RIP Roger Craig

 In my mind, the Giants have had three great managers in my lifetime, Roger Craig, Dusty Baker and Bruce Bochy.  Of course, until someone manages them to 4 World Series Championships, Bochy will be the greatest, but Roger Craig was the first and maybe more impactful in terms of completely changing the attitude of the organization from top to bottom and possibly even saving it altogether.  

When he was brought in by new GM Al Rosen to manage the Giants, they were all but a moribund organization.  Perennial losers.  Whiners and complainers.  The players hated the ballpark and were not shy about saying so and were riddled with clubhouse cliques and lawyers.  Rosen set the tone from the GM post but it was Roger Craig who laid down the law in the clubhouse and made the players like it.  If you didn't like the ballpark or your teammate, they'd be happy to trade you or release you.  The ballpark was an advantage because visiting players hated it even more.   He recruited allies among the veteran players like Mike Krukow who brought in other players and pretty soon the whole team was on the same page.

He brought with him the bag of gimmicks that new managers alway talk about, the hit-and-run, the squeeze play, the pitchout, endless throw overs to first base.  The difference with Craig was he actually did those things and made them work, and he sent an unspoken message in the process.  He was in the game every single pitch and the players better be too....on both teams!  He was not going to concede a stolen base to a fast baserunner.  He was not going to leave runners on base.  The Giants were not going end their rallies by grounding into double plays.  If the other team got careless with their signs, Roger was going to steal them.

He played the kids.  He put his faith in Will Clark and Robby Thompson who became the cornerstones of an entire era of Giants baseball. He reinforced the sense that these were not your father's Giants and it was time to stop pining for the golden years of Mays, McCovey and Marichal that were never coming back.

Then there was the split-fingered fastball.  When he was the pitching coach for the Detroit Tigers under Sparky Anderson, he noticed how Bruce Sutter dominated with just one pitch, the splitter.  Craig's genius was he figured out that if someone could dominate using it as a single pitch it would be even more devastating as a #2 or #3 pitch.  He taught it to Jack Morris and Milt Wilcox and transformed their careers and won Sparky another ring with the Tigers.  As manager of the Giants he insisted that every pitcher on the team learn the pitch and incorporate it into their pitch mix in one way or another.  His results with the Giants were more mixed than with the Tigers, possibly because the pitch was gaining popularity around the league and hitters were adjusting and possibly because the pitch just wasn't for every pitcher, but the result was a definite net improvement in the Giants pitching performances.

So yes, Roger Craig was a great Giant, a forever Giant and one of the great managers in franchise history.

RIP Roger Craig.