Exhale, Giants fans. The All-Star break is here. The wrecking ball that’s obliterated AT&T since April is (temporarily) at a stop.
While most wouldn’t mind burning an unbelievably exasperating first half and starting fresh, the Giants have much to improve on if they hope to have a more consistent second half.
According to broadcaster Mike Krukow, the biggest adjustment the Giants need to make is their attitude, especially their mentality towards their own ballpark. It’s a dilemma he can understand personally, mainly because he went through the same issues himself. On Murph and Mac Monday morning, Krukow compared the current Giants mentality at AT&T Park to one he knows personally: his 1986 Giants’ attitude towards Candlestick.
“He (then-manager Roger Craig) said ‘we are going to knock this off.’” Krukow said. “‘We’re not going to talk about how bad it is to play here. We’re not going to say that, in fact we’re going to go the opposite. When you have a thought that you might want to say something negative, you’re going to say something positive.’
“It’s just an example of how fragile negative energy can be and how easy it can be to overcome it and get rid of it. It started off as kind of comical, how we would start to say something negative and we’d openly say something that was a bit sarcastic but it was positive. Slowly and surely that attitude changed in that clubhouse and we brought a positive attitude into that ballpark. It became our ballpark, our home-field advantage and it truly was the greatest home-field advantage in the league.”
The 1985 Giants were the last team in franchise history to lose 100 games, but began to regroup in 1986 where they finished above.500 at 83-79. By 1987, they were 90-game winners and notched first-place in the NL West. The 2017 Giants are on pace to become the next team to hit the triple-digit loss column. Their reluctance to embrace AT&T as their own advantage is strangely similar towards the resentment the ’86 team had towards The Stick.
“The Giants are pretty much a positive bunch but what has crept into their clubhouse now is that their ballpark takes away home runs,” Krukow added. “It’s not a place for offense for home runs. When they hit fly balls deep to the warning track, when they round first base, all of a sudden the head drops down and the shoulders slump. They’re almost kicking the dirt. It’s letting it get to them. Not only that, they’re starting to show it on the field. It’s contagious, it’s running through that clubhouse.
“They have to get rid of that, very much like we had to get rid of it in 1986. They can do this, but I think it’s paramount and I think it’s the key that they return to the positive and utilize that ballpark as their home field advantage and not something they have to overcome. I think that’s something that will really help this club.”
Listen to the rest of the podcast below. To hear Krukow’s thoughts on AT&T, skip to 0:43.