Oracle in the heads of Giants hitters? This calls for the Humm Baby
Roger Craig's mind-over-matter approach regarding frigid Candlestick Park resulted in a .590 home winning percentage during his five years as Giants manager.
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that somewhere in the Giants’ files is contact information for Roger Craig.
Farhan Zaidi ought to consider making that call.
On Thursday, Zaidi, the Giants president of baseball operations, made a different call, dropping in on KNBR’s Tolbert, Krueger & Brooks show. The subject: Oracle Park’s eccentricities that tend to suppress runs and hits.
“I think as we look through the numbers,” Zaidi said, “there’s a certain psychology to guys feeling like, this is a really tough place to hit.“
You know where else used to be a really tough place to hit? Candlestick Park. It was bone-chilling. The wind, well, one night it sucked a contact lens right out of Jeff Kent’s eye.
Candlestick was a burr under everyone’s saddle from the time it opened. All-Stars such as Willie Montanez, Bobby Murcer (who stashed his bats in the sauna during night games), and Chili Davis were quite vocal about their displeasure with The Stick.
By the time Craig arrived as manager in 1986, there was definitely a certain psychology going on. It didn’t help that the Giants were coming off a 100-loss season. One of his first orders of business was a bit of mind-over-matter. He knew, based on his playing days, it wouldn’t be easy.
“Ron Perranoski, his hat flew off when he was pitching,” Craig told the Sacramento Bee in 2014, “and it went all the way to center field and never hit the ground. Stuck in the fence.”
So what did he do?
“Turned off the heat in the visiting dugout,” he said. He probably didn’t. But he was OK with opposing players thinking that he did.
Craig was blessed with the strong-minded likes of Will Clark, Robby Thompson, Bob Brenly, Mike Krukow. Then there was catcher Brent Mayne, who delighted in greeting opposing batters by saying, “Can you believe how cold it is tonight? I’ve never seen it this bad.”
In Craig’s first season, the team increased its win total by 21. The year after that, the GIants reached the postseason for the second time in 25 years. Two years after that they were in the World Series. During his five years as Giants manager, the team played .590 ball at home, the equivalent of 96 wins over a full season.
Back to Zaidi.
“It’s almost like there’s been this feeling at home that when we get down, because we haven’t been able to score runs, then we’re out of it,” he told KNBR. “At home, we haven’t even had those instances many times where there’s a small lead and we come back because sometimes it felt insurmountable.”
That’s the kind of defeatism that Craig overcame.
Zaidi didn’t mention Thursday any plans to alter Oracle’s dimensions, but it the subject has been broached this season.
I think this is something we have to tackle head-on,” Zaidi said. “I think some of it is just going to be sitting down with the players and talking through things and talking about how the home park has played fairer. And hopefully that lends itself to a little more positive psychology. I do think the history of this ballpark and how it plays as a pitchers’ park wears on players a little bit.”
Two words for you, my friend: Humm Baby.