In the end, it really wasn’t that much of a contest. Behind the pitching of righty ace Tim Lincecum and the long ball hitting of veteran shortstop (and series MVP) Edgar Renteria, the San Francisco Giants won the 106th Fall Classic — downing the Texas Rangers 3-1 in the fifth game of the World Series and taking the series four games to one. That the difference was pitching should not come as a surprise. The Giants rode the arms of their best pitchers, while beating Texas ace Cliff Lee twice. Giants’ starters held the hit-heavy Rangers’ line-up to an embarrassingly anemic .167 batting average, with the Rangers’ best hitters unable to unlock the Giants’ best starters. After scoring seven runs in the first game against the Giants, Texas’ bats went quiet in the Fall Classic’s final four games, scoring just five runs in the final 36 innings of the series. “As a competitor, you want to put it on yourself,” Texas third sacker Michael Young said during post-game interviews in the Rangers’ clubhouse. “They threw the ball well, but no matter who is out there, we still feel we’re capable of scoring runs. We just didn’t get it done.”

The same message was given by patch-em-up and let-em-play veteran Edgar Renteria, who manfully stop-gapped the Giants at shortstop, while providing a home run bat that had been silent nearly all season. The crafty and savvy shortstop walked away from the 106th World Series with the MVP, a much deserved reward for a player who spent the year nursing an aching neck and all sorts of tears and pulls to compile a .412 (7 for 17, two home runs, six RBIs) Fall Classic. Renteria, 34 — and in his fifteenth season — hit a three run dinger in the fifth game to notch his place in Giants’ (and baseball) history. “I got confident, looking for one pitch, and if he throws it I’m going to hit it back to the middle,” Renteria said of his home run stroke against Texas ace Cliff Lee. “So he tried to throw the cutter, and the cutter stayed in the middle, and that’s why it went out.” That Renteria would be the player at the center of the Giants’ postgame celebration seemed oddly just: a legendary franchise that boasts some of the greatest players in baseball history now has a new hero — a slap-and-run good-glove defender who plays quietly behind, argubly, the very best pitching staff in baseball. That’s what made the San Franciso Giants the Champions of the World.

The best move the Washington Nationals made before the trading deadline was the one they didn’t. As the witching hour struck 4:00 pm, the Nationals front office didn’t budge — and thereby decided that keeping a fan-popular 35-to-40 home runs per year hitter in D.C. was better than moving him to Chicago for a sometimes-very-good and sometimes just so-so righthander. The news that Adam Dunn was staying in D.C. began to circulate 60 minutes before the deadline, with a variety of sports reporters (including SI’s Jayson Stark) saying that Dunn was staying put. Even so, there seems little doubt there was a last minute attempt to land the Nats bopper: the Pale Hose dangled newly acquired righty Edwin Jackson (the Nats wanted Jackson and prospects), while the Giants inquired about Dunn but thought the price (Jonathan Sanchez) was too steep.

Nationals’ G.M. Mike Rizzo was always hesitant to deal Dunn, the centerpiece of a formidable 3-4-5 line-up that features Ryan Zimmerman and Josh Willingham. Even talk of trading Dunn caused consternation, with Zimmerman saying flatly that it would be a mistake to break-up the trio. Apparently team president Stan Kasten agreed. According to the MLB Network, Kasten (a Dunn partisan) met privately with the first baseman on Friday night to reassure the slugger that the Nats were doing everything they could to retain him. One of MLBN’s commentators described Kasten as “tearful” during his one-on-one talk with Dunn. Over at Nationals Daily News, Mike Henderson quotes Mike Rizzo as saying that the Nats “never got a deal that we thought was equal or greater value to Adam Dunn.” Good. There arn’t many every day major leaguers who can hit 35 to 45 home runs each year.

Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: We here at CFG always attempt to respond to the flood of correspondence we receive from our dedicated readers. A recent missive upbraided us for our lack of coverage on the before game problems of what’s-his-name. “Dear editor:  Three days later, how could CFG not write a single word about the biggest Nats story of the year — Stephen SoreArm?  Are you and your staff covering the team or not?  At least offer a little commentary, or insight, or historical perspective on similar injuries . . . If nothing else, think about your foreign readers and their need-to-know…….. Sincerely, A concerned reader.” Hmmm. Point taken.

Okay, so here goes: we stayed away from “the kid’s” arm issue because, honestly, we don’t have a damn thing to add to what is already being said. Except that, oh yeah, we are attempting to sort through two conflicting views: that with a $15 million investment it’s hard to blame the Nats front office for playing it safe and (second), having said that we know that the very best way to protect “Stephen SoreArm” is not to pitch him at all. Put another way, we couldn’t decide between “phew, good move” and “oh c’mon.” Mmmmmm: whaddawegonnado? There’s an idea abroad in the land of baseball that today’s pitchers just aren’t as tough as the old codgers who used to pitch complete games and go entire careers without a complaint. The Warren Spahn-Juan Marichal game is cited as an example of this toughness.

But polemicists for this viewpoint fail to add that the era before rotator cuff surgery and bone chip removal is littered with the bodies of young hurlers who blew out their arms and had no recourse to bone marrow scoops or ligament replacement surgery. We here at CFG know one, for sure — who (designated as a power arm in the Kansas City A’s  rotation of 1959) blew out his arm and ended up coaching high school football. He had no choice. The reason we didn’t hear much about arm trouble in the good old days is that once you had arm trouble you had two choices — you could wait it out, or you could quit. Most times, you were simply finished. Which is to say: arm toughness isn’t the rule, it’s the exception and if there’s anything that can be done to save a young pitcher’s young arm early in his career, why then that ought to be done. The Nats are doing that and will continue to do that. But with this caveat: while the Nats have made an investment in Stephen Strasburg, they’ve also made an investment in winning baseball in D.C. Weighing the two is the challenge.