Starting our thank yous for the 2009 baseball season, we begin with Pablo Sandoval. At some point soon, we'll be reading the stats about how many of the Giants 88 wins wouldn't have happened without him. And we saw how fun he made watching the games. Thank you Pablo for a fun 2009!
Befitting his role, today he hit the game winning home run in the last game of the season:
So it was proper that the game's central figure was perhaps the most grateful Giant of all -- third baseman Pablo Sandoval, who broke a 3-3 tie by homering off Ryan Webb to open the 10th. Sandoval reinforced his emergence as an impact hitter with his 444-foot clout to center field, which was the seventh-longest home run in PETCO Park history.
Sandoval's glittering statistical line features a .330 batting average (second in the NL), 25 home runs and 90 RBIs. It was a remarkable performance for a player in his first full Major League season who just turned 23. Sandoval himself understood just how singular he was.
"I can't believe it," he said. "Every time I went to the ballpark or went home, I said, 'Thank you, God, for letting me play baseball today.'"
via SFGiants.com
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