Matt Cain has openly talked of his lifelong dream of throwing a perfect game. It's no longer just a dream.
Cain threw the first perfect game in the Giants' long and storied history Wednesday night, striking out a career-high 14 in a 10-0 victory over the visiting Houston Astros.
With plenty of help from the lineup and a couple of stunning plays from his defense, Cain sailed into the ninth inning.
Brian Bogusevic and Chris Snyder flied out for the first two outs of the ninth, and as the sellout crowd held its collective breath, Cain got Jason Castro to ground out to third to clinch the perfect game.
Cain's perfect game was just the 22nd in major-league history and second of the 2012 season. Chicago White Sox right-hander Philip Humber threw a perfect game on April 21. It was the first no-hit performance by the Giant since Jonathan Sanchez no-hit the San Diego Padres on July 10, 2009.
Cain took the dominance a step further.
The first five innings featured little drama for Cain, who repeatedly threw first—pitch strikes to an Astros lineup that was caught looking time after time. But like any bid for history, there would be moments when the defense was tested.
Melky Cabrera made the first highlight play of the night, a leaping grab that secured the second out of the sixth inning. Snyder's blast to left looked like it would easily travel into the left-field bleachers, but the thick San Francisco air knocked the ball
down and gave Cabrera time to make the catch just inches in front of the wall.History again appeared dashed with no outs in the seventh when Jordan Schafer hit a ball deep toward Triples Alley, where home runs go to die but hits rarely do.
Gregor Blanco is a center fielder by trade but plays right field in the Giants' alignment. The first-year Giant is fond of saying the outfield features three players with center fielder skills, and he showed them while chasing Schafer's ball down and making a diving catch on the warning track.
As Blanco held the ball high above his head, a sellout crowd of 42,298 gave him an extended standing ovation. The disbelief was momentary -- Cain struck out Jose Altuve and Jed Lowrie to end the seventh.
Manager Bruce Bochy pulled out all the stops in the late innings, inserting strong fielders Brandon Crawford and Emmanuel Burriss in the middle infield and moving Joaquin Arias over to third in place of Pablo Sandoval.
Arias easily gloved a slow grounder and made a strong throw to first to retire J.D. Martinez, the first batter of the eighth. Cain went to a 3-2 count on Brett Wallace before striking him out looking with a 93 mph inside fastball.
Chris Johnson's groundout to short ended the eighth inning, as Cain walked off and quietly took a seat in the dugout with 114 pitches down.
The lineup had taken care of the notoriously hard-luck Cain's run support early, scoring 10 runs through the first five innings. Cabrera, Brandon Belt and Blanco homered, giving the Giants five homers in the last two games. They entered the series with just six homers at AT&T Park, but anything seemed possible for the Giants on this night.
Cain proved that on every one of his 125 pitches.

  • Belt had an air of confidence when he walked into AT&T Park on Wednesday, just a few hours after hitting his first homer of the season. Asked if he was about to get on a roll, Belt replied: "I tend to hit homers in bunches."Belt then homered in his first at-bat Wednesday night, taking Houston Astros left-hander J.A. Happ deep to center field. A night earlier he had hit an offering from southpaw Wesley Wright over the right-field wall.
    Belt had just 18 at-bats against left-handers entering this series, but manager Bruce Bochy indicated that he's about to get a whole lot more.
    "This will be good for him," Bochy said. "He'll benefit from playing more. It's been tough with the first basemen we've had and we've been trying to get matchups.
    "But Brandon's playing time will pick up."
    Belt has tweaked his swing in recent weeks in an effort to maintain a more consistent approach at the plate. The home run he hit to right field Tuesday was exactly the kind of at-bat the Giants were hoping to see from their young first baseman, but not because of the result. The Giants have simply been looking for Belt to string good at-bats together, as he has done throughout this series.
    "Hopefully that gets me going," Belt said.
    With Belt settling in at first base, the lineup appears to be nearly set for the first time all season.
    Bochy hit Pablo Sandoval sixth Wednesday night, a spot behind Angel Pagan. Bochy said the alignment against left-handed pitchers is one he hopes to keep for the rest of the season.
    "It was going well with Pagan hitting fifth," Bochy said. "I'm not going to tweak it too much."
  • Golfer Dustin Johnson was joined by Giants special assistant J.T. Snow and pitchers Clay Hensley and Cain in a pregame driving exhibition that sent plenty of golf balls sailing into McCovey Cove.Johnson hit drives with Hensley and Snow before Cain was goaded into taking a swing.
    Cain looked to general manager Brian Sabean, sitting in the stands, for approval. "If you're hitting, I'm not going to watch," Sabean said to Cain, who signed a $127.5 million contract extension before the season.
    Cain, who hit a drive 342 yards at February's Pebble Beach Pro-Am, stepped up and hit a mammoth blast off a tee that had been placed on home plate.
    "One swing was enough," Bochy said.
    Cain threw the game's first pitch three hours later.
  • According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Madison Bumgarner's performance Tuesday made him just the third Giants pitcher since 1900 to hit a home run and strike out at least a dozen batters in the same game. Bumgarner struck out 12 and hit a solo homer in Tuesday night's 6-3 victory over the Astros.
  • Juan Marichal (1963) and Mike Krukow (1985) are the only other Giants pitchers to accomplish the feat.For more on the Giants, see Alex Pavlovic's Giants Extra blog at blogs.mercurynews.com/Giants. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/AlexPavlovic.