CINCINNATI — Homer Bailey tucked a few items from his locker into a gym bag and said, “Hunting season begins right now — way too early, way earlier than I expected.”

That’s because the Cincinnati Reds’ hunt for a World Series trophy ended barely after the search began, one victory short of the National League Division Series. That stopped them from even thinking about the National League Championship Series and the World Series.

A season of high promise became a broken promise in the most improbably of ways, the ignominy of losing three straight games at home in Great American Ball Park, a place where they hadn’t lost three straight all season.

AMAZINGLY, THE REDS won the first two in San Francisco, so they had three chances to get the one more win they needed to advance. That win was elusive. And it was never found.

A couple of familiar negatives surfaced during Thursday’s 6-4 loss that sent the Giants to the NLCS and the Reds to vacations, golf, hunting trips and many sleepless nights.

One was a meltdown by Mat Latos, his immaturity once again surfacing at a bad moment, a something that has plagued him during his short career. He permits questionable balls and strikes call to infect his concentration.

It did it in the fifth inning of a 0-0 tie. Three calls by plate umpire Tom Hallion — balls that Latos thought were strikes — shattered Latos’ mission and it led to him giving up a grand slam home run to San Francisco catcher Buster Posey and two other runs.

DESPITE THE 6-0 deficit, the Reds chipped away until it was 6-3. Then leaving runners in scoring position, part of the fabric of this team when it strugged this year, surfaced again. They had the tying run at the plate in the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth. They scored one run.

OF HIS FIFTH INNING game-breaker, Latos thought he had strike three on the first batter, Gregor Blanco, but it was called a ball and he then singled. He thought he had strike three twice on Brandon Crawford but they were called balls. Crawford then tripled for a 1-0 lead.

A second run scored on shortstop Zack Cozart’s error, Latos walked Mark Scutaro and Pablo Sandoval singled to fill the bases for Posey. He promptly emptied them.

“I let a couple of things get to me that shouldn’t have,” said Latos. “Then I made a mistake to Posey and he hit a grand slam. Most importantly, I let down the team, the front office and the fans. I let things get to me and 100 per cent this game is one me and I messed up. There were a couple of calls that could have gone either way and went the other way.”

AFTER STRANDING eight runners in th first four innings of Wednesday’s Game 4 loss, they stranded 11 in Game 5 - two in the seventh, two in the eighth, two in the ninth.

They did score on in the ninth on Ryan Ludwick’s single. And Ludwick drove in the team’s first run with a leadoff home run in the sixth, his third home run of the series.

But with runners on first and second with one out, Jay Bruce staged an incredible at-bat against Giants closer Sergio Romo. He fouled off five pitches on 1-and-2, took ball two, foufled off another, took another ball and then on the 12th pitch of the at-bat he flied to left.

That left the season up to veteran Scott Rolen, but he struck out on five pitches — which may be the last at-bat of his storied major-league career.

SAID LUDWICK, “That one pitch to Buster Posey broke open the game. The disappointment? Huge. From spring training I said this team was capable of winning it all. We went through a lot of adversity, losing closer Ryan Madsen, losing Joey Votto, losing manager Dusty Baker, losing Johnny Cueto. And we kept overcoming all that and that’s why I thought this season was not supposed to end. Certainly not like this. I just thought it was written in the book that we were going to go on to the next round today.”

THE TEAM’S power supply, Joey Votto, was reduced to drawing walks and poking singles due to his surgically repaired knee still bothering him. While he hit .389 for the series, he did not drive in a run and did not him a home run. He didn’t homer in his last 204 plate appearances this season and one scout said, “Votto right now is Wade Boggs, all walks and singles. He is a $240 million Sean Casey.”

Votto’s assessment of Thursday’s train wreck was succinct: “By far, hands down, the biggest play of the game was Buster Posey’s grand slam. That made it very, very difficult for us to come back.”

But there were those chances, over and over and over again.

“Again, 6-0 lead after four or five innings? That’s very difficult to come back from in the regular season and in this game they were ready to follow (starter) Matt Cain with Madison Bumgarner and Ryan Vogelsong (all starters) — throw the kitchen sink at us.”

None were needed. The Giants regular bullpen operatives kept wriggling out of mess after mess.

AFTER HIS MAGICAL moment 12-pitch battle royale against Giants’ closer Romo failed, Bruce was

“There is disappointment in general in here right now,” said Bruce. “We went to San Francisco and took care of business, then came here and just couldn’t finish it out. The beauty of it is that this team is going to have a lot of chances in the years ahead.

“In the playoffs, opportunities are few and far between and we had them, especially the last two days, and didn’t capitalize,” said Bruce. “We needed to do it and didn’t, but they did.”

Of his 12-pitch at-bat that could have changed the outcome, Bruce said, “Sergio has a lot of sink on the ball and I kept trying to get the ball up over the plate to hit. I did and he gave me some pitches I could handle and to be honest that at-bat should have lasted that long. But he kept on me and didn’t give in.”

Neither did Bruce. He didn’t give in, but didn’t hit pitches he thought he should hit. Now he and the rest of the Reds have a long, long winter of discontent to think about what might have been.