I’m back and ready to dive into the daily grind. Forgive me if I discuss a few older items, but I’ve been marginally in touch the past two weeks, dodging fires and smoke, paying exorbitant gas prices in tiny mountain towns and helping a very cranky Malita Monkeypants bring forth her first tooth — the left front lower incisor, let the record show.

Here and there I caught an inning or two at a cable-outfitted pizza joint, and sometimes I scrounged two-day-old Reno Gazette-Journals to find a boxscore. Oddest moment: walking past a bar, the front door open and the TV tuned to the game, I spotted #56 on the mound for the Giants. They were playing at home so he had no name on his jersey, and I mumbled under my breath, “I’ll bet that’s Osiris Matos.”

“What?” said Mrs. Malo. She didn’t know that I had caught a glimpse of the game through the open door.

“Um, Osiris Matos.”

“I don’t even know what that means,” she said. “It sounds like a planet. Or a flower.”  

That’s all I caught of the game. I couldn’t even see the score, and all that night I kept obsessing over this new Giant, this mysterious 56. (It was indeed Matos, a.k.a. Sixth Rock from the Sun.)

The next day I was preoccupied with exquisite pain. To top off our vacation, we hit one of my favorite Tahoe-area day hikes, the Shirley Canyon trail that follows Squaw Creek from the floor of Squaw Valley to Shirley Lake, then on up to High Camp and the gondola terminal. It’s 2000 feet of elevation gain in less than three miles, with spectacular cascades, rock scrambles and snow patches to negotiate, and riotous wildflower blooms to admire. I’ve done it before, but never with 38–year-old knees and 25 pounds of Monkeypants on my back. My ass done been kicked.

Perhaps this is the ibuprofen talking, but despite all the roster moves and Barry Zito’s fantastic start against the Dodgers, I reckon the most important thing that happened while I was gone was the All-Star selection of Tim Lincecum and Brian Wilson.

Here’s why: The Giants have been mocked locally and globally for losing their way the past few years. And while no one is tabbing the team, only five games back in the NL West, as a dark-horse division winner — or even a candidate for a shocking turn-around in 2009 (not yet, anyway) — the All-Star selections give the rest of the country the chance to see what you and I have noticed since late April: the Giants aren’t a laughingstock.

Add to the All-Star hype Tom Verducci’s Sports Illustrated cover story on Lincecum — which I read while shopping at Safeway — and you’ve got a mini-revival, a blip of recovered pride, for an embarrassed franchise. (If you haven’t read the SI article on Lincecum, please do so. Verducci does a nice job explaining pitching mechanics for a general audience.)

For those following the team every day, the national recognition is a nice exclamation point on the first half. It’s about as a good a run as any projected 91–game loser could have for several reasons:

* It’s not 100 losses.

* Several young players have either established themselves (Sanchez, Wilson, Lewis, Bowker) or given glimpses of talent (Burriss, Denker, Horwitz). Even the guys who have bounced up and down (Velez, Sadler, Misch, Holm) have at least defined their weaknesses and given the team a chance for up-close evaluation. Velez is back as of today, so we’ll see first-hand if he’s improved his defense and baserunning.  

* The off-season acquisitions have made sense, whether cheap (Castillo, Yabu) or expensive (Rowand).

* The farm system continues to improve, thanks in large part to two consecutive strong drafts.

And today’s news reports bring the most emphatic word yet that Giants brass is disinclined to make short-term trades before the upcoming deadline. Here’s Sabean in the Merc:

"We've got some disposable money and we'll explore everything. But we've completely changed our tune. We're not interested in the year-to-year planning we've done in the past. While you'd like to add a bat to the lineup, we're not going to add (an impending) free agent. And to get somebody of note, they'll want pitching we're not going to give up. If everybody can understand that, you can understand why we would or wouldn't do something."

Second-best thing that happened while I was gone: Sergio Romo’s moustache. I’d show you a picture, but a Google image search on “Sergio Romo moustache” came up empty. However, it returned Rosie O’Donnell’s face photoshopped onto Khalid Sheik Mohammad’s body (result #2) and the scary Terminator metal skeleton (result #4).

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SMALL PRINT UPDATE: Roster moves aplenty. Sadler down, Matos up. Holm down, Eliezer Alfonzo up. Horwitz down, Velez up, which means the Giants have three outfielders and eight infielders on their roster. Velez can play OF, but it’s a dicey proposition.