WASHINGTON – Two minutes past midnight, almost 6½ hours after it started, half the fans gone, the rest vacillating between hypothermia and hopelessness, the longest baseball game in playoff history ended. It reduced 18 innings of baseball to one intangible: not who wanted it, say, because both the San Francisco Giants and Washington Nationals desperately did, but who would survive the game's vagaries and steal it away. Thievery, in this instance, was a virtue, not a crime.

It was the perfect time for the Nationals to once and for all bury the referendum on their manhood. San Francisco starter Tim Hudson three days earlier talked about how the Giants' greatest attribute was found between their legs, the implication being the Nationals lacked in testicular fortitude what they brought in talent. This played poorly in a Nationals clubhouse, certainly because it was a slight and just as much out of concern the seed of truth Hudson exposed might germinate if bathed in enough playoff light. For all of the great performances Saturday, all of those that proved Hudson's thesis unfair to apply writ large to Washington, the final score showed a harsh reality.

The Giants had a pair and the Nationals didn't.

After 285 pitches, 34 strikeouts, 18 hits and 6 hours, 23 minutes, an epic relief-pitching performance, one blown save and a massive home run that cut through the frigid air and proved the difference, the Giants filched a 2-1 victory over Washington and take back to San Francisco a 2-0 series lead with ace Madison Bumgarner looking to knock off the best regular-season team in the National League. With Game 2 of the division series sandwiching two full contests into one, the Giants managed to score both runs in the ostensible tops of the ninth. The first came after Drew Storen blew another postseason save following a questionable decision to pull brilliant starter Jordan Zimmermann with one out remaining. Brandon Belt plated the latter with an 18th-inning home run that soared more than 400 feet at Nationals Park and deflated however many of the announced 44,035 remained.

View photos Jordan Zimmermann allowed just three hits over 8 2/3 innings before he was pulled. (USA Today) More

From the ninth through 17th innings, Nationals came to the plate 30 times, each at-bat capable of ending the game. Over that juncture, they managed two hits and three walks. Never did a player advance past second base, Giants reliever Yusmeiro Petit in particular handcuffing them with six innings of one-hit ball. The flaccidity extended to the Giants, too, thanks especially to a big-time relief appearance by Craig Stammen, until Belt took a full-count, 94-mph fastball from Tanner Roark into the right-field stands. Rookie Hunter Strickland worked around a two-out walk to notch his second major league save in a game that extended the Giants' postseason winning streak to 10 and left the Nationals' palates awash with bitterness.

"Nine innings of postseason baseball drain you enough," Giants catcher Buster Posey said. "Doubling that is pretty tough."

Far tougher for the Nationals, who find themselves one game away from another ignominious division series bow-out. The first came in 2012, when Storen coughed up four ninth-inning runs in a Game 5 loss to St. Louis. Compared to that 33-pitch cringefest, Saturday's collapse was short and sour, one run on two hits that spanned three pitches.

Story continues