Last Night's Winner: Edgar Renteria, MVP The Earl Weaver And Babe Ruth Way

It's not a shock that the Giants did it with pitching, defense and the three-run homer, as espoused by Weaver. It is a shock that the homer came from dink-hitter Edgar Renteria, and that he apparently called his shot.

Renteria's far from the longest tenured Giants. (Actually, not that far. Grizzled 26-year-old Matt Cain has been there the longest, since way back in 2005.) But he is one of the longest-tenured humans on the team, at 35. And you know, he's been here before.

We were sent this screengrab with the question "which of these players doesn't belong?" Actually, it might be Yogi and Joe D. In his 16 World Series games, admittedly a small sample, Renteria is hitting a cool .333. Berra, just .274; DiMaggio, .271.

Whence this love for October? We can't be sure, but we're reminded of John Smoltz talking about Mark Lemke, a pokey little second baseman who was the definition of scrappy to slightly racist sportswriters way back when David Eckstein was renting his tux for prom. "Lemke couldn't hit for shit," Smoltz said, "but he had enormous balls." Come October, guys overthink. They lengthen their swings, or second-guess themselves. Batting averages go down precipitously for all but a select few. While everyone else's buttholes are so tightly clenched, they don't feel the pressure. Renteria's one of these guys, and his career World Series OPS is 150 points higher than his regular season numbers.

To add to the Legend of Edgar, he told Andres Torres before his at-bat that he was going to hit it out. He admitted he was joking, but when you're going into an at-bat with 2 career postseason home runs in 277 plate appearances, we're going to call that a called shot.

The dude's actually a borderline hall-of-famer, according to Bill James's Hall Of Fame Monitor projection. But in baseball, where the playoffs are so hard to get to, it's October success that creates a legacy. Maybe Renteria's the Robert Horry of baseball.

(SportsCenter screengrab from Trainor)