World Series: Texas 0 - 4 San Francisco (San Francisco leads 3-1)

Madison Bumgarner was born on August 1, 1989 in Lenoir, North Carolina. He attended South Caldwell High School in Hudson, North Carolina, where he led the team to the state 4A baseball championship in 2007. The Giants took him with the 10th overall pick in the 2007 draft, and sent him to the Augusta (Ga.) GreenJackets, a Class A team. By 2009, he had moved to a high-A team, the San Jose Giants. Then he went to the Connecticut Defenders in double-A. This year, he began the season with the Fresno Grizzlies in triple-A, before being called up to the majors midway through the season. He went 7-6 with an ERA of 3.00. He had 86 strikeouts and only 26 walks.

Today, he went out to pitch game four of the World Series, and he was tremendous. He completely dominated the Rangers, giving up only 3 hits and no runs in 8 solid innings. He is the youngest left-handed pitcher to throw eight innings of shut-out ball in World Series history. The Giants cruised to their second shutout win over the suddenly punchless Rangers, and now lead the Series three games to one.

The story of this Series has been the dominance of San Francisco's home-grown pitching staff (all four of the Giants' starters were developed in-house). In four games, the Rangers have only scored 11 runs, and three of those runs were scored in the ninth inning of game one -- an inning that began with San Francisco holding a seven-run lead. Now the Giants need just one more victory to bring the title to San Francisco for the first time ever.

It's still not over. The Rangers are starting Cliff Lee tomorrow (probably the last game he will ever pitch for Texas). And if Texas could ever start hitting, they could come back. But no team has come from 3-1 down in the World Series since 1985, and I will be surprised if Texas ends that string.