SAN FRANCISCO — Finally, the San Francisco Giants started living up to their marketing slogan. Now they have to keep it going, and hope it’s not too late.

Brad Penny helped to pull his new teammates out of the fetal position, taking a shutout into the seventh inning as the Giants beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 7-2 Sunday at AT&T Park.
Giants manager Bruce Bochy went with a “strap-it-on” strategy, canceling batting practice and barring players from using an indoor cage. His offensively challenged team responded for 15 hits, including Juan Uribe’s glacier-breaking two-run home run in the second inning.
The Giants prevented being swept and, combined with Colorado’s loss at San Diego, they climbed within 4 1/2 games in the wild-card standings with 19 to play.
Tim Lincecum will be pitch Monday to greet the Rockies, who arrive to begin a series — the final three games between the clubs this season.
They’ll need a sweep, but as their flood of TV ads suggests, yes, “They’re in this thing.”
It doesn’t matter if fans, reporters or opponents believe the slogan. It only matters if they believe it within the walls of the home clubhouse. And there were many indications over the previous two days, after getting outscored 19-4 in a pair of losses, that the belief had eroded.
Before the game, Lincecum acknowledged what nobody else has been willing to say — that the Giants seemed to be giving up. He hoped to be a spark on Monday in his return to the rotation, but he also hoped Penny could provide that same spark against the Dodgers.
“He’s that kind of guy,” Lincecum said. “He likes to rile people up in the dugout. We’ve been pretty lax the last couple days. It’s time for someone to kick us in the butt and remind us, ’Hey, do you realize it’s September? This is when it counts.”’
With Aaron Rowand and Edgar Renteria out of the lineup, Travis Ishikawa had three hits and Freddy Sanchez hit a put-away two-run single in the sixth inning. The Giants knocked out Chad Billingsley after four innings and defeated him for the first time in five starts in San Francisco.
The ballpark had been swamped with Dodger blue in the late innings the previous two nights, but the atmosphere was different Sunday. The fans even sustained a familiar chant — “Beat LA.”
And with their season on the line, Penny and the Giants complied.