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Turning a Dodgers frown into a smile: Ruin the Giants season

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And now a small wish to brighten a dismal Dodgers season … go beat the snot out of the Giants.

Break their little black-and-orange hearts. Send their obnoxious fans weeping into the night, reeking of garlic fries and stumbling over their wine carts.

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Crush their playoff hopes. Leave them dazed and bitter and, once again, unable to contain their latent geographical envy.

Look, the Giants have had a better season than the Dodgers. We all get that. This year, not a major accomplishment.

But these next three days, the Dodgers have an opportunity to still make their season memorable.

Because for Dodgers fans the next best thing to advancing into the postseason is to knock the Giants out of the postseason.

Makes their little feet patter in hyper-speed like a giddy Snoopy. And nothing could make a Dodgers fan giddier at this point in the season than taking wondrously perverse delight in causing the Giants absolute, knee-buckling pain.

There is great history here, of course, on both sides.

Joe Morgan and his three-run homer eliminating the Dodgers on the season’s final day in 1982, allowing Joe Torre’s Braves to win the West. Trevor Wilson -- Trevor Wilson? -- throwing a complete game to again eliminate the Dodgers on the last day, in 1991.

Then there was Mike Piazza and his two home runs helping return the favor two years later and eliminate the 103-win Giants on the final day. The Dodgers taking two of three in the last weekend to leave the Giants and Barry ‘Puffy’ Bonds and his 73 home runs one game back.

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And few things were more delicious than Steve Finley’s walk-off grand slam against the Giants that captured the 2004 division title and helped push the Giants out of the playoffs.

The Giants enter this series half a game in back of the Padres in the National League West. A sweep would be just so sweet. The only thing that would make that better would be if the series were on the final weekend.

Pull it off and then the Giants and their pretentious fans can return to their faux cultural superiority and their overcast skies and their I’m-running, I’m-not-running mayor and bizarre jealousies/insecurities of everything south of Daly City.

Is it so much to ask?

-- Steve Dilbeck

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