisco Police Department maintained a heavy presence, but also a cool distance as marijuana smoke wafted over Civic Center Plaza and jubilant fans set off fireworks and popped open cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon that someone was selling out of a cooler.
One indication of the mood there was that several fans said they would have been able to stomach a Royals victory with a shrug, if not a smile.
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