San Francisco ? Sounds like the Giants are just a tad defensive about this whole Barry Bonds signing.

“I’m not going to apologize for Barry being our fourth hitter,” general manager Brian Sabean said, somewhat testily, during a conference call Monday.

Then how about apologizing for overpaying the fourth hitter? How about apologizing for misleading your fan base? How about apologizing for an astonishing lack of creativity?

This sad little marriage of desperation between the Giants and Bonds will be consummated later this week. Bonds will almost certainly pass his physical – an easier task since trainer Stan Conte packed his credibility and took it to Los Angeles. Perhaps the Giants will get a concession that one of the Bonds flunkies has to go, so they can feel so much better about pouring $16 million-plus into Bonds’ bank account.

But the deal will be announced, and it will be interesting to see if the Giants try to dress this up as one of their grand pronouncements. It will be a little like putting a skirt on a pig.

This is a morally bankrupt signing. The Giants have sold the remaining bit of their integrity in exchange for a few more ticket sales.

Somebody out there must like the deal, because I’ve received two e-mails applauding it, and I’m going to assume they’re not both from Giants executive Larry Baer, under an alias.

But in the days since the deal hit the papers, I’ve heard nothing but disappointment or flat-out anger from Giants fans. I’m not talking about people in the sports business. I’m talking about regular folks in my Giants-centric town. They’re the rank-and-file fans who attend a handful of games a year, who listen on the radio, who drive television ratings. And they are disenchanted.

What Giants fans want, most of all, is to win. They don’t believe they’ll win with an aging Bonds. They don’t believe the Giants even care about winning.

Average fans understand the market for free agents is obscene. They understand the Giants didn’t have many options. What they don’t understand is how the Giants could not have predicted and planned for this day for the past two futile years.

They feel as though they were lied to at the end of last season, when Sabean said the Giants would try a new tactic because “older and experienced hasn’t worked.” They feel they were treated like fools when owner Peter Magowan said Bonds wouldn’t be the centerpiece on the team.

I’ve talked to high-profile members of the Giants’ own organization who find it hard to believe the team has once again let Bonds dictate the shots. They wonder if management didn’t notice all the empty seats last season.

This deal makes the Giants full and active participants in Bonds’ tainted legacy. Until now, you could argue that the Giants were just complicit partners. They gave Bonds his last contract back in 2002, when Bonds was still producing historic numbers and long before the painstakingly detailed steroid allegations came to light.