¡Adiós pelota!

The Giants are dead. Long live the Giants.

Yeah, I don't know what that means either. Maybe an Elizabethan form of "Wait 'til next year!"

With the Giants these days, I don't know what anything means.

Except that they're dead. Of that I'm certain. I'll call time of death 9:43 a.m., July 30, 2013, in Philadelphia, city of brotherly love.

They died long before, of course. I'm just being charitable. What fans see now are the undead, going through the motions, pantomiming hitting the ball and fielding grounders and running bases with regard for rules.

The wake will commence tonight and continue through Sept. 29, the last game in the regular season. Undead but twitching, the Giants will put on as good a show as they can muster until that time.

They are a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a wasted scoring opportunity.

Most mysterious is how the 2012 World Series winners (the very same team, save for some parts and pieces) could be so horrible this year.

It's greedy of us fans to want three World Series titles in four years. But it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect the Giants to rattle contenders, to hum along in second or third place, raising hopes of a dynasty.

No chance of that. After many many days of Manager Bruce Bochy telling reporters "These guys are really trying hard," and sports commentators saying, "Maybe now they've reached rock bottom," the Giants have in fact reached rock bottom. They've become the lowly Chicago Cubs.

Worse, they are lower than the lowly Cubs, who swept the Giants in San Francisco over the weekend.

This time it wasn't the pitching. Matt Cain (the workhorse!) threw 115 pitches deep into the game Friday, good enough for the win. Then a ball skipped through the usually sure-handed first baseman Brandon Belt in the ninth. The Cubs won 3-2.

Madison Bumgarner pitched eight shutout innings Saturday! Cubs still won 1-0, on a ninth-inning homer by former Giants Nate Schierholtz.

Tim Lincecum struck out 10 Sunday, 30th 10-strikeout game in his career! And got the Giants' best hit! Cubs won, of course, 2-1. Was it this year Lincecum threw a no-hitter? Good God.

But pitching had faltered before. Also, players got injured; center fielder Angel Pagan is gone for the season, having hurt himself May 25 in the Giants' last truly great moment this year, scrambling for a game-winning inside-the-park home run.

Then hitting failed, then once-solid fielding. Then all these together, for game after harrowing game.

Twice in the last three days, Giants loaded the bases with no outs — and couldn't score. Saturday, after loading the bases with no out in the eighth and failing to score, the Giants loaded the bases again in the ninth with one out — and Tony Abreu grounded into a game-ending home-to-first double play.

None of the Giants' hitters, including the powerful Buster Posey, Pablo Sandoval and Hunter Pence, could hit the ball out of infield. Most Valuable Player Posey hasn't hit in the last six games.

Hunter Pence, trying hardest of all — accounts are widespread of his prodigious pre- and post-game workouts, his paleo diet, his quirky intensity — still has popped up on the first pitch to blow one scoring opportunity against a tired pitcher, then swung at three pitches in the next county to blow another opportunity.

Like commentator and former Giants second baseman Duane Kuiper said, the right guys were up at the right time all weekend and couldn't get anything done.

What's going on? Even the players don't know. More in sorrow than in anger, everyone has a theory.

A San Francisco Examiner writer calls it the curse of The Dawg, when a longtime Giants fan, so nicknamed, was told he could no longer roost along the outfield fence after he interfered with a fly ball that an Atlanta Braves fielder might have caught.

Feelings hurt, The Dawg left and didn't come back and the Giants fell out of first place.

Well, The Dawg finally returned to AT&T Park over the weekend, but he did the Giants no good.

Within the spectrum of possibilities, I'll even accept that the Giants are throwing games for some reason, or that nefarious forces are threatening their families if they win. My guess is as good as yours.

My guess is that if the Giants can somehow play for love of the game, rather than for countless unrealistic expectations, they'll improve. 

Of course, fans are angry. Talk shows tingle with recriminations and simultaneous demands and denunciations of trades. The trade deadline is today; we'll see. I hate baseball as business.

To the old saws of firing Bochy and General Manager Brian Sabean, fans have added calls for bringing in the fences at the Giants' ballpark, because so many of the Giants' long fly balls would have been home runs in just about any other ballpark.

Maintenance crews could have pulled the fences in front of second base and still not helped the Giants this weekend.

The only good news in all this: Such a shockingly impotent performance only elevates the brilliant pitching, hitting and lattice of lucky breaks that enabled the Giants to win the National League in two do-or-die series last year, then sweep the Detroit Tigers in the World Series.

How rare and precious such feats!

As long as fans continue to clad themselves in the gear of their heroes and put their butts in seats, even this malaise is profitable, entertainment so bad it's good.

Thousands of other fans commiserate, some faring better than others. Multiply that by the thousands of fans of at least 20 other miserable teams, and a strange kind of comfort blankets the continent.

While the Giants floundered Sunday, my mother-in-law asked if was praying for them. God has better things to do, I said.

Besides, I understand zombies are popular these days.

Be careful what I wish for

Don't say I didn't warn me:

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.

— Shawn C Turner, June 4, 2013

Still true.  But even I couldn't imagine, a month later, how horribly true.

Here's how bad the Giants are: When the July 4 game in Cincinnati was rained out, Giants and their fans were happy.

That's right. The 2012 World Series champions now look poised to lose any game. Maybe poised isn't the word.

Though thousands of little crying kids were deprived of the most American of spectacles — baseball on the Fourth of July in Middle America on the banks of the Ohio River, with baseball's first professional ballclub, a century of rivalry, $14 hot dog in one hand, $4 glove in the other — Giants fans were ecstatic.

Imagine that.

Just hours ago — this morning, in fact — the Giants lost to the New York Mets 4-3 in 16 innings. Except for its length, the game was a tableau of Giants woes stretching back to the last time the Giants showed their championship mettle …

(Cue flashback sequence …)

That was May 26, when Angel Pagan won the game on a walk-off, inside-the-park homerun.

The crowd went, you know, wild.

Then Pagan went lame, injuring his hamstring so badly in that play he needed surgery and will be out for the season, depriving the team of his leadoff strength and rangy centerfield.

Except.

His centerfield play wasn't all that spectacular before he got hurt. At times he played as if he was on the visiting team, unaware of the quirks of AT&T Park's jagged outfield walls. He was prone to diving for fly balls that squirted past him, and overthrowing the cutoff man to try for the big putout, giving up runs instead when the ball rolled away.

Replacement outfielders inherited these horrid habits, as last night's game attests.

In quick time injuries plagued Giants starters, keeping one, then another, then several out for weeks. Though defense tightened up for a while, ineptitude bubbled up again and the Giants resumed making plays champions wouldn't make, much less professional players who train every day to account for every possibility on the field of play.
(An aside: I cannot possibly imagine what it's like to fail in front of 41,644 people  counting on you not to fail. I solemnly acknowledge I'm taking for granted how difficult it is to do what these players do. Not that I think they should be paid so highly for it, but that's another post for another day …)

It was as if Pagan's departure cast a spell — a curse! — on the Giants …

This morning's 16-inning game showcased the most curious of the Giants' problems: Somehow, almost all of the Giants hitters have gone cold.

Not just one or two hitters … almost all the hitters have gone into a slump. The exception is catcher Buster Posey, who got five hits in eight trips to the plate, including a two-run homer in the first inning. But the Giants didn't score again until the seventh, and couldn't push a run across the plate for nine more innings.

First baseman Brandon Belt, dubbed the Baby Giraffe for his limber galumph, went 0 for 8 with five strikeouts.

(I've been scrambling to compile the stats that would lay out in grand panoply just how bad the Giants have been, but that's really all that need be said: Posey keeps on hitting, but everyone else is woeful.)

Pitching is not as bad. The late-inning loss masked Tim Lincecum's surprisingly strong performance as he kept the team in the game; fans and analysts have been wondering for a couple of seasons what happened to Lincecum's ever-slowing fastball, and whether his small frame and wildly gymnastic pitching motion have worn him down.

But too many times the Giants' starters have been surprisingly bad, pitching impressively in the first inning, but then doing everything but announcing their pitches to the batters by megaphone in the succeeding innings.

Though I'm not experienced enough to remember another championship team that suddenly went so wholesale cold, I doubt there are many.

A guy I work with sometimes, who slips me Giants' scores when I can't be near a radio to get updates, told me he's no longer following the Giants because they didn't make the crucial changes before the season to strengthen the team.

Wait a minute: The Giants have kept almost all of the players from the World Series team. Sounds like a good plan to me, as it did to the general manager and the fans. Who expected almost the entire team to go bad at once?

Even the managers and coaches fell down, accidentally batting Posey out of order against the Los Angeles Dodgers Sunday. His run-scoring double was negated, the batter for whom he was wrongly batting was called out, and Posey then batted next in his proper order — to hit a grounder for the final out instead. No score.

The Giants' announcers have fallen into an annoying habit of wishful broadcasting. With the Giants down four runs in a late game, for example, a Giants batter would get hit by a pitch.

"And the rally started with a fastball to the ribcage …" announcer Mike Krukow would say.

I feel their pain. They're trying to keep an even but upbeat tone. They want to broadcast wins. For now, fans still fill the beautiful ballpark, entertained by their loveable losers. They're just waiting for the Giants to do whatever it is to realize their talent and play like it.

So are we all.

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.

Whew!

The Giants, or a dim facsimile, stay alive in the National League Division Series.

They beat the Cincinnati Reds 2-1 in extra innings Tuesday, and will play Game 4 today, the Reds leading the series 2-1.

It was do or die, and the Giants did and didn't.

(Likewise for the Oakland A's, down two games, beating the Detroit Tigers Tuesday.)

I'm forming the theory that police are searching for the real Giants, tethered and drugged in some self-search storage closet in Teaneck, New Jersey (I watch too many iterations of Law & Order). It's the only explanation, because these are not the Giants we have watched all season.

Maybe Benson and Stabler (yeah, another Law & Order reference) will soon find the kidnappers' hellhole and release the Giants. We'll know tomorrow, if the Giants start hitting and pitching and playing scary rather than scared.

Even this was not so much a Giants win as a Reds loss. The Giants struck out 10 times to starter Homer Bailey, who had thrown a no-hitter in the late weeks of the regular season. That tells you how well the Giants, one of the best hitting teams during the season, did this game and this series.

The Reds hit a bit better, not much. They made mistakes, the most glaring of which came in the top of the 10th with a passed ball that moved the Giants' two slowest runners (catcher Buster Posey and a hobbled right fielder Hunter Pence) to second and third, and a bobbled infield grounder that allowed Posey to give the Giants the lead.

Whew! Another win. One more day to ask: Why do TBS and Fox baseball broadcasts ramp up the volume every time a pitch reaches home plate? Does anyone else find that excruciatingly annoying? It's some attempt to amplify the sound of the bat on the ball, to make the game more "exciting!" but it sounds like a jet flyover with each pitch.

I miss the Giants' broadcasters on TV … even when color commentator and former Giants pitcher Mike Krukow says, every time, that the catcher is in "the SQUAA-AAT, putting down the signs." Even when he does that.

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 …)

What the what?

OK, I peeked.

In a moment of weakness and a paucity of interesting TV, I checked in on the Major Leauge All Star game Tuesday — the one I said I never cared for and wouldn't watch.

Bottom of the first, National League 5, American League quickly out and scoreless.

What the heck happened?

Then, like finally seeing clearly into the living room darkness on Christmas morning, I learn that Pablo "Panda" Sandoval, the Giants' third baseman, had hit a bases-loaded triple to right field, 10 feet short of a grand slam (how is that the first bases-loaded triple in more than 80 years of All Star games?) to contribute the lion's share of the five-run inning. He scored on a single.

Melky Cabrera, the Giants' left fielder, had singled in that first inning bombardment, and then hit a two-run homer in the fourth inning to bring the National League tally to eight runs. He won the game's Most Valuable Player Award: a crystal bat (huh?) and a new Camaro.

Whichever National League team wins its championship also gets home-field advantage in the World Series, the only real stakes (besides league pride) in the game. The American League gets nothing. We fans get nothing. OK, memories, conversation. The game otherwise doesn't count. The regular season resumes Friday, teams nursing their wounds or stoking their boilers, depending, racing/limping to the season finish.

Today, another dark day without baseball, is the day to think about starting pitcher Matt Cain's getting the All Star game win with two shutout opening innings, allowing one hit; catcher Buster Posey's first inning walk to contribute to the scoring (and spending the rest of the game in the bullpen helping warm up each of the All Star pitchers); to consider that at the start of the game, four of the nine National League players were Giants. Today is time to wonder what it might mean for the Giants the rest of the season.

Maybe momentum, maybe nothing. Tomorrow, against the Houston Astros, will tell. Saturday, when the wonder-inducing wunderkind Tim Lincecum makes his next start on the mound, will really tell.

By the way, you probably missed out on buying the official bat to commemorate Matt Cain's perfect game June 13. For $99.95 plus shipping, you could have bought it, but the 2,012 bats have already been sold. It's not clear to me why a bat would memorialize a perfect game, the essence of which is the absence of bats.

You can still buy the commemorative ball in its dust-collecting case for $89.95, just 2,012 made. Hurry, operators are standing by!

Above the blue and windy sea

Time was — when our first was born — that people could predict my moods by the outcome of each San Francisco Giants game. Wins made me accessible and cooperative and accommodating; losses turned me into a hermit.

(Last night's embarrassing 9-1 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers, for example, would have meant a bad today for everyone.)

I was ardent. We almost named our son after Will Clark, the hootin' and hollerin' Giants hitting sensation and first baseman at the time, but we employed rare restraint at the last.

Time was that I spent a couple of cold October evenings fixing the water lines to our house (well, "fixing" sounds a lot cleaner and more definitive than what I was doing), and watching baseball playoffs through the living room window, which I had cleaned in the one spot that gave me a clear shot to the TV.

I've tempered my baseball behavior since. In fact, I'm not a baseball fan anymore; I'm a San Francisco Giants fan. The only other baseball I follow is the Giants' current opponent (the Dodgers this day). After the two teams part, I all but forget the other guys. Other sports hold no interest for me.

I try — try, mind you — to see baseball for what it really is: Enjoyable but meaningless entertainment.

Wins bring pleasure, but so — I've come to discover — do losses. It's the pleasure a good book brings as its drama unfolds. The games are daily serials. My heart races, my face reddens; I hoot at a good play and curse at a bobble. The game ends, I listen to the the radio analysis for a while, then it's over. On to life.

At its height — when the Giants won the 2010 World Series — I shared the elation with, what, maybe 2 million fans who follow the team from game to game? I didn't buy the commemorative sweatshirts or license plate frames or bobbleheads or any such thing, but I was happy to have watched with others as the improbable season unfolded, and wistful when it ended. And life went on.

The Giants this year are a torturous lot — "Giants baseball: Torture!" had been a catchphrase the last two seasons and it's an evergreen — so I now share the angst and wary hope of those 2 million other fans. Just a month into the six-month season, and the Giants have lost their closer, the weird-bearded marketing genius Brian Wilson, for the season because of a bum elbow, and are not sure when or whether they'll ever get their clutch hitting second baseman, Freddie Sanchez, who has been out since the middle of last season with a shoulder injury.

The deceptively powerful third baseman, Pablo "Kung Fu Panda" Sandoval, went down last week for six weeks to repair a broken bone in his left hand — the same bone that broke in his right hand this time last year. Their catcher, Rookie-of-theYear Buster Posey who missed more than half of last season when a home-plate collision crushed his ankle, is back and doing sorta kinda OK. Their aging first baseman Aubrey Huff fled the team in a panic attack, and is back now, tenatively. And this week their effective middle reliever Guillermo Mota got kicked out for 100 games allegedly for taking performance-enhancing drugs.

This list of woe is incomplete.

Even among the healthy, the roster evokes grievous tension. Ace pitcher and two-time Cy Young Award winner Tim Lincecum, who embodies "must-see TV" because of Koufaxian bow he makes of his body to throw the ball, is like a thoroughbred who must have perfect conditions and mindset in order to succeed. Veteran Cy Young winner Barry Zito, whom I admire for his work ethic and his service to wounded military veterans, comes to the mound as a different pitcher each time, bedeviling hitters with his magic-trick curveball one game, walking a conga line the next. Fans regularly rag him for the multi-million dollar salary they say he doesn't deserve.

I'm leaving out the good stuff, like usually dependable starters Matt "Hardluck" Cain (so many times the Giants have failed to give him the runs he needs during his mostly masterful performances) and youngster Madison Bumgarner. Shortstop Brandon Crawford is acrobatic in the field, though a victim of the youngster yips. Trade acquisition Melky Cabrera wows the crowd with his bat and with a frighteningly accurate arm from the outfield; speedy Angel Pagan was on a 20-game hitting streak (snapped, sadly) as of last night. Rookie Gregor Blanco brings speed, and the infield usually comprises first- or second-year players these days.

The result is hit-and-miss, with more errors than the Giants usually commit. Not much different than most teams. The season, as we tell ourselves, is early yet. Plenty of games left.

The "pleasure" in all this is watching to see if the Giants can finagle small miracles en route to the playoffs — or succumb to more than a century of statistical likelihood and common sense, finishing a respectable third or stinky fourth place.

Win or lose, the Giants will have entertained me. That's my game plan.

It helps that the Giants have the league's best storytellers (Vin Scully is the best alone, but the Giants broadcasters have him outnumbered.) On the radio, it's butter-voiced Hall of Famer Jon Miller and the Boy Wonder, Dave Flemming. On TV, most of the time, it's Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper, two former Giants (the former a one-time 20-game winner and All-Star) whose greatest value to the team is being former Giants who talk fan-to-fan with Giants viewers.

Some of summer's best moments are catching the Giants on the radio. Baseball games weave their tendrils into daily life, slyly. Just when you're lost to the drone of the day, the sudden barking narration of a double in the gap returns you to the game in progress. More than one long family drive was made shorter by extra-inning games of heartstop and heartbreak and derring and stupidity until, suddenly, resolution.

The best part of a Giants home win is the tradition of playing Tony Bennett's "I Left My Heart in San Francisco," over the public address system as fans file out. Radio listeners can hear the ending crescendo echo through the stadium as the broadcasters return from commercial for  for the post-game recap:

"Above the blue and windy seeeaaaaa …
When I come home to you, San Francisco,
Your golden sun will shine for me."

One-hundred thirty-four games left.

The road less traveled

Kids! Take it from me, Shawn Turner — backpacking can only lead you
down the road to ruin! (These and many more wonderful photos by
Liam Lewis Turner.)

A week of rare things is now a wonderful memory: the most miles and nights I've backpacked in one trip, and time alone with my son in his brief escape from college town. Sore hips and knees gingerly remind me of the fun we had on the Skyline-to-the-Sea trail, 30-some miles from a ridge above Saratoga at Skyline Boulevard,  to wind-tattered Waddell Beach north of Santa Cruz.

After pestering my son for months to take the route in reverse (I'm far better climbing and almost useless descending), I shut up about it after the first day, which somehow comprised just enough rising slopes to make me wonder whether we'd ever reach sea level. Bizarro days ensued, entailing more climbs, seemingly, than descents. But oy, the descents, when they appeared!

Day One was the mystery, not only in finding where to start the trail, but where to pay. We ended up driving the 24 miles round trip into the heart of Big Basin Redwoods State Park, our Day Two stop. Later that day, the know-it-all park ranger checking our credentials told us how we could have saved ourselves the trip: We had driven within a quarter-mile of the kiosk to Castle Rock State Park near the trailhead, without seeing it. Oh well. We drove all the way back up to the start, said goodbye to my wife, who camped with us the night before, and dropped slowly out of wind and drizzly fog to the first camp.

Tranquil Silver Falls distract from the
knee-jerking descent.

Day Two was the Slog that Never Was. True, we trekked the farthest at 10+ miles, but we inadvertently pushed it too hard and arrived in Big Basin before lunch, as we did each day. The trouble with backpacking, we remembered, is rarely having something to do once you reach camp; the journey is the point, not always the destination. Luckily, the destination this time included a store, where we gorged on ice cream bars and a bag of Fritos to supplement our meager cup-a-soup meals.

Day Three, into the redwood rainforest, was the Day of the Banana Slug, when we encountered most of the dozens we spotted.

Our planned detour from the main trail did not plan for this!
Serendipity! One of my favorite words and concepts.

Our stop that night was Sunset Trail Camp, described in one pamphlet as the Sunset Magazine Camp; instead of the split-level four bedroom experimental house strewn with ferns, and Aryan kids strewn in the sandbox made of railroad ties near perfect parents dining on cucumber-and-pistachio salads with pomegranate iced tea, we found 10 remote bare spots deemed campsites. There it rained just as soon as we arrived. After soaking and stewing, we decided it best to stake out a shelter and nap through the storm.

Day Four was Day of the Newt (or Salamander). They lived in a Jurassic paradise of Berry Creek, which spilled into three distinct water falls. Golden Cascade, named for the bright ochre Santa Cruz mudstone the creek washed downstream, looks in its striations like the temple ruins of a jungle-choked civilization; Silver Falls falls in tiers, every turn of the twisty steep trail revealing another level; Berry Creek is the big daddy, a Robinson Crusoe-desert island kind of tropical waterfall. We saw not a soul until we reached the last camp, and are reasonably sure we did not accidentally send any salamander/newt souls heavenward by crushing their slimy mortal coils under our boots.

The last day, potentially the most nerve-jangling, worked out almost perfectly, requiring a pre-dawn trek to the beach to catch the only bus into Santa Cruz, there to spend the day until Amtrak could trundle us home. We wandered to the city wharf, and our worries about smelling up the place and looking out of place soon dissipated when we realized we were just two of a great number of smelly backpackers in the city. We grabbed a newspaper and coffee, and sat as lotus eaters on a wharf bench, listening to the sea lion harems arf and reading with sadness the tragic loss of Buster Posey, and cringing at the front-page picture in which Posey's feet seemed to turn at anatomically impossible directions.

Could a velociraptor be around the next corner? Nah.
More likely a newt (Gingrich). Squish!

The only damper to the last day was our needlessly wandering through town waiting for the ride out, because my son's foot was aching badly.

Aboard the train, I wanted to tell my son about the strange Australian outback-style home set in the Suisun marsh, with its great wraparound porch and the wind tower jutting out of the center of the home to regulate the indoor temperature, but I was too tired. He would have thought it nonsense from a dream.

Ocian in view! O the joy! We are in view of the ocian, this great
Pacific Ocean which we have been so long anxious to see.

Final tally:

75 banana slugs, the last one entertaining us from before dinner to bedtime with its glacial parade through our campsite.

21 newts. Or salamanders. Probably newts. The sign said newts. The sign described two newts, too, so we think we too saw two kinds. Also.

2 rabbits.

4 deer.

2 big fat gray squirrels, one dead.

Back in civilization, we receive the bad news.

2 ice creams, killed dead. Same for a bag of Big Scoop Fritos.

2 raccoons, each surveying our feast and each giving up without threat; they could learn something from their brazen brethren on Angel Island.

4 Steller's jays, one for each camp. Their strategy seems to be intimidation, their ugly squawks meant to separate us from our food, but they're really just crazy clowns, their heads dipped in night.

2 cars wrecked on the slopes of the first day's hike. Two mysteries about how the cars got there (it's not obvious they ran off roads), and why after after the decades they haven't been hauled out.

Happy and sad to see the end.