SAN FRANCISCO HAS GIANT PROBLEM!
A's thrash NL champs in first two games of World Series

It wasn't supposed to go like this.

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This was the matchup talked about the months, a collision course between the two best teams in the Franchise Stars Baseball League's first season.

The Oakland A's with 111 wins. The San Francisco Giants with 109.

It was going to be epic.

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Then one team failed to show up.

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Nineteen to two.

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Yes, NINETEEN to TWO!

That's the combined margin of the Oakland A's decimatory wins over the Giants at Oakland Coliseum in the first two games of first FSBL World Series.

 

"Embarrassing," a forlorn-looking Willie Mays said at his locker after Game 2, a 5-1 defeat that was a marked improvement from the 14-1 drubbing in Game 1, but nowhere near good enough.

"No excuses," he continued. "They've been better in every part of the game so far. Hopefully, coming home will wake us up."

Mays and his Giants return to Candlestick Park after the off day for a Game 3 that is, as cliche as the phrase has become, a veritable must-win game.

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That's the result of the Game 1 pasting - which saw Rube Waddell strike out 12 over 8 innings of 5-hit, 1-run ball and get more backing than he could ever have asked for: 14 runs on 16 hits and 10 walks. Jimmie Foxx crushed a 3-run shot in the first, Rickey Henderson drove in four runs and Frank Baker added three RBIs in the rout, which saw Carl Hubbell charged with 7 runs, not making it out of the fourth inning.

"Nothing worked," Hubbell said flatly. "Location was bad, stuff was bad...so the results were bad."

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The Giants mustered only a run - on a Willie McCovey homer - on six hits, a tally they duplicated in Game 2, a narrower defeat as Lefty Grove, despite hard contact at times, chucked a complete game 6-hitter in a 5-1 A's win, backed by homers from Baker and Mark McGwire. Giants starter Tim Keefe, perfect 3-0 in the playoffs entering the night, exited after five innings, trailing 4-1.

"I need to be better," Keefe said. "It's that simple."

Unsaid was Keefe's frustration with some bad luck. With a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the fourth, Keefe allowed a two-out bloop single to Bert Campaneris to bring home Foxx to tie the game, then struck out Danny Murphy on a curveball in the dirt only to have the ball get past Buster Posey for a wild pitch that let McGwire score and the inning continue, leading to an RBI single from Wally Schang.

After feeling squeezed working to McGwire in the fifth, Keefe served up a homer to the slugger well into the second deck, and Keefe had choice words for the umpire as he exited at the end of the inning, which also proved to be the end of his night.