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SAN FRANCISCO -- Everyone seemed to be of the same mind that Thursdays series opener between the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants was an important game.More important, they all agreed, is the series.The Giants got the jump on the Cardinals with a 6-2 win Thursday night behind Johnny Cuetos complete game.Cueto seemed to challenge his teammates after the win, boasting, Every game I will pitch from now on, I will pitch like a playoff game. Thats the way we need to play, like its a playoff game.The Giants and Cardinals are well versed in playoff-type games, dating back to the Giants run at their first of three World Series championships in 2010.But neither of Fridays starting pitchers has been a part of it.The Giants Matt Moore, acquired at the trade deadline from the Tampa Bay Rays, and Cardinals Luke Weaver, who has only six games of major league experience, will duel in Game 2 of the series.The night will begin with the Giants (78-68) leading the New York Mets (77-69) by one game and the Cardinals (76-70) by two in the race for the two National League wild-card spots.Also at stake in the Cardinals-Giants series is home-field advantage in a possible wild-card tie-breaker should they finish the regular season in a tie.Home field will go to the team that has the better head-to-head record during the regular season. The Giants win Thursday evened that count at 2-2.Im not trying to downplay (Thursdays) game, but we do have time left, losing pitcher Adam Wainwright insisted. We have plenty of time left to make this thing happen. We just have to play good games and have good starting pitching and play good defense and get timely hits. Thats what were going to try to do going forward.The Giants had all of the above in the opener. Hunter Pence hit a two-run homer off Wainwright, Buster Posey had a four-hit game, and Denard Span, demoted from first to eighth in the batting order, contributed a key two-run single in support of Cueto.The Cardinals, meanwhile, got a subpar effort from Wainwright (four runs and nine hits in 5 2/3 innings), hit poorly in general (seven 1-2-3 innings), and stranded four baserunners in the two innings in which they scored single runs.No doubt, the spotlight was on, and the Giants responded best on the first night.There was added intensity with who were playing, Giants manager Bruce Bochy said of the playoff-type atmosphere. Were both fighting to get there. We knew we had to go out and play well, and we did that.The Cardinals welcomed back a potentially key player for their stretch run when former closer Trevor Rosenthal was activated from the disabled list before Thursdays game.He could play a role in the series before weekends end. Joe Mixon Youth Jersey . 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Josh Malone Bengals Jersey . The Nashville Predators were glad their captain was still on their side. Weber had a goal and two assists, and Roman Josi scored the shootout winner to lift the Predators to a 4-3 win over the Flyers on Thursday night. The most popular item in Bill McCartneys basement full of memorabilia from a long and well-decorated coaching career is a picture of his Colorado teams 1994 victory at the Big House: The Miracle at Michigan.Theres a little button in the corner of the frame that when pushed summons Keith Jacksons unforgettable call of Kordell Stewarts 75-yard Hail Mary pass on the final play of the 27-26 upset over the fourth-ranked Wolverines. Derek McCartney, Bills grandson, lived next door growing up and would gather up his grade-school buddies on a weekly basis to bring them downstairs and give them all a chance to press the button.We wore that thing out, says Mike McCartney, Bills son. There wasnt a time we went into the basement where we didnt play it.Derek is now 22 years old and a defensive lineman for the Buffs, who will travel back to the Big House this season for another underdog matchup against a Wolverines team that is once again ranked fourth in the nation. Bill will be there to watch. It will be, he says, his first time back in the stadium that has meant so much to his coaching career since he left victorious 22 years ago.The visit will be an important trip for Bill, who worked for eight seasons in his home state as an assistant at Michigan before building a national champion from scratch at Colorado. The 76-year-old coach was diagnosed with late-onset Alzheimers disease this summer. Hes still physically fit and socially sharp, but his short-term memory has started to falter. Friends and family say he has trouble remembering conversations from earlier in the day. He can recall with clarity, though, practicing the Hail Mary pass from Stewart to Michael Westbrook the day before beating Michigan.It didnt work on Friday; the ball fell to the ground, Bill said. We didnt deflect it properly. So, its true that we got a little bit lucky, but we also felt like we prepared properly.An instant classic like that produces a thousand different stories from a thousand different perspectives. McCartney would probably be OK with hearing them all.Jerry Hanlons version starts in Miami, Ohio, where the longtime Michigan assistant was being inducted into Miamis famous Cradle of Coaches on that September afternoon in 1994. He says its the only home Michigan game he hasnt watched from inside the Big House since he started with the Wolverines in 1969.I watched it in the press box (at Miami) on the television and damn near jumped out of the box, Hanlon said.Hanlon was part of Bo Schembechlers staff in Miami that followed him up to Ann Arbor. Schembechler struck up a relationship with Bill after hearing that he had won football and basketball state championships in the same school year at Divine Child High School in Dearborn, Michigan. Shortly thereafter, Schembechler asked McCartney to join his staff and coach the linebackers at Michigan.McCartney grew up across the street from a high school in Riverview, Michigan, a few miles west from where the Canadian border dips down into Lake Erie. He would sneak over to the school and watch football practices, where he says he decided as a seven-year-old that coaching football would be his vocation.He shared an office with Jack Harbaugh for the majority of his eight years in Ann Arbor. During their first week in Ann Arbor, McCartney sent his boys down the street to meet Jacks sons, John and Jimmy. They had the best cereal of anyone in the neighborhood, Jim recalled earlier this week.McCartney eventually worked his way up to being the teams defensive coordinator. McCartneys monsters, as radio man Bob Ufer dubbed the defense, didnt allow a touchdown for five straight games (three of them shutouts) to help lead the 1980 team to a Big Ten title and Schembechlers first Rose Bowl victory.McCartneys allegiance to and reverence for Schembechler is the tie that binds Michigan and Colorados football programs. McCartney modeled much of his tough-love formula that made the Buffaloes successful after what he learned while coaching for the Wolverines.We tried to do things a similar way, McCartney said. I tried to duplicate that, although I wasnt Bo.Shemy Schembechler, Bos son, was a graduate assistant on Michigans staff when McCartney returned with his Buffaloes team in 1994. Shemys job after the final play of the game was to go and collect the prospects in town for the days game and bring them back to the locker room. It was as long andd devastating a walk as he can remember having in the Big House.ddddddddddddWhile on his way to retrieve the recruits, he bumped into Elli Uzelac, a former Michigan assistant who had joined McCartney in Colorado as offensive coordinator.He comes up behind me and says, Shem turn around, Schembechler says. He said, Sorry buddy, but we still love you. It was almost just like my dad. They had the same mantra of jubilance in winning a game like that. It was almost like it was the Michigan of the West.Colorados coaches agree with that description, almost to a comical fault.Whatever Schembechler did, Mac did, says Gary Barnett, a long-time McCartney assistant and eventually a head coach at Colorado. He did it to the point where we got tired of listening to all the Michigan stuff. It was Michigan this, Michigan that. Bo this, Bo that. He was in Bos corner all the way.As former Colorado coaches, Barnett and McCartney bump into each other frequently at charity events and golf outings. Those days usually come with a few stories from their time on the same staff -- knocking off Oklahoma State with a fake field goal in 91 or the year before, when Barnett replaced Gerry DiNardo as offensive coordinator a month before playing for a national title. McCartney called over Barnett to deliver news of his promotion. He said, OK, Gerrys leaving. Youre the coordinator. Figure out how to win the game. End of meeting.Barnett did. Colorado beat Notre Dame 10-9 in the Orange Bowl to wrap up an undefeated season and a national championship. A few years later, Barnett was the head coach at Northwestern and sitting in his office after a game when he flipped to ABC to catch the end of Colorado-Michigan. He saw the Buffaloes were down to a final play and walked away figuring they had lost.Barnett said as he remembers the play, it was actually Westbrooks job to tip the ball to another receiver. Their routes got crossed up near the goal line, so Westbrook was a little out of position when he caught the game winner. The coach says now that he should have known to expect the unexpected after working alongside McCartney for so long.Two months later, McCartney announced he was stepping away from coaching at age 55 to spend more time with his family. Barnett was shocked again.He was always going to do something or say something that was off the wall, Barnett said. For us, that one came out of nowhere, but it was kind of fitting.Mike McCartney has a version of the story, too, of course. He was working for the Chicago Bears at the time and made the trip back to Ann Arbor to see his dads team play in their old hometown.He remembers standing in the tunnel of the stadium late in the second quarter and seeing Les Miles, then Michigans offensive line coach, who was headed down from the press box to talk to his players during halftime. The Buffs had the ball and were going to try a deep pass to score before the break. McCartney leaned over to Miles, who was part of McCartneys first staff in Colorado, and let him know that Stewart had the arm strength to hurl 75 or 80 yards in the air.Les talked to me later on, he said. On that last play (of the game) he was in the press box telling Michigans coaches, Hey, McCartney told me Kordell can throw it 75 or 80 yards. You better back up. Can you imagine if they wouldve batted it down because of something I said? Luckily, it worked out.Mike McCartney called that weekend an emotional one, and he expects the return trip this time around to be much the same. Dozens of former players and coaches are planning to meet in town Friday night to relive glory days and tell their own versions of one of the many stories theyve shared together.As Bill McCartneys disease starts to eat away at his memory, those unforgettable moments become more important, his son said. They talk more now about old coaching stories than they ever have before, and calling them to mind lights up the old coachs face in a way few other things do now.Im 76, so Im over-the-hill Bill, but (this weekend) Im wired, fired and inspired, he said. We havent seen each other for a long time, but theyve got all stories. Those stories are funny and theyre also revealing. Im sure theyll be some of that. Theyll say, Do you remember this? and Ill say, No. Remind me. 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