Sanchez returns to Pittsburgh a world champion
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Former Pirates All-Star Freddy Sanchez won a World Series title last fall with the Giants.
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Minutes after the San Francisco Giants won the World Series in the fall, the champagne was spraying about the clubhouse, and a Fox Sports reporter approached Freddy Sanchez with a question he had fielded many times in previous months but now came with fresh meaning: Could you ever have imagined this when you were playing in Pittsburgh?
Sanchez's answer might have surprised the national television audience, but likely not those who followed his career with the Pirates.
"I loved my time in Pittsburgh," he spoke unflinchingly into the microphone that night. "I've got nothing but good memories."
Ask Sanchez now, and he will acknowledge he was ready for the question.
"People sometimes try to pin me down on that," he said by phone from San Francisco the other day. "But I'd never say anything bad about Pittsburgh because I'd never think it. People here say to me all the time, 'Oh, you had to have been glad to get out of there. It had to be terrible.' The way the Pirates and the fans treated me ... I had a great experience there."
With one exception.
"My only regret was that we couldn't win. That's still a regret."
Still?
Tomorrow night, Sanchez will take the field at PNC Park with the Giants as a champion, having gone worst-to-first in barely more than a year. That might have another player pounding his chest, but Sanchez still speaks of his 2009 trade with a pained tone, still speaks of Pittsburgh with palpable affection, and yes, still expresses regret about not having contributed more to the Pirates than three All-Star selections and a National League batting crown.
Which is to say, that shiny new ring clearly has not tarnished him in the slightest.
"I made Pittsburgh my home," Sanchez said. "It was a great place to play, a great sports town. I wanted to be there. I wanted to be part of that team that turned it around. With all the tradition that's already there, I wanted to be part of the new tradition, to start with having a winning season and eventually getting to this point."
By that, he meant the Giants' championship, the franchise's first in San Francisco, a five-game victory against the Texas Rangers.
"It was just the best feeling," Sanchez said, going back to that Nov. 1 night in Arlington, Texas. "This is what we as players strive for, to win a World Series, to win a ring. I'll have that for the rest of my life. It's been a long road for me. With everything that I've gone through ... wow, I couldn't have imagined I'd be a World Series champion."
First Published April 25, 2011 12:00 am
