Brown does nothing for you

Yahoo's Tim Brown gleefully trashes the Giants following the opener, slagging Zito under the headline "Last Barry standing falls." How clever! It's funny because no team has signed Bonds yet, don't you know.

Unfortunately, he apparently watched the game.

Meantime, around him, the Giants had an interesting afternoon, including:

• A light collision involving rookie shortstop Brian Bocock and Roberts that left Roberts on his knees, his glove flung into left field.

• A dropped popup by second baseman Ray Durham, leading to a run.

• A couple wild pitches.

• A passed ball.

• Two missed cutoff men by center fielder Aaron Rowand.

• A man (OK, the rookie Bocock) getting picked off first in the eighth inning, in a five-run deficit.

• A few unnerving moments leading into the bottom of the eighth, in which the Giants appeared content to go it without a left fielder. (Which, come to think of it, would have been a suitable tribute to the man who was supposed to have been holding the franchise back.)

Afterward, Zito, the last Barry standing, was asked if he didn’t hunger for the days when he wasn’t so concerned with his stuff, when it was about standing on a mound and knowing exactly what was going to come out of his arm.

His eyes narrowed.

“I was me today,” he said.

And they were them.

They were them, Tim, I guess. Hopefully, next time, the team won't make it quite so easy for you to slack off.

The starting line-up

In 2003, the Giants and Dodgers were headed in opposite directions. Mired in poor succession planning, Dan Evans and Paul Depodesta had been axed in Chavez Ravine, but had revamped a starved farm system, which Kim Ng and Logan White have further strengthened. It's impossible to look down their roster without seeing possibility (and a few ex-Giants; Ned Colletti can we interest you in Rich Aurilia?). Whereas for the Giants, the post season of 2003, after the World Series run, featured the trade-whose-name-shall-not-be-spoken.

Torre might trot out Juan Pierre and Nomar Garciaparra, but the Bums have much better options waiting in the wings. What the Giants need to know, before a quarter of the season has gone by is whether or not Eugenio Velez, Daniel Ortmeier, Brian Bocock, or Jose Castillo are cogs in the infield of the future.

How Bruce Bochy manages the corners, where Castillo 3B (hit .296 this spring) will be critical, and whether or not Castillo and Ortmeier 1B (who hit .287 with the big club last year) get ABs taken away from them by Aurilia.

First pitch in a minute.

1994's first pick, by the Hansin Tigers...

It's worth noting, as we kick off the season that the Giants have a 39 year old Japanese born pitcher on the active roster named Keiichi Yabu. Yabu was the first pick by the Hanshin Tigers of the 1995 Nippon Baseball League draft, and in American service he has thrown 58 innings with a 4.50 ERA, which begs the question as to why he's on the active roster, or was even invited to camp.

Yabu threw 15.1 innings in spring training, with a low four ERA, which deserves a big club invite, except when you consider that those 15.1 innings came at the cost of guys like Osiris Matos, who threw a total 3.2 innings in the Cactus League (half of which came in mop-up duty during the 23-5 massacre), but who, last year in AA, went 5-0, with a 2.89 ERA and a 2-1 K:BB ratio. Plus, born in 1984, he was not alive for the 60's, as Yabu was. Similarly, Alexander Hinshaw, who posted a 1.96 ERA with 50 Ks in 41 innings, at AA Connecticut last season, threw a total of only 2.1 innings this Spring.

Neither of the pair are ready for the Major League level, as Yabu appears to be, but 6 innings between the pair of them?

The city and team, neither electrified or Diesel'd

Herb Caen said of the mood in San Francisco, on opening day of 1995: "I wouldn't say the whole town was electrified, or even Diesel'd, but all you had to say was ``How about that?'' and people knew what you meant."

The Giants went 67-77 in that strike distorted year, and based on Vegas predictions, that's about how many wins they should end up with this season, albeit in 18 more games. Even with the losses, that team as one of the G-men's most entertaining units, as it was a transitional point between our '93 club that broke our hearts, and the '97 team that went to the playoffs. We still had Robby Thompson up the middle and Matt Williams at the corner and we still believed in Shawn Estes and William Van Landingham. Bonds stole 31 bases.

They were built to lose, and they finished fourth, but every day Williams would barehand a ball, and with his sidearmed flick, fire it to first to catch a speedy runner, or Thompson, in his last full season, standing impossibly deep in the box, his heels almost at the third base dugout, would reach out and poke one over the green chain link at the 'Stick, you'd be listening to the call on the radio, or watching from the dollar seats, and you'd turn to your friend and say, "how about that?"

2008's team doesn't have a prayer to make the playoffs, or even a puncher's chance at a winning record, but there will be plenty of moments from men like Cain, Lincecum, Lowry, Sanchez and the gods willing Zito, worth remembering or putting in your pocket so as to say, years from now, it was in a 4-0 ballgame that Sanchez became Sanchez, and I could see it then.

It takes no creativity to follow a winner. You almost have to lie to yourself to believe you're rebuilding when you might be sinking.

And that's fun.