If I'm Jason Schmidt , I don't show up for work until I know it's safe at the ballpark.

I want radon testing. I want the place checked for dry rot, spores, mold and old concessions gone south. I want an exorcism.

Then I want second opinions on all the tests, because there's some really gassy juju going on with the Giants these days, perhaps as repayment for all the extraordinary good fortune they have enjoyed these past several years.

Don't act like you don't know to what we refer here. The honeymoon on the new stadium has lasted well beyond the usual shelf life because of Barry Bonds and the 2002 pennant, Barry Bonds and the 2000 and 2003 playoff teams, Barry Bonds and Jeff Kent, Barry Bonds and ... well, you see the trend here.

But this is the payback year, and someone/thing is getting loan-shark prices.

The latest grenade to be dropped down Brian Sabean's shorts is Armando Benitez's season-ending leg injury, the price he pays for covering first base properly to help end Tuesday's win over San Diego. If he had dogged it, or forgot, or ran to third for some loopy reason, he would have been better off and so would the rest of the room.

But no, he hustles and his leg slides out of his pants. Sounds like a lesson for all you Little Leaguers out there who don't feel like hustling out those comebackers -- you do have the Benitez argument going for you when Dad gets his neck in a knot.

That's another story for another day, though. The Benitez injury tells us something else, something profoundly disturbing.

That the Giants are being systematically targeted by some ethereal force for slow, tortuous elimination, one aged pillar of the ballclub at a time.

It's not that they are getting people hurt; look at the Mariners' injury list some time when the boss is over in Accounts Receivable.

It's who they are. Every important Giant, starting at the top and working down.

Bonds, with a knee that even the finest in Web site technology cannot heal. Moises Alou, with his annual calf-muscle problem. J.T. Snow and Ray Durham, playing with more pain that April baseball should allow. Now this.

Bizarre coincidence ... or something more sinister? You be the judge.

No, hold that. Who needs a flood of e-mails citing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, President Bush, U.N. ambassador nominee John Bolton and the Dodgers for forming a secret conspiracy to undermine a city's will to live? I mean, John Bolton?

Clearly, though, someone is messing with the West Bay's team of choice, coldly, clinically and comprehensively. I mean, when your healthiest uniformed employee is manager Felipe Alou, you've got issues that go way beyond Blue Cross.

Perhaps we should have seen this coming when pitching coach Dave Righetti showed up in Arizona last spring with a baby buggy strapped to his leg after a winter skiing accident. Or maybe two years before, when Jeff Kent crashed the Motorcycle That Wasn't There.

These might have been warning signs from the unseen force urging the Giants to mend their evil ways, whatever they might be. But nobody saw them as such. Instead, we just thought of them as logical extensions of the Kevin Mitchell "I Broke My Tooth on a Chocolate Donut" injury, or the Chris Brown "I Slept Wrong on My Eye" excuse -- weird things happening to people in boxscores.

Now we know better ... at least a little. Now we know who needs to watch their steps, or get food tasters, or have hired underlings play for them.

Starting with Jason Schmidt. Time to face the music. This HazMat suit's for you.