Mike Singletary and his 0-4 team take the field tonight before a national television audience and – at this point – you have to wonder what odd thing Singletary might do next.

Last week, he didn’t shake the hand of Atlanta coach Mike Smith after the game. Singletary conceded that it was “poor sportsmanship” on his part. That’s troubling on a fundamental level.

Singletary is all about leadership, values, motivation. All those things that go into sportsmanship. Without that, what does he have? A yellow Hall of Fame jacket, but in terms of coaching credentials, not too much.

Other coaches skip the handshake on rare occasions. Bill Belichick comes to mind. But Belichick is a brilliant coach. His calling card isn’t leadership, its Xs and Os. Pretty much no one would want him to come talk to room of boy scouts. But everyone would like him diagramming plays late in a tense game.

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Back at the ballpark for Game 2 of the Giants-Braves series but still thinking about Game 1. It was that kind of a night – an instant classic, burned into the memory banks forever.

My first takeaway  will, of course, be Tim Lincecum’s look. He was locked into the kind of zone that only elite athletes at the top of their craft can penetrate.  Overmatching professional baseball players, who were  whiffing away at his stuff like minor leaguers. It was something to witness.

But my other takeaway moment is the postgame press conference. Buster Posey and Lincecum sat side-by-side at a table. Two All-American kids – one cut from an old-school cloth with his short hair and Captain America looks, the other a scruffy new generation skater dude. The fresh faces of the Giants. On a truly historic night.

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My SI.com columns show up on this blog in the feed to the right. But my article on Buster Posey that appeared in this week’s Sports Illustrated magazine (cover issue date Sept. 27, 2010) won’t, because it’s old school. Print, that is. I know print is dying, etc. etc. But it’s still a thrill to show up in Sports Illustrated. Unfortunately, the link won’t show the terrific photos from my friend Brad Mangin.

On a related note, I asked Posey if he’d seen the piece. He said yes. Then added, “we spent a lot of time talking. It wasn’t very long.” I explained the editing process at SI. And had to smile. That kid doesn’t miss a trick.

Singletary’s public tantrum this week was a bad look on a lot of fronts.

* If you sit down for a scheduled interview with a TV camera, expect the interviewer to ask relevant questions about what’s going on with the team. Don’t have a hissy fit when someone is simply doing their job.

* This wasn’t exactly the toughest media moment Singletary could face. Pretty soft, actually. But he seemed to crack.

* Singletary sure likes to talk when he chooses to talk. But as the face of the team, he needs to have a better way of answering questions than blustering “I don’t want to talk about that.”

* Singletary said the Yahoo story that started the firestorm about the communications problems on the team was “not factual,” but then went off on a rant about a “rat” and a “coward” in the locker room. If there wasn’t any truth to the story, why the name-calling over the leak?

* I know football coaches are notoriously blindered but it’s a bad look for two men operating in the heart of Silicon Valley – for a team looking to sell corporate naming rights – to have no idea who or what Yahoo is. I’m guessing we won’t see Yahoo Stadium going up in the Great America parking lot.

* Did he really say “We will not try to stop Drew Brees. We will stop Drew Brees. Next question.” ? Is that a guarantee? Take note Who Dat nation…