Bud Light, brotherhood and ‘Mafia’: Inside SF Giants’ ‘awesome’ pre-spring retreat
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Weeks before any player was required to report to Arizona, before Sean Manaea or Taylor Rogers had ever put on a San Francisco uniform, when it was just Logan Webb and handful of others getting in their offseason workouts, an idea started to percolate among the Giants’ pitching group.
A get-to-know-you getaway. A wilderness retreat. A weekend with the boys.
It culminated over the third weekend in January, 150 miles north of their spring training home and worlds away from Oracle Park, in the woods of northern Arizona. There was Bud Light and brotherhood. Steak and lobster. Nature walks and deep talks. And snow. Lots of snow.
“To be able to connect with our guys in a different environment, to really have a meaningful getaway where we all just wanted to be together, connect outside, it was awesome, man,” said pitching coach Andrew Bailey, who took on the task of organizing the trip. “I really enjoyed it. Something that we’re looking to build on and do unique events like that over the course of the season.”
Corralling a group of ballplayers, spread out across the country, with their own offseason obligations, presented challenges. Alex Cobb, who helped think of the idea, couldn’t make it because he had family in town. Taylor Rogers hadn’t planned to be in Arizona but made room in his schedule and flew in from Colorado. Ultimately, the group consisted of five players (Logan Webb, Jakob Junis, Sean Manaea and the Rogers twins, Tyler and Taylor), Bailey, manager Gabe Kapler, mental skills coach Harvey Martin and two team chefs, Dec Inthavone and Jordan Neal.
Taylor Rogers: “It didn’t really work into my schedule, but I thought it was important to go, just being the new guy. Being the new guy twice last year, I was like, this is important.”
Webb: “I had a conversation with Kap about it. Harvey was all about it. And it just all kind of came together.”
Kapler: “Bails did a great job of setting the whole thing up.”
Bailey: “That was different for me. Kind of a glorified travel guide.”
Bailey, Martin and the chefs made the two-and-a-half hour drive up Interstate 17 on Thursday to begin setting up for the players’ arrival the following day. Tyler picked up his twin brother from the airport and piled into a car with Webb and Junis. When they got there, they were greeted by the massive, three-story cabin they rented on Airbnb. The players took the top floor, the coaches on the second floor, and the chefs had their quarters downstairs.
Tyler Rogers: “I felt like I had to show up with a case of Bud Light or else my reputation wouldn’t live up to my standards.”
Bailey: “It had just snowed, so me and Harvey were shoveling snow to get the saunas set up outside.”
Martin: “It snowed like 30 inches, so we were loaded with snow. That was our ice baths. Manaea and Webby were jumping into the cold. Just jumping into it and letting it get all over them. It was cool with the sauna to be able to pair that out in nature.”
Manaea: “A lot of breathing up there. I’m really big into that. Just get out there and feel the earth.”
Webb: “We did some sauna. Jumped in the snow. Went on a hike. Drank some Bud Lights. Had a good time.”
There was no set itinerary for the weekend, but there was a menu. Sitting around a fire pit, the players and coaches bonded over the meals carefully crafted by the team chefs. For as much planning went in to getting the players there, just as much went into the food. The first night’s entrees: Australian wagyu and Canadian lobster. Saturday night’s meal came at a special request from Kapler: beef ribs, flown in from an Iowa farm. The chefs also provided each person’s beverage of choice: Red Bull for Webb, Topo Chico for Kapler.
Webb: “The chefs came and they did amazing, as always. It was sick.”
Kapler: “They became a part of the trip as well. So there was a lot of bonding happening.”
Tyler Rogers: “We had quesadillas for lunch one day that were unbelievable.”
Kapler: “It really was just a normal, human, hey, let’s get together and eat and drink and hike. Just kind of a stripped down, good environment to learn about people, not baseball players.”
On Saturday, the guys hoped to find a hike. But with the fresh snow blanketing the trails around Flagstaff, they headed about an hour south to Sedona. It wasn’t hard to find a place to connect with nature — and each other — surrounded by its famous red rocks.
Martin: “Kap was considering unique, creative ways to reach deeper levels of connection. To me, nature is the answer in that. A hike will solve a lot of stuff. Sit in the woods and it’ll solve a lot of stuff.”
Taylor Rogers: “They were all excited about this hike. I had just come from the snow and the mountains, and then we went to the snow and the mountains. Ty and I kind of hung back. Everyone else was all excited about the views and everything.”
Kapler: “I love that sort of thing, which is like, get outside, having conversations while you’re doing something like a hike in a beautiful setting. Kinda cool. So from my perspective, it was nice to see players in that mode.”
Martin: “Really, a lot of it was just talking about life.”
Taylor Rogers, with sarcasm: “Just hang out and let nature take its course. Ha, ha, ha.”
Bailey: “The highlight of the weekend for me was the hike. Me and Junis and Sean were trying to get down to this waterfall. Obviously trying to be safe, but scaling the side of a mountain into a valley and trying to get underneath a waterfall was pretty cool.”
Taylor Rogers: “It felt like you were away from civilization for a bit.”
Martin: “That’s why you retreat. You retreat so that you’re away from stimulus and you can digest a lot of things and come to terms with what we want to accomplish.”
Besides the food and the hiking, there was one runaway hit of the weekend: a party game suggested by Manaea. It’s called “Mafia.” Manaea learned it from his family, then played it in college, too. A brief initiation, for those unfamiliar: Players are secretly assigned roles — either mafia members or civilians — and it’s a choose-your-own-adventure race for the townspeople to identify the mafia members before they are killed off themselves. One person, the narrator, is charged with moving the game along.
Webb: “We played a lot of Mafia.”
Kapler: “That one I think you can trace to Sean.”
Manaea: “I was just the narrator, the puppeteer, if you will.”
Tyler Rogers: “If you’ve ever played Mafia, you need a good narrator to make the game good.”
Manaea: “I just try to come up with fun stories. Some of them are ridiculous. Some of them are kind of funny. I just riff off the top of my head and figure out something.”
Tyler Rogers: “Manaea was a great narrator.”
Manaea: “There were some really good performances.”
Bailey: “That was the first time I ever played it. I think we could’ve played it for hours.”
Kapler: “I think I missed the first night. The second night, everybody was talking about it, like let’s play. I had a lot of fun with it.”
Kapler arrived late and had to leave early: he had box seats for the 49ers’ divisional playoff game against the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday in Santa Clara. Before departing, he got a to-go box of Saturday night’s ribs. But his presence made an impression.
Taylor Rogers: “In regular Kapler fashion, I guess. Everybody’s like, ‘When’s he showing up? When’s he showing up?'”
Bailey: “Seeing Kapler with his guard down around the guys was cool.”
Taylor Rogers: “You hear him walking around at like 5 a.m. He went and got a workout in. We’re all just slowly getting up and he’s already halfway through his day.”
The weekend made an impact on all the attendees. Two weeks later, Webb declared at fan fest that he hoped to help “change the culture” this season. Fan fest was also when Manaea and Rogers were introduced as the newest Giants. But, it turns out, their tenure started a couple weeks earlier.
Junis: “I think us starting doing that in the offseason was a big step in what Webby wants to ultimately do in the locker room.”
Martin: “There was a lot of love, as I’m thinking about it now, there was just a lot of love.”
Bailey: “Culture and camaraderie is so big in our game. These guys, they’re not just baseball players; they’re human beings. To be able to connect on a personal level is invaluable to the success of our team.”