NL Baseball

It's not true that there were only Chicago baseball fans left at the end of another depressing day at PNC Park Monday, although the "Let's Go Cubs!" chant that fairly rocked the yard in the ninth inning surely made it seem that way.

This is a column in praise of the gritty, plucky, smoke-and-mirrors San Francisco Giants, who have made the experts look silly. To emphasize that point, this particular expert is wearing a propeller beanie right now. I pegged this team for .500, tops.

So, praise! But first, a brief side trip to tackle a few random questions.

-- Where has Buster Posey been all our lives?

Another big test approaches, a critical road trip, a stand-and-deliver stretch for the San Francisco Giants and their playoff hopes. They'll begin September in the park of the defending world champs, who also happen to own this season's third-best record in the National League. If fervor and anxiety about the Giants don't reach a new high this week, there can only be one explanation.

The first six innings at Dodger Stadium were fairly normal Monday night ... as long as you don't count the sight of Manny Ramirez leveling Matt Kemp with a shoulder tackle in center field, just after Kemp had lunged to catch a fly ball suddenly caught in a freakish gust of wind.

The final innings? Just plain weird.

As the San Francisco Giants dressed for their flight to Philadelphia, Kanye West was bellowing through the clubhouse speakers: "It's amazing, so amazing, so amazing."

With Sunday's 9-5 comeback victory and three-game sweep of Colorado, the Giants will move into September tied for the National League wild-card lead after making up four games in less than a week.

So what's it going to take?

Things we learned from the San Francisco Giants' four-game series in Denver, where they dropped three of four to the Rockies to fall four games behind Colorado in the National League wild card race:

I wasn't sure that Los Angeles Dodgers fans had it in them, But nice work, folks, for holding Manny Ramirez accountable for some lackadaisical outfield play.

It has become common knowledge that all National League teams are flawed in some way, even the world-champion Phillies, with storied closer Brad Lidge on the verge of losing his job. Every club has its problems, right?

Walt Jocketty began working in baseball with Charlie Finley's Oakland A's, orchestrated Tony La Russa's Oakland-to-St. Louis transfer and now is the Cincinnati Reds' general manager. He has been around the game long enough to know what does and doesn't work.

For many reasons, the draft doesn't. Here's one of many examples: