The Giants Win The Pennant! The Giants Win The Pennant! The Giants Win The Pennant! The Giants Win The Pennant! Whoooooooo-OHHHHH!!!

Tonight my beloved San Francisco Giants beat the heavily favored Philadelphia Phillies 4 games to 2 to win the National League Championship and punch their ticket to the World Series for the first time in eight years. This is just the fourth time in my lifetime that the Giants have made it to the pinnacle of Major League Baseball.

In 1962--when I was just five years old--the Giants lost the Series to the Yankees in 7 games on a whistling line drive out by Willie McCovey in the bottom of the ninth inning with runners at second and third and trailing 1-0.

In 1989 the Giants were swept by the Oakland A's in a series remembered more for the devastating 7.1 magnitude earthquake that struck just prior to the beginning of Game 3 at Candlestick Park. (On a personal note, I was there that night and have the ticket stub to prove it--the only World Series game ever cancelled on account of an earthquake.)

In 2002 the Giants held a 5-0 lead heading into the bottom of the seventh inning of Game 6, needing just nine outs to win their first Series in nearly fifty years. But the Anaheim Angels scored three runs in the seventh and three more in the eighth to win Game 6, and then coasted to a Game 7 victory as well.

Three berths in the Series. Three failures to reach the pinnacle.

Now comes try # 4.

The last time the Giants won the World Series was in 1954 when they beat a heavily-favored Cleveland Indians team that had 111 games in the regular season.

The World Series opens in San Francisco at the beautiful AT&T Ballpark on Wednesday night.

I feel like a kid at Christmas...wow wow wow.