SAN FRANCISCO — On Saturday afternoon, Brandon Crawford stood behind a podium in front of the pitcher’s mound at Oracle Park and gave the longest speech of his life. It was the longest bit of public speaking he’d done since he was in school, by his own reckoning, and the speech made him “more nervous than Game 7 in Kansas City,” but he handled it with aplomb.
A weekend day game with Bruce Bochy and the Rangers in town was already one of the easiest games on the calendar to circle, but the pregame ceremony made it even easier for the die-hards and Crawford fanatics. (Although we have questions for the gentleman in the powder-blue “CRAWFORD 35” Cardinals jersey in section 119. A lot of questions.)
The loudest cheers of the day weren’t for Crawford, though. They weren’t for the introductions of Bochy, Buster Posey or Hunter Pence before him. The loudest cheers were for a ninth-inning Patrick Bailey single, flipped to right field at 56.6 miles per hour. The Giants won 3-2 on their fourth walk-off win of the season, which is the most of any team in baseball and gives them one more walk-off win than the entire 1988 team had.
Not bad, considering they’ve played fewer home games than almost any other team this season. The day started with a nostalgic celebration, and it ended with a reminder that the nostalgia factory is still pumping out some quality product.
There were plenty of positives for the fans more focused on the present than the past. Robbie Ray overcame a shaky start to give the Giants seven innings and his best outing of the season, getting Rangers batters to swing and miss 23 times, his highest whiff total since August 2022. Willy Adames extended his hitting streak to five games with a two-run single in the fifth inning that tied the game, and manager Bob Melvin cited it after the game as a needed jolt of momentum.
“That was a huge hit for us,” Melvin said. “It didn’t feel like that game was going in a good direction for us in the early innings, and then it turned for Robbie, and it turned for us in the fifth with Willy’s hit.”
There were plenty of those positives in the ninth inning alone. Ryan Walker pitched his way through two singles with nobody out in the top of the ninth, keeping the game tied and boosting his confidence back up. Heliot Ramos led off the bottom of the ninth with a hard single, LaMonte Wade Jr. moved him into scoring position with a late-afternoon walk and Christian Koss laid down a perfect ninth-inning bunt in a situation where everyone in the ballpark was expecting it. Bailey’s game winner came after the Rangers brought in a lefty to turn him around, another confidence builder for a hitter in need of them.
PINCH-HIT PATTY WALKS IT OFF‼️pic.twitter.com/QQ3NealLmz
— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) April 26, 2025
It was, as they say, a good day at the yard, and it offered a reminder of what fans want with their baseball experience. With every rookie taken in the draft, with every trade and free-agent signing, there’s a way to explain what organizations and fans are looking for. We’re talking big-picture stuff. They want walk-off wins and championships, of course, but that’s thinking too small.
All fans want from baseball is a podium in front of the pitcher’s mound.
Brandon Crawford spoke before Saturday’s game and was more nervous than he was before Game 7 of the 2014 World Series. (Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)
Sometimes they exist because of championships, but not always. Willie McCovey didn’t win a championship, but he still got a podium in front of the pitcher’s mound before Willie McCovey Day (and he also got the walk-off single to win the game). The 1997 Giants didn’t win a postseason series, but they still got a podium to honor just how unexpected and remarkable the season was. No other team embodied the spring feeling of “You never know” better than that one. Give ’em a podium.
It’s a great shorthand for just how much fan service a team might offer in any given season. Look at the roster on Opening Day and count the podium players. Add managers, announcers, coaches and whoever else might qualify onto the list. Some teams can go years without someone like that in the organization. Some teams can go a decade or longer.
Few will deserve one more than Crawford, of course, so don’t use him as the benchmark. He was introduced to Giants fans through one of the greatest pieces of local photojournalism in sports history, and he went viral even before his major-league debut.
He went from glum li’l Brandon to a franchise icon, having one of the greatest storybook careers anyone in professional sports could ever dream of. Keep your Hall of Fame career in a strange city and give me the Crawford experience, please.
The podium test is a helpful framing to explain why fans might have been less than ecstatic about recent rosters. Even when there were talented players on the team, it was hard to imagine making a special trip to the ballpark in 20 years for any of them. Giants fans were so spoiled, and for so long, there was a sudden realization that it didn’t always have to be like that. Crawford’s ceremony might be the last one like it for a long, long time.
At the same time, part of the buzz of the Giants is that the team features players you could at least imagine giving a speech one day. There’s still a lot of baseball before that’s even close to a reasonable expectation for anyone. Adames has the charisma and the long-term commitment to be a podium player, but he’ll also have to raise his batting average 150 points and keep it going for a decade. Patrick Bailey is adding to his walk-off collection, but he’s not just behind the Giants’ president of baseball operations in franchise WAR as a catcher; he’s also behind his manager.
Still, the Giants have a mix of homegrown players and long-term fixtures. It’s not impossible to daydream about Jung Hoo Lee Day, even if it’s roughly a decade too soon to consider it inevitable. A lot would need to happen for Matt Chapman to get in front of a podium on Matt Chapman Day, but his long-term extension certainly pushed it into the realm of possibility. Logan Webb is making a heckuva case already, even though it almost feels like he just got here.
The odds are against any individual ever getting that kind of treatment, which is sort of the point. But the Giants offered one last celebration from the championship era, and then they won a game in the ninth inning. They won it with a roster that features players fans might want to watch over the next several years, if not the next decade. Podium potential is what makes baseball a billion-dollar industry, and it’s why Giants fans have had it better than almost any other fans in any other sport. It’s why they’re cautiously optimistic about a team they just might get attached to.
Some days at the ballpark resonate more than others, but it’s the years, decades, careers and lifetimes that are the truest measure of just how much fun baseball can be. On Saturday, Giants fans got all of the above. A podium in front of the pitcher’s mound and a chicken in every pot. That’s all fans want out of this silly sport, now and forever.
(Top photo of Patrick Bailey: Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)