I have noticed that I don’t loathe the San Francisco Giants as I once did. It could be a direct correlation of not being around their fans in any numbers for several years now. (Giants fans, en masse, are crude and declasse, not at all what we would expect from the presumably cultured crowds culled from Baghdad by the Bay.)

It also might be about a deeply eroded sense of attachment to the McCourt-owned Dodgers, the Giants’ traditional rival going back to the New York-Brooklyn days. Dodgers fans hate the Giants, but if you’re not much of a Dodgers fan …

I find myself almost pitying the Giants. And the handful of Giants fans I can put a name or a face to … they seem like the sort of sad, battered, scarred, even hopeless fans who deserve, once in their lives, this:

The San Francisco Giants as World Series champions.

The Giants moved to the West Coast in 1958, along with the Dodgers. But unlike the Dodgers, they have not won a World Series in their “new” locale. Zero. In 53 seasons. While the Dodgers have won five championships in Los Angeles.

Now, I harbor the notion that barren streaks make for good sports stories, and when those streaks of nothingness attain significant numbers I find myself wanting them to continue. For the sake of the story. Not really out of animus toward the city or franchise. Usually.

Sure, I find the Red Sox and their fans disgusting, but that wasn’t the only reason I pulled against them in 2004. I wanted the Curse of the Bambino to go on forever. I noticed a similar sentiment just a year later, when the White Sox won their first World Series since 1917. I had preferred the White Sox to remain barren, as an eternal punishment for the game-throwing Black Sox of 1919. (See, 85 seasons weren’t enough punishment for that crime.)

The Giants are in that territory, now. Where the number is so big, I like the story of keeping it up. Fifty-six years since then won the 1954 World Series as the New York Giants, and 52 complete seasons in San Francisco.

But I also think of the genuinely bad luck the Giants have had, since being in San Francisco. They reached the World Series three times, and each was either a close-run or weird thing.

In 1962, the Giants lost in seven games to the Yankees, winning games 2, 4 and 6. In the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7, with the Yankees leading 1-0, Willie Mays doubled into the right-field corner with two outs and Matty Alou at first. Why the young Alou, presumably running at the crack of the bat, was stopped at third remains a mystery. That brought up Willie McCovey, who smoked a line drive toward right field, but it went right at Yankees second baseman Bobby Richardson. Instead of the Giants winning 2-1 with a bottom-of-the-ninth rally, they lost the game — and the Series.

In 1989, the Giants finally got back to the World Series. The 1962 World Series had taken a then-record 13 days to complete, because of rain. The 1989 World Series needed 15 days to play four games because of the deadly Loma-Prieto earthquake, which rocked the Bay Area just 31 minutes before the first pitch. (Two of my colleagues, Gregg Patton and Steve Dilbeck, were in the stadium when it happened.)

The Bay Bridge collapsed, 42 people died and the Series went on hold for 10 days. When it resumed, the Giants were unable to pick up their game and the Oakland Athletics completed a four-game sweep.

The 2002 World Series is one treasured in the hearts of Angels fans but remembered with pain by Giants fans. San Francisco led 3-2 in games and was ahead 5-0 in the bottom of the seventh of Game 6,  in Anaheim. However, Giants manager Dusty Baker relieved starter Russ Ortiz after two singles with one out, and the Angels went on to score three in that inning and three more in the eighth to rally for an unlikely 6-5 victory — and won 4-1 over the dispirited Giants the next day to secure their first and only World Series title.

The Giants had been up 5-0 with eight outs to get … and couldn’t get them.

So, here they are in the National League Championship Series. I wouldn’t mind seeing them in the World Series. I wouldn’t mind them losing it, and keeping that streak of futility intact, but I also realize I would not mind them winning it, either. The franchise has suffered enough, even from the vantage point of Los Angeles (via Abu Dhabi via Paris).

(Also, in the National League, we still have the Cubs’ streak out there: No World Series wins since 1908. So if the Giants win, well, we still have the hapless Cubbies to marvel at.)

If nothing else, I wouldn’t mind the two young sons of my cousin being able to see a World Series winner in their lifetimes. Well, or in their father’s, as well.

Actually, the most interesting World Series this fall would pit the Rangers, a 1961 expansion team that has never even played in a World Series, vs. the Giants. Somebody would have to end a long, long drought.  And given that matchup, I would pull for the Giants. San Francisco is a better baseball town, and I’ve always been a National League guy, as well.