SAN FRANCISCO -- They were staring at the promised land -- just nine outs away from a world championship and all the satisfaction of nuking the Rally Monkey out of existence. Five-run lead. Three innings to go. And a perfect sense of calm in the Giants' dugout.

"There was a lot of confidence," Dusty Baker was saying afterward.

Who could've blamed him? Not only did the Giants knock out Kevin Appier with a three-run fifth inning, but their crowning as champs seemed complete when Barry Bonds launched another of his to-the-planets home runs off Francisco Rodriguez.

Not only did that give the Giants a 5-0 lead, it all but assured Bonds of winning the Series' MVP award, which would've ranked among his greatest achievement considering his history of poor postseason play.

Like Baker said: The Giants were about to own the world. MVP ballots were being circulated in the press box. The Rally Monkey had been neutralized. All that remained were those three final innings.

But then came the collapse -- so shocking that Baker seemed at a loss for words afterward. Even the seemingly stoic Mike Scioscia called the six-run comeback, which fueled the Angels' 6-5 win, one of the greatest games he'd ever witnessed. The Angels' manager even said the energy at Edison Field was similar to what he experienced in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series, when Kirk Gibson stunned the A's with a ninth-inning home run off Dennis Eckersley.

But Scioscia then said, "This game surpassed (Gibson's HR)," perhaps remembering the Angels muscled the Giants into Sunday night's Game 7. And if momentum counts for anything in a seemingly even, all-wild card World Series, who is living larger than the Angels?

Baker seemed to concede as much. The deadness in his voice impossible to ignore. The manager said, simply, "they just messed us up. ... That was a heck of a comeback by them."

Most shocking was that the Angels engineered their comeback against Felix Rodriguez, Tim Worrell and Robb Nen, who had combined to allow Anaheim only two runs in 11.2 innings during the Series. But they were no match for the Angels in Game 6, beginning with Scott Spiezio's three-run homer off Rodriguez in the seventh inning.

It was a classic, nearly monumental at-bat, which lasted eight pitches. Three times, with the count at 2-2, Spiezio fouled off Rodriguez' mid-90-mph fastball. Each time, just missing.

"I kept telling myself, 'I'm right on it. I'm right on it,' " Spiezio said. "I kept waiting for a pitch I could drive. I was lucky I got one."

This time it was a hanging slider, and Spiezio lifted a long, lazy fly ball toward right field. This wasn't a Bonds-like beast -- it cleared the wall by only three rows -- but suddenly the Giants were leading by only two runs.

The end was coming fast now. Darin Erstad led off the eighth with a home run against Worrell, and the Angels soon had runners on second and third and none out. Worrell gave way to Nen, the Giants' last line of defense. And here is where Baker was forced into several hard decisions.

The Giants were still leading 5-4 but were facing the dangerous Troy Glaus. Nen had the option of either pitching around Glaus or walking him intentionally, but that would've loaded the bases. Baker ultimately decided to pitch to Glaus, because, as he later explained, "Glaus is prone to the strikeout."

In other words, the Giants assumed Nen could blow away Glaus with heat, at which point they would've intentionally loaded the bases by walking the left-hitting Brad Fullmer and taking their chances with Spiezio, perhaps for an inning-ending doubleplay. But the Giants met an entirely different fate when Nen left a fastball over the plate to Glaus.

The heavy-hitting third baseman approached the at-bat with narrow horizons, imagining nothing more than, "getting a sac fly or at least a ground ball to second. Anything to score (the tying run)."

But Glaus took Nen's middle-of-the-plate heater and ripped a two-run double to left-center -- giving the Angels the lead, the game, and an entry-ticket to Game 7.

"I'm sure he didn't want it in that location," Baker said of Nen's fastball. "As long as you're throwing the ball, sometimes it's not going to go where you want it to go."

Meaning, there's no escaping a mistake in October, and that the World Series can be a pitiless teacher.

Either the Giants or Angels will learn that Sunday night.

Bob Klapisch of The Record (Bergen County, N.J.) covers baseball for ESPN.com.