Barry Tompkins: The Giants’ clubhouse was missing a certain something this season

Sometimes I just feel as though I am living in a parallel universe. So let me get this straight.

Baseball is considered the National Pastime – do I have that correct? And yet in two playoff games in Tampa Bay this week, the total paid attendance for both games combined, was less than 40,000 people. As difficult as they have been to watch this season, your San Francisco Giants would have been able to induce 20,000 people to a Tuesday 5 p.m. game against the Kansas City Royals. This was the playoffs!

The crowds at the Texas-Tampa Bay series saw the lowest postseason attendance figures in 104 years. And even in the 1919 World Series (there were no playoffs) between the Cincinnati Reds and Boston Red Sox, only one of the eight games (the Series was best of nine back then) had an attendance less than those at Tampa Bay this week.

And all of that being said, the pitch clock, I believe, was a resounding success. Time of game was reduced by an average of 24 minutes. And, league-wide attendance was on the rise — 10 percent higher in most places. Except of course here, where a faceless team meant a decrease in bodies-in-seats to the point that the Giants played host to fewer people than ever before at Oracle Park.

I mentioned Andrew Baggarly, who covers the Giants for The Athletic, in this yarn last week. He’s insightful, knows his stuff, and oh-by-the-way was a two time winner on Jeopardy. For which he has my ultimate respect. My wife and I record the show and binge on two or three episodes whenever we’re both home, while hoisting a day’s end martini. If we get three correct answers in a row we treat ourselves to another olive. “Baggs” won the whole damn bottle. So, I believe what he tells me.

I spent more days than I ever want to remember stumbling through baseball clubhouses and football locker rooms. They were always kind of a frat party when the team was winning. Lots of towel snapping, dirty uniforms and jock-strap slinging.  Or funereal when the team was losing. Either way, they were never a place for pithy conversation or insightful observations.

But the picture that Baggarly painted this week of the Giants clubhouse somehow explained how the on-the-field version of the San Francisco Giants looked as though they had just come off an assembly line. In fact, it was pretty much just that – an assembly line.

The Giants clubhouse was a convivial place in years past. The manager’s office was just inside the doors on the left, and the office of clubhouse manager Mike Murphy was on the right a few yards down. Further down at the end of the hallway were the players’ lockers, food facility, showers and training rooms.

When the press was allowed in, the players mostly sought refuge in the kitchen or the training rooms. Murph’s office was the hub. At any given time Willie Mays or Barry Bonds; Huey Lewis or Bob Weir, or any one of hundreds of former players would be gathered around. Current players would come by just for the vibe. Laughs and lies were abundant. Until this year.

Almost the moment Murph retired and walked out the door, his office was turned into a computer laboratory for the analytics staff. When it proved not big enough, a wall was knocked down to provide more space for the propeller heads. They were closer to the manager’s office than any of the players.

Then the press interview room was ceded to the numbers guys. There apparently were as many Harvard MBA’s in the hitting and pitching meetings than there were hitters and pitchers.

Baggarly points out that the Giants currently have a payroll that consists of a Senior data scientist, four analysts, two associate analysts, five research analysts, and eight software engineers developing proprietary baseball data systems.

I always find myself harkening back to a conversation on the science of hitting I had with the great Willie Mays. He said, “They throw it, and I hit it.” Interestingly enough, I don’t believe he ever consulted with a senior data analyst to see if he was right.

I tried to relate this whole phenomenon to my own business of calling live sports events. It would be the equivalent of my having an English grammarian standing next to me and asking me why I used a split infinitive instead of going straight to the verb on my call of a game-winning touchdown. All while my producer was talking in my ear and counting me down to a commercial break.

Like a baseball player, I want to know the information, but I prefer to hear it from someone who understands the nuance of what I do. Analytics are a valuable tool but unless the purveyors of all those numbers are equally adept at slinging a jock strap or the fine art of towel snapping, I don’t think I’d want to share a clubhouse with them.

I sincerely hope that the new manager of the San Francisco Giants gets an office with a sign Gabe Kapler never had: Do Not Disturb.

And finally, as further proof of the fact that baseball can no longer claim ownership of The National Pastime, I give you last Sunday night’s NBC prime time football game. The game, between the Kansas City Chiefs and New York Jets drew an audience of almost 27-million viewers. Baseball’s ALCS and NLCS last year averaged less than five million.

Even Sunday night football hadn’t scored that big before this week. Ahhh, you beat me to it – Taylor Swift was on hand for the second week in a row to see her maybe-boyfriend Travis Kelce play for the Chiefs. And just like that, “Swifties” changed the television-viewing landscape.

So here’s the plan. Let’s hook up Taylor Swift and the Giants’ Senior Data Scientist and two things will happen.

Attendance will surge and the players will have respect for a Harvard MBA.