SAN FRANCISCO - The money was the problem. It was what everyone thought about every time Barry Zito pitched. It was what Barry Zito thought about.

A man gets paid $126 million to pitch a baseball, and he has to pay for unmet expectations.

"If I wasn't making so much money,'' Zito said in the New York Times Magazine two years ago, when the situation was the toughest, "the fans would show a little compassion.''

He was making so much money, however, and what the fans showed was displeasure.

There's not a lot of booing of the home nine at AT&T Park, a mellow place along the Bay, but Barry Zito again and again was booed.

Until this season. Until 2010, when, at 31, in his fourth year with the Giants and his 11th in the majors, Zito found the touch he had back with the Oakland A's when he earned a Cy Young Award.

In spring training he said he didn't like being relegated to No. 3 starter behind Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain. In the opening weeks of the season, he pitched as if he didn't like it. He had a 5-0 record and a 1.49 earned-run average.

Then came Tuesday night. Then came a game against the most surprising team in baseball, the San Diego Padres. The Pads had swept the Giants in a three-gamer down south. Now they were up north. Now they were facing unbeaten Barry Zito. Who is now once-beaten Barry Zito.

The immediate past blew in on the cold wind that kept the crowd of 33,249 at AT&T bundled in parkas and sweatshirts. Zito couldn't get the ball over.

Not once in six previous starts had Zito allowed more than three walks. Tuesday night in five innings, he walked seven. He threw 58 pitches the first three innings. His record fell to 5-1 when San Diego won 3-2.

"I didn't have my command,'' Zito conceded. "Sometimes this happens.''

When it happened the last three years, the crowd turned on Zito. But Tuesday night it was accepting. This was a new Zito. This was a new reaction from the people in the seats.

"They knew I was battling,'' he said. ‘"They supported me. It was great.''

When he signed in the winter of '06, the Giants outbidding the New York Mets, Zito was going to be the new face of a team that needed a replacement for the other Barry, as in Bonds.

Here was this left-handed pitcher who was cooperative and successful, trying to cover up the alleged steroid sins of the left-handed batter who was uncooperative, albeit successful.

Zito crossed the bridge from Oakland to San Francisco, but the distance between his former clubhouse and his new one proved greater than the 15 or so miles on a map. Over there he was merely popular. Over here he was supposed to be a savior.

Also a highly paid one - in fact, at the time the highest-paid pitcher in history. This year he won his first five decisions for the first time. Two years ago he lost his first eight. An 0-8 record brings about a great deal of torment.

Zito admitted the harder he tried, the worse it got. When players change teams and are given huge contracts, they tell us they're the same. Yet often they become bewildered and confused, trying to prove their worth, attempting to throw every pitch perfectly, and losing both confidence and games.

"He had speeded up his motion," said Giants pitching coach Dave Righetti, "which caused him to overstride." It's like a golfer rushing his shot when he has a chance to win on the 18th fairway. The mental failure becomes the physical failure.

The latter part of 2009, Zito escaped the agony. He stopped thinking and started throwing.

"He began to have fun out there,'' said Giants manager Bruce Bochy. "He just went out and competed. He took some of the pressure off himself that he put on himself, I think, through expectations.

"He wasn't beating himself.''

He wasn't until Tuesday night, and even then, struggling - he threw one pitch 5 feet wide of the plate, an unintentional copy of the parody in the movie "Major League'' - he didn't collapse.

"It started with the first at-bat,'' said Zito, reviewing his performance. "I threw 11 pitches. I wasn't throwing strikes. So they took the walks."

And Zito took the loss.

"I gave my best,'' he said, "but I didn't have it. I just look forward to getting out there again on Sunday.''

Unlike previous years, so do the Giants' fans.