Take a minute folks to let this settle in: Barry Zito outdueled Justin Verlander in Game 1 of the 2012 World Series.

The perpetually maligned San Francisco Giants’ starter sufficiently outpitched the reigning AL CY Young Award winner and MVP.

On a spectacular night at AT&T Park in front of a raucous crowd, the Giants defeated the AL Pennant-winning Detroit Tigers 8-3. They did so in a way that had the masses of baseball pundits scrambling to understand how they got this so wrong. Age-old records were broken, and pre-game predictions were rendered obsolete.

Zito, who had pitched a phenomenal Game 5 against the Cardinals with the Giants down 3-1, was still cast under the incredulous eye of the public. Before this year, he had not completed a season with a winning record since 2006 and had never pitched in the Fall Classic.

Yet, the way he escaped a jam in the top of the first inning indicated that this would not be a Zito performance of old. After a walk to AL Triple Crown winner Miguel Cabrera to put two runners on, he induced a lazy pop up to left field by Prince Fielder, the best insurance cleanup hitter in the game. Postseason stalwart Delmon Young then grounded out to third to end the threat. Zito had traversed murderer’s row unscathed.

The Tigers’ ace then emerged from the dugout to face the top of the Giants’ order. He had the face of a resolute warrior. That resolution, though, quickly turned to unease when a baseball player with a certain likeness of a Panda came up to the plate.

After showcasing hard-biting breaking pitches and live 95-plus MPH fastballs to the first two batters, Verlander was in the driver’s seat. He induced consecutive groundouts, and Pablo Sandoval followed up by hacking at the first two offerings—but to no avail. Then, the unthinkable happened.

Verlander, who had not surrendered a home run on an 0-2 pitch all season, had to watch in despondent awe as Sandoval squared up one of his 95-plus fastballs for a rocket homer to centerfield.

He recovered by striking out Buster Posey to close out the first. But the damage had already been done.

The opposing teams’ starters exchanged shut-down innings until the bottom of the third. With two outs in the frame, Verlander was sitting pretty with Angel Pagan down 1-2 in the count. Then came the start of a heart-breaking sequence. After fouling off three pitches, the Giants’ leadoff man hit a grounder to third that miraculously bounced off the bag and rolled into centerfield. Pagan advanced to second.

Marco Scutaro, San Francisco’s postseason hero, struck again. On the eighth pitch of the at-bat, the league’s least strikeout-prone hitter lined a single to center to score Pagan. And three pitches later, Sandoval launched his second home run of the game, this time to left field. Giants 4, Tigers 0

At this point in the game, there was a palpable energy in the air that seemed to thoroughly disagree with the Tigers and really favor the home team. Young grounded into a freak double play in which he never left the batter’s box and Fielder was gunned down at second. Then there was the Zito straw that broke the camel’s, er, Tiger’s back.

On a purely defiant act against the laws of physics, Zito—one of the worst hitting pitchers in all of MLB—went opposite field for a slap-hit, RBI single.

Verlander, the dominant pitcher with the 3-0 record and 0.82 ERA through 24.1 innings of three postseason starts, was reduced to mere mortality from the very beginning. He exited the game after just four innings. One would have to dig through the archives to find the last time something like this occurred to the former Cy Young.

It was only fitting, then, that a game with such uncharacteristic developments would add a few more in favor of the home team.

Zito’s run-scoring base hit was the fourth-consecutive postseason game in which a Giants pitcher accomplished that feat. That established an MLB record. But the Giants weren’t done.

“The Kung Fu Panda,” otherwise known as Pablo Sandoval, stepped up in the bottom of the fifth and recorded an even more remarkable achievement. The corner infielder caused a relative 43,000-plus freak-out at AT&T with a 435-foot shot to center for his third home run.

At first, the Twitterverse and world of social media exploded with praiseworthy shouts that Pablo had become the fourth batter to hit three home runs in a World Series game. He had indeed joined Albert Pujols, Reggie Jackson and Babe Ruth in a truly exclusive club that harbored only some of the best to have ever played the game.

On further historical inspection, however, the masses learned that Sandoval became the first hitter in the history of Major League Baseball to blast three homers in his first three World Series at-bats. Let that sink in as well.

Grandiose verbiage aside, the San Francisco Giants took Game 1 of the 2012 Fall Classic. They conquered the best of what the Detroit Tigers had to offer. The visiting team mustered two of its three runs off a Jhonny Peralta home run with one out in the top of the ninth. The game, though, was already out of reach for the usual offensive juggernaut.

But even as aberrant for the Tigers or magical for the Giants as this game was, it was indeed just a game. Detroit could easily gain the upper hand with a dominant Doug Fister on the mound and a shaky Madison Bumgarner for San Francisco in Game 2.

Recent history dictates that the winner of Game 1 has taken eight out of the past nine series. Tigers’ veteran manager Jim Leyland didn’t sweat at the statistic, though.

“I’m one that’s been around long enough to know that a lot of things happen in this game,” said Leyland.

Indeed. By game’s end tomorrow night, the 2012 World Series could very well be rendered anew with a Tigers’ victory.

Until then.