On any given Sunday through Saturday, the Internet is awash in lists, some fanciful, some dubious, most subjective, and all shrieking for attention in the electronic din of the information superhighway.

At any random click, you can bump into the 10 Best Performing Mutual Funds, the 10 Best Shots of Celebrities Without Underpants, the 10 Worst Self-Styled Vampire Cult Killers, or the 10 Worst Weekend Destinations For Over $50,000.

So when the 10 Worst Sports Franchises dropped onto the road bed Thursday afternoon, the global reaction was essentially that of an 18-wheeler to a groundhog.

Did you feel something?

This was actually fortunate for the Pirates, who happened to be No. 1, the absolute worst, according to a typically qualified Internet pundit with unquestioned gravitas, in this case the fitness expert for AskMen.com.

But I'm not here to defend your Pirates, who may have fully deserved their place at the wrong end of a frightening queue of incompetents that included the Los Angeles Clippers, the Memphis Grizzlies, the Detroit Lions and the Tampa Ray No Longer With The Devil Bays.

Still, this list might have had a few more ounces of credibility had it not appeared just as the Pirates were sweeping the San Francisco Giants, who weren't on the list, which is not to say I'm not hopeful. Six weeks into the baseball season, nothing feels so pleasing as the obvious wreckage that is the Giants, who not only let their clubhouse be overrun by drug mules, who not only let their superstar turn himself into a toxic record-ruining monster, who not only used their own negligence to build a string of sellouts on a pharmaceutical lie, but then turned around and removed all of Barry Bonds' commemorative ballpark markers like none of it happened.

You can put that at the top of your 10 Best Examples of Hypocrisy.

Previously in this space, it has been mentioned that the Giants, and, in particular, general manager Brian Sabean, who, according to the Mitchell Report, was confronted by his own training staff about what was going down in the clubhouse and did nothing, should be in line for some severe Commissioner's Office discipline, which the commissioner initially promised and has since apparently forgotten.

Now, having seen the club Sabean's going to have to watch all summer, I think maybe he'll have suffered enough. No further punitive action may be required.

When manager Bruce Bochy filled out his lineup card on one rainy morning this week, I wonder if he noticed that the starting nine had as many homers among them as Nate McLouth?

This was the morning after Barry Zito, the $18-million-a-year left-hander who'd just been banished to the bullpen for starting 0-6, had been given an on-second-thought start against the Pirates, perhaps someone's idea of the closest thing the major leagues can offer in the way of a rehab start. Zito seemed encouraged that his curveball punched out Adam LaRoche, who'd only struck out 35 other times to that point.

Zito worked five undistinguished innings, none of them of the 1-2-3 variety, got stung for a two-run homer by Xavier Nady, whittled his cumbersome earned run average to 6.95, and became the first person to lose a big league game to Phil Dumatrait.

Asked how he was dealing with the 0-7 albatross, Zito issued one of the most nonsensical what-me-worry comments in the game's recent history.

"I don't deal with it," Zito told the San Francisco Chronicle. "It's out of my control. I could be 4-3, and no one would even mention it."

It must please Sabean to no end, and with him owner Peter Magowan -- now said to be contemplating an early retirement -- that they've committed at least $126 million through 2013 to a guy who can't really control what happens when he pitches. He could be 4-3, true, especially if he'd, you know, pitched worth a lick, but instead he's the first Giants pitcher to start 0-7 in 81 years. It took the Elias Sports Bureau a few days to dig all the way back to Blackie Clarkson, who started 0-7 in 1927, recovered to go 3-9, and never won again.

When the Giants gave Zito the largest contract ever handed a pitcher prior to last season, they considered him the final building block to a rotation that included Matt Cain, who couldn't hold a 4-2 lead against the Pirates Thursday, Noah Lowry, who was just another of the 95 pitchers on the disabled list Friday (honest to God, 95), and none other than Matt Morris.

The Pirates are no longer run by the people who brought you Matt Morris at a cost of some $14 million (or $4.67 million per win if you prefer), but the Giants, still again, have no such excuse.

That should make somebody's list of something.