I’m here at the Oakland Airport waiting to board my St. Louis flight. And I’m thinking about a small scene that took place after Monday night’s game in the Giants clubhouse. A bunch of us writers were talking to Jeremy Affeldt about Matt Holliday’s slide into Marco Scutaro — I’ll get back to that in a moment. Javier Lopez has the locker next to Affeldt and he walked over in a towel but a writer was standing in front of Lopez’ locker. When the writer began to move Lopez told him not to worry. Lopez could wait until he finished talking to Affeldt.

Such politeness is unheard of in a big league clubhouse, believe me.

I asked Lopez his opinion of Holliday’s slide. Very politely he said there were other people I could ask. In other words, he didn’t want to get involved in a controversy. I apologized for putting him on the spot. He said not at all, I understand your job.

I’m impressed with Javier Lopez.

Back to Affeldt. He never gave Holliday the death sentence. He explained they are friends and Holliday is not malicious. It would have been easy for Affeldt to go off on Holliday, but he restrained himself. From my dealings with Affeldt — limited — he appears to be a gentleman.

That makes it two gentlemen in two adjacent lockers.