Mays Field Welcomes The Hemlock Society to Tonight's Game

It was all distilled down to one exchange by the poet laureates of Giants baseball, Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper. With the Giants down 5-1 in the 4th, J.T. Snow stepped up to lead off the inning.

This isn't something that reflects on Snow. He's done plenty for the team over past years, and he isn't the problem now. Rather, this was just one fan trying to will the Giants to a sliver of success, and the Giants not complying. This series was going to be some Revelations-tinged showdown of bad vs. awful, as the weary souls following both teams got a chance to find out just how bad their team is. The Royals are hoping to ascend from terrible to bad. The Giants are looking to avoid the steady descent from bad to mind-numbingly awful. Round one went to the Royals. And how.

D.J. Carrasco was the buzzsaw the Giants ran into. It isn't enough for the Giant bats to lay down for a pitcher who has an extremely limited catalog of major league success. Nope, the Giants have to hack at first pitches, letting Carrasco sail through the nine innings throwing all of about 40 pitches. Carrasco was always a promising reliever coming through the minors -- think Jeremy Accardo with control issues and experience -- but to see him cut up the Giants as a fledgling starter is embarrassing. Unless this start was the first complete game of a brilliant career, that is. Then we could brag about watching this game, as if it were a Green Day show at 924 Gilman back in `91. Not bloody likely.

There is a certain untapped, and unwanted, vein of excitement coming up. It has been so long since the Giants were this bad, it's almost worth the reality check. Let's slum for a while, and see how the other half lives. Youngsters being rushed. Veterans being sold for scrap. Draft picks so high the Giants couldn't give them away if they wanted to. It's going to be different, and it's going to be interesting to see how Sabean handles it.

If the Giants come back to win this series it doesn't prove a thing, and last night's spanking has to have turned on some lights in the front office. In theory, it's almost time to start rooting for players to keep their trade value up, and worry about the results of each specific game later. In practice, the irrational churning of the bowels for each ugly, meaningless loss isn't going to stop until October.