OK, we can get on the cart now.

NO MORE DREAMING

San Diego ends S.F. hopes, clinches weak West

Someday, when people really do fly around on personal jetpacks and there are four Starbucks on every corner, baseball historians will chuckle about the 2005 National League West, deriding its winner as "the worst team ever to take a division title."

As bad as that sounds, the Giants really wanted to take the thing. A championship is a championship, and it is not as though they didn't grind for six months. They did "scrap and scrape," to use Randy Winn's phrase, and trimmed a deficit that reached 11 games to as few as three before the end came Wednesday night.

The San Diego Padres routed the Giants 9-1 to clinch their first division title since 1998 and reach .500, and if that is not the oddest sentence ever written in a baseball story, it has to be in the top 10.

"It is strange to see a team play .500 ball and get into the playoffs," shortstop Omar Vizquel said. "But in this division, they are the best. They played the best baseball. They were able to hold onto the lead, and they showed it the last couple of days. We got real close to them, but they just turned it on."

The champagne-soaked Padres clubhouse was not the place to bring up their record. At 79-79, they became the first team to clinch a division without a winning record.

"It's been a bumpy road, but I couldn't be prouder of these guys," manager Bruce Bochy said. "This team has been pushed."

For the second consecutive year, the Giants had to watch the clinching celebration. Despite leading by eight runs, the Padres had Trevor Hoffman pitch the ninth so he could get the final out, Pedro Feliz's fly to right. As the Padres mobbed one another in front of the mound, the Giants wasted little time retreating into their clubhouse, where manager Felipe Alou spoke to them.

"I addressed the team and the trainer and the doctors and everybody, because I believe the effort was a super effort," Alou said. "A team that had to go through what these guys had to go through, to be eliminated with four days to go, I think the effort has to be appreciated. If you look at our record, we had a bad season. If you look at our effort, we had a good season."

The Giants have played only 10 games while out of contention since the start of the 1997 season and now must play four more, one in San Diego and three at home against Arizona, before disbanding for the winter and reflecting on their poorest season in the Brian Sabean era.

The Giants still have something to play for, second place, which will be settled this weekend against the Diamondbacks. Besides the nominal payout players receive for second place, it simply sounds better than third.

This year's elimination lacked the jolt of last year's, when Steve Finley of the Dodgers hit a clinching grand slam. The Padres jumped to a 4-0 lead by the third inning against Jason Schmidt, who was pitching for the first time in 11 days, and didn't look back. Schmidt will end his most frustrating season as a Giant at 12-7, his lowest win total since he went 11-14 in 1998 (not counting 2000, when he was limited to 11 starts with shoulder problems and finished 2-5).

"I felt good," said Schmidt, who has dealt with a groin injury. "I just couldn't get things going. I couldn't line up my arm with my lower half and throw strikes."

San Diego scored one run off Jack Taschner, another off Matt Kinney and three more against Brian Cooper. In the eighth, Alou finally raised the white flag and pinch-hit for Vizquel, Barry Bonds and Moises Alou.

Bonds went 2-for-3. If he is true to his word and sits out the meaningless games to rest his knee, he will finish the season with 708 homers, six shy of the Babe, but Felipe Alou said he hopes Bonds plays another game or two.

Bonds did not speak after the game, but Vizquel nicely expressed the team's frustration at watching the Padres leap into one another's arms.

"It's always emotional," Vizquel said. "For guys who have been in the playoffs and the World Series, they know how important and awesome it is to celebrate and be in the playoffs. That's what everybody is shooting for from spring training. We had the opportunity. We just found ourselves in a big hole."

sigh.

Oh well, 138 days (roughly) until pitchers and catchers report!

That Winter Holiday is fast approaching..

and this book would be very welcome under my tree.

Getting really geeky these days.