on the cover / By Eric J. Gourley

Hitting it Home

Brett Pill’s climb from the Crabs to the Giants

(Oct. 6, 2011)  It was a warm September evening, even by San Diego standards, when Brett Pill stepped to the plate for his first at-bat as a San Francisco Giant. His gray jersey was crisp and unstained, and his matching pants were pulled down over the tops of his cleats. Sitting nervously along PETCO Park’s first-base line, his dad Mike Pill told a relative he hoped his son would get a hit. Inside, the elder Pill just remembers thinking, “I hope he doesn’t strike out.”

This was a pinnacle of boyhood dreams, realized eight long years after Pill was just another gawky but promising college student starring for the Humboldt Crabs. Since that 2003 summer, Pill had played 740 minor league games in dozens of towns across the country. Now, in his major league debut, he watched a slow curveball from Padres lefty Wade LeBlanc cross the plate at his knees. Strike one.

Two-time Giants Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum pitches against the Dodgers in Los Angeles on Sept. 20, while Brett Pill, right, stands ready at first base. Pill also played behind Lincecum during his first season of minor league baseball in Oregon. PHOTO SPECIAL TO THE JOURNAL

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Pill backed out of the batter’s box, banged his bat against the outside of his left foot and stared up the line for any sign from the third base coach. Then he licked his lips, took half a practice swing and adjusted his shiny black helmet as he dug back in.

LeBlanc tried another off-speed pitch and Pill was waiting for it. With one triumphant swing, he justified the promotion that had eluded him for so long.

The ball rocketed down the left field line and caromed off a balcony on the nearby Western Metal Supply building. Pill realized instantly he had homered as he dropped his bat, but his adrenaline carried him around the bases faster than he’d ever circled them before. As he rounded third and passed a cheering dugout of grinning teammates, Pill couldn’t help but smile with them. It was an uncharacteristic display of emotion for the shy slugger. On Sept. 6, Pill had become just the third player in Giants history to homer in his first at-bat.

The next afternoon, he launched another stunner into the left field bleachers. In all of Major League Baseball — among more than 10,000 players since 1919 — only 21 others have homered in each of their first two games.

Pill, 27, is quick to credit the foggy nights he spent at the Arcata Ball Park for helping launch him to greatness on a much brighter stage.

“Playing summer ball in Arcata was just an awesome atmosphere, a great experience,” the soft-spoken Pill said. “It was a good place to really start my career. Arcata was the first place where I got to play every day. I was kind of a walk-on in college, and I needed to play in a starting line-up. That’s where Humboldt really helped me.”

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