The End of the Season — Brandon Crawford
I’m standing at shortstop in maybe the third or fourth inning on Wednesday and notice all the people in the stands. I know that’s not unusual at our park. We get great crowds. But having been a Giants fan all my life, going back to Candlestick days, I know how easy it is for fans to stay home when team is going south.
So seeing the park nearly full really struck me. It’s mid-September. We’re not going to the post-season. We’d just lost 10 games in a row. And people still showed up in their orange and black.
It’s kind of incredible.
So thank you for picking us up. We need it. We’re so frustrated and disappointed in how this season has gone, and I know all of you are, too. There are so many factors that have to come together to lose as we have, given the talent we have, just like so many have to come together to win championships. And everything that goes wrong in a season is made worse, of course, by injuries.
I’ll be happy to get my back to 100 percent during the off-season. It started just before the All-Star break. I figured we’d work on it and it’d go away in a few days like most aches and pains do. It didn’t. It’s not a big injury, and I’m still in the lineup, but it affects my hitting. I put so much weight on my back (left) leg so I can explode off it. This is the change I made in my batting approach that boosted my power and average the last few years. My knee takes all that weight while it’s also torqueing, a combination of motions that has taken its toll. When something begins to hurt, your body tries to protect it. So I find myself drifting forward as I load up on my swing to ease the weight on the leg, which I’m not as explosive and not hitting pitches hitting pitches I’d usually hit. I’ve been working every day in the training room, and the last few days the knee has felt better. It’s been a frustrating couple of months, but you grind through it. Sometimes baseball is all about the grind.
On a lighter note: A few weeks ago, Jalynne and I took our oldest child, Braylyn, to her first day of kindergarten down in Arizona, where we live in the off-season. (I flew down the night before so I could be there, then flew back to be with the team.) Jalynne was emotional for days just thinking about it. She bawled her eyes out at the school.
I, on the other hand, enjoyed it. I like all the milestones. I might feel different during the off-season when I’m taking her to school every morning and then not seeing her for most of the day. Braylyn, for her part, was fine when she marched off into the classroom. But her teacher told us she cried when she realized Mom and Dad weren’t there anymore.
Jalynne and all four kids are now back in the Bay Area with me until the season ends. Braylyn is doing “independent study,’’ or whatever passes for that for a kindergartener. Then she returns to her school when we go back to Arizona.
Thank you again for coming out to the park. I know the results don’t show it, but believe me, we’re playing as hard as we did on Opening Day. And, as we talked about in a team meeting on Tuesday, we’ll continue to play hard until the final out of the final game.
