Hunter “The Reverend” Pence

Nobody ever looked less like a ballplayer and played harder than Hunter Pence. The socks pulled up to the knees, the swing that seemed to use every limb at once, the throws that came out of nowhere, the eyes that went wide when he got going. He wasn't smooth. He was relentless, and for two Octobers he was the heartbeat of the whole clubhouse.

He was born April 13, 1983, in Fort Worth, Texas, and went to Arlington High, where he played the outfield and then shortstop as a senior. The Brewers took him in the 40th round in 2002 and he didn't sign. He spent a year at Texarkana College, then moved to UT Arlington, where he hit .395 in 2004 to lead the Southland Conference and win its Player of the Year award. Houston picked him in the second round that June.

He was in the big leagues by April 28, 2007, and his first homer was a grand slam against the Cardinals a week later. He hit .322 as a rookie and led NL rookies with nine triples. In Houston he became a two time All Star, in 2009 and 2011, and hit 25 homers in three straight seasons. The Astros traded him to the Phillies in July 2011, and he hit .314 for the year, fourth in the league.

On July 31, 2012, the Phillies sent him to us for Nate Schierholtz, Tommy Joseph and Seth Rosin. He didn't exactly tear it up that August, hitting .219 for the Giants the rest of the way, but that's not why we remember 2012. We remember the dugout in Cincinnati.

Down two games to none in the NLDS, one loss from going home, the Giants gathered before Game 3 and Pence gave them a speech that nobody who heard it has forgotten. They won that night in ten innings, with Pence legging out a single on a cramping calf. They won the next two in Cincinnati. They fell behind the Cardinals three games to one in the NLCS and won three straight again, six elimination games in a row, and Pence was in the middle of the dugout huddle firing everybody up before every one. They called him the Reverend. Then they swept Detroit.

In 2013 he started all 162 games, the first Giant to do it since Alvin Dark in 1954, hit 27 homers with 99 RBIs and stole 22 bases. He was the first Giant to go 20 and 20 since Barry Bonds in 1998, the NL Player of the Month for September, and he won the Willie Mac Award. In July his diving catch in San Diego saved Tim Lincecum's no hitter. In September he hit a grand slam and drove in seven at Dodger Stadium in a 19 to 3 win. At the end of September the Giants gave him five years and $90 million, and during the physical they found out he had Scheuermann's disease, a spinal condition he'd been playing through for who knows how long.

His streak of consecutive starts reached 331 near the end of 2014, and he kept the games played streak alive with a pinch hit appearance. He made his third All Star team. Then came another October: the leaping catch against the wall on Jayson Werth in the NLDS clincher, a homer off James Shields in Game 1 of the World Series, and a .444 average with 12 hits in the seven games against Kansas City. He had a hit in every game of that Series.

The body started to give out after that. A pitch broke his left forearm in spring training in 2015 and ended his iron man streak at 383 games. Wrist tendinitis and an oblique strain wiped out most of the rest of that season. He tore a hamstring tendon in June 2016 and still hit .289, and he hit his 200th career homer that May. By 2018 he was hitting .226, and on the last day of that season the Giants honored him at the ballpark like they knew it was goodbye.

It wasn't, quite. He signed a minor league deal with Texas in 2019, got voted in as the American League's starting DH in the All Star Game, hit .297 with 18 homers and won the AL Comeback Player of the Year. The Giants brought him home for 2020, but he hit .096 in 17 games and was released in August. He retired on September 26, 2020, and spent the next day, the last day of the season, on a boat in McCovey Cove with his wife Alexis.

He's still around. He went into the Giants Wall of Fame in 2022, he's done color commentary for NBC Sports Bay Area and analysis for MLB Network, and he lives in San Francisco. For a guy who played only parts of seven seasons here, he feels as Giant as anybody.

Pence's biggest clutch moment didn't happen in the batter's box. It happened in a dugout in Cincinnati before Game 3 of the 2012 NLDS, when the Giants were one loss from elimination and he basically willed them into believing. Matt Cain, who pitched the opener and the clincher of every series that October, said Pence challenged everybody to dig deeper than they ever had. The Giants then won six straight elimination games on the way to a title.

He backed it up with the bat and the glove. In Game 7 of the 2012 NLCS his bat shattered and still sent a ball through the middle with the bases loaded, three runs scored and the Cardinals were done. In the 2014 NLDS clincher he went up the right field wall to take extra bases from Jayson Werth with a one run lead. In the 2014 World Series he hit .444, scored seven runs, drove in five and hit safely in all seven games.

Some players get tight in October. Pence got louder. We needed somebody to be the emotional engine of those teams, and it was the guy with the knee high socks.