Photo credit: @NBCSGiants

By Jeremy Harness

The Giants lost in heart-sinking fashion on Thursday, 5-4, to the Boston Red Sox, after a ninth-inning rally that fell just shy that will almost certainly make the plane ride to Atlanta a little less pleasant.

But before sulking in that any deeper, let’s all take a moment to look back on all the good, legendary stuff that went down in these past three games.

First of all, the Giants took two of the three games at historic Fenway Park, a place where the Giants had not won since 1915.

Do the math. That’s 104 years, people!

Mike Yastrzemski, the grandson of Hall of Famer and Red Sox legend Carl Yastrzemski, made his Fenway debut Tuesday night and was given a standing ovation by the Boston faithful, and the magnitude was ramped up when young Yaz blasted one out of the ballpark later in the game.

To cap it all off, Bruce Bochy got the 2,000th win of his managerial career Wednesday night, a career that will land him into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

As we let that sink in for a little bit, fast-forward to Thursday afternoon.

Trailing by a pair in the ninth, the Giants began a rally against Red Sox closer Brandon Workman, which started when Brandon Belt reached base on a throwing error by second baseman Marco Hernandez, who made a nice sliding stop but watched as his routine throw to first pulled Brock Holt off the bag.

The Giants loaded the bases with nobody out, but Brandon Crawford struck out looking, a situation where simply making contact would likely bring in a run. Yastrzemski was then blown away by a Workman fastball, and the rally was suddenly in jeopardy.

Kevin Pillar kept the rally alive by drawing a walk and bringing in a run, and Evan Longoria was able to work a full count. However, Workman then threw perhaps his best pitch of the afternoon, a breaking ball that dove out of the strike zone and enticed Longoria to swing at air, ending the rally and the hope for a sweep.

“(Workman) found a way to get through it,” manager Bruce Bochy said. It’s a tough pitch to lay off for (Longoria), especially after seeing a couple of pretty good fastballs before that.

“We were close to getting a nice sweep here, but we just came up a little short.”

Although the numbers won’t necessarily reflect it, but Madison Bumgarner threw well on Thursday and gave his team a chance to win.

He went five innings and gave up five runs on nine hits, walking two and striking out seven. However, many of the decisive hits were not hit especially hard at all, but rather were bloopers off good pitches that found open spots in the Giants’ defense.

“It’s just unfortunate that that many fell in,” Bumgarner said. “In this case, I just keep making my pitches and trust that that’s not going to continue to happen. I felt that I threw the ball pretty good.”