How do you best qualify a four-game sweep of the most important series in American sports?

Pitching, defense and ignoring the majority of pundit prognostications. The Detroit Tigers may want to cover their ears.

For the second time in three years, the San Francisco Giants took home the World Series title, once again overcoming the underdog mentality. When two years ago required overcoming a 56-year drought, the 2012 championship team overcame consecutive deficits that nearly trumped the half-century fallout.

The Giants won an incredible six-consecutive elimination games through the first two rounds of the playoffs to reach the Fall Classic. And once they arrived, it was as riveting a ride as the path that took them there in the first place.

Matt Cain witnessed his baseball livelihood flash before his eyes via hanging curveballs, permeable atmospheres and fortuitous trajectories to left field against the mashing Tigers. Fortunately, the Giants’ ace cruised unscathed through the first two innings, pitching with the benefit of a 1-0 lead via a Brandon Belt RBI-triple.

Then with two outs and a 1-1 count in the bottom of the third, AL Triple Crown winner Miguel Cabrera tapped into his MLB-best opposite-field power and launched one to right. The ball carried without obstruction through the heavy night air into the right-field porch. Without warning, the Tigers enjoyed their first lead of the series. And the Giants experienced the end of their 56-inning scoreless streak without trailing an opponent.

Well, just until the top of the sixth. Tapping into his as of yet unrealized MVP talent in the World Series, NL batting champ Buster Posey put on a clinic on how to best hit a facebook. He timed up Detroit’s starter Max Scherzer’s lethal off-speed offering into the left field stands for a two-run, go-ahead shot.

The 3-2 lead was entirely short-lived, as Delmon Young did his best Cabrera impersonation with a soaring home run to right field, tying the score at 3-all.

But timely hitting was as much a prevailing force in the Giant’s championship run as the shutdown pitching that preceded it. Jeremy Affeldt struck out four-consecutive batters through the eighth and ninth innings, avoiding a career stigma by a mere two feet when Angel Pagan tracked down Peralta’s drive to deep left-center.

NLCS MVP Marco Scutaro reciprocated in equally critical fashion with a base hit up the middle to drive in Ryan Theriot. The invaluable second baseman cemented his legacy as a Giants’ postseason hero and likely earned a multi-year contract in the process.

The Giants and Marco Scutaro, though, were none too interested in any such monetary accolades. They preferred watching their closer Sergio Romo—the Latino second-coming of 2010 World Series closer Brian Wilson—become the second pitcher to clinch the series by striking out the side in the final inning.

With all due respect to enlightening fun-facts pertaining to the Fall Classic, the San Francisco Giants thrived off a formula that was distinct from factual data. They operated off a deep-seated camaraderie and steadfast disbelief in the impossible to capture what experts deemed beyond the capability of the team. It involved a mentality that qualified themselves as part of the general pack, but with all the right components to separate themselves from the rest when it mattered most.

Pitching, fielding and timely hitting help win championships—there isn’t any denying that. But the Giants have an unquantifiable essence that evades the parameters of normal description. It’s one that helped fuel the 2010 run, as well as the historic 2012 winning campaign.

Yet, one merely needs to chalk it up to Kung Fu Pandas, Cy Young starters-turned-relievers and Romo bombs. Throw in that guy named Scutaro with unreal displays at the plate and you might have the beginning of an equation to a World Series championship.

For the 2012 Giants, that equation has already been solved.