San Francisco Giants 2014 World Series Champions Film Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

San Francisco Giants 2014 World Series Champions Film Blu-ray Movie Review

Bummer!

Reviewed by Martin Liebman December 3, 2014

This is kind of becoming a habit. Win it all, skip a year, win it all, skip a year, win it all. The San Francisco Giants have officially become fun to watch in even-numbered years, having won three of the last five World Series titles in 2010, 2012, and 2014. The club has also officially become a dynasty. The 2014 team, captained by future Hall-of-Fame skipper Bruce Bochy, anchored by staff ace Madison Bumgarner, and led on the diamond by the quartet of Posey, Panda, Pence, and Panik, beat the other P's (this reviewer's favorite club, the Pittsburgh Pirates) along the way to the World Series, also ousting the National League Eastern Division winning Washington Nationals and 2013's NL World Series representative, St. Louis. A scrappy, go-get-em sort of club that refuses to lose and led by a manager who always seems to push the right button, the club appeared to have an air of destiny about it -- this was an even-numbered year, after all -- even as it faced off agains the scorching-hot American League champions and a Cinderella story in their own right, the Kansas City Royals.

Celebrate!

The Giants' 2014 campaign saw the club finish in second place in the top-heavy National League Western division, completing the season with an 88-74 record, six games behind the high payroll Los Angeles Dodgers, a club fielding the eventual Cy Young and National League MVP winner, Klayton Kershaw, and a myriad of superstars including Yasiel Puig, Adrian Gonzalez, and Carl Crawford. Yet in this baseball day and age, second place is often good enough. Just ask the American League pennant winners, the Kansas City Royals, who like the Giants won the wild card play-in game and rode the momentum train all the way to the fall classic (or, ask the Florida Marlins, a franchise that has yet to win a division title but boasts two World Series championships). The Giants travelled to a blacked-out PNC Park to battle the Pittsburgh Pirates, a squad fielding then-reigning MVP Andrew McCuthen and the emerging Josh Harrison. The Bucs placed the ball in the hands of Edinson Volquez, a hurler whose season seemed to, in many ways, defy the sabermetrics to a positive record and relatively low ERA. Unfortunately for the Pittsburgh squad, Volquez was shaky in his outing, surrendering a number of hits and walks, including a back-breaking grand slam to Giants shortstop Brandon Crawford. Giants staff ace and would-be World Series hero Madison Bumgarner mowed down the high-powered Pittsburgh offense with ease, sending the sellout crowd home disappointed and sending the Giants to the nation's capital for a best-of-five date with the Washington Nationals.

The Giants beat the Nationals in four games, but in terms of sheer playtime it may as well have been five. The series will be remembered for its game two 18-inning marathon, the longest in Major League postseason history, eventually won on a Brandon Belt home run. Madison Bumgarner proved human in the series, dropping the Giants' third game but rebounding in the NLCS with a 7.2 inning, seven strikeout shutout performance that gave the Giants a 1-0 lead and set the team up for a quick run through St. Louis, dethroning the defending NL champions in five games, which included a dramatic series-ending walk-off home run off the bat of a first baseman by trade playing left field, Travis Ishikawa. It was then back to the Show Me State for a showdown with the American League champions, the Kansas City Royals, a team that entered the Fall Classic having dropped exactly zero games, beating the A's in the Wild Card play-in game, sweeping the daunting Anaheim Angels in the ALDS, and buzzing through the talented Baltimore Orioles in four to capture the American League crown. It was a series pitting a team of calendar destiny -- the even numbered year trend for the Giants -- versus a team of destiny in the here-and-now -- the Cinderella Royals -- in what was certainly shaping up to be a classic confrontation. The Giants took game one in Kauffman Stadium but an undeterred Royals squad returned the favor in game two, taking the series back to San Francisco all square at one game apiece. The Royals would hold on to that momentum by capturing a 3-2 victory in game three, but the Giants would rebound to take games four and five at home by a combined score of 15-4. The seesawing continued as the Royals blanked the Giants 10-0 in game six back in Kansas City, but the Cinderella team couldn't withstand the fate of numerology, and the Giants would claim a third title in five years with a 3-2 victory propelled by a five-inning save from Madison Bumgarner.

World Series Champions 2014 presents viewers with a rapid-fire look back the Giants' regular season -- including the acquisitions of Michael Morse, Tim Hudson, and, at the trade deadline, Jake Peavy as well as the team's hot start, its midseason slump, and playoff push to secure the second wild card slot -- before quickly moving to the postseason and the de facto play-in game in Pittsburgh. Likewise, the series' against the Giants and Cardinals amount to little more than glorified highlight reels. The film does spend more than hour of its 90-some minute runtime on the World Series, and rightfully so. The piece features plenty of access as well as detailed game recaps and highlights, unlike the companion release that only features the games in their entirety (in addition to the final NLCS game against the Cardinals). Here, fans will enjoy a plethora of interview clips with an assortment of Giants players in addition to Manager Bruce Bochy and General Manager Brian Sabean. Technical merits are straightforward; it's nicely edited together and flows well. Some fans may be upset that there's not a more detailed examination of the games before the World Series, but considering it takes an hour to fully dissect all seven Fall Classic match ups, viewers would be looking at a significantly longer production, for better or for worse, were it to offer a more robust look through the entire regular season and playoff run.

San Francisco Giants 2014 World Series Champions Film Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

That's not a typo up there in the video specifications field. World Series Champions 2014 arrives on Blu-ray with a 720p high definition transfer, framed at HD-standard 1.78:1. Fortunately, the image isn't significantly worse off for lack of a 1080i/1080p presentation. Generally speaking, it looks quite nice. Details can be, and frequently are, terrific. Mesh uniform textures, heavy patch and lettering details and stitching, ball cap textures, and grass and dirt details look marvelous. Interviews feature well-defined facial features, pushing a touch warm and showing a little background banding but otherwise presenting very well. Additionally, occasional occurrences of blockiness and noise are present. Colors are rich and pleasing. Green grasses, Giants orange and black, and deep Royals blue all look magnificent. It's a little softer in fast-moving game action footage, but on-field and in-locker room segments tighten up very nicely. Fans shouldn't have much to complain about, even considering the 720p encode.

San Francisco Giants 2014 World Series Champions Film Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

World Series Champions 2014 features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack, unlike the games-only release cited above that features but a 2.0 track. The musical presentation is suitably wide and flavorful, with rich fidelity and tight low end support. Scattered background support elements, like the crack of the bat or the roar of the crowd, play nicely enough to make for a fair sense of immersion in those moments where they are pumped to the fullest. Dialogue, in the form of narration, player/management interviews, and broadcast calls, is precise and effortlessly focused up the middle. Unfortunately, the track does suffer from some noticeable lip synch problems, verified to be present on two players, including the PlayStation 3. Good examples come with a Buster Posey interview at the 2:00 mark, a Hunter Pence clip around 4:58, and even later in the program when Giants' broadcaster Jon Miller discusses a key World Series matchup at the 52:38 mark, probably the single worst example in the entire program. The track loses a scoring point from "4" to "3" for this persistent problem.

San Francisco Giants 2014 World Series Champions Film Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

World Series Champions 2014 contains a handful of relatively brief featurettes and behind-the-scenes material.

• MLB 162 Feature: Michael Morse (720p, 4:12): A short look at the Giants' well-traveled player and his journey to the postseason.
• Mission October: Giants' Rookie Prank (720p, 5:12): A look at some harmless rookie hazing.
• Regular Season Highlights and Milestones (720p, 4:24): A piece celebrating the best moments of the 2014 regular season, including Bumgarner's home run, Lincecum's no-hitter, Sandoval's 100th career homer, Panik's first Major League dinger, and Yusmeiro Petit's 46th consecutive out.
• Clinching Moments (720p, 2:55): A montage of the Giants' end-of-season and postseason clinches, excluding the World Series.
• World Series Highlights (720p, 9:39): The best Giants moments from the 2014 Fall Classic.
• World Series Parade (720p, 2:54): A short highlight reel from the October 31, 2014 event held in San Francisco, California.
• National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum: 2014 World Series (720p, 1:33): A look at some of the 2014 Giants memorabilia heading to Cooperstown.
• More Official MLB DVDs: Previews for other MLB home video releases.

San Francisco Giants 2014 World Series Champions Film Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The big question after every championship, after the champagne has been drunk, the parade remnants have been swept up, and the euphoria returns to manageable levels is always: "can they repeat?" It's a hard thing to do in sports, particularly when the teams that didn't win the whole thing retool in hopes of improving enough to reach the promised land, and it's doubly difficult when a key piece from the winning team is one of those players landing on a retooling team. That's the case with the 2015 Giants who say goodbye to third baseman Pablo Sandoval. Kung Fu Panda has departed the city by the bay for greener pastures (literally) in Boston. But, who cares. It's an odd-numbered year coming up. Give 'em until 2016 when the calendar says the Giants win it all again. A&E's Blu-ray release of World Series Champions 2014 features strong video even at 720p, a quality 5.1 lossless soundtrack, and a healthy array of extras. Obviously recommended to Giants fans, but this will be a nice addition to any baseball fan's home video library as well.