Never give up. Never surrender.

I mean, you can in your head if you want. If things are really out of hand. I just thought I'd use a movie quote as the title. You do whatever you want. Within reason.

Well, it’s still not like the Giants are good, but they sure can be fun.

This is the essential thing that was missing from the team for the first month of the season. I want to be clear that the team is not better now than it was then, but they are less boring. There are more possibilities. Sure, those possibilities include falling on their faces in ever more embarrassing ways, but they also include spending an entire game looking like the assiest ass to ever ass until one inning they just decide, to hell with that, and start hitting like a group of talented professionals who should have been doing this all along.

For those of you who are not aware, yesterday the Giants entered the 8th inning down 9-1 to the Nationals. They ended the 9th up 11-10, after Bryce Eldridge hit a walk-off grand slam with the Giants down 3, otherwise known as The Coolest Walk-Off Grand Slam, though if we’re being honest, it’s not like there’s a bad one, from the offense’s perspective.

Anyway, all in all, I preferred this game to the previous two in the series.

A game like that can make anyone recalibrate their expectations. “I thought they were that (derogatory) but instead they’re this (complimentary)!” It can make a Giants fan start dreaming big and believing hard. “If they could do that, then they could make a run and really become something someday!” It would be like these people hadn’t even read my newsletter from Tuesday. Enjoy the little things. If the big things happen to go well too, great, but don’t count on it.

For a while, that seemed like good advice for enjoying yesterday’s game. Robbie Ray had had a solid if unspectacular start, giving up only 2 runs through 5, but unfortunately he also pitched in the 6th, and gave up another 3 runs without finishing that inning. Still, enjoy the 5! Matt Chapman continued his hot hitting with a 6th inning homer, and sure, the game was pretty much out of reach by then, but it was nice to see him continue his run of success. Carson Seymour got to pitch in a major league baseball game, and that’s special no matter how many runs you give up (4). The little things!

But then the bottom of the 8th came. Chapman hit another home run, then Rafael Devers went back-to-back. The Giants got a couple walks, a double, a run-scoring groundout, and a run-scoring wild pitch, and suddenly they were down just 3. Reiver Sanmartin gave up a run in the top of the 9th and the deficit was up to 4, but the Giants never made an out in the bottom of the 9th, going double-double-walk-single-grand slam. It was jubilant and exhilarating for the Giants, and crushing for the Nationals, which, hey, it’s about time the Giants did that to someone instead of someone doing it to them.

But how crushing are we talking? Well…

Since 1969, there have been six games in which a team, down by eight runs in the 8th inning, came back to win. Since 1969, there have also been 15 perfect games. A perfect game — an absurd unicorn that, if you are lucky, you will see your team achieve once in your life (more if you are a Yankees fan, but we don’t need to discuss them right now) — is a famously rare occurrence, and over the past 57 years, there have been 250% more of them than games like the one the Giants won yesterday.

Hell, since 1969, there have been seven unassisted triple plays in baseball. In any given game, you are more likely to see an unassisted triple play, probably the most spectacularly unlikely baseball play that you can name off the top of your head, than a team coming back from an 8-run 8th inning deficit.

It’s honestly pretty likely that you’ll never see the Giants win a game like that again. And it happened because the Giants are fun now. Or, if you think “fun” is too strong a word, we can go with less boring. They spent all of April being utterly, miserably dull, doing a reasonable job at preventing runs but also not scoring any. Since May started, they’ve been the opposite, scoring at a decent clip but allowing runs at a higher one.

If you had to pick one of those two, don’t. The only winning game is not to play. But there’s something to be said for the entertainment value of a bad team that can hit. In any given game, you might see some wild stuff that you’ll remember for a long time. The Giants made some memories that you’ll appreciate for a while. It doesn’t mean more than that in the grand scheme of the season, but it doesn’t have to.