Happy flight!*

This year, I'm all like:

This time last year, I was all like:

The San Francisco Giants — my Giants — are tearing up the season already, tearing covers off baseballs, tearing up the National League West champs the Los Angeles Dodgers.

They are already leading the league in home runs. (!) Even with two World Series rings in the last four years, the Giants have not been known for power.

It's early yet. Yet, my parade: Do not rain.

Last year this time the Dodgers were giving the Giants of taste of how the season would end. Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw threw a shutout AND hit the game-winning homer.

I was trying not to sweat it this time last year, but I kept a weather eye out for trouble.

Now — no ill will meant — Kershaw is hurt and may be out as many as two months, and the Giants are ripping the ball.

No schadenfreude here. Not even a little. Not my style, nor my nature. OK, maybe a molecule … 

I got my mind right for the season, watching "Angels in the Outfield," the 1951 zeitgeist-y original with Paul Douglas and Janet Leigh, sweet and slightly schmaltzy, players in their blousy uniforms, the angels vivid and powerful in their help for the hapless Pittsburgh Pirates namely because we couldn't see them. The remake with Danny Glover and Joseph Gordon-Levitt and a lot of computer graphics ruined all that for me.

And I read one of my favorite poems, by Robert Francis:

Pitcher

His art is eccentricity, his aim
How not to hit the mark he seems to aim at,

His passion how to avoid the obvious,
His technique how to vary the avoidance.

The others throw to be comprehended. He
Throws to be a moment misunderstood.

Yet not too much. Not errant, arrant, wild,
But every seeming aberration willed.

Not to, yet still, still to communicate
Making the batter understand too late.

I will take it easy as a fan this year, enjoying the moment, taking nothing personally. Last year I nearly drowned in my own tears when the Giants finished in fourth.

I exaggerate for effect. It was really my own flop sweat.

Play. Ball!

Randomnesses

Our home contains no tweezers that I can find. Not that I need tweezers a lot, but when I do, I really do. A big sliver slid into the palm of my hand Saturday.

But our home does have, readily accessible in a bathroom drawer, a rattlesnake bite kit. It's the kind with the two rubber suction cups, molded with a vaguely snakeskin pattern, that draws out the venom and encases the cutting tools afterward. Poisonous serpents are so afraid of this fact they have never shown their pit-viperous faces around here.

•••

Twenty years ago, as many as 1 million Rwandans were slaughtered in three months, primarily Hutus killing minority Tutsis. A most horrible genocide for utterly inhuman reasons. Not that any reason can be made.

We could not be bothered over here, gripped (so to speak) as we were by an issue of vital national consequence: Whether a leather glove fit O.J. Simpson's hand. Remember?

•••

* "Happy flight" is a phrase attributed to Giants center fielder Angel Pagan, meaning the team's mood on the plan after a winning road trip.

Pagan holds high regard in our family, so high our children made him the angel atop our tree two Christmases ago.

Triple ka-thud!*

Don't let it get to me … don't let it get to me … don't let it get to me …

The Giants are bad.

Can't pitch! Even the ace of the staff, Matt Cain, makes me hyperventilate, wondering when the next third-inning shelling will rain down on him, and the batters will hit around. Starters walking batters, then immediately giving up runs on timely hits.

And don't get me started about Tim Lincecum and why he's not in the bullpen, where he did so well during the postseason last year.

Can't hit! If they looked over at the opponents' dugouts, they'd see players who can hit. Maybe they want to take notes.

Marco Scutaro, so consistent I'd be suspicious if I wasn't a Giants fan, is striking out. Looking! He never does that!

Too many times in which, with runners in scoring position, Giants needing runs, the opposing pitcher showing barely perceptible signs he's tired, and the next Giants hitter swings at the first pitch! for a week inning-ending grounder. Ohfergawdsakes!

Can't field! Can't field! Magicians of defense, almost all of 'em. Now they can't find their asses with both hands. Balls gettin' by 'em. Balls fallin' between 'em! Outfielders overthrowing the cutoff in vain attempts to make the big out, and giving up runs instead. Giving up runs with sloppy play.

Now players are hurt. Angel Pagan is out of the outfield with a hamstring pull. Pablo Sandoval is out — again! — with a foot injury. In each of the last two seasons, he sat out when surgeons had to remove the hamate bone from one hand and then the other. We didn't even know what a hamate bone was, but I'm sure doctors will now find one in his foot and remove it and thus the Panda from the lineup. Then the other shoe will fall the season after next.

The last of the Giants are just now getting over the flu. 

How did this happen? You bring back all but four of the players from last year, when you won the World Series, you should come out like champions. Instead, others are championing your defeat.

The St. Louis Cardinals, with the best record in baseball, were the latest to pound the Giants, as if taking revenge on San Francisco's wild come-from-behind National League championship last season. Cain nearly pitched a perfect game in his win — if we ignore the third inning (my preference), in which the Cardinals got seven runs on nine hits. The Giants took the last game in the series, showing the old spark, but looked utterly without hap in the first two.

Today San Francisco hosts the Toronto Blue Jays, who last month made the Giants look like cricket players trying to learn this strange American game. Maybe today the Giants will turn things around, maybe they won't.

That's baseball.

It's true: Good teams "scuffle" (baseball euphemism for suck) and lose games in great batches, then start winning again. Cellar dwellers pull out win streaks from who knows where, and make good teams scuffle.

And that's entertainment, and owners hope fans see it that way and continue to buy tickets and buy Fords®© and Mitsubishi™® air conditioning systems and Solar Co.®© sun panels to keep the lights on at AT&T park.

It's entertaining to watch speedy Gregor Blanco, filling in for the injured Pagan in the leadoff spot, swing at the very first pitch of the game for an out, instead of making the pitcher show what he's got, instead of bluffing a bunt and making the pitcher nervous he'll get on and steal second and then third. Really, it is! Entertaining! The result is that I storm out of the room in disgust (and listen to the game on the radio in my office instead), and that's entertaining to my family.

Small comfort comes knowing thousands of other fans share my frustration. Some share it harder than others. Calls flying into the radio talk shows call for the Giants buying the best pitcher available for a huge contract comprising just two starts, or until pitcher Ryan Vogelsong's broken hand heals. Others want wholesale lineup changes, with prospects from the Triple-A club. Some, as usual, want General Manager Brian Sabean fired. Someone always wants Sabean fired, no matter the record.

My own loony idea, which I won't proffer on a radio show, is to have the Giants forfeit a game. Go fishing, hang out at the beach, take a mental break that doesn't involve letting a fly ball skip under your glove. Of course, I'm not thinking it through, all the money the Giants would lose in ticket sales, broadcast shares, unprecedented fines from Major League Baseball, not to mention the irreparable damage to the team's reputation, dubbed quitters from that day on.

But they need to stop the world and get off somehow, order a do-over.

The worst part about the Giants losing are the Giants radio commercials, which of course celebrate the Giants winning so you will buy tickets to the game.

Featuring breathless play-by-play, they invoke the gum-swallowing miracle of Giants baseball.

"Posey (crack!) left-centerfield, hits it high!" Duane Kuiper will shout. "Hits it DEEP! It's OUTTA HERE! And we are GOING HOME!"

"Crawford coming around third, he'll score," announcer Dave Flemming builds steam. "And Pagan COMING AROUND THIRD, and FLANNERY'S GONNA SEND HIM! Here comes the relay! Pagan slides! HE'S SAFE! IT'S AN INSIDE-THE-PARK HOME RUN AND THE GIANTS WIN IT 6-5! MY GOODNESS!"

That hurts. These wonderful outcomes happened only a couple of weeks ago, but it feels longer. Like it never happened. Like it's myth.

KNBR, the Giants' flagship station, needs a special set of commercials to bring fans down easily. Something like, "The Giants need some runners here …" or "Plenty of baseball left …" Less pomp, more circumstance.

Times like these also make Mike Krukow a nuisance. He's the Giants' color commentator, a former Giants pitcher adored by listeners because he gives you a player's insights and tells wonderful stories all with a players patois.

When the Giants sour, though, it's a lot of ptooey.

Krukowisms begin to stale. For an opponent's strikeout: "Grab some pine, meat!" For just about any woman wearing Giants' paraphernalia in the stands: Gamer babe. For a Giant getting a third hit of game: "Have a night, (insert name here)!"

"Thank you very nice!" Krukow will say when a player gets a lucky bounce. "Atta babe," for anything good. Lately he overuses the phrase "count leverage," when a batter has a 2-1 or 3-1 count and can expect the next to be a good pitch to hit.

Those don't torment me so much as when he presents the teams' defense (always to the backdrop of what sounds like a '70s porn movie, for some reason) at the start of the game, and he just HAS to say that the catcher is "in the SKWaaaHHHT, putting down the signs." He doesn't say, "And catching is Buster Posey," or "Buster Posey is behind the plate." No, he's always "in the SKWaaaaHHHT." I hate that, and even more when the Giants are losing.

Also, he promotes Coors Light®©, which he always describes as "the world's most refrrrrrrrr(rolling his r's here)rrrrreshing … beeyear." Aaauuuugh! Nails on the aural chalkboard.

No better tonic than a Giants win — or two, or three — to help me tolerate the Krukowisms.

I know I said I didn't care if the Giants didn't win the World Series again, because they'd won two in the last three years. But I didn't realize how hard it would be watch them play like mortals.

I'll get over it. Next win.

Atta babe.

*Yet another Krukowism, for any botched play.

Tell it goodbye!?

With 10 games left in the season, the San Francisco Giants won the National League West Division and a chance to win the World Series.

Of course, I fear the worst.

The Giants won convincingly, and even though they lost six of the final 10 games (including the season-ending series with the Los Angeles Dodgers) their lone win against the Dodgers was enough to ensure their Southland rivals would not go to the playoffs. As broadcaster and former Giants pitcher Mike Krukow would say, Grab some pine, Meat!

Their catcher, Buster Posey, is electric, having won the batting title and in line to win the league most valuable player award — all a year after getting his lower leg shattered in a collision at home plate.

Their mid-season acquisition, Marco Scutaro, is simply amazing, but most confident hitter I've ever seen. He has swung and missed a pitch only 10 times since joining the Giants. Think of that. Unreal.

The pitchers are, if not on their best, enough to inspire hope. The relief pitchers are many and strong, having carried so many, many games.

Everything is ready as the Giants face the Cincinnati Reds Saturday in the first round of playoffs.

Of course, I'm worried.

This is not the same team as the one that won the World Series two years ago. By most accounts, this team is better.

But the 2010 team was an improbable interloper in post-season play, the one many in the national media dismissed as unworthy to  show up.

The Giants secured post-season play on the last day of the regular season then, needing to beat the San Diego Padres to get in.

Momentum carried them into the playoffs, and magic ensued. The factors that determine a baseball team's success — power from the unlikeliest hitters, crazy streaks from the easy-out batters, and unbelievably stupid mistakes by the opponent — all fell the Giants' way.

The season in capsule form …

The same thing must happen for the Giants, or whoever wins it all this year.

This year's team worked through its own adversities, steadily, patiently, and won just when they wanted to. So I worry they'll go into the playoffs a bit soft, a tad entitled … kinda like President Obama in the last debate. I'm afraid the Giants might be measuring for World Series rings already, and that would be the end of it.

I hope the Giants show up hungry.

The hungriest team is across the Bay, the Oakland A's, who did the 2010 Giants one better in their playoff quest. The A's finished the season with six straight wins, sweeping their division rivals The Texas Rangers, and spraying their locker room and each other with champagne twice in three days — once when they secured at least a wild-card place in the playoffs (wild-card teams play each other for one game to decide who continues to the division series) and the second time when they took first place from the Rangers and consigned Texas to the wild card.

They did it with the lowest payroll in Major League Baseball, despite injuries that should have put the team down, and with a bunch of rookie pitchers who didn't know they weren't supposed to win the West.

I watched exactly one inning of A's baseball this year — the last inning of the regular season, when the A's battered the Rangers 12-5. I hate the A's, and have since I began following the Giants at the same time the A's and their gaudy green and yellow uniforms and handlebar mustaches won three straight World Series, 1972-74.

Were it not for my wife pointing out the A's improbable progress (with the loss of three key players to injury — one pitcher took a line drive to his head, fracturing his skull — one pitcher to substance abuse, and crushing failures), I wouldn't have watched even that one inning.

Tuning in was like peeking in on an alternate universe. A roaring, standing capacity crowd seemed to bend the decks to bursting, wearing their neon yellow and green (instead of Giants black and orange). Fans waved their posters boasting inside jokes (Giants fans point out they're Gamer Babes, or exhort Posey for president, or wear fuzzy halos for Angel Pagan or giraffe caps for Brandon Belt or panda caps for Pablo Sandoval).

The A's do the Bernie Lean, after a rap song (after the cult comedy "Weekend at Bernies," in which friend must make a dead guy appear to be alive) which is played when Coco Crisp (great name!) steps to the plate. It was teammate Brandon Inge's song, but Crisp took up the mantle when Inge was injured, and the fans went nuts.

The A's closer is an Aussie named Grant Balfour. Fans go into a wild "rage fest" dance as he comes in for the last inning. He throws hard, stares down batters and occasionally yells at them during an at-bat. He's the equivalent of the Giants' Brian Wilson, but with an extra edge, a real rage.

The Giants have a tough battle to the World Series, not having done well against the National League Central leader Reds (won three, lost four) and worse against the National League East winner Washington Nationals (won one, lost five).

The least of the Giants hitters have to get hot. Opponents have to screw up at the right time. It's always the way.

Even if the Giants win the National League, I most fear the A's, who carry that rage into the American League playoffs.

Eh. It's only entertainment. It's only entertainment … it's only entertainment …

(Which reminds me suddenly, the annoying downside of having your favorite team in the post season is not being able to watch the game with your favorite broadcasters. Now we get a steady, stultifying diet of Joe Buck and Tim McCarver, and it's disorienting to listen to the radio broadcast because it's as many as 10 seconds ahead of the TV coverage. It's only entertainment …)