I watched most of this game and it seemed a little weird from the start. Finally, around the eighth inning, maybe when Dave Roberts pinch-hit for the Giants, it struck me:

These two teams are absolutely awful. Particularly in terms of the people they ran out there Tuesday night at Dodger Stadium.

Starting for the Giants:  Has-beens Rich Aurelia, Omar Vizquel and Never-weres John Bowker, Jose Castillo and Fred Lewis.

Starting for the Dodgers: Has-beens Angel Berroa and Juan Pierre and Never-weres Danny Ardoin and Jason Johnson. The latter is of particular import, considering he was the starting pitcher — making the first big-league start in two years of his extraordinarily spotty, eight-team, 10-season so-called career. Dude may as well have had JOURNEYMAN on his uniform, instead of JOHNSON

Then they played the game. Oh, my.

The Giants couldn’t touch Johnson, who went seven scoreless innings. Not that the G-Men struggling to score is anything new. I mean, they had a lineup containing all of three competent big-league hitters — Randy Winn, Bengie Molina and Aaron Rowand. They got all of five singles, and twice Vizquel torpedoes a “rally” by hitting into double plays. (Omar, great glove, but can’t hit a lick anymore.)

Johnson came into the game with a career ERA of almost 5.00, and a career won-lost record of 55-98. The Giants managed to make that guy look good.  That was hard to get my mind around.

And then the Dodgers. Hah. Their lineup had exactly five competent big-leaguers in it, and they were ranged in the 2-6 holes — Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier, Jeff Kent, James Loney, Casey Blake. Then there were three automatic outs — Berroa, Ardoin and the pitcher’s spot — followed by the useless Juan Pierre at the top of the lineup.

The game was crude and inartistic. Three errors. Two uncontested stolen bases. Another ball that could have been an error. And the event was utterly devoid of star power, of course.

It didn’t get any better when the genial but, oh-so-done, Dave Roberts came on to pinch hit (and ground out), then move to left field to replace the lead-gloved Fred Lewis, who seems intent on making Manny Ramirez look like a fielding whiz.

It was Lewis who managed to knock a bouncing ball into the seats down the left-field line, allowing the second Dodgers run to score in their “big inning.” It was a peculiarly awkward play for a professional athlete, but not out of the ordinary for Lewis, who dropped a routine fly ball vs. the Dodgers in San Francisco, a gaffe that cost the Giants a game.

And there was Pierre, dropping a quite-catchable foul down the line (it went as “no play”) … and then Pablo Ozuna ran for Kent, reducing the Dodgers’ double-play combination to “Berroa-Osuna, and what are those guys still doing in ball?” status. And the epically awful Andruw Jones coming on for Andre Ethier as a defensive replacement. When normally you don’t want AJ touching any game, for fear of defiling it, but Matt Kemp is a dunderhead and, yeah, you probably really don’t want him in center field any longer than is necessary. Though I would have parked Juan and moved Kemp to right and Ethier to left.

Anyway, this game was a travesty. It was badly played, by crummy players, and the idea that one of these teams is in a pennant race and the other really not quite out of it … says tons about the state of the National League and especially its comical West division.

If I had been there in purpose, I would have asked for my money back.