The clouds were heavy and the wind strong, foretelling a storm that slowly approached from the Pacific, when Matt Cain walked to the mound for his 317th regular-season start Wednesday night. Nobody needed a literature degree from Oxford to extract a metaphor there.
With Ty Blach in the dugout, Tyler Beede seemingly ready in the minors and a near-term schedule that makes the fifth spot in the rotation less necessary, it did not take a lot of mental gymnastics to envision this being Cain's final walk to the mound to start a game after 13 seasons in San Francisco.