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The San Francisco Union-Giants marched onto the fields at AT&T Gettysburg under an orange and black sky on this day of 27 October 2010.
General Lee (Cliff) looked to continue his invasion northward after successful campaigns against Fort Tampa and the Yankee outpost in the Bronx.
In the opening rounds of battle, General Lee attempted to flank the Union-Giants with cut fastballs and outlandishly wild curves.
But Calvary Captain Freddy Sanchez and Colonel Aubrey Huff were prepared for this tactic and managed several counter maneuvers, firing doubles to right field.
Lee’s face revealed his thoughts, “this is not going to be like previous battles.”
Furthermore, the doubles were the beginning of an onslaught to the right flank that left Confederate grunt Vladimir Guerrero bloody, limbless and concussed.
With the Confederate Rangers rolling through the countryside of late and Lee evoking the ghost of Julius Caesar, winning this critical battle would be a huge turning point in this World Series War.
Both Generals Lee and Lincecum seemed a little spooked by the magnitude of the battle in the early rounds.
After the first two rounds of battle General Lincecum was in mid-retreat and losing 2-0, but several of his mates, Cannoneer Juan Uribe and Major Edgar Renteria, made dazzling saves in the field to prevent an even greater deficit.
Meanwhile, General Lincecum took several buck shots to the leg, but bravely fought on.
In the third round of battle, the tide began to change for the Union-Giants.
They spotted Lee with grunt Michael Young, and witnessed Young abandon his General with a costly error. With Lee alone, Scout Andres Torres cornered him and took one for the team in close combat.
That set the stage for Captain Sanchez, who took aim and blasted Lee with a double shot to left center field.
Private First Class Gerald “Buster” Posey, a Southerner by birth but fighting for the North, got his opportunity. He pounded Lee with a golden bullet from his revolver and the score was tied at 2.
Lee’s Confederate mates finally dragged him off his mound bloody and bruised, but not beaten.
The night was still young and the battle would rage on.
General Lincecum kept the pressure on by breezing through the next two rounds of battle.
Then in the bottom of the fifth round of battle, the entire Union-Giant Cavalry arrived with the sound of blaring horns and pounding hooves. Scout Torres fired and landed a double round, followed by a Captain Sanchez double bayonet cut to Lee’s left shoulder.
The tide had turned with the Union-Giants taking a 3-2 lead. Smelling and seeing Lee’s blood, the Union soldiers fought with extra vigor and spirit.
Major Pat Burrell managed a freebie, then Colonel Cody Ross whipped his hatchet into Lee’s left shoulder. The battle score now rested at 4-2 Union-Giants.
Lee’s entire left side was now bleeding profusely. Yet Confederate Senator Ron Washington foolishly believed that Lee could still fight on.
The inspirational leader of the Union-Giants, Colonel Huff, then approached General Lee surreptitiously.
Lee could barely muster a response as Huff grabbed his throat. Lee fired off a harmless shot, which Huff batted right back at him and down his throat.
In close combat, Huff removed his U.S. Union-Giant issued hunting knife from its sheath and cut deeply through and across Lee’s throat, severing his jugular veins and leaving him to gargle and choke to death in his own blood, urine, and feces.
Lee was defeated. His legacy would never be the same. The Union-Giants shouted, “he is not a God!” just as the natives once said after drowning a Spanish Governor.
General Cliff Lee came to Gettysburg an immoral marauder, and left a bloody corpse.
He came to know the meanings of team, divinity, and faith through the acts of the heroes that slayed him.
The world was at peace.
But the Confederate army refused to wave the white flag. So President Bruce Bochy brought out the canons and Cannoneer Juan Uribe.
Uribe fired one massive blast into the heart of the Confederate Army. It was final.
The Union-Giants defeated the Confederate Rangers on 27 October 2010 by a battle score of 11-7.
AT&T Gettysburg would not give way to the invaders.
President Bochy rose to the podium and addressed the gathered:
Two score and twelve years ago our fathers brought forth to this coast a new team, conceived in wood and leather, and dedicated to the proposition that Giants are created superior.
Now we are engaged in a great baseball war, testing whether the Giants, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that World Series War.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those Giants who here gave their lives that the team might live: Mays, McCovey, Marichal, Bonds Sr and Jr, Clark, Krukow, Mitchell, Williams, Kent, Nenn, Aurilia, and more than can be listed.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave Giants, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.
The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what the Giants did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which the Giants who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead Giants we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead Giants shall not have died in vain—that this Giant-nation, under God, shall have a new championship—and that their Superiority, of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Battle Commendations
Freddy Sanchez: Silver Star
Juan Uribe: Congressional Medal of Valor
Aubrey Huff: Silver Bullet
Tim Lincecum: Purple Heart
Message delivered via Pigeon Post…. from Union-Giant Scribe Ray Brennan…
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