SAN FRANCISCO -- They are words you've been hearing all your life:

The Giants win the pennant. The Giants win the pennant.

Except this time, they weren't words echoing out of a grainy old black-and-white highlight film. This time, it was 8:23 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time, on a magical Monday night at Pac Bell Park.

	Benito Santiago hoists the NLCS MVP trophy after the Giants beat the Cardinals 2-1 in Game 5.

This time, past became present, and present became past. This time, David Bell had just raced the longest 180 feet of his life to lunge across home plate with the winning run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. This time, it was a ballpark 2,500 miles from the Polo Grounds that shook with its own playoff thunder.

This time, it was Giants 2, Cardinals 1. The NLCS had just come to an astonishing, exhilarating end. The Giants were heading for the World Series. And those words were flashing on the scoreboard at Pac Bell as 42,673 roaring human beings tried to convince themselves that this time, they were real:

"The Giants win the pennant. The Giants win the pennant."

"This time," said Rich Aurilia, "was almost as exciting as the last time."

And by "the last time," he didn't mean 1989 or 1962. He meant the time those words became etched in the national consciousness, the day Bobby Thomson and Russ Hodges made them famous in 1951.

To win this pennant, though, the Giants didn't need to propel one last storybook home run through the autumn haze. Heck, to win this pennant, the Giants didn't even need to finish first.

But it's not their fault that modern baseball doesn't require that sort of thing anymore. That wasn't up to them.

What was up to them was finding the strength to ignore the standings when they were 11 games out of first place in the third week of August. What was up to them was maintaining the fire to keep on chugging when they trailed the Dodgers in the wild-card race by three games, with only 21 left to play.

Starting on Aug. 19, when Livan Hernandez awoke from hibernation to throw a sweep-averting shutout in Florida, the Giants transformed themselves into the hottest team in baseball -- for one reason:

They had no choice.

"We had to battle tooth-and-nail with the Dodgers," said Giants GM Brian Sabean. "And that got us pointed in the right direction. Then we found ourselves in a situation where we had to win every series, and it really allowed these guys to stay focused."

Since Hernandez tossed that shutout, the Giants are 36-13. They didn't lose a single series to a team with a winning record over the last eight weeks. They became the first team in history to charge into the postseason riding an eight-game winning streak.

They had to win two games in 24 hours in stadiums 2,100 miles apart to topple the Braves in the first round. They had to survive a series of excruciating and dramatic baseball games to send the Cardinals home.

They found a way to do it all.

"Sometimes," Sabean said, "the hottest team ends up as the best team." Sunday, these Giants figured out a way to win a game in which they got four hits all night. Monday, they somehow won a game in which Matt Morris shut them out on two hits for the first 7 1/3 innings.

And then, of course, six of their next 10 hitters willed themselves to reach base. Barry Bonds stroked the most important sacrifice fly of his life to make it a 1-1 game in the eighth. A game-winning rally materialized out of the thin air of two outs, nobody on in the ninth. David Bell started it. Kenny Lofton finished it. And these Giants, these wild-card Giants, had won the pennant.

"You can't describe something like this," Sabean said. "Everybody dreams this stuff, whether it's Barry Bonds or the bat boy. And to do it here, in the fashion we did it, was special. We exorcised a lot of demons for this organization.

"And it was fitting, the way we did it, because this is just a grinding group. They just had a propensity for doing things when they seemed least likely to do them."

Well, for 2½ hours Monday, they seemed about as likely to score a run off of Morris as they were to trade Bonds even-up this winter for Tanyon Sturtze.

They didn't have a hit until the 17th hitter they sent up there, until Bell doubled with two outs in the fifth. And Morris would make it to within five outs of throwing the Cardinals' most heroic postseason shutout since John Tudor outdueled Dave Dravecky, 1-0, in Game 6 of the the 1987 NLCS.

"Matt Morris," Aurilia said, "threw the ball as well as anybody has thrown it all year against us."

But the story of this postseason was that you never knew when this team would suddenly hear its alarm go off. And poof, out of nowhere, here it came.

Lofton was down, 0 and 2, then poked a single up the middle. Aurilia, his left hand blue and swollen after taking a Morris flameball in the wrist two innings earlier, pounded another hit into left. And you could feel the game changing.

Cardinals pitching coach Dave Duncan sprinted to the mound. Both bullpens sprang to life. The ballpark throbbed with noise and emotion. Morris took a long walk behind the mound to compose himself.

Then his first pitch to Jeff Kent was a curveball, up and in. And let's just say Kent didn't exactly somersault out of the way like Dominique Moceanu.

"I heard (Mike) Matheny yelling, 'Look out,' because he wanted me to get out of the way," Kent laughed afterward. "And Matheny doesn't talk much, either. He's a quiet man. But he was screaming, 'Look out, look out.' And I said, 'Sorry, I can't do that. He's throwing too good.' "

So Kent strolled down the first-base line, and the bases were loaded. For Bonds.

In his previous at-bat, the Cardinals had intentionally walked him. Again. It was his 10th walk of this series -- one short of the all-time record for walks in any postseason series (shared by the unlikely duo of Babe Ruth and Gene Tenace).

But with the bases loaded in a 1-0 game, the Cardinals were sentenced by the baseball gods to pitch to him. Morris launched a 95-mile-per-hour scorcher. Bonds crushed it to the track in left-center. Lofton trotted home without a throw. Tie game.

Not to suggest it got kind of loud at that point, but six local seismology labs dispatched teams of scientists to Pac Bell to investigate.

"You know," Aurilia said, "I tried to think back to 2000, when this place opened, and all the different big moments in this stadium, trying to remember what was the loudest. There was J.T. (Snow's) homer in the playoffs against the Mets in 2000. There was Benito (Santiago's) home run last night. But when Barry hit that ball, this place erupted. That sacrifice fly was up there with any of them."

But there was more to come. And Mr. Bonds wouldn't even come to bat again. But that, too, was fitting. Because as much as America considers these Giants to be not much more than Bonds' faceless backup band, they have spent the last two weeks proving they're something more than that.

The ninth inning began. As he'd done exactly one year earlier to the day, in a Game 5 NLDS classic against Curt Schilling, Cardinals manager Tony La Russa let Morris bat for himself in the top of the ninth, then sent him to the mound one last time.

	“	As soon as I saw it go over (Fernando) Vina's head. I said, 'We're going to the World Series.' And then I said, 'Come on, David (Bell). Go, man. Go.' I was going like, 'Go, go, please go.' It seemed like the ball never got to the outfield after I hit it. And it seemed like David never got to third base. It was like everything stopped. It was crazy, man. ”
		— Kenny Lofton, on his game-winning hit

He got the first two outs. But then here came those Giants. Again.

On the first pitch he saw, Bell served a single into center.

"I was just trying to be aggressive," said Bell, a member of a father-son tandem (with his dad, Buddy) that had played 3,285 games without ever reaching the World Series. "That's the way he (Morris) was against us all night. That guy is so unbelievable. He was in such command out there. I knew it would take something incredible to beat him. I knew he wouldn't come out of that game unless they dragged him out."

So Bell led off first base. Next was Shawon Dunston, in the 17th season of his career, still consulting his baseball atlas looking for the road to the World Series.

Dunston had entered in a double-switch two innings earlier. In his first at-bat, Morris froze him with a two-strike breaking ball. He'd gotten a hit in one game in the previous four weeks.

"Matt Morris is one of my best friends," said Dunston, a former Cardinal. "So I knew he'd come right at me, because that's the kind of competitor he is. All I said was, 'I've got to put the ball in play. If I just put it in play, anything can happen.' "

Dunston lined a 1-0 fastball through the middle. The winning run was on second base. And finally, after 100 brilliant pitches, Matt Morris was heading for the dugout.

"When he came off, I yelled at him," Dunston said. "I put my thumb up and told him, 'Way to go.' He just smiled. I feel for Matt Morris. He pitched his heart out."

So off walked Morris. In stomped Steve Kline. There were 42,000 people all around him to welcome him at the top of their lungs, as white towels waved and orange pom-poms shook and those infernal thunder sticks pounded until your eardrums ached.

Lofton stood in the on-deck circle watching. Three months ago, his knees were hurting and his average was sinking and he was going down with the ship on the south side of Chicago. Then the Giants rescued him, and here he was. Ready to become a hero.

"I was just standing there, doing what I'd do on any pitching change," Lofton said. "Just watching the pitcher, seeing what he was throwing, just telling myself, 'Swing at a good pitch.' "

Lofton had faced Kline once in his career. And struck out. In this series, he'd gone 4 for 5 against Matt Morris -- and 0 for 15 against the rest of the Cardinals' staff. Until Monday, he'd gone 0 for the last three games.

But that was irrelevant now. It was all irrelevant now. Kline delivered. Lofton swung. The baseball landed in right field. And the fate of this series boiled down to a race to home plate between David Bell and the throw from J.D. Drew in right field.

"As soon as I saw it go over (Fernando) Vina's head," Lofton said, "I said, 'We're going to the World Series.' And then I said, 'Come on, David. Go, man. Go.' I was going like, 'Go, go, please go.' It seemed like the ball never got to the outfield after I hit it. And it seemed like David never got to third base. It was like everything stopped. It was crazy, man."

"It seemed like it took him forever to get there," said Aurilia. "But it seemed like he'd never run faster, too. I don't know how to explain that. Kenny hit it."

"Right before he hit it," Bell said, "I was standing there on second, just going over it in my head. If he hit it, I was getting set to score that run any way I could. Then the ball went into right field, and I started running, and I remember it all. It was like it was all happening in slow motion. I don't know if that's a good thing or not. I mean, I'm not the fastest guy in the world."

But he didn't have to be. It was so clear that the throw wasn't close, Bell's teammates came charging out of the dugout and practically beat him to the plate.

"They did?" Bell chuckled. "Well, they were a little closer to it than I was."

He skidded across the plate, and a lovefest burst out all around him. In the middle of it, Bonds and Benito Santiago and Dunston -- three guys who had played more than 6,000 games without a trip to the World Series -- shared a special moment.

"Thank you for giving me a chance to get to the World Series," Dunston told Bonds, tears streaming down his cheek.

"Thank you," Bonds said, "for getting that hit."

They've all spent their Giants careers orbiting in their left fielder's shadow. But it took more than one man to get these Giants to that elusive World Series. And the best part of October is that the whole country gets to find that out.

"What this is, more than anything, is a baseball team," Sabean said. "Yeah, sure, it's got its share of star quality. But most of all, it's a baseball team."

The party began with David Bell's slide, and as it rampaged on for hours, Aurilia found himself thinking about the last all-California World Series that stopped in San Francisco.

"I hope we don't have an earthquake," he said.

"I think they already had one tonight -- when David Bell scored," somebody replied.

But this time, it was a human earthquake -- an unavoidable earthquake. Because once again, the Giants won the pennant.

Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com.