There’s a cliché in movies that is usually written for a character who has been tormented for the first two-thirds of the movie. The character has had enough torment – whether from Jason Voorhees, a predator, a great white shark, or from Chino in "West Side Story" – and he or she starts yelling to no one in particular, "Fine! You want me? COME AND GET ME!" or something like that. Maybe they start firing a gun into the shadows or up in the air. It’s usually a pretty dumb scene.

That’s where the Giants are. They’re in the final act, and they need to start screaming vaguely threatening things about the Padres into the darkness. The Padres are watching the whole thing unfold, of course, as a low, gritty synth track starts to swell. This is the final stand for the Giants (until the next final stand in October), and they need to consider training in a montage format b…

Dang it. There’s no time for a montage. It’s here that I should point out that the screaming to an unseen tormentor doesn’t always work. Sure, Jaws was kind of killed, and Schwarzenegger got the predator to blow itself up, but Jason usually just kills the person who does the screaming. If instead of a machete Jason could kill the character with Q-Tips, marshmallows, and first-grade portraits of Santa made with cotton balls, well, we’d have the perfect analogy for a pending Padres series.

So, screw it. I don’t care that the Padres keep beating the Giants with stolen bases, infield hits, hit-and-runs, bunt hits, 74 unhittable slider-throwing relievers, Hairstons upon Hairstons all multiplying when they have water poured on them, errors, hidden-ball tricks, court orders, and reverse tachyon beams. I don’t care. You want to humiliate the Giants again? Fine. COME AND GET US!

Actually, they’ll just come to you, if that’s alright. During the scheduled dates and times they agreed upon months ago, okay? Good.

I’m sick of the Padres winning, and I’m sick of how they do it. Take those "fundamentals" and cram them. Real men assume that the first pitch of every at-bat is going to be a belt-high fastball and swing accordingly. Real men run like gout-stricken insurance salesmen instead of professional athletes. Real men think that blooping two-out base hits with runners in scoring position is only something that nancy-boys do because their fathers didn’t pay attention to them. Don’t you want to be real men, Padres? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

So here’s when we scream into the darkness. Maybe the shark will eat us. Maybe we’ll harpoon the shark. Maybe we’ll jump over the shark on water skis in a hilarious, never-before-seen bit.

Maybe Giants pitchers will get dinked and doinked for two runs as Giants hitters flail away at changeups, sliders, and sliders, managing a robust four or five hits over nine innings.

Dammit.

Hitter to watch:

Watch when Scott Hairston passes by a clubhouse mirror. You can’t see his reflection. This would explain the dead drifters and hobos he keeps in his trunk. He used them for sustenance. At least they’re not mindless killings. I'm not sure about the disemboweled mules in the back seat, though.

Pitcher to watch:

This guy:

If you have a jar of paste out, he just might eat it. I mean, look at that guy. So watch that pitcher if you value your paste.

Prediction:

A whole bunch of 12-11 games, just to mess with our minds.