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Jeffrey Leonard became the first player on a losing team to capture the NLCS MVP honor, but the Giants fell in seven games to the Cardinals.

After an amazing 1986 season, in which manager Roger Craig transformed the Giants from a 100-loss club into the "Humm Baby" crew with an 83-79 record, good things were expected in 1987.

But after leading or being near the top of the division for the first two months of the season, the Giants began to slide. When they fell a season-high 5 1/2 games behind division leader Cincinnati on the Fourth of July, general manager Al Rosen decided to shake things up and engineered a blockbuster trade, acquiring Kevin Mitchell, Dave Dravecky and Craig Lefferts from the Padres.

Two more trades in the next few weeks added pitchers Rick Reuschel and Don Robinson, and San Francisco regained the division lead for good in mid-August. They would win the West by six games with a 90-72 record and head into the National League Championship Series to face the St. Louis Cardinals.

In late July, the Giants had swept the Cardinals in a four-game series, so hopes were high as the teams opened play in St. Louis. But Cardinals pitcher Greg Mathews allowed only four hits and struck out seven in 7 1/3 innings while driving in two runs to lead his club to a 5-3 victory in Game 1.

Game 2 saw Giants slugger Jeffrey Leonard crack his second homer in as many games as part of a 3-for-4 day. Will Clark added a home run of his own, and Dravecky pitched a sparkling two-hit shutout to even the series at a game apiece.

When the series shifted to San Francisco for Game 3, the Giants jumped out to an early 4-0 lead. But the Cards battled back with a two-run Jim Lindeman homer in the sixth off starter Atlee Hammaker, and an inning later, they scored four more off Hammaker and reliever Robinson. San Francisco got within one by adding a run in the bottom of the ninth, but St. Louis held on to capture a 2-1 series lead.

The next two games, both at Candlestick Park, put the Giants on the verge of their first World Series berth in 25 years. Three home runs -- including Leonard's fourth consecutive game with a dinger, an LCS record -- and Mike Krukow's complete-game two-hitter gave the Giants a 4-2 victory in Game 4. In Game 5, Leonard didn't homer but Mitchell did, and Joe Price pitched five innings of one-hit ball in relief of Reuschel to collect the 6-3 win.

But a four-run fourth inning in Game 5 would be the last time the Giants would score in the series. Despite another spectacular pitching performance from Dravecky, who struck out eight while allowing only five hits and a single Cardinals run in six innings, the Giants fell in Game 6, 1-0.

They were blanked again in Game 7 (setting a dubious NLCS record with 22 straight innings of scoreless baseball). The Cards' Danny Cox pitched a complete game, and losing pitcher Hammaker gave up four in the second inning. The Giants emptied the bullpen, using six more pitchers in the game, but without any offense, the cause was hopeless. The Cardinals clinched the pennant with a 6-0 drubbing of the Giants at Busch Stadium.

Leonard, whose "one-flap-down" home trot was the story of the series, received the unusual, but somewhat hollow, honor of being named MVP in the losing cause. The Cardinals would later fall to the Twins in the 1987 World Series in seven games.