Terse Postgame Comments Hardly Befitting of Winner

How to make the media squirm, by the San Francisco Giants . . .

There’s something a little prickly about the Giants in their media relations. You could understand it in the past because they weren’t all that good and the cold weather at Candlestick Park probably frosted their dispositions.

But here they are, polishing off the Mets in Game 1, the doors to the clubhouse are thrown open to the nation’s media . . . and not one player is in the room. You would think they would be so happy they would pass out pages of printed quotes.

With a few exceptions, they were not and they did not.

The players began filing in, one by one. Barry Bonds fielded a question from a TV reporter about whether the Giants had a home-field advantage at cozy Pacific Bell Park because they play 81 games there.

Bonds’ reaction was 10 seconds of silence, then: “Are you serious? No comment.”

Jeff Kent didn’t like questions about Bonds.

“You’re making it out that it’s Barry’s team,” Kent said. “We’ve got other players on this team.”

Kent was gracious in his praise of Livan Hernandez.

“We just get on the back of bus and ride along,” Kent said. “He’s driving it.”

That was good. Maybe they can work on their quotes after batting practice.

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Quote of the day, from Giant Manager Dusty Baker, when asked how this series compares to the last time the Giants were in the playoffs: “I don’t remember the last time. It’s like a long time ago.”

Actually, it was 1997.

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The Giants lost five of seven before finishing the regular season with three consecutive wins and the best record in the majors, but Baker says he never considered giving his team a pep talk to encourage them to finish with the home-field advantage.

In fact, Baker doesn’t sound too corporate about his approach to meetings.

“I think we can have too many meetings,” he said. “I think in our country we tend to meet too much. You go to the average business office and they’re meeting just to be meeting. A lot of times I think meetings are counterproductive.”

It may have worked for the Giants, but chances are this anti-meeting thing isn’t going to go over very big in the board room.

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Bonds said he didn’t see Derek Bell limp after the baseball on Bonds’ third-inning triple.

“I saw it bounce off the wall but I didn’t see him come up lame,” Bonds said. “I just thought I could make it to third. I was getting there, no matter what.”

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Met Manager Bobby Valentine was asked what he thought about the Yankees and Mets playing in the Bay Area at the same time.

“I think it’s real good for the restaurant industry,” Valentine said.