Editor's Note: The schedule says it A's vs. Twins and Angels vs. Yankees in the postseason. In truth, says Page 2 California baseball diarist Eric Neel, both the A's and Angels have some ghosts to face down. And he offers a few suggestions on how they might do just that.

Friday's scoreboard: Giants edge Houston, 2-1; Dodgers defeat Padres, 1-0; Angels fall to Mariners, 7-6; A's over Rangers, 3-2.

Status: Giants maintain 2-and-a-half game lead over Dodgers for the NL wild-card; magic number down to one. Angels and A's are in.

Just two quick notes:

Paul Lo Duca hits a game-winning home run in the 10th and L.A. is alive, if just barely. Seconds, literally seconds, later, Robb Nen strike outs Orlando Merced on a nasty, dirt-diving thing to beat the Astros, and the Giants are one step closer to the promised land and one step closer to killing off the Dodgers.

My television is in the living room, downstairs. My computer is in the office, upstairs. The Giants were on TV. The Dodgers were on Web radio. It was a little after ten, and I was standing on the landing between the two floors, stretching my ears back to my office, reaching my eyes down to the living room.

I'd been that way for the better part of an hour, happily suspended between the two games, wondering if the Dodgers would ever score and if the Giants' two runs would be enough.

Then Lo Duca pops one, and I don't move, really, I just stand still in the dark, taking in the screaming crowd and the scratchy, disbelieving twang of announcer Ross Porter's call. For about half a minute, that hit and that sound were all there was.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I see Nen rear back, and less than an instant later, Merced is a corkscrew and the game is over. I lean over the railing, watching the crowd dance, watching the players give each other the most intense, door-slamming, give-no-quarter high-fives you'll ever see.

Bang, bang. The center of the action, the place to be. A great story about a team that keeps coming up with improbable, late-inning heroics. An equally great story about a team on a roll that will not be distracted or denied. Two rivals trading blows at a distance.

I like California night games the best because for a few hours, while folks back east sleep, the stuff that matters is happening here. Lo Duca's homer and Nen's last pitch feel like delicious secrets and for a little while, the center of the sports universe isn't New York, it's L.A., it's San Francisco, it's where I'm standing on the landing, one ear toward the office and one eye toward the living room. For a great, drawn-out night, the head-shake and chuckle of disbelief that goes along with Lo Duca's shot and the Dodgers' third-straight one-run win, and the no-doubt-about-it, yes sir, he's good, he's real good admiration that comes with Nen's save and the Giants' sixth straight win, are western phenomena. They're things we experience in real-time, with all the zip and pop of a story unfolding rather than one being recounted.

Come morning, everybody knows -- it's just news. But in Cali last night, it was a thing, a happening, a series of events. It was a sweet, sudden duel between two teams and two heroes to see who would tell the story of the night and the season; a duel you could touch and taste, a duel you were at the center of.

* * * * *
Here's the taboo subject in both San Francisco and L.A. right now: airplanes.

If, and it's a mighty big if, but if the Giants lose Saturday and Sunday and if, and it's another mighty big if, but if the Dodgers win on Saturday and Sunday, then … the difference between them will be half a game and the Giants will have to fly to Atlanta to play a make-up game to determine whether there will be a playoff for the NL wild-card spot.

The Dodgers are longing for this flight to take off. They can think of little else. They dream about planes to Atlanta. They flash on visions of Barry Bonds' luggage shuffling down the conveyor belt and into the cargo hold. They imagine in-flight movies, bags of peanuts and juice in a can (in their dreams, the Giants fly coach, of course). They draw doodle planes and keep an eye on the fog patterns around San Francisco International.

But they won't talk about planes, not with each other, not with their families or priests or oldest friends. They won't even utter the word "plane," because they know to do so could be to put the kibosh on this lovely little run they're having right now, because they know just whispering the word will ensure the Giants' streak reaches seven games today and it will all be over.

They will bend their necks to watch planes fly overhead, they will hum the United Airlines theme song, but they will not speak the word, they will not broach the subject. They will hold it in and hold their breath.

In San Francisco, it's a don't-even-go-there thing. It's a Pandora's box of bad mojo thing. Guys cringe at the thought of that flight. They're doing everything they can to block it out, keep it at a very safe mental distance.

They know if they think about the plane, even for a moment, weird things will start to happen to their swings and throwing motions. Strange, subtle little tensions and ticks will come into play. Breathing will feel a bit labored, vision will become slightly blurred, and balance will elude them at key moments.

They know that if they just mention a plane -- even in some casual conversation about a vacation one of them took with his wife to St. Thomas last year -- that it's like a hat on the bed in "Drugstore Cowboy": the catalyst for some very serious misfortune in the days to come.

And so they will ride buses, just for sport. They will take cable cars and BART trains, to nowhere in particular. They will drive their cars and take cabs, around the block. They will sleep in their cars, just to be surrounded by the reassuring touch and smell of a reliable, local, sitting-in-my-driveway, earth-bound vehicle. They will lay down in rafts in McCovey Cove. They will walk. But that other mode of transportation, that thing that wings to Atlanta, it is the word that will not be uttered, the fate that will not be pondered.

Previous entries: Sept. 27 | Sept. 26 | Sept. 25 | Sept. 23 | Sept. 22 | Sept. 20 | Sept. 19 | Sept. 18 | Sept. 17 | Sept. 16 | Sept. 15 | Sept. 14 | Sept. 13 | Sept. 12 | Sept. 11 | Sept. 9-10

Eric Neel reviews sports culture in his "Critical Mass" column on Page 2. You can e-mail him at eneel@cox.net.