The San Francisco Giants 2012 World Series Collector's Edition Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

The San Francisco Giants 2012 World Series Collector's Edition Blu-ray Movie Review

Gift giving for your resident baseball fan just got a lot easier.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 5, 2012

The so-called Boys of Summer may have put away their cleats and hung up their bats for another season, but they’re still making a play for the holiday gift giving season, at least to fans who follow a certain team housed in The City by the Bay. 2012 turned out to be a fairly epochal year for the San Francisco Giants, and not just because they ended up winning the World Series in a relatively rare Series rout against the Detroit Tigers. 2012 marked the Giants’ 130th anniversary in Major League Baseball, as well as the team’s 55th year in San Francisco itself. The Giants had a fantastic regular season, as evidenced by the fact that they finished the season in first place in the western division of the National League, with a 94 – 68 win-loss record. Things seemed to turn at least a little rocky for the team in the Division Series when the Cincinnati Reds broke through with a quick one-two punch and bested the Giants in the first couple of games. The Giants proved their mettle, though, by battling back in the next three games, ultimately winning the Division Title and becoming the first team in National League history to fight back from such a daunting position to ultimately claim the divisional prize. Things were decidedly less dramatic once the Giants moved on to face the Detroit Tigers in the 2012 World Series, with San Francisco’s offensive lineup smashing through the Tigers’ pretty formidable defense to deliver the Series Title in four games (ironically, the Tigers had had astoundingly good luck in their League Championship Series matches, routing the New York Yankees 4-0 and seeming to pave their way to a relatively easy task in the World Series). While the recently released 2012 World Series Champions: The San Francisco Giants offers a very good overview documentary and some great supplementary features, its "generalist" approach may not satisfy hardcore baseball fans, and into that breach steps this massive eight disc set, featuring the entire World Series as well as a glut of other content.

The eight discs of this new set include:

Disc One: World Series Game 1. The Detroit Tigers may have had their fair share of confidence coming into the Series, but almost right off the bat (sorry) they found out what they were in for. This game made history when the San Francisco Giants’ Pablo Sandoval homered repeatedly to help put the Giants on top, though the Tigers did manage to get a little action in, with the ultimate score being 8 to 3.

Disc Two: World Series Game 2. The Tigers must have felt like bad was turning to worse as the second game saw strike outs from virtually the first at bat and then in the second inning Fielder getting hit by a pitch which nonetheless didn’t result in an ultimate run. This was overall a pretty slow moving game, despite spurts of activity, and it wasn’t until the bottom of the seventh that San Francisco finally was able to notch its first scoring hit, followed by its second in the bottom of the eighth.

Disc Three: World Series Game 3. Detroit had the misfortune to have two games in a row where it couldn’t even score, but at least they didn’t have the almost cartoonish calamities that afflicted them in Game 2. The Giants weren’t really at the top of their game, either, scoring relatively early but then just kind of coasting for the rest of the game and ultimately coming out on top, two to zip.

Disc Four: World Series Game 4. Detroit may indeed have been down, but this game proved they weren’t completely out, and in some ways, this fourth game proved to be the most exciting match of this particular Series, despite the fact that prescient viewers could easily see the handwriting on the veritable wall. Once again, San Francisco was first on the scoreboard in the bottom of the second, but unlike the previous two games, Detroit didn’t take it lying down and hammered back in the third with their own double. That actually put the Tigers ahead for the next two innings, and Tigers fans were probably watching with bated breath to see if their team could hold off the supposedly inevitable, an inevitability that surely seemed all but inevitable when the ninth inning closed with a tied score. But the Giants’ Young homered in the sixth, and then a Scutaro single in the tenth managed to put the Giants over the top when Theriot, who had been on second, was able to get to home plate, finishing the series up with a 4 – 3 victory for San Francisco.

Disc Five: National League Division Series Game 5. This showdown between the San Francisco Giants and the Cincinnati Reds was a pretty epic battle that showed just how determined the Giants were to ultimately come out on top, even when the cards seemed stacked against them. Interestingly, the Reds actually outhit the Giants in this game, but the Giants, fueled by Posey’s grand slam, managed to outscore the Reds by 6 to 4.

Disc Six: National League Championship Series 5. Just a little over a week after the Giants put away the Reds, they managed to get within striking distance of the Series in this game against the St. Louis Cardinals. The Giants had battled back from a 3-1 deficit in the opening games of the Series and were obviously only one game away from getting put down for the season. Their fearsome determination is well on display in this game, with a rare postseason bunt by a pitcher (Zito) and yet another Sandoval homer the big standouts of an exciting showdown.

Disc Seven: Baseball’s Greatest Games—San Francisco Giants’ First Perfect Game. As if the Giants’ 2012 season wasn’t exciting enough, their June 13, 2012 game against the Houston Astros saw another high water mark, Matt Cain’s perfect game, the first ever in the Giants’ franchise history. Cain actually tied Sandy Koufax’s record of 14 strikeouts, the most ever in a perfect game, only the 22nd such game in the entire history of Major League Baseball.

The San Francisco Giants 2012 World Series Collector's Edition Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The San Francisco 2012 World Series Collector's Edition is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of A&E Home Video with an AVC encoded 720p transfer in 1.78:1. The broadcasts are ported over from Fox Sports, and have a decently detailed appearance, even if some of the establishing shots of the various cities look really ragged for some reason (see some of the screenshots accompanying this review). Coverage of all the games is exceptional, with a lot of great close-ups which do pop with abundant fine detail. Color is very accurate, full blooded and well saturated.

The San Francisco Giants 2012 World Series Collector's Edition Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

A&E Home Video has gone above and beyond with their audio options on The San Francisco Giants 2012 World Series Collector's Edition. There are three English language tracks available on the World Series Games, all presented via lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mixes. The original Fox Sports team is on the main audio track, but also offered are both the San Francisco Giants network as well as the Detroit Tigers network, offering a really good variety of approaches and (obviously) personal prejudices amongst the announcers. Fidelity on all of these tracks is excellent, though only the Fox Sports track really gives some sonic semblance of what it must have sounded like in the various stadiums where the games were played.

The San Francisco Giants 2012 World Series Collector's Edition Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

It's hard to know what to call "Supplementary" in a set this massive, but there is a so-called Bonus DVD in this set (which is actually a Bonus Blu-ray, but who's counting?). That disc includes:

• Walk Off Winners (720p; 11:05)


• Season Highlights include:

  Pitching Highlights (720p; 9:25)

  
  

  Twenty-Game Hit Streaks (720p; 2:02)

  
  

  Giants Clinch NL West (720p; 6:26)

• Postseason Highlights include:

  NLDS Game 3 (720p; 3:31)

  
  

  NLDS Game 4 (720p; 5:06)

  
  

  NLCS Game 2 (720p; 5:10)

  
  

  NLCS Game 6 (720p; 3:41)

  
  

  NLCS Game 7 (720p; 8:25)

The San Francisco Giants 2012 World Series Collector's Edition Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The San Francisco Giants 2012 World Series Collector's Edition is an impeccably handsome set that will surely appeal to all baseball fans. The set is housed in a sturdy slipcase, and each of the slimline cases holding the individual discs comes replete with tons of statistics and other factoids printed on the slimline case inserts. Even the discs are individualized, with team logos and final scores emblazoned on their labels. The content here is also exhaustive, offering not just the World Series itself, but some really excellent bonus content. About the only downsides here are relative, namely having "only" a 720p video presentation and 2.0 audio mixes. This is probably too big (and perhaps a bit too pricey) to be a stocking stuffer, but it has "thoughtful gift" written all over it. Highly recommended.