THE GIANTS

Lorenzo McCutchen, the outfielder’s father, hoped to become a college football star one day.

Andrew McCutchen, the newest Giant, can tell you why he didn’t.“He had a newborn,’’ Andrew said, smiling widely, “and that newborn was me.”

Lorenzo abandoned his college football career in 1989 and returned home to help raise his 2-year-old boy. Andrew McCutchen remains forever grateful, and he plays that way.

As the former MVP gears up for his first season in San Francisco, he wants his new fans to know why he’s still a little kid inside. He wants people to understand that he takes the field with a joy his father made possible. To put a twist on that old Ernie Banks line: “Let’s play for two.”

“My dad had to come back (home) and throw football away,’’ Andrew said. “Well, not throw that away, but take care of something that was a little more important. And I’m happy he did that.”

Lorenzo McCutchen made it as far as his redshirt freshman season at Carson-Newman University, a Division II school in Jefferson City, Tennessee. That’s hardly a pipeline to the NFL, but it’s worth noting that the running back ahead of him on the depth chart, Vernon Turner, carved out a 54game career as a special teamer.

David Needs, the Carson-Newman quarterback during that time, recalled that Lorenzo bulldozed opponents during contact drills and put on a show in the weight room. “Here was a running back who was benching 350 pounds,’’ he said, still impressed.

Andrew McCutchen might not be the player he was at his peak, when he led the National League in offensive WAR for three consecutive seasons (201214), but his reputation remains unchanged.

Because they were also roommates, Needs remembers the day McCutchen decided to give it all up and head back to Fort Meade, Florida. He eventually became a youth pastor.

“He had a real strong sense of what was right and what was wrong,’’ Needs said in a telephone interview. “He had been raised well and was really morally responsible. He just said, ‘David, I have to take care of my family.’ ”

Lorenzo returned to Fort Meade to join Andrew’s mother, Petrina Swan. (Lorenzo and Petrina were married Aug. 1, 1992). The couple lived in a trailer park and worked multiple jobs to afford their son’s youth-league entry fees and equipment costs.

Lorenzo worked as an assistant manager at a grocery store, a chicken fryer at Junior Foods and a phosphate miner at night. Petrina, a former high school volleyball star, worked as a clerk at the Fort Meade sheriff’s department.

Even with all that, it was barely enough. Jon Spradlin, who coached Andrew in high school, ventures that there were times when Lorenzo could cover everything but his own game ticket.

“He’d get (Andrew) to the games and, quite honestly, his dad couldn’t afford to get into the tournament,’’ Spradlin said. “He might have had to watch from outside. But he’d find a way to get him there and let him go perform.”

Spradlin continues to marvel at how little has changed, even after Andrew’s five All-Star games and $50 million in career earnings.

“His parents,’’ Spradlin said,

“still get up and go to work every morning.’’

Gridiron Toughness

Baseball was Andrew’s athletic path even as a little kid, but having a hard-blocking fullback as a father instilled him with a dose of gridiron toughness. “He was a guy that used his football mentality and put it on the baseball side,’’ McCutchen said. “So a lot of the stuff I learned, I learned it a little different.”

For example, there’s the lesson about avoiding strikeouts. Some young players are told to shorten their swing or keep their eye on the ball.

Lorenzo’s coaching advice was a tad more intense.

“One of the things that he used to preach when I was a kid was that home plate was my house. And my sister was in that ‘house’ and my mom was in that ‘house,’ ” McCutchen said. “And when they pitched the ball, you don’t want anybody to get in it. He told me to hit that ball so no one would get in my house. He would tell me to protect my house.

“He would say that all the time. That was my mentality, and I think that helped me as a kid growing up. He knew what fueled me to make me better. If it made me emotional, it made me better.”

Such ingrained self-defense reflexes help explain how McCutchen manages to generate offensive lineman strength out of a cornerback body. Listed at 5-foot-11, 195 pounds, McCutchen hit 28 home runs last season, his seventh consecutive season with at least 20 home runs.

A right-handed hitter, he