SAN FRANCISCO – The Los Angeles Dodgers and Giants have been battling each other on the West Coast since 1958, but nothing like this had happened until Sunday.

The Dodgers shut out the Giants in consecutive games in San Francisco – a 4-0 triumph punctuated by a Clayton Kershaw complete game that was preceded by Saturday's 10-0 blowout in the three-game sweep.

That's what you call history considering that Dodgers immortals Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale didn't manage what seemed so easy for Chad Billingsley and Kershaw.

Then again, Giants center fielder Angel Pagan is no Willie Mays. And Giants first baseman Brandon Belt is far closer to Rich Murray, the failed replacement of Willie McCovey 30 years ago, than the immortal power-hitting first baseman that Big Mac was in the 1960s.

If time travel were possible, Koufax and Drysdale might have recorded consecutive perfect games against Sunday's Giants "hitters" – men with holes in their swings and a chronic inability to hit with runners in scoring position or hit at all.

The few times the Giants did get runners Sunday, they ran themselves off the bases – as Pagan did in the second inning by getting picked off as soon as he reached base on an error.

New Giant Marco Scutaro and Belt promptly hit back-to-back singles, but with Pagan in the dugout, no one in black and orange scored.

So it went and so it goes for the Giants.

A three-game division lead over the Dodgers on Friday had evaporated before the ubiquitous sea gulls of AT&T Park could scavenge the scraps of another capacity crowd.

Giants fans are also hovering for scraps from Giants management – they want a slugger now and money is no object to them – but the conventional wisdom is that Giants Nation will still be hungry when Tuesday's trade deadline comes and goes.

People in the stands – and on the Internet – panic over three dismal games when 61 remain. But Giants management thinks like Donald Rumsfeld, the former U.S. defense secretary.

The Giants will do battle with the army they have, save for a few tweaks. This stadium sells out every game, the Giants are virtually coining it, but they won't break the bank or sell the farm (system) as the Dodgers have and seem willing to do.

So for a weekend, it's galling that flashy Dodgers third baseman Hanley Ramirez – acquired in a big trade with Miami – comes in here and administers a whipping. After scorching the game-winning home run Friday, Ramirez drove in the first Dodgers run Sunday on a fielder's choice in the fourth inning.

Ramirez then scored on shortstop Luis Cruz's two-out double after the Dodgers got a break when third baseman Scutaro lost a ball in the sun. Giants starter Ryan Vogelsong didn't deserve the loss, but there it was.

Cruz singled home another run in the eighth, as did second baseman Mark Ellis, but these were purely decorative.

Five measly Giants singles off Kershaw were no threat at all.

When it was done, the Giants tried hard to downplay the significance of the weekend.

"Why frustrated?" said Pagan, his expressive brown eyes flaring at the suggestion that he – or his teammates – were frustrated by getting rolled by their rival.

Pagan kept saying the Giants needed to come out with a better attitude, but when asked what he meant – a logical question – he grew surly and told a Bay Area reporter not to question him like that again.

It was the sort of thing that happens in clubhouses after teams have their heads handed to them.

You could tell before Sunday's game that the Giants were gripping. With third baseman Pablo Sandoval down because of an injury – and with once hot hitters such as Pagan mired in slumps – the Giants have become very vulnerable.

Catcher Buster Posey and left fielder Melky Cabrera have been expected to carry too much of the load while Sandoval is down, and the top of the Giants' order resembles the bottom – futile.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers are making moves the Giants can't or won't match.

Sunday was not only historical; it was cold water in the face. And it raised the question: Was this the end of the beginning of 2012 or the beginning of the end?

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