2023: Play Ball Premium Edition

PLAY BALL

GIANTS

IS IT OR

TAYLOR TYLER?

If you wanna know which twin is on the mound for the Giants — it’s in his pitch

BY EVAN WEBECK

Pop. Pop. Pop.

The neighbors kept telling Scott Rogers about these sounds that practically every afternoon rang down the dirt road that separated the family home from the rest of its suburban Denver setting.

Little did they know, they were listening to the origins of two future major leaguers. Brothers born 30 seconds apart, catch partners for life, this is where Tyler and Taylor Rogers got their start. Tossing a baseball 100 yards back and forth on that unpaved road. Pop. Pop. Pop.

Last year, the twins achieved a lifelong dream: They played catch on a major-league field for the first time. Now, they’re living out a reality that once seemed unimaginable: paired up in the Giants’ bullpen after Taylor was signed as a free agent over the winter. But while they look identical, their paths to re-

uniting in San Francisco couldn’t be more different.

“Not that Taylor didn’t work,” says their dad, Scott, “but Tyler’s always had the tough road.”

Growing up, the Rogers brothers were so inseparable that neighborhood kids simply referred to them as “TayTy.”

They shared a truck and a cell phone. They attended the same classes and played on the same teams. In peewee football, they wore Nos. 20 and 21 — and different-colored face masks to tell them apart.

“I had a built-in best friend right there,” Tyler says. “We’d play catch, then just go straight into shooting hoops. We were always finding stupid games to play against each other.”

Any observers of those daily catch sessions, though, would have been able to spot a difference.

Taylor was developing quite the live left arm, a valuable commodity in baseball. Whereas his catch partner, Tyler, threw with his right hand and more than a few miles an hour slower.

The Rogers are mirror image twins — identical in every way, except with some defining characteristics (yes, there are some) on opposite sides. The phenomenon occurs in about 25 percent of sets of identical twins. (They wanted to play off it with their jersey numbers in San Francisco, but Mitch Haniger claimed No. 17 before Taylor could mirror his brother’s No. 71.)

That difference, for one of the few times in their lives, separated the twins. Taylor, the hard-throwing lefty, was a blue-chip prospect who earned a scholarship to the University of Kentucky. Tyler, the right-hander, didn’t make the varsity team until his senior year of high school.

It wasn’t until Tyler was at Kansas’ Garden City Community College that he developed a unique submarine motion that would

Giants opponents — and fans — will likely do a double-take this season with twins Tyler Rogers, left, and Taylor, right, joining forces in the San Francisco bullpen. The pair faced each other last season for the first time in the majors (Taylor was with the Padres) but will join a very exclusive group in 2023. They will become the fourth set of twins to play on the same team in MLB history and the first since Jose and Ozzie Canseco with the A’s in 1990.

COURTESY OF THE SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS

set him on course to join his brother in the big leagues. Some 300 miles away from home, Tyler didn’t choose the school, which was 300 miles away from home, for its athletic prowess. It offered a fire science program, and Tyler figured if baseball didn’t work out, he would follow in the footsteps of his father, who retired at the end of last year after 35 years as a fireman in suburban Denver.

It was at Garden City, where, at the coach’s suggestion, Tyler radically altered his motion. Quickly, he found himself extinguishing only metaphorical fires, out of the bullpen. He transferred to Division-I Austin Peay State University in Tennessee, where he broke the NCAA single-season record for saves as a senior (with 23), met his eventual wife (Jennifer) and got the attention of the Giants (who drafted him in the 10th round in 2013).

By 2019, Taylor, an 11th-round draft pick by the Minnesota Twins in 2012, had established himself as one the majors’ top left-handed relievers. Tyler, drafted a year later than his brother, was at a career crossroads.

Tyler toiled for four seasons at Triple-A for the Giants, where he compiled a 3.27 ERA in 179 games. He was named a Pacific Coast League All-Star twice. But each time, the request from above was for somebody who threw harder than Tyler, who relies on the deception of his knuckle-dragging delivery rather than trying to overpower hitters with a fastball that tops out in the mid-80s.

“There are other guys that have made long careers in the minors before they got called up. But none of them had their twin brother in the show, and they haven’t been

Above: Growing up, Tyler (left) and his twin brother Taylor were so close that they were known as “TayTy” by the other kids in their Colorado neighborhood.

Right: Taylor (left) and Tyler made their first appearance as teammates during FanFest at Oracle Park in February. Tyler is entering his fifth season with the Giants; it’ll be the first for Taylor, a 2021 All-Star who has pitched for the Twins, Brewers and Padres and signed as a free-agent over the winter. KARL MONDON/STAFF

asked why aren’t you there with him? They weren’t compared to anybody else,” Taylor says. “That’s more what I felt heavy for.”

At one point that season, Jennifer left for a week. When she returned, Tyler had picked up his firefighting books again.

“That’s when I knew: This was probably going to be it for him,” she said.

Tyler was days away from calling it quits, when the call from the Giants finally came in late August. After all that waiting, Tyler made his big league debut that night in San Francisco and pitched a scoreless eighth inning against the Diamondbacks.

“He amazes me that he stuck it out that long,” Jennifer said.

play 10 games, it’ll be 5-5.”

“It’s always 50-50,” adds Taylor.

The last set of twins to share a major-league clubhouse did so just across the Bay Bridge, where Jose and Ozzie Canseco were A’s teammates for about 10 days in 1990. The Rogers will be only the fourth pair in history to suit up for the same team and are only the 10th set of twins to ever play in the majors. (The last ones were Ryan Minor and his brother Damon, the hitting coach for the Giants’ Triple-A affiliate Sacramento River Cats.)

Twenty minutes away from their childhood home is a rustic Italian ranch-style home adorned in stucco. With 5,000 square feet, there is enough room for both brothers, Jennifer, Tyler and Jennifer’s one-year-old son, Jack, and a putt-putt course, cornhole set-up and foosball table.

This is Casa de Rogers.

It was after the 2019 season that Taylor welcomed Tyler and Jennifer (Jack was born last April) into his Littleton, Colorado, home for the first time. They stayed for six weeks and started an annual tradition. These brothers, so inseparable, live together every offseason.

Every year around Dec. 17, the Rogers celebrate their birthday, and Tyler and his family leave for Taylor’s compound in Colorado. The mornings are for throwing. The afternoons: working out. But in the evenings? Anything goes.

“We’re still like those little kids,” Tyler said. “I got a Broncos football in the mail, and we’re just throwing it in the house like we’re kids again, but our parents aren’t there to tell us we can’t do that. So we just throw the ball in the house now.”

The big game in the family, though, is foosball. Would it surprise you to hear the score?

“Honestly,” Tyler says, “if we

Despite their divergent paths, Tyler insists he was never jealous of Taylor. Taylor was never anything but supportive while Tyler found his way. Growing up, they battled — but never fought.

“Rivalries begin because the older brother is always beating up on the younger one,” Taylor says. “When you win half the time and lose half the time, then you don’t develop a rivalry.”

While their teammates are eager to find ways to tell them apart (the tells, according to their loved ones, are their personalities: Taylor is the serious one; Tyler is more easygoing), the people that know them best are more curious about how their unique bond can help them when they’re on the same team.

“When they were with other teams,” Jennifer says, “if one had a bad outing, they wanted to call each other right away. Like if Ty had a bad outing, Tay would find something like, ‘hey, I noticed this, this and this.’

“It’s funny, you have all these computers and all these coaches … but I don’t know, the two of them just find other things that they can’t find.”

Just don’t expect Scott’s eyes to be dry on Friday, when he’ll be in the stands at Oracle Park for the Giants home opener, and his two sons will be sitting side by side in the bullpen in center field.

“Whatever you do, don’t put a camera on me,” he says, “Because I’ll be crying.”

2023 schedule at a glance

March 30-April 2 at New York Yankees

The Giants spent Opening Day in New York for the first time since 1956 — their penultimate season before moving West. It was also an opportunity for fans to dream about what offseason free agent target Aaron Judge might have looked like in Orange and Black and see what former Giants lefty Carlos Rodón, the Yankees’ likely starter in Game 2, looks like without a beard.

April 10-12 vs L.A. Dodgers

MLB’s new balanced schedule means that for the first time, all 30 teams will face each other in at least one series but will play six fewer games against their divisional rivals. It just makes the 13 Giants-Dodgers matchups mean more, right? The Giants opening homestand concludes with the Dodgers, but the rivalry will have to simmer for a while, as the teams won’t meet again until mid-June in L.A.

April 29-30 vs. San Diego Padres in Mexico City

The Giants won’t get their first look at the Padres until San Diego star Fernando Tatis Jr.’s suspension for drug use ends, but they’ll make history by playing in the first MLB games in Mexico City. Last year’s lockout canceled a scheduled GiantsMarlins series there. Expect runs to be plentiful — Estadio Alfredo Harp Helú, which seats a little more than 20,000 fans, is about 2,000 feet higher than Coors Field, and the dimensions are a cozy 325 feet down the lines and 400 to dead center.

May 22-24 at Minnesota Twins

Part II of the what-could-have-been tour

Logan Webb and the Giants will get their first look at the Dodgers to conclude their first homestand of the season. But then the rivals won’t see each other again until mid-June.

takes the Giants to Minneapolis, where they’ll get their first look at Carlos Correa since his introductory news conference in San Francisco infamously was scrapped at the last minute. Correa ultimately returned to Minnesota after concerns about an old leg injury scuttled larger free-agent deals with the Giants and Mets, but one of the Giants’ consolation prizes — Michael Conforto — is a career .556 hitter at Target Field (5 for 9).

June 23-25 vs. Arizona Diamondbacks

If the Giants want to get back to the playoffs, they can’t lose any more ground to the improving Diamondbacks. After going 25-4 against Arizona the previous two seasons, they lost the season series a year ago, and Arizona is a trendy preseason pick to move past the Giants in the West hierarchy. Arizona’s visit is part of a pivotal 22-game stretch against projected playoff contenders that also includes the Cardinals, Dodgers, Padres, Blue Jays, Mets and Mariners.

NOTES

All times Pacific. All game times and telecast information subject to change.

*Games to be played in Mexico City

RANDY VAZQUEZ/ STAFF ARCHIVES

July 25-26 vs. A’s

The first half of the annual Bay Bridge Series … but will it be one of the A’s last visits as residents of Oakland? The A’s lease at the Coliseum expires after the 2024 season, and the team headed into another spring training threatening to move to Las Vegas if a deal for a new ballpark in Oakland can’t be reached. The Giants have won three of the past four series but have lost six of the 10 games at home during that stretch.

July 28-30 vs. Boston Red Sox

Giants shortstop Brandon Crawford is the only player remaining on either team since the Red Sox last visited San Francisco in 2016. But Giants fans could recognize quite a few faces on the new-look Boston roster that rolls in for a weekend series. Former Giants Adam Duvall and Christian Arroyo were projected as starters heading into spring training, as were former Dodgers Justin Turner, Enrique Hernandez, Alex Verdugo and closer Kenley Jansen.

August 11-13 vs. Texas Rangers

Giants fans thought they had seen the last of Bruce Bochy when he announced his retirement in 2019. But “Boch,” who guided the Giants to their three World Series titles in five years, was lured back this winter and will make his first appearance in the visiting dugout at Oracle Park since 2006. The 1993 Giants, who won 103 games but finished second in the N.L. West, will be honored before Game 2 of the series.

Aug. 25-27 vs. Atlanta Braves

If the Giants are in the playoff chase in late August, a home-and-home series with one of the preseason favorites in N.L., capped by these weekend games at Oracle, figures to be a good indicator to gauge their title hopes. It’d probably be in the best interest of the Giants to get ace Logan Webb two starts against the Braves. The right-hander is 2-0 with a 1.33 ERA in four career starts against Atlanta.

Sept. 29-Oct. 1 vs. Los Angeles Dodgers

Will it be 2021 all over again, with the arch-rivals battling for the N.L. West crown down to the final day of the regular season?

The three-game set at Oracle concludes a stretch that sees the Giants face the Dodgers seven times over the final 11 days of the season, starting with four games at Dodger Stadium. The Giants haven’t won a season series against L.A. since 2016 and were 4-15 last season, although three of those wins came at home.

New rules

Here is a look at the significant rules changes adopted by MLB for the 2023 season.

ON THE CLOCK

In an effort to speed up play, pitchers will have 15 seconds to throw a pitch with the bases empty and 20 seconds with a runner on base. If the pitcher does not start his delivery before the pitch clock expires, he’s charged with a ball. Hitters have to be on their toes, too: It’s an automatic strike, if you’re not in the batter’s box with at least eight seconds left on the clock.

SO LONG, SHIFT

The days of seeing three players on the right side of second base or a gaping hole where a third baseman typically is positioned are over, now that the (some say overused) “shift” has been pared down. Two players have to be positioned on each side of second base and no more infielders setting up on the outfield grass — all four infielders are required to stay on the dirt, although they can move anywhere they want once the pitch is thrown. If the positioning rule is violated, the hitting team can decide to let the result of the play stand or add one ball to the hitter’s count.

TWO AND THROUGH

In another effort to speed up the game — and create more action on the base paths — pitchers can only throw to a base or step off the rubber twice during the same plate appearance. Once the limit is reached, another “disengagement” will result in a balk. The rule figures to drive catchers and pitching coaches nuts trying to devise new ways to control the running game, which for the most part had become a non-factor in the analytics era of baseball.

GAME OF FEWER INCHES

You might not notice it, but the size of all the bases will be increased from 15 inches to 18 inches. The slightly shorter distance will make a difference in all those close plays — especially stolen base attempts — but also should reduce injuries around the bags. Don’t worry about home plate. Those dimensions have not changed.

All games broadcast on 680 AM

Home games

2023 schedule at a glance

March 30-April 2 vs. LA Angels

If an A’s-Angels season opener in Oakland seems familiar, it should. This will be the fifth time in seven seasons the Angels play their first game of a season in Oakland. (It’s the fourth time for the A’s, because they opened the 2019 season in Japan before hosting L.A). Keep an eye out for a potential pitching matchup of A’s free agent Shintaro Fujinami and Angels twoway star Shohei Ohtani, who were high school rivals in Japan.

April 14-16 vs. New York Mets

The Mets play in Oakland for just the fifth time in franchise history, and, conveniently enough, 50 years after their first appearance at the Coliseum — for the 1973 World Series. The second of the A’s three straight title wins will be honored before the series finale on Sunday. This is the second year in a row both New York teams will visit the Coliseum (the Yankees play June 27-29.) Before last season, that had happened just three times — including the 1973 World Series.

May 2-4 vs. Seattle Mariners/

May 26-28 vs. Houston Astros

The new balanced schedule means fewer games against divisional opponents — 52 times instead of 76 — but May will be A.L. West-heavy for the A’s. The A’s open May with 16 games against division rivals in 27 days, starting with their first look at the Mariners. Seattle returned to the playoffs for the first time in 21 years last season and appears poised for a run at the division crown. The A’s will face star Julio Rodriguez and the Mariners seven times in May.

May 29-31 vs. Atlanta Braves

Nobody has contributed more material to the A’s organizational rebuild than the Braves, who have sent eight players to Oakland in trades since last March. Former top Braves

prospects Shea Langeliers and Kyle Muller almost certainly figure to face their old franchise, and it could be that as many as six of those former Braves do so. Of course, the A’s will have to face Matt Olson and Sean Murphy, who each won Gold Gloves and received MVP votes with Oakland.

June 9-11 at Milwaukee Brewers

Because of the old interleague schedule rotation, the A’s haven’t played teams from the N.L. Central since 2019. They haven’t played in Milwaukee or Cincinnati since 2016, their longest gap between games against any active team. That changes in 2023 because of the balanced schedule, with home games against Cubs and Reds, and trips to St. Louis, Pittsburgh and, finally, a return to American Family Field (known as Miller Park until 2021), where

Domingo Acevedo appeared in an A’s-high 70 games last season, and the reliever figures to be busy from the opening series this season, too. The reliever hasn’t allowed an earned run in seven career appearances against the Angels.

they are 2-3 in two visits.

July 20-23 vs. Houston Astros

The A’s and defending World Series champion Astros enter the season on different trajectories, but they share one distinction: They are the only teams to have won the division title since 2017. The A’s won the West in the COVID-shortened 2020 season and finished second to the Astros twice during this stretch that, other than Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman, has seen most of the significant heroes and villains from both sides move on to other teams.

Aug. 5-6 vs. the Giants

Unlike last season, when the Bay Bridge Series games were broken up by more than a three-month gap, this year’s edition will resume in Oakland 10 days after they

meet across the Bay. The A’s hold a 45-34 all-time home edge, but have lost seven of the past 10 games at the Coliseum. Jason Giambi, Carney Lansford, Gene Tenace, Bob Johnson and longtime PA announcer Roy Steele will be inducted into the A’s Hall of Fame before Sunday’s finale.

Aug. 18-20

vs. Baltimore Orioles

This series will decide who did it better for less. The A’s entered spring training with a projected season payroll of about $41 million. The Orioles were next at $51 million. Both teams are rebuilding, although Baltimore has a leg up on the A’s because it is a couple years into the makeover. The O’s nearly captured a wild-card berth last season, and their top prospects are starting to contribute in the majors, led by catcher Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson.

Sept. 4-6 vs. Toronto Blue Jays

The Astros and Yankees enter the season as the trendy picks to win the A.L. pennant, but Toronto might be the most exciting team in the majors. There are the stars: Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette, Alek Manoah and George Springer, but the addition of former A’s All-Stars and fan favorites Matt Chapman (last season) and Chris Bassitt (over the winter) are what might land the Jays in the World Series for the first time in 30 years.

Sept. 15-17 vs. San Diego Padres

A’s fans will always have a soft spot for Bob Melvin, the Bay Area native who guided the team to the postseason six times in his 11 seasons as manager before taking over the Padres job last season. Since the move came about a month after the 2021 season and the A’s played in San Diego last year, this will be the first time “BoMel” will be back in the Coliseum. It figures to be one of the most anticipated returns of the 2020era teardown.

SHAE HAMMOND/ STAFF ARCHIVES

NOTES

All times Pacific. All game times and telecast information subject to change. All games broadcast on 960 AM

Home games

Do your own ‘Dare to Pair,’ A’s fans

STORY BY LINDA ZAVORAL ILLUSTRATION BY DAVIDE BARCO

Oakland A’s fans lucked out last season.

No, not when it came to the stadium drama. They were whipsawed between two sites, with a third — Las Vegas — dangling over their devoted green-andgold-capped heads.

And not when it came to the team. The A’s traded all-stars (and crowd favorites) Matt Olson, Matt Chapman and Chris Bassitt.

But when it came to innovative food sold at the Oakland Coliseum stands, fans blessedly escaped some ghastly sounding combinations. You see, Aramark Sports & Entertainment, the concessionaire for nine MLB stadiums, had developed a “Dare to Pair” menu for the 2022 season.

Just how daring was Aramark? Toronto Blue Jays fans got Pickle Poutine, cheese curds topped with fried pickle straws, peanut butter gravy, bacon bits, dill and scallions (the very definition of a hot mess). For Kansas City Royals fans, it was the BBQ Reese’s Sandwich, a barbecue-sauced pulled pork (so far, so good) to which Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups were added (aack). And the poor Boston Red Sox fans were offered Fluffer Nutter Fries, sweet potato fries with

peanut sauce, crushed peanuts, cilantro and ... you saw it coming ... fluff sauce.

By comparison, the Coliseum crowd was treated to Aramark’s Flaming Hot Cheesesteak, a rather traditional combination of chopped steak, onions and Cheez Whiz adorned with Flaming Hot Cheetos. Sounds edible.

To be sure, there were other good eats on the grounds, with the Food Truck Mafia hosting a food truck festival in Championship Plaza, the area between the stadium and the arena, for all ticket holders. A rotating series of trucks will be back this season, the A’s confirmed.

What else is in store besides the requisite hot dogs, popcorn and nachos? Aramark wasn’t ready to release details by our press time. So if you’re ready for your put-me-in-coach, I’m-ready-to-play assignment, here goes:

You’ve been hired to dream up a new creation called the Hegenberger Hottie. But you must pick one each from columns A, B and C. If it doesn’t sell, you could be heading down to the minors. OK, you’re up.

A Pick a base

Ballpark sausage

Birria taco

Chicken tenders

Pork banh mi

B Pick some toppings

Bacon bits with maple syrup

Thousand Island dressing

Mango habanero salsa

Hoisin sauce

C The crowning glory

Cracker Jack

Caviar

Dippin’ Dots

Maraschino cherries

Man With the Plan

Do-everything travel director Mickey Morabito remains the A’s hidden treasure after 43 years

BY JON BECKER

With another dreary, last-place season in the forecast, the A’s are fortunate to have Mickey Morabito and his dry sense of humor around for the 43rd straight year.

Oakland’s quick-thinking, do-everything director of travel has long known when it’s time to lighten a mood. When someone bemoans the A’s seemingly hopeless plight, Morabito deftly points out how Oakland can and will distance itself from every other MLB team this season.

“We jumped Seattle and the Angels into the No. 1 spot in most air miles traveled for this season. So we are leading Major League Baseball in something,” Morabito said — drolly — during a phone conversation while he waited to board a flight to spring training.

Sure, the A’s 51,527 air miles for 2023 puts them safely ahead of the Mariners (49,036) and Giants (46,111), but it leaves them a long way from where they want to be as a team. Getting there won’t be easy. This is where the eminently likable Morabito provides subtle assistance on a daily basis.

Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa, who worked with Morabito in Oakland from 1986 to 1995, said it’s easy to explain what’s made Morabito such a popular and valuable co-worker and friend.

“Mickey’s got a really good personality, and you look forward to his company,” La Russa said. “He’s interesting and fun. He could take it, and he could dish it out. There ain’t no way that you get to 43 years unless you’re 43 years special.”

Former equipment manager Steve Vucinich, whose

Mickey Morabito has handled all the A’s travel arrangements since arriving in 1980. Here, Morabito, center, waits with (from left) Rich Sauveur, Omar Oliveres, Tim Hudson, Kevin Appier, Ben Grieve and Mark Mulder in the loading dock under Camden Yards in Baltimore for the bus back to the team hotel following a 2000 game against the Orioles.

PHOTO BY MICHAEL ZAGARIS

epic 54-year run with the A’s ended with his retirement last year, said Morabito has always done right by everyone he works with.

“I guarantee you, Mickey is at the top of everyone’s list, from the hotel people to the airline people. From the bellmen to the bartenders, Mickey treats everyone with respect,” Vucinich said.

“He’s a treasure,” said Michael Zagaris, the iconic Bay Area sports and music photographer who has been the A’s team photographer since 1981. “Everyone loves him. I don’t think he’s ever had an enemy ... well, there were one or two (expletives). But that’s on them, not Mickey,”

Morabito’s 43 years in Oakland make him the team’s most senior full-time employee. He’s also Major League Baseball’s longest-tenured traveling secretary — by a long shot. Arizona’s Roger Riley is next, with 28 years on the job.

“Why do I still do it? Working

A’s director of travel Mickey Morabito doesn’t have much down time during spring training, but his real work will come this season. Because of an expanded MLB schedule, the A’s will lead the majors in air miles this season — 51,527. Next up are the Mariners (49,036) and the Giants (46,111).

in baseball is all I’ve ever done, and I still enjoy it,” said the 71-year-old Morabito. “I enjoy traveling and staying in nice hotels on somebody else’s dime.”

All fun aside, Morabito’s core responsibilities of overseeing every aspect of team travel have never changed, even if they’ve been altered since he took over the A’s travel in 1980. Back then, the A’s took commercial flights, sometimes flew on game days and occasionally changed planes en route.

Travel has gotten better since then. The A’s have their own chartered plane for every trip, and Morabito sets up all the A’s travel arrangements, from flights to hotels, buses and delivery trucks, well in advance of the sixmonth season. There will always be plenty of other flights for him to arrange during the season for players coming up to the A’s or down to Triple-A Las Vegas.

(He surely has a quip about the franchise-record 64 players the A’s used during last year’s perpetual roster shuffle, but the less said about the 2022 season, the better).

Making the best of any situation comes naturally for Morabito, who made his name in the game while working for boorish Yankees owner George Steinbrenner

during the “Bronx Zoo” era of the late 1970s. There, in the tabloid capital of the world, Morabito’s job as the public relations manager meant he had to defuse the almost daily drama between Steinbrenner, Reggie Jackson and manager Billy Martin.

“You never knew who was fighting or arguing with whom

PHOTO BY MICAHEL ZAGARIS

“ Why do I still do it? Working in baseball is all I’ve ever done, and I still enjoy it.”

Mickey

Morabito, Oakland Athletics director of travel

each day,” said Morabito, whose close friendship with Martin in New York would ultimately shape his life’s path.

First, Morabito had to survive working for the volatile Steinbrenner, who seemed to go through PR directors at nearly the same rate he switched managers — and “The Boss” changed managers 20

times in his first 23 years.

Like most under Steinbrenner, Morabito hit the ground stumbling when he was hired. It wasn’t long before Morabito was fired for the first time by Steinbrenner, apparently for hiring the wrong limousine driver to pick up his boss at the Fort Lauderdale airport. And the next two times

Morabito was told he was fired, Steinbrenner had forgotten and forgiven by the next morning. Morabito’s most infamous reprieve was in 1978, nearly a month after one of the five times Martin was replaced as manager. Morabito arranged for a small group of Yankees beat writers to have lunch with Martin. Soon

after, Steinbrenner was fielding calls from those writers who were seeking comments about Martin ripping Reggie.

As Morabito recalled, Steinbrenner told him: “I’ll tell you what, Morabito. I’m gonna send my driver out tonight to pick up the early editions of the papers. If it comes out bad, more of that Billy-Reggie (stuff), you’re gone. Fired!”

Convinced the stories in the morning edition of the New York tabloids could be nothing but bad, Morabito started packing up some of his belongings.

In an amazing stroke of good fortune for Morabito, New York’s largest newspapers had gone on strike that night. There would be no stories for Steinbrenner or anyone to pore over that morning or for the next month.

A year later, Martin would be at the center of another huge break for Morabito.

A’s owner Charlie Finley hired Martin to manage the A’s in 1980, and one of the manager’s first moves was to bring Morabito with him as the traveling secretary and temporary PR director.

“Dad loved Mickey and trusted him. He knew Mickey always had his back, and dad obviously had Mickey’s back,” said Billy Martin Jr. during a recent phone call from Arlington, Texas. “George was so hard on Mickey that I remember my father saying to me, ‘I want Mickey here with me, but I really want to save him from George.’”

Morabito vividly recalls his first day with the A’s. He arrived at spring training in Scottsdale, and Martin called him and the coaching staff in for a short, jarring meeting.

“Don’t bother looking for any housing in Oakland. No one knows this yet, but we’re gonna be in Denver next year,” Martin told them, revealing Finley had a deal to sell the A’s to Denver oilman Marvin Davis.

After the initial shock, Morabito reasoned that he’d still made the right decision, he’d spend one season in Oakland and continue his career in Denver. Then everything changed, when Martin turned the A’s into a contending and valuable team.

Morabito’s one-year plan in Oakland is now at 43 years … and counting.

Mickey Morabito gets a good look at Fenway Park during A’s batting practice before a game against the Red Sox in 1998.

PHOTO BY MICHAEL ZAGARIS

Take him out to the ballparks — all 30 of them

Author offers a zippy guide for visiting every stadium

STORY BY CHUCK BARNEY ILLUSTRATION BY JEFF DURHAM

It doesn’t take a rigorous Google search to learn that it was Ralph Waldo Emerson — rather than Yogi Berra — who insisted life is all about the journey, not the destination. Then again, ol’ Ralphie never spent a lazy summer day in the Dodger Stadium bleachers or gazed upon the Green Monster at Fenway Park.

Any baseball devotee worth his peanuts and Cracker Jack knows that both the journey and the destination hold equal value when it comes to road tripping across North America to visit the fields of their dreams.

It’s those wanderlusty fans, many of whom spent their youth collecting bubble gum cards, who now exuberantly collect major-league ballparks. In some ambitious cases, all 30 of them — from Oracle Park in San Francisco to Yankee Stadium in New York City.

Sure, they might go about it differently: There are those who enjoy tailing their hometown team on an extended road trip. Others spend life in the fast lane, trying to hit as many stadiums as they can in a short amount of time. Still, some prefer a more laid-back game plan.

But no matter the method, they just can’t wait to get on the road again.

“It’s the allure of seeing things up close that we’re used to seeing from afar,” says author and passionate baseball lover Timothy Malcolm. “We’ve all watched

A statue of former Red Sox player Carl Yastrzemski stands outside Fenway Park in Boston.

games on TV, seeing different ballparks, and it’s like a case of FOMO (fear of missing out). We’ve just gotta reach out and be part of that. We yearn to experience the history of the parks — their flavors, their aromas and the romance of it all.”

Malcolm is certainly plugged in, having written “Baseball Road Trips: The Complete Guide to All the Ballparks, With Beer, Bites and Sights Nearby.” It’s a lavishly detailed Moon Travel Guide (Hachette Book Group, $28) and a must-have for any fan whose bucket list includes big-league stadiums.

“There are a lot of us who absolutely worship ballparks. They’re like temples,” says the author, who might as well be channeling Susan Sarandon’s “Church of Baseball” speech in “Bull Durham.”

Malcolm caught the baseball travel bug while growing up in Philadelphia, where he and his dad often frequented old Veterans Stadium to watch their beloved Phillies. Even as a child, he was fascinated with ballpark design aesthetics and found himself marveling at images of big-league venues depicted in the baseball video game he and his friends played.

As a high schooler, Malcolm visited Baltimore to catch a game at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, the retro facility that set a new standard for ballpark design when it opened in 1992. Soon, his journeys led to other legendary

sites, including Chicago’s Wrigley Field and Boston’s Fenway Park, where Malcolm “nearly fainted” with excitement.

“It was one of those my-life-iscomplete moments,” he recalls of his time in Fenway. “I felt like I was back in 1948, watching Ted Williams at the plate.”

In the years since, Malcolm has become what’s known in some circles as a “ballpark chaser,” roaming the nation to sample

the various amenities, histories, moods and quirks of baseball’s showpieces. And while he certainly admires the can-do gusto of chasers who turn their ventures into kind of a race, he’d rather take it slow and get a feel for both the parks and their cities.

To that end, his travel guide suggests seven bite-sized regional trips and not only includes loads of venue intel — seating plans, parking info, etc. — but rundowns of

local fan culture and tips on where to eat, drink and stay nearby.

He even turns some attention to fun side trips such as the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, and the “Field of Dreams” movie site in Dyersville, Iowa.

Of course, Malcolm has his favorites. His Top 10 ranking of major league ballparks, for example, gives major props to Oracle Park as San Francisco’s jewel by

You can bet Timothy Malcolm, the Houston-based baseball fan behind “Baseball Road Trips,” attended the 2022 World Series games at Minute Maid Park.

COURTESY OF TIMOTHY MALCOLM

the Bay sits in third place, behind only Wrigley and Fenway.

Malcolm was “floored” during his visit to Oracle, digging the garlic fries, the craft beers, the “killer views” and the way the Giants’ team history looms large around every corner.

“It easily could be ranked No. 1,” he says. “I loved everything about Oracle, even though it’s one of the most expensive parks. It has all the bells and whistles.

… Looking out at the (McCovey) cove, I thought about all the massive home runs Barry Bonds hit there.”

Clearly, RingCentral Coliseum in Oakland isn’t nearly as adored. The concrete behemoth that the Athletics have sought to flee for years dwells at, or near, the bottom of most ballpark rankings. Malcolm, however, has a soft spot for it.

“It’s much better than I

expected,” he says. “(The organization) has done a lot to dress up the place and provide plenty of amenities and activities. And the fans who do show up are very passionate.”

Of the seven regional trips that Malcolm breaks down in his writings, it’s no surprise that his favorite is the East Coast trek with a Boston-to-Washington, D.C., route that includes stops at Fenway, Yankee Stadium, Citi

Field (Mets), Citizens Bank Park (Phillies), Oriole Park at Camden Yards and Nationals Park.

It’s a trip that features some of the sport’s most storied franchises, along with some hit-and-run efficiency.

“Because the parks are so close to each other, you can bang out that trip in a week and still have room to breathe,” he says.

That doesn’t mean a West Coast tour doesn’t offer its own delights. Malcolm’s suggested trip starts at Petco Park in San Diego (Padres) and heads north with stops at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, Oracle, RingCentral and T-Mobile Park in Seattle (Mariners). It’s worth noting that four of the Western parks — Oracle (No. 3), Dodger (4), Petco (7) and T-Mobile (8) make his overall Top 10 rankings.

This year, Malcolm plans to work on an update of his book, which debuted in 2021. Meanwhile, he continues to expand his baseball bucket list with a focus beyond North America.

“Someday, I want to visit other countries. I’d love to see a game in the Tokyo Dome (home to the Yomiuri Giants) and elsewhere,” he says. “I’d like to see the game through the eyes of people who watch it differently.”

Timothy Malcolm’s book guides readers through all 30 major league baseball parks, including the Cincinnati Reds’ Great American Ball Park (left).

LEFT: JAMIE SABAU/GETTY IMAGES

GIANTS

Feasting before or after the game

There’s plenty of great grub within steps of Oracle Park

BY JESSICA YADEGARAN

The only thing better than decking yourself out in orange and black for a day at the ballpark is some delicious food to go with it. You can certainly eat inside San Francisco’s Oracle Park — who doesn’t love Organic Coup or The Lumpia Company?

But if you’re looking for something before or after the game, there are plenty of options for reasonably priced, tasty eats between SoMa and Mission Bay, and many are within a 10-minute walk. Some even have waterfront and ballpark views. Neighborhood restaurateurs, such as Scott Morton of MoMo’s, take great pride in matching the excitement of orange-clad fans with stellar hospitality.

“It’s a full house on most game days, and my job

The brewery’s trademark bicycles hang from the ceiling at San Francisco’s New Belgium Brewing, which is known for its Fat Tire amber ale. KARL MONDON/STAFF

is to put on the best show I can,” Morton says. “Hospitality and maintaining a fun atmosphere are a big part of that.”

Here’s everything you need to know about MoMo’s, which is celebrating 25 years in the neighborhood, and four other restaurants where you can have a memorable meal on game day — or any day.

MoMo’s

This American bar and grill checks multiple game-day boxes, from waterfront views and hearty eats to a stellar happy hour. Former Momo’s general manager Scott Morton and his wife and MoMo’s events director, Caitlyn, took over ownership in 2019, and recently completed a refresh that includes newly upholstered booths, fresh coats of paint and an impressive arbor atop the 80-seat deck. It protects outdoor diners from the sun in the summer and rain in the spring.

MoMo’s prides itself on a menu of accessible dishes, including meal-sized salads, wood-fired pizzas, a half-pound burger with griddled onions and eight shareable appetizers, such as Brussels sprouts with pancetta and crispy chicken wings with housemade chile pepper sauce. It’s the kind of place you can get both spinach gnocchi and fish tacos with roasted pineapple salsa.

The dish: Don’t miss the French Dip sandwich ($21). Sliced New York strip is layered with provolone on a warm baguette slathered in horseradish aioli, with a side of au jus for dipping. Don’t forget the fries.

Details: Opens at 11:30 a.m. MondaySaturday at 760 Second St. in San Francisco; www.sfmomos.com.

Top: Scott and Caitlyn Morton, owners of MoMo’s across from Oracle Park in San Francisco, say they are looking forward to the upcoming baseball season.

Right: Ahi Tuna Tartar, featuring avocado, sesame, soy, pickled ginger, scallions, Tobiko and sriracha aioli, is served at MoMo’s.

KARL MONDON/STAFF

New Belgium Brewing Taproom & Restaurant

This massive, 6,300-square foot brewery and restaurant opened its doors just in time for the Giants’ first home game day of the season in 2021, a fitting debut for an establishment overlooking Oracle Park. New Belgium is based in Colorado, but the menu, brews and talent here are all San Francisco. Head brewer Ramon Tamayo came over from Russian River Brewing Company to join the lineup, and Noosh founders Laura and Sayat Ozyilmaz launched the menu, which is now executed by chef Antonio Padilla.

Inside, colorful bicycles dangle from the ceiling in bright contrast to the industrial steel beams. A blue sign — “Smile, beer loves you” — beckons you to the bar, where a dozen taps offer a mix of small batch, classic Belgian-style brews, experimental hoppy beers and sour blends. Anchoring the small menu of global, seasonal eats are 10 shareable starters, such as Mexican spiced peanuts and a warm Bavarian pretzel, served with beer cheese fondue, and six entrees, including mussels steamed in garlic and beer, naturally.

The dish: Fried Cauliflower ($10). Among the restaurant’s home-run dishes, these tempura batter-dipped florets are fried to a crisp and served with a side of ranch dipping sauce.

Details: Open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily at 1000A Third St.; www.newbelgium.com/ visit/san-francisco.

Above: Antonio Lopez serves lunch at New Belgium Brewing, a popular noshing spot near San Francisco’s Oracle Park.

Left: New Belgium Brewing’s Mothership Burger is served with a side of Fried Cauliflower and a Green Goddess Salad.

KARL MONDON/STAFF

Little Skillet at Victory Hall & Parlor

Preposterously crispy fried chicken and golden, fluffy yeasted waffles make Little Skillet one of the most delicious choices for dinner near Oracle Park. You can add craft cocktails to that winning combination, since the Southern food gem is located inside Deanna Sison’s revamped bar, Victory Hall & Parlor.

Inside the historic building that once housed one of San Francisco’s first gay bath houses and later, the storied 330 Ritch nightclub, Victory Hall & Parlor is modern yet cozy, with brick walls, exposed wood beams and a bar lined with pendant lights and soft, leather-backed stools. The Little Skillet menu is focused on that fried chicken, which owes its dynamite flavor to an overnight brine. It comes in two-, three- and eight-piece orders alongside a bevy of classic sides. Don’t miss the bar menu — available starting at 4 p.m. — which features slow-roasted pulled pork sliders and Old Bay deviled eggs with crispy garlic.

The dish: Fried chicken, of course. The Works ($21) gets you two pieces of that glorious bird with a housemade waffle and side of your choice. We recommend the jalapeño kale slaw.

Details: Opens at 11:30 a.m. weekdays and 10:30 a.m. weekends at 360 Ritch St.; www.littleskilletsf.com

Underdogs Cantina

Craving affordable Mexican food? Look for the Giants flag billowing above the orange-andwhite surfboard logo, and you’ll know you’re in the right place. Located just across the street from Oracle Park, Underdogs Cantina is a casual Mexican restaurant specializing in street tacos, burritos and quesadillas. It’s the kind of place you’ll find flautas, elote and a cheeseburger in burrito form. Inside the split-level dining room, it’s festive and roomy, with a mix of booths and tables, including plenty of seating at the full bar, where you’ll find multiple flat

screens for catching the game. The epic happy hour (4:30-6 p.m. daily) includes everything from two-buck churros to five-dollar margies. As for the menu, best come hungry. Those burritos, especially the San Francisco, a Mission-style favorite loaded with meat, cheese, rice, beans, guacamole and pico de gallo, are giant. And don’t skip dessert: Underdogs serves a Mexican chocolate mousse made with Ghirardelli chocolate.

The dish: Crispy Taco ($5.75-$8.75). You’ll want a few of these legendary tacos that fill grilled corn tortillas with your choice of carne asada, chicken, Baja-style fish or cauliflower and all the fixings.

Details: Opens at 11 a.m. daily at 128 King St.; https://underdogscantina.com

21st Amendment Brewery & Restaurant

Over the past 23 years, brewery founders Shaun O’Sullivan and Nico Freccia have helped establish South Beach as a lively epicenter. Just two blocks from Oracle Park, the 21st Amendment brewery and restaurant inside the familiar blue corner building is a dynamite hub for comfort food and iconic beers (What will the next seasonal Hell or High Water fruit beer be?)

Whether you’re perched inside the brightly lit brewpub or accompanying furry friends on the rear patio, 21st Amendment typically offers at least 10 beers on tap — a recent lineup featured everything from a rich, black IPA called Back in Black to a light and crisp Mexican lager, El Sully. And the restaurant serves up a hefty menu of appetizers, soups, salads, burgers, pizzas and larger entrees, like a rotisserie-style half jerk chicken and baby back ribs slathered in house beer-barbecue sauce.

The dish: Sharing or not, you’ll want the tater tot nachos ($14) topped with two kinds of cheese and cilantro-spiked sour cream. On chilly days, the Brew Free! or Die Chili ($7/$10), made with red beans, freshground chuck and the brewery’s signature IPA, hits the spot.

Details: Opens at 11 a.m. daily at 563 Second St.; https://21st-amendment.com.

Above: Bartender Mia Santos serves up cocktails at San Francisco’s Victory Hall & Parlor.

Below: Deanna Sison, pictured at left, owns Victory Hall & Parlor, which is also home to Little Skillet, a popular fried chicken and waffle-centric eatery.

KARL MONDON/STAFF

Game time is play time for longtime Giants organist Steve Hogan

BY JIM HARRINGTON

Steve Hogan’s timing was impeccable, signing on as ballpark organist for the San Francisco Giants in the summer of 2010, right as all the fun was about to get started.

“I sailed through three World Series in my first five years,” he says of the team’s championship runs in 2010, 2012 and 2014. “It’s amazing. It just worked out that way — being in the right place at the right time.”

The team has had its share of ups and downs since that last banner was hung at 24 Willie Mays Plaza, but fans have always been able to count on hearing Hogan’s lively organ work during day games.

“I just think it’s a fun extra dimension,” says Hogan, who lives in Castro Valley with his wife, Johanna, and teenage sons, Brady and Liam. “Just the knowledge that there is a real living, breathing human being doing this makes it a little more fun. It just adds to the ambience and experience.”

Hogan grew up in the Boston area and attended countless Red Sox games with his family at legendary Fenway Park.

“(Ballpark organist) John Kiley was like the institution in Boston,” Hogan says. “I think he did Celtics, Bruins and Red Sox. He must have played for the Red Sox for 30 or 40 years. God bless him — he ruled the town on the sports organ.”

It’s no wonder the organ caught the young baseball fan’s attention. He was an aspiring musician, too.

“Ever since I was a kid, I studied piano,” he says. “I played in the jazz band in high school.

When I got to college, my major was environmental science, but I took a ton of music classes, and in my heart, all I wanted to do was play music.”

His early influences included classic rock musicians as well as jazz greats Keith Jarrett and Bill Evans. He singles out Roy “The Professor” Bittan, from the E Street Band, as having a big impact.

“Springsteen ran strong in our household,” Hogan says.

After graduating from Washington University in St. Louis, another Grade A baseball city, Hogan moved to the Bay Area and settled in Pacifica with the goal of launching a music career. But another opportunity soon came along.

“When I moved here in 1996, that was almost the pinnacle of the dot-com boom, so I wound up getting a job as a software tester as the day job,” he remembers, and he played music gigs on the side. Then a job came along that melded tech with tunes. Some 22 years later, he’s still there.

These days, everyone knows about Pandora, the Oakland-based internet powerhouse. But in 2000, when Hogan came onboard as a music analyst, co-founder Tim Westergren’s fledgling startup had only a dozen or so employees. Those early days were rocky, Hogan recalls, as the company fought to stay in business.

“By 2001, the company com-

pletely ran out of money, and we went almost two years either not getting paid or intermittently getting paid. Tim maxed out his credit cards trying to keep this thing afloat. It was insane,” says Hogan. “Out of 30 musicians, I was the only one who stuck it out, so I kind of became the de facto manager at the end of that hard period. (Tim) finally got a nice big round of venture capital infusion into the company and was able to pay back a lot of back salary for everybody who had stayed.”

Hogan was at the Pandora offices one day, playing around on an electric piano and running through a version of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” when he was overheard by a colleague with a side gig. Michael Addicott was the house DJ at the Giants’ ballpark.

“He came in and was like, ‘Would you ever want to try playing at the game sometime?’” Hogan said.

Hogan has played the Giants’ ballpark organ ever since, performing at day games — about 30 per year — as well as during playoff series. His repertoire ranges from classic ballpark fare to the Grateful Dead and Electric Light Orchestra — plus Sesame Street and Raffi for the younger set — but he throws in a few original numbers now and again.

“It’s just been a great musical outlet, because I don’t get a chance to perform that much publicly,” he says. “So, this is just enough.”

And he means it. When the San Jose Sharks came calling a while back, searching for an organ player for some of their games at SAP Center, Hogan was more than happy to recommend his Pandora coworker, Kevin Seal, who ended up getting the gig.

“I think,” Hogan says, “one sports season a year is enough for me.”

Steve Hogan, a music analyst at Pandora, has played the organ for San Francisco Giants home games since the 2010 season. SHAE HAMMOND/STAFF ARCHIVE

Beyond the fieldright wall

Some of the most ardent fans of the Giants and the A’s cluster where they can best practice their trademark antics

BY SHAYNA RUBIN

Only a short drive across the Bay Bridge separates the Giants and the A’s, but their ballparks couldn’t be more different.

The Giants’ waterfront home turns 23 this spring and still is one of MLB’s jewels, while the A’s prepare for their 55th season in a crumbling stadium they have been trying to replace — and more recently completely abandon — for more than two decades.

Yet the Bay Area’s teams share a common bond: a world beyond their right field fences that makes the ballpark experience unique.

A core group of hardy San Francisco fans brave the waves and frigid fog to bob in the Bay for “splash hits.” And every game at the Coliseum includes a soundtrack and spectacle provided

Los Gatos’ Dave Edlund wasn’t the first to kayak McCovey Cove, hoping to catch home run balls — or rescue “splash hits” — in the Bay, but he’s the best. Edlund is closing in on 50 home run retrievals since grabbing his first — off the bat of Randy Winn — in 2005.

ARIC CRABB/ STAFF ARCHIVES

by a fan base whose fierce loyalty makes up for its lack of numbers.

In both cases, there is nothing else like it in baseball.

EYE OF THE STORM

A kayaker’s rule of thumb is to never paddle in a thunderstorm. But on this rare stormy San Francisco night, the McCovey Cove Dave bylaws advised otherwise.

It was September 11, 2017. The Los Angeles Dodgers were starting right-handed pitcher Kenta Maeda, which meant the Giants lineup was ripe with left-handed hitters: Joe Panik, Brandon Crawford, Jarrett Parker and, most importantly for Dave Edlund, AKA McCovey Cove Dave, was Denard Span.

Because left-handed hitters are more likely to pull home runs over the right field bricks, a lefty-heavy lineup meant the Cove would be jam-packed with boaters hunting splash hit baseballs. But a night with Span in the lineup was the jackpot for splash hit gurus like Edlund. He had good numbers against Maeda and four splash hit home runs nearly two seasons into his Giants tenure.

So when the 7 p.m. game was officially delayed until 10:30 p.m. as lightning strikes lit up the clouds above what was then AT&T Park, Edlund didn’t pack up his kayak and bolt like the rest of his competitors. He took a nap in his car and was out on the water once play resumed, joined only by Jon Miller and Dave Fleming crooning over his transistor radio headphones. It paid off: At 11 p.m., Span hit one into the water. In 20 seconds, Edlund had it.

“We all feel like we’re part of the game,” Edlund said. “It’s a sport of chasing memorabilia baseballs. And only a few people got that gene when they were born.”

For Edlund, ball-hawking in McCovey Cove is a sport, his fellow kayakers are his competition,

and he’s played more games than Barry Bonds — he’s made it out on the Bay for most home games, since he quit his Silicon Valley job in 2005.

And while Edlund is the face of the McCovey Cove denizens, a vibrant aquatic fan culture has formed out on the water next to him.

Some of McCovey Dave’s competitors and fellow fans include “The Shark,” “Splash Hit Steve” and Mark Busch — who doesn’t want a nickname. They keep a tally of who has caught more splash hits — Edlund by a good number. They share secrets of the trade, and they’ve experienced their favorite team’s highs and lows together from beyond the ballpark walls.

BLEACHER CREATURES

Bryan Johansen is part of the “Last Dive Bar” group, one of a dozen bleacher creature crews that populate the mostly empty Coliseum seats. On broadcasts, you can see some of the banners he makes for A’s players: “Laser Ramón” for Ramón Laureano, “Kempin’ Ain’t Easy” for Tony Kemp.

During the pandemic season in 2020, Johansen used his seat for a cardboard cutout of the Houston Astros mascot Orbit sitting in a trash can — a poke at the A’s division rival for a cheating scandal in which Astros players pounded on trash cans from the dugout to relay signals to batters.

Johansen was told that the Astros saw the cutout during batting practice, complained to MLB and had it removed.

“They had him in jail, but I did get it back,” he said.

Johansen grew up an A’s fan, not just idolizing the players, but the bleacher crews he saw around the park. He idolized the “The Hendu Land Group” for Dave Henderson, of course, and the “Fly Boys” — two ball hawks

The right field drummers who pop up at A’s home games are among the team’s most loyal and enthusiastic fans. SHAE HAMMOND/STAFF ARCHIVES

named Mike Kelly and Jay Didier who would fly down the Coliseum railings in pursuit of home run balls.

Through the years, he’s seen other super fan crews pass through, including “The Green Man,” “Coco Fingers” and the “Melvin Misfits,” who have all lost faith and disappeared.

“Melvin Misfits got kids and left around the (Josh) Donaldson fire sale,” Johansen said. “Green Man left with the Marcus Semien departure, that was the final straw.”

A’s players may come and go, but some of the most loyal fans in baseball occupy the bleachers above the right field wall, where flags wave and drums beat. Some have even found their soulmates in those cheap green seats.

At least four couples from the current right field crew have said “I do” after romances kindled over countless A’s games and chants of “Let’s go, Oakland!”

“I think common interest was definitely the biggest thing for most of us, and that we were out there so frequently,” said Dublin native Rebekah Schlimmer, who met her husband, Daniel, in the bleachers. The pair were married in 2019. “We had already kinda built the friendship at that point. There were a few people that definitely saw (a relationship) coming.”

Some of the current group first

Top: Oakland Athletics fans Ben Sachez, of Oakland, and Nina Thorsen, of Alameda, play the drums during the A’s game against the Los Angeles Angels at the Oakland Coliseum on Tuesday, July 20, 2021.

DOUG DURAN/STAFF ARCHIVES

Bottom left: The core group of A’s fans in the right-field bleachers have attended games since the mid-2000s, forging strong friendships – and a few romances. Rebekah and Daniel Schlimmer met in the stands rooting for the A’s and much of their bleacher crew was in attendance when they were married in 2019.

COURTESY OF REBEKAH AND DANIEL SCHLIMMER

Bottom right: Devon Errington, left, shows off a home run ball she recovered to Dave Edlund, right, as they kayak in McCovey Cove during a San Francisco Giants game on Sunday, May 9, 2021, in San Francisco.

ARIC CRABB/STAFF ARCHIVES

started populating the right field bleachers in the early 2000s. While some faces have come and gone, A’s fans know all about that this core has remained largely intact. During the A’s offseason, they stay connected with bowling outings and pizza nights or by attending other sporting events together. And of course, attending each other’s weddings, including the union of James and Amanda Sanos, who traded vows on the Coliseum diamond in the summer of 2019.

“You find a way to get in,” Schlimmer said, “and then you’re in.”

Johansen does his part with the cutouts and banners he hangs over the railings. The players know about their banners and often ask for them as gifts. Threetime Athletic Jed Lowrie asked Johansen for his banner that said “Return of the Return of the Return of the Jed.”

Then there’s the drum beat, a rhythm created by the Oakland 68s from their spot in right field. They come from a long line of Coliseum drummers that began with Krazy George and continued with a group of mostly Skyline High School students in the early 2000s.

The drums are often accompanied by chants, too. In 2011, their “bacon” chants got former Royals outfielder Jeff Francoeur to throw a $100 bill up to the seats with directions: Beer and bacon on him.

Those same chants have gone wrong, too. Jose Guillèn, Álex Ríos and Magglio Ordóñez have directed angry words at the right field taunters.

“The best of all would have to be Josè Bautista,” said season ticket holder Will MacNeil, otherwise known as Right Field Will. “We had not even said anything to him yet, and he came out screaming and yelling at us, so that provided extra motivation and fire for us to just let him have it all game, all series and for years to come.”

Whether it’s racing for home run balls through water or railing, befriending your team’s guys or getting under opposing players’ skin, Bay Area fans take this stuff seriously.

“In my life, there’s my wife, there’s my son, and then there’s baseball,” Johansen said. “I lose any of those three things, my life significantly changes.”

Top: Longtime A’s fans Amanda and James Sanos, were married on the field following the A’s game against the Rays on June 22, 2019. Attire was casual, but green collar was encouraged. The reception, attended by many of their cohorts from the right field stands, was held inside the Coliseum at the East Side Club, where they got to pose with the A’s four World Series trophies. COURTESY OF AMANDA AND JAMES SANOS

Above: The right field drummers cheer on the field during the Oakland Athletic’s Opening Night against the Baltimore Orioles at the Coliseum in Oakland, Monday, April 18, 2022. SHAE HAMMOND/STAFF ARCHIVES

Alex the baseball bunny hops to the challenge of bringing luck to the Giants

BY JOAN MORRIS

In a game where much depends on fate — a ball that takes an unlucky bounce, a sudden gust that sends a sure home run just foul, a hard hit ball that careens off the corner of a base and miraculously ends up in the first baseman’s glove — is it any wonder that ball players put a lot of stock in good luck charms?

They follow rituals, wear lucky socks, eat the same pregame meals, all in hopes of recapturing a bit of baseball magic. The San Francisco Giants’ lucky charm is a rabbit’s foot. Four of them, actually.

Alex the Great, a giant Flemish rabbit who weighs in at 32 pounds (34 during the offseason), has become the Giants’ unofficially official rally rabbit. He has a proven record, when it comes to bringing good luck to the boys by the Bay. The Giants have won 24 games when Alex was in attendance and lost just four.

Many of those victories, says Alex’s owner, Josh Row, were come-from-behind wins, including Alex’s first game, where the Giants were down two runs before the rabbit magic kicked in, and they won by a single run.

In 2021, the Giants were at best a .500 team, Row says, predicted to win just 80 games in a post-COVID season. Then Alex showed up, rallied the team and kicked off a 14-game winning streak. Although the Giants’ World Series dreams were spoiled by the Los Angeles Dodgers in postseason play — which we don’t like to talk about — the Giants still won 107 games. Coincidence, you say? Maybe, but it’s bad juju to question the luck.

Alex’s baseball record is impressive, but it is not considered his biggest turn of good fortune. The lagomorphic good luck charm was a whisker away from being someone’s Sunday dinner — a Dodger fan, probably — when he was rescued from a rabbit meat farm and put up for adoption.

Although Alex is not an official employee of the Giants, they’re happy to have him on their side.

“We know that he attends many of our games and is seen throughout the neighborhood and is popular with the fans,” says Casey Baska, the team’s senior director for business and internal communications. “With this Lunar New Year being the Year of the Rabbit, signifying hope, when Alex does attend a game, his presence will have extra special meaning this year.”

Alex didn’t intend to become a rally rabbit and social media darling. When Row, who has had rabbits for the last 16 years and does a lot of work with rescued rabbits, first met Alex, he and his fiancee, Kei Kato, thought Alex’s calmness and friendliness would make him a great therapy animal.

Rabbits, Row says, have all the good qualities of cats and dogs rolled into one fluffy, lovable creature. They also are easily trained, and Alex is incredibly adventurous and curious. For a rabbit, he’s also a bit of a ham and loves all the attention he gets, which is good, because Alex turns heads wherever he goes — and he goes a lot of places.

In addition to his baseball work, Alex is part of San Francisco International Airport’s “Wag Brigade,” an assortment of animals that stroll the airport, greeting fliers and working to keep tensions and anxiety as low as they can. The brigade includes dogs as well as Alex and a pig. Alex also visits nursing homes and hospice care.

Alex the Great’s preferred mode of transportation is a remote controlled Jeep operated by Row, although don’t tell Alex that.

“He thinks he’s doing the driving,” Row says.

While he was training Alex to become a therapy animal, Row says he started taking the rabbit to public venues to help socialize him and get him more accustomed to larger groups of people. His first Giants game was the season opener, and Row noticed not only how calm Alex was with the crowd around him, but how interested he was. The rabbit really seemed to thrive on the energy in the crowd.

“He loves it when people get excited, and fans start chanting and cheering,” Row says. “He gets excited, and his ears go forward.”

Fans noticed him, too, and his fame spread quickly on social media, where he was immediately dubbed the Giants rally rabbit. Now fans seek him out at games.

“The first thing they do is touch his feet,” Row says. “They all want to touch his feet for luck.”

Alex has flirted with other Bay Area teams, too. The Warriors have invited him a few times, but Alex isn’t much interested in basketball. The noise in the enclosed arena might be a little too much, Row says.

The San Francisco 49ers also got in touch about having Alex attend a game at Levi’s Stadium, which Row considered, despite being a lifelong Seattle Seahawks fan.

However, Santa Clara County, which owns the stadium, wouldn’t permit Alex inside. The only animals allowed in are service dogs, not rabbits ... leaving fans to wonder what might have been.

San Francisco Giants fans greeted Alex the Great, a Flemish giant rabbit, before Game 1 of the 2021 National League Division Series at Oracle Park. JANE TYSKA/STAFF ARCHIVES

SHAE HAMMOND/STAFF

GAEL FORCE

Tiny Saint Mary’s College in Moraga has become a pitching pipeline to the major league fields,

BY JASON MASTRODONATO

A’s fans might have been a little surprised to learn that Ken Waldichuk, the franchise’s top pitching prospect, got his start a few miles up the road from the Coliseum in the tree-lined hills of Moraga.

But word of the pitching pipeline coming out of Saint Mary’s College is spreading. Quickly.

Saint Mary’s fielded its first baseball team in 1872 and was the dominant college program on the West Coast in the early 20th century. But in the modern era, nothing has come close to this new golden age of Gaels baseball.

The Gaels’ reach was on full display last summer during All-Star weekend at Dodger Stadium. Former Gaels pitchers Corbin Burnes and Tony Gonsolin were members of the National League team, and two more — including Waldichuk — participated in the Future’s Game, the annual showcase of the top prospects in the minor leagues.

Waldichuk recorded the final out in that game, representing the New York Yankees. A month later,

One of the big pieces to the A’s rebuilding plan is Ken Waldichuk, who opens this season rated the No. 3 left-handed pitching prospect in baseball by MLB.com. The former Saint Mary’s star made his big league debut last season.

the A’s made sure the 25-year-old left-hander was part of the trade that sent Frankie Montas and Lou Trivino to the Bronx.

It’s not far-fetched to think Waldichuk, who walked on at Saint Mary’s before adding more than 10 miles of speed to his fastball, could be the ace of the A’s rotation when the franchise’s major rebuilding project is complete. Waldichuk entered spring training battling for a spot in the A’s rotation, but even if he starts the season in the minors, it probably won’t be for long.

The San Diego native arrived in Oakland for the final month last season and made seven starts. He dazzled in his major league debut, striking out six and allowing one run in a no-decision against the Nationals. After a couple of rough outings, he ended the season on an impressive run, allowing one run on six hits while striking out 12 in 12 innings in starts against the Mariners and Angels.

He pitched seven shutout innings against the Angels in Oakland on the final day of the season. Among

and former Gael Ken Waldichuk has all the makings of being the A’s next big thing

his strikeout victims in that game: Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani.

Waldichuk has all the tools to be a dominating starter. He throws a mid-90s fastball and has an electric slider and evolving changeup. He’s also got a three-quarters delivery that is deceptive, especially for left-handed batters. In 2021, his first full season, he was fourth in the minors in strikeouts. Last season, he averaged 13 strikeouts per nine innings.

Waldichuk credits former Gaels head coach Eric Valenzuela for helping him transform from a lightly recruited college player into one that MLB.com ranks as the No. 3 left-handed pitching prospect in baseball heading into the season.

“I think the biggest thing was the work ethic, the mentality that Valenzuela installed in all of us,” Waldichuk said. “Everyone is faceless. That helps a lot with prospects or guys in MLB who have had success. (I) look at the numbers, and I have a plan to beat this guy, and I’m going to do it. You have a lot better chance doing that than if you go on the mound, and it’s like, ‘oh my God, it’s Mike Trout.’”

HOW’D IT HAPPEN?

There’s long been a tradition of producing quality big leaguers at Saint Mary’s — four SMC products played in the 1915 World Series, including Hall of Famer Harry Hooper, Dutch Leonard and Duffy Lewis for the title-winning Red Sox. But the pipeline to The Show slowed dramatically until recently.

After the school produced 55 big leaguers through 1955, Tom Candiotti, Von Hayes and Mark Teahen were among just eight former Gaels to debut at the MLB level between 1956 and 2015.

But when Valenzuela was hired in 2014 to lead the program, Mark Orr had a feeling the program was about to take off.

“I could tell right away,” said Orr, Saint Mary’s athletic director from 2000 to 2017.

Above: Baseball was the first sport to be played at Saint Mary’s College back in 1892, when the team was known as the Phoenix. They became the Gaels in the 1940s.

Left: For nearly 70 years — and through multiple renovations and a location change -- the Gaels’ home field has been named after Lou Guisto, center, who won 11 letters in football, baseball and rugby at the school between 1912 and 1916. Guisto took over as the baseball coach at his alma mater in 1932 and was part of the coaching staff until the mid-1970s.

COURTESY OF SMC ATHLETICS

After he was lightly recruited out of high school, Ken Waldichuk’s career path changed dramatically when he arrived in Moraga in 2016. After three seasons with the Gaels, he was a fifth-round pick in the 2019 MLB Draft by the Yankees. TOD FIERNER/SMC ATHLETICS

East Bay native Tom Candiotti is one of 57 former Saint Mary College players to reach the major leagues. No former Gael has won more big league games than the 151 Candiotti amassed between 1983 and 1999. Candiotti spent 16 seasons in the majors, including parts of two seasons with the A’s in 1998-99.

After more than a decade as an assistant, Valenzuela had high expectations for his first head coaching gig, but with the understanding that at Saint Mary’s, “we didn’t have the resources and the bells and whistles,” he said.

The problem wasn’t the reputation of the program.

“The only thing we were behind in was the facilities,” remembers Kyle Barraclough, a seven-year big leaguer who turned down a chance to play with Aaron Judge at Fresno State to go to Saint Mary’s in 2011. Barraclough ended up being a seventh-round pick by the Cardinals in 2012 and debuted with the Marlins three years later.

Playing home games on a field that cried out for upgrades, Valenzuela found other ways to recruit talented players.

“It’s about finding the perfect-fit type of guys,” Valenzuela said. “Most of our guys were overlooked by bigger schools that had

Eric Valenzuela oversaw the start to a new golden age of Saint Mary’s baseball as the Gaels’ head coach from 2014-19. More than a dozen Gaels recruited by Valenzuela were drafted, including A’s top prospect Ken Waldichuk.

more tradition, better facilities, but we stuck to our guns and got the guys that valued the things we were selling.”

He sold kids on the private school setting, the student-teacher ratio, the reputation for having a strong academic program and the idea that at Saint Mary’s, you’ll get a chance to play.

ALL-STAR CALIBER

In his first year, Valenzuela recruited Burnes, a 5-foot-10 shortstop from Bakersfield, and quickly realized he wasn’t a shortstop at all.

Burnes took a year to adjust, but then submitted a pair of dominant seasons on his way to becoming a fourth-round pick by the Brewers in 2016. He made his big league debut two years later, won the National League Cy Young Award three years after that and today is widely considered a topfive pitcher in baseball.

One of Burnes’ Gaels team-

mates was Gonsolin, a dominant two-way player from Vacaville who both pitched and played the outfield. Gonsolin figured he’d be drafted as a hitter, but Valenzuela assumed a big league team would want him for his arm.

“We get a lot of guys who are overlooked, and we have to do things out of the norm,” Valenzuela said. “Two-way players were something we took advantage of.”

The Dodgers took Gonsolin in the ninth round in 2016 and used him exclusively on the mound. He made his big league debut in 2019 and won a World Series in Los Angeles the following year. Last season, he went 16-1 with a 2.14 ERA, and was reunited with Burnes at the All-Star Game.

Valenzuela now had another selling point for potential recruits:

Burnes, Gonsolin, Barraclough, Waldichuk and Patrick Wisdom were among those who put Saint Mary’s back on the baseball map. Even the facilities are now a potential drawing card after the school raised enough money to build a new field and recreation center, get new dugouts and a new scoreboard and construct a covered hitting facility.

Nine Gaels have been selected in the MLB draft since 2019, with lefty Ky Bush, who pitched in the Futures Game along with Waldichuk, going in the second round to the Angels in 2021.

Waldichuk was a fifth-round pick by the Yankees in 2019, after three standout seasons with the Gaels. It was a somewhat surprising career arc for a guy who arrived in Moraga in the fall of

Above:

2016 with an 84-mph fastball and no scholarship. He was pitching at 92 mph by the end of his freshman season.

Valenzuela is “pretty good at teaching guys about work ethic,” Waldichuk said. “That’s how you’re going to see improvements.”

University of San Diego coach Brock Ungricht said Waldichuk is a “prime example” of the kind of players Saint Mary’s has been able to find and develop.

“He wasn’t a high-profile guy out of high school, but I give Eric credit for that,” Ungricht said.

“There’s a chance — that age-old saying, ‘don’t ever walk away from a left-handed pitcher.’ He gets an opportunity to go get innings, to pitch. There’s something to be said for that.

“You can have the dreams of

going to UCLA or Stanford. You go, and you don’t get to pitch as much. These guys (at Saint Mary’s) get a chance to pitch, and that helps you develop by logging innings. They did a great job with him.”

The A’s might not be the favorites in the American League West this year, but Waldichuk sees a similarity between what they’re building in Oakland and what the Gaels have done in Moraga.

“You could definitely say that,” he said. “It feels like everyone (has) that same mentality that everyone is working really hard, and if you’re not giving it 110 percent, people will call you out and tell you: ‘We’re trying to do something big here. We need you to do your best, so we as a team can be our best.’”

Top: It was a SMC mini-reunion at the All-Star Game last July at Dodger Stadium as former Gaels Corbin Burnes of the Brewers, left, and Tony Gonsolin of the Dodgers, center, (here chatting with the Braves Dansby Swanson during batting practice) joined forces for the National League.

KEVORK DJANSEZIAN/GETTY IMAGES

Left: Ken Waldichuk (30) pitched the final out for the American League in its 6-4 win over the National League in the All-Star Futures Game in July as a member of the New York Yankees organization, and a few weeks later, was acquired by the A’s in a blockbuster trade.

RONALD MARTINEZ/GETTY IMAGES

“Most of our guys were overlooked by bigger schools that had more tradition, better facilities, but we stuck to our guns and got the guys that valued the things we were selling.”

Former Saint Mary’s head coach Eric Valenzuela

Working his way up

Giants assistant coach Taira

Uematsu, ‘Mr. Omnipresent,’ has his sights set on advancement

BY EVAN WEBECK

SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA — Taira

Uematsu’s day begins, like it always does, before dawn.

It’s 6 o’clock now, as he slides into the corner table under his name at a sushi hotspot here — he ran into Ichiro’s translator at the same spot last week — 12 hours since he arrived at the ballpark, first in the building, as usual.

The Giants coach puts in his order and begins to play with his chopsticks. His hands tell a story. His left thumb is permanently altered from a Hunter Strickland fastball, and the index finger next to it turns blue while he sleeps. Proof of the physical toll of more than a decade of grunt work, of never saying no, of being “Mr. Omnipresent.”

Uematsu, 39, is one of a handful of Giants left with three World Series rings. Uematsu predates every current player and just about everyone else. He joined the organization in 2006 and has been a constant presence at the waterfront ballpark since 2008. A bullpen catcher, batting practice pitcher, intel gatherer, trainer, translator — you name it, Uematsu has done it. But he won’t be anonymous for long.

“One of my goals,” he says, taking a bite from his chirashi bowl,

“I want to be a base coach.”

Why stop there?

“The people that I’m seeing as managerial candidates on our staff at some point, I look at Taira in that regard,” manager Gabe Kapler says. “The way he demonstrates his willingness to do anything is what makes him special. But then also what’s impressive is that he speaks up.

His nickname — Mr. Omnipresent — was coined by former Giants manager Bruce Bochy, who first brought Uematsu on board. His biggest opportunities, though, have come under Kapler.

“Kap likes collaborating,” Uematsu says. “If you like something, and he feels like you’re good at it, you can get involved. You have to be good at it. I thought that was a big opportunity.

“I wanted to be a coach, but I didn’t think it was a possibility. I didn’t even think about it for a while. But as soon as Kap took over, the way I could think about myself in the future and baseball itself was totally different.”

Uematsu will tell you: He was not the best baseball player. His father played collegiate ball in

Japan, and Taira once dreamed of following the same path. But by the time he reached high school, what was once a passion had come to haunt him. A voracious eater, Uematsu couldn’t shed his scrawny frame no matter how hard he tried. He was bullied by his classmates. After graduation, he took the advice of his mother: to put baseball behind him and look for better opportunities in the U.S.

Taira Uematsu, MLB’s first Japanese-born coach, highfives Giants supporters at FanFest at Oracle Park. Uematsu has been with the Giants since 2006.

At 17 years old, far from proficient in English, Uematsu moved stateside. The son of one of his dad’s clients was a minor-league trainer with the Chicago White Sox who had graduated from Southern Illinois Carbondale’s kinesiology program. Maybe, Taira thought, there was a path in baseball, after all.

At least twice a semester, Uematsu would wrangle together a group of friends, hop in the car

KARL MONDON/STAFF

and drive two hours to old Busch Stadium in St. Louis. Roaming the Cardinals’ outfield at the time: So Taguchi, the third position player to ever go from Japan’s highest level, Nippon Professional Baseball, to the major leagues.

“When I came to the big leagues, my first day, I found the jersey in my locker, and I was so happy,” Uematsu said. “The number was 99.”

Taguchi’s number.

After serving as the bullpen catcher for the Fresno Grizzlies, then the Giants’ Triple-A affiliate, there was a need in San Francisco: Newly signed Japanese pitcher Keiichi Yabu required a translator.

Yabu lasted only one season in San Francisco. Uematsu, though, is still here.

MBA. Alyssa Nakken became the first uniformed female coach in major-league history.

When Hallberg was promoted, it created an opening on the support staff. He told Kapler that Uematsu would be a great fit, but Kapler already knew. Uematsu had told him himself.

This season, his second as an assistant coach, Uematsu is taking on more responsibility, helping the Giants improve their base running and take advantage of the new rules in place that should encourage more stolen base attempts. The art of base-running is a particular passion for Uematsu.

“I didn’t think I was a good hitter, and I wasn’t fast, either, but base-running is something you can be better at,” Uematsu says. “Sometimes, actually a lot of the time, base-running dictates the result of the game.”

Uematsu sips from the miso soup next to his bowl of raw fish and rice. It’s good, but it doesn’t quite hit in the same way as his mom’s.

For the first time in three years, Uematsu was able to travel back to his hometown, Tateyama City, just outside of Tokyo. His daughter, Hannah, couldn’t walk the last time her grandparents saw her. There’s a new addition, too: Sho, Uetmatsu’s son, who was born this offseason.

For a man who is described as

indispensable by practically anyone you ask, Uematsu is curiously insecure about his employment status. When Kapler took over in 2019, he wondered if there would be a spot for him. Those worries were soothed as Uematsu watched Kapler round out his staff. His bench coach, Kai Correa, never reached the pros. Mark Hallberg, who would become third-base coach in 2022, was raised in Saudi Arabia and possessed an

Back in Japan, Uematsu is a regular talk-show guest. He’s asked about his journey, how it could be a model for other kids to follow. If and when he achieves his goal and becomes a base-coach, he’ll be the first Japanese-born on-field coach in major-league history.

Uematsu understands the significance, but it doesn’t concern him.

“I think I’m always going to feel the same way, even if I became the prime minister of Japan,” he says.

Uematsu laughs. He’s joking. He takes another bite. He is hungry for more.

Still swinging

STORY BY JON BECKER

PHOTOS BY KARL MONDON

Ithappens every spring here in San Leandro. Young baseball players from the Bay Area and beyond, along with their dads, moms or grandparents, make their way to West Coast Sporting Goods, a mecca of baseball equipment for nearly three-quarters of a century.

Once here, they quickly learn the place isn’t what it seems at first glance.

Unsightly and unequivocally unpretentious, this sprawling expanse is tucked in between modest homes in the middle of a neighborhood on the grittier side of town.

To understand West Coast’s charm and allure for customers, you must step inside the massive, 40,000-square foot amalgamation of six buildings, with its partition walls made of stucco, glass, metal siding or chain link fencing.

First-time visitors typically get overwhelmed by the vast amount of athletic equipment and apparel they encounter. The inexhaustible collection of bats and

Its jaw-dropping stock of inventory has kept West Coast Sporting Goods in business through thick and thin for nearly 75 years

Andrea Tall, 15, shops for a baseball cap at West Coast Sporting Goods in San Leandro.

gloves fills up multiple rooms. At almost every turn, there are shirts, helmets, hats and more layered nearly to the ceiling. Narrow aisles are jammed with overflowing racks and stacks of pants, shoes, jerseys and jackets.

Somehow, the warehouse provides just enough space for owner Jeff Fingerut’s gigantic inventory, which features a head-spinning stash of 10,000 bats and 7,000 gloves.

“I find too much stuff here,” chuckled Gary Elizarrey, a 39-yearold Hayward father of three baseball-crazed boys, as he piled up pants, gloves and belts next to the cash register. “I’ve been coming to West Coast since I was a kid. I could spend hours in here just milling around … but now my wife just left to go back to the car.”

The glut of equipment is part of Fingerut’s never-ending push to provide anything and everything for his customers. With momand-pop stores such as his getting squeezed into submission by Amazon’s online shopping dominance as well as big box sporting goods stores such as Dick’s and Big 5, Fingerut knows his livelihood depends on it.

“I grade myself not on a profit, I grade myself on whether you got everything you wanted. If you didn’t, I failed you,” said Fingerut, the third-generation owner of the family business that began in 1948 as a shoe store in Oakland. “Dick’s may have 12 red belts, and they may run out by Friday. I’ve got 800 red belts in bins. And if you come looking for a youth medium red undershirt, too, I’d better have one for you to buy at the right price.

“That’s why there’s six buildings here with more stuff than the whole Bay Area could use.”

In addition to multiple generations of owners, many of West Coast’s customers have had shared family experiences here over the years.

Take 24-year-old Derrick Reese of San Leandro. The former high school baseball player fondly remembers coming to West Coast as a 6-year-old with his father to get Little League gear.

His visit to the store on this day was tinged with nostalgia, as he Besides

his inventory for sale, Jeff Fingerut keeps a collection of sports memorabilia on display, including these vintage, unused Wilson baseball gloves.

dug through buckets of baseballs with his 6-year-old son, trying to find the right ones to practice with for the upcoming season.

“It’s been here forever. It’s a staple,” said Reese, whose guilty pleasure is West Coast’s below-market New Era baseball hats. “It doesn’t matter if you’re from the East Bay, South Bay … you’re coming here. Where else are you going to go? We’ve needed Jeff, and he’s always been here.”

Clearly, West Coast is baseball to its core — right down to the daily “squeeze play” executed by patrons trying to maximize the store’s virtually nonexistent parking spaces. But the place still has plenty of room for softball, basketball and football gear that keeps the warehouse teeming with would-be consumers.

Their arrival is a constant testament to the power of wordof-mouth marketing, especially considering West Coast doesn’t have a website. Even more unlikely, Fingerut’s store has become somewhat of an international go-to place for affordable baseball equipment. Coaches and benefactors from around the world caught wind of West Coast years ago at sporting goods trade shows.

West Coast now regularly outfits schools and teams from as far away as Japan, Australia, Guam and Mexico.

“I now do more business in Mexico, Europe, Australia and Japan than I do here,” said the

Above: Only three items survived a fire that leveled the West Coast Sporting Goods warehouse in 2007: a bat, a glove and this baseball held by third-generation owner Jeff Fingerut.

Top left: Fingerut’s memorabilia collection includes a Silver Slugger Award.

Bottom left: The West Coast warehouse holds more than 7,000 gloves and 10,000 bats, a stash of inventory – including basketball and football gear – that owner Fingerut says is “more stuff than the whole Bay Area could use.”

ANDA CHU/STAFF

Right: Shoppers arriving at the gargantuan West Coast Sporting Goods in San Leandro don’t see much from the outside, but inside there are six buildings that have gear stashed in virtually every corner of the 40,000 square feet of space.

Center: With the help of his dad Dave Catano, J.D. Catano, 11, tries out a baseball bat he’s considering buying at West Coast Sporting Goods, where several generations of the Catano family have shopped over the last 75 years.

59-year-old Fingerut. He’s now in his 44th year working at West Coast, the last 30 as its owner.

Times haven’t always been this good for Fingerut or his bottom line, though. It’s taken two epic, grueling comebacks for the store to remain in business.

Having to essentially close its doors for nearly 18 months during

the pandemic wasn’t even the worst of West Coast’s catastrophes. For sheer devastation, it was the awful 2007 fire that leveled West Coast’s old building across town that brought the business to its knees.

“I was numb. All the inventory was gone, and I was in debt. I was bankrupt,” said Fingerut,

who had to quickly gather himself and move into his current spot to begin rebuilding West Coast.

It didn’t take long for Fingerut to get jolted back into focus, though.

He experienced his “It’s a Wonderful Life” awakening the morning after the fire, when a coach from Berkeley handed him

a credit card, asking Fingerut to charge $5,000 for future gear to help with the immediate rebuild. Soon there were others pitching in to save their baseball mecca. There were league administrators showing up with checks on spec. Representatives from major suppliers such as Easton, Wilson, Rawlings and Mizuno shipped

new inventory to Fingerut with assurances he could repay them down the road.

It was more than enough motivation to keep Fingerut going.

IF YOU GO

West Coast Sporting Goods is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday-Friday and 11 a.m.-5 p.m. on Saturday at 1855 Alvarado St. in San Leandro; 510-351-6644.

“Every day, I came here to work saying to myself, ‘Tomorrow will be better,’ “ he said. “I was in debt and broke, but I came in here every day with a happy attitude.” The pain and debt are now

gone, but there are some aspects of the fire that will never leave him. A singed baseball, bat and glove were the only pieces of equipment that weren’t completely ruined on that fateful August night in 2007. Fingerut still keeps that baseball encased in glass at the front entrance of his warehouse as a daily reminder of how quickly life can

Jeff Fingerut, third-generation owner of West Coast Sporting Goods, helps ring up a purchase by 11-year-old Joel Yepez.

spin out of control.

“Life is traumatic. It’s the ebbing and flowing of good times and bad times. It’s how you handle those good and bad times that matters,” Fingerut said. “I came back with a smile and rebuilt my life.”

Any visit to his bustling San Leandro warehouse surely proves that.

West Coast carries what appears to be a near-infinite supply of baseball caps.

It’s academic!

The Institute for Baseball Studies at Whittier College teaches

STORY BY JOHN METCALFE PHOTOS BY JIM ALEXANDER

Babe Ruth was a world-class player in a couple of senses. When he wasn’t hitting grand slams, he was playing the, er, field. Evidence of his dalliances can be found in Southern California’s Institute for Baseball Studies and Baseball Reliquary — a half-smoked cigar Ruth supposedly left in a Philadelphia brothel in 1924.

“That evening, a Yankee player observed Babe sitting in a big chair in an upstairs room with a brunette on one knee and a blonde on the other,” the exhibit informs. “As the girls poured a bottle of champagne onto his head and shampooed his hair

Whittier College’s Joseph L. Price, a professor emeritus of religious studies, is the director of the on-campus Institute for Baseball Studies.

with it, Babe smiled and exclaimed, ‘Anybody who doesn’t like this life is crazy!’ The next afternoon at Shibe Park, the Bambino, with barely two hours sleep, hit a pair of home runs.”

The institute and the Baseball Reliquary are full of such wonderful nuggets of history. Two separate collections sharing the same space at Whittier College, the troves include rare material on the Negro Leagues and early Mexican-American baseball, memorabilia like the costume of the San Diego Chicken and intriguing artworks, such as Darryl Strawberry’s head sculpted in chewed-

the importance of the sport to our culture — and houses some pretty weird memorabilia

KEITH DURFLINGER/WHITTIER DAILY NEWS

up Bazooka bubblegum.

On some days, the collections include the physical presence of director Joseph Price himself. A professor emeritus of religious studies, Price founded the institute in 2014 with two other Whittier professors, Michael McBride in political science and Charles Adams in English. While it’s hard to say who’s the bigger fanatic among them, Price has good qualifications: He’s sung the national anthem at 120 major and minor-league ballparks in 42 states.

When asked why it’s important to preserve the history of baseball, Price has a simple answer.

“Baseball helps to bring people together, especially in an ethos such as ours today, when there’s divisiveness in the nation,” he says. “Baseball is one of the ways that people of different racial groups, economic backgrounds and political persuasions can sit side-by-side and cheer for the same team. They can have conversations that transcend their otherwise seemingly potent differences.”

It was not easy convincing the college administration it needed a baseball institute. “They thought it was a wacky idea, but we persisted,” recalls Price. The higher-ups relented after realizing it would keep the professors active on campus post-retirement. The trio stocked the third floor of an administration building with their personal baseball libraries and also absorbed the materials of the Baseball Reliquary, a peripatetic museum of odd parapherna-

lia operated by Pasadena’s Terry Cannon, who died from cancer in 2020.

At the 2015 grand opening was none other than California Rep. Linda Sánchez, who invited herself as a huge baseball fan and player. This year, she was named coach of the congressional baseball team for the Democrats, the first woman to hold that position.

“For many of us, especially for someone like me from a big

baseball-playing Latino family, (the sport) is a connection to our heritage and our past. It is a connection to memories we have playing the game with loved ones or huddling around the radio on a Sunday afternoon to hear Vin Scully call the game,” Sánchez says via email. “That is why the baseball institute and the Baseball Reliquary at Whittier College is so important — it helps us preserve those memories and helps us make new ones with our own kids.”

The institute is unique in America. Unlike the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, it infuses baseball studies into an entire college curriculum. Courses that Whittier has offered include “Muscular Faith,” about the intersection of sports and god, and “El Beisbol: A Caribbean Religion,” which has sent students to Cuba and Puerto Rico. Graduates sometimes go off into baseball-related fields — one did public relations for the Omaha Storm Chasers; another serves as director of sports science for the San Diego Padres.

Visitors to the institute will be struck by its neatly ordered shelves of 4,000 books, many so

Top: The institute’s collections range from the serious to the whimsical, like these player bobbleheads on display.

Left: A treasure trove of memorabilia at the institute includes items from the Negro Leagues, including this Kansas City Monarchs Negro League jersey.

“ That is why the baseball institute and the Baseball Reliquary at Whittier College is so important — it helps us preserve those memories and helps us make new ones with our own kids.”

California

Rep.

Linda Sánchez

rare they’re not categorized by the Library of Congress. There are bobbleheads and paintings of Tommy Lasorda and a monkey-skull baseball, a reference to the “Death Pitch” that killed Ray Chapman of the Cleveland Indians. There’s a baseball signed by Hillary Clinton and another (fake) one by Mother Teresa, part of the FBI’s “Operation Bullpen” against counterfeit-memorabilia dealers. There’s a potato that the minor league’s Dave Bresnahan sneakily threw to try to score an out (the ruse didn’t work), and resting in the archives, an old hotdog without bun reportedly half-eaten by Babe Ruth.

Some of the most fascinating things aren’t physical. For two decades, the Baseball Reliquary has maintained an alternate hall of fame called the Shrine of the Eternals, whose members are elected often for reasons unrelated to stats or playing ability. Ted Giannoulas, the San Diego Chicken who popularized mascot culture, is in the shrine, as is Frank Jobe, the doctor who

Left: Memorabilia on display at Whittier’s Institute for Baseball Studies includes much of the Baseball Reliquary collection.

Bottom: A fan donated this unusual card catalog, which tracked the transactions of thousands of major league players, to the baseball institute.

pioneered Tommy John surgery; Max Patkin, the “Clown Prince of Baseball”; sports broadcaster Bob Costas and Charles Schulz of “Peanuts” fame.

“He made it because of his portrayal of Charlie Brown’s deep understanding of baseball,” jokes Price. (For non-Peanuts fans: Charlie managed his neighborhood’s awful team and frequently had his clothes knocked off by line drives.)

The Reliquary also honors notable fans with a Hilda Award, named after Hilda Chester, the Brooklyn Dodgers enthusiast who raised hell in the stands with a cowbell, despite having had at least two heart attacks. One recipient got the 2020 Hilda Award for collecting used game bats from the Red Sox going back to 1960; another snagged a 2003 award for co-writing the fight song “Meet the Mets,” played before the team’s home games and requested at diehard fans’ funerals.

Emma Amaya got a 2013 Hilda for her L.A. Dodgers’ fandom — she dresses up as Hilda Chester at Dodger Stadium and has thrown the first pitch twice. She recalls the awards ceremony well.

“The event starts with the M.C. ringing a big cowbell, followed by many of the attendees ringing their own cowbells and regular bells,” she says. “The playing of the national anthem and ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame’ by a group, trio or one person follow. These are exceptional, unique people doing this. There was an 82-yearold lady singing upside down (standing on her head). There was longtime Chicago White Sox organist Nancy Faust.”

Amaya keeps her award, an actual cowbell, in her home on prominent display. “It is like receiving an Oscar,” she says. “I told Terry Cannon that I did not think I deserved such honor. Terry told me, ‘It is not how you feel. It is how others feel about you.’”

Monkey business baseball heads to San Jose

The wild and wacky Savannah Bananas will play just one night in Excite Ballpark

BY JASON MASTRODONATO

Turkey Mike’s has been the star at San Jose’s 82-year-old ballpark on the corner of East Alma and Senter Road for years. But for one night this summer, it’ll be all about the Bananas instead of the barbecue.

A batter on stilts — who also plays first base. Back-flipping outfielders. Yellow baseballs. Flaming baseballs … and bats. Twerking umpires. And a 76-year-old relief pitcher who isn’t opposed to chugging a beer in the stands before reaching the mound.

The Savannah Bananas are coming to San Jose. And it happens to be the toughest ticket to score in baseball this summer.

The Bananas have been playing their unique — and wildly entertaining — version of the national pastime for several years, but primarily in the Georgia area.

Now, “Banana Ball” is going on the road this summer for 33 games, including six on the West Coast.

Tickets for the July 25 game at San Jose’s Excite Ballpark won’t go on sale until May, but by mid-February, there already were tens of thousands of fans on a waiting list.

“Let me tell you, we are feeling the fact that we are the smallest stadium the Bananas are coming to,” said San Jose Giants general manager Ben Taylor. “The

Savannah Banana’s

Malachi Mitchell flips in the air, as the team cheers before the start of a banana ball game against the Kansas City Monarchs at Legends Field in May of 2022 in Kansas City, Kansas.

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We’re not in the baseball business. We’re in the entertainment business.”

demand for tickets is the demand for a top-five media market in the country, and we only have 3,500 people we can fit here. It’s going to be a crazy, exciting Tuesday night in July.”

The Bananas were founded on a simple idea: Baseball can be boring.

In 2016, Jesse and Emily Cole purchased a struggling summer collegiate baseball team in Savannah, Georgia, and realized fans weren’t all that interested in the product on the field. So they created a new one.

“We’re not in the baseball business,” Jesse Cole said. “We’re in the entertainment business.”

In the process, they’ve created an unexpected empire. The Bananas, a moniker picked by fans in a name-the-team contest, have become a national sensation.

Initially, the hook was ingame entertainment that relied heavily on goofy dance routines by the players and leaned into the absurd. And people loved it. The Bananas have sold out every game since 2016 and have a ticket waitlist of more than 500,000 fans. They have more than 4 million Tik-Tok followers (that’s more than the Yankees, Red Sox, Mets, Dodgers, Cubs and Giants have combined). They have been featured in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and in a five-part ESPN documentary, among other media outlets.

But Cole thinks this summer’s

Dance routines and stunts are a big part of what the Savannah Bananas do, but owner/creator Jesse Cole bristles at the notion they are the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball. “I have a ton of respect and admiration for the Globetrotters. They changed the game of basketball in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s. But for us, I am more interested in being The Grateful Dead, where every single night, they’re doing a completely different set.”

KENT NISHIMURA/LOS ANGELES TIMES/TNS

Savannah Bananas Owner Jesse Cole

“Banana Ball” tour will change the sports world forever.

“I believe ‘Banana Ball’ is one of the most entertaining and greatest games in the world,” Cole said. ““And I believe there’s the possibility it’ll be the ‘Game of the Future.’”

When the Coles bought the team, franchise survival seemed to be a long shot. They reached out to the Savannah community of about 400,000 people for potential customers and found just one person willing to commit to season tickets.

With little to lose, they got creative. They hired a choreographer who knew nothing about baseball to be the first base coach. They hired a pep band, a “DadBod” cheerleading team called the Man-Nanas and another made up of women in their late 60s called the Banana Nanas. Each game, there was a designated “Banana Baby” who would be picked to wear a banana suit.

On the field, the baseball was traditional. But the players, recruited from colleges around the country to play in the wood-bat Coastal Plain summer league, began to participate in the midgame dance routines. The unlikely mix was a success. Not only did 4,000-seat Grayson Stadium become the place to be entertained between innings, the Bananas won on the field, capturing league

The Bananas have sold out every game since 2016 – with a waiting list for more than 500,000 tickets — and it won’t be any different as they take their show on the road. Tens of thousands of ticket-seeking fans contacted the San Jose Giants shortly after the game was announced. San Jose’s stadium only holds 3,500 fans.

KENT NISHIMURA/LOS ANGELES TIMES/TNS

“Look, we do play better because of the fun.”

titles in 2016, 2021 and 2022.

A professor at Georgia Southern performed a research study that suggested players’ performances improved while playing for the Bananas, largely because they were having more fun.

“Seeing it broken down like this, it was like, this is special… Look, we do play better because of the fun,” Cole said shortly after the study was released. “Anyone who is against all the craziness we have in our ballpark and all the high jinks, well, it actually works.”

With confidence building, the team created a fast-paced entertainment-only spinoff called “Banana Ball” that wouldn’t count in the standings. The first Banana Ball game was played in the summer of 2020 after two years of experimenting.

Banana Ball has nine rules:

Win an inning, get a point; it’s essentially match play, where runs don’t carry over from inning to inning

Two-hour time limit

No stepping out of the batter’s box

No mound visits

Bunting is not allowed

There are no walks; if a pitcher throws ball four, the batter can sprint around the bases until every defensive player on the diamond touches the baseball Batters can steal first; the ball is always live

If the game is tied after two hours, it goes to a showdown tiebreaker with a pitcher, catcher and just one fielder on the field to retire the opposing hitter.

And here’s the rule that ought to keep fans from ever looking at

their phones: If a fan catches a foul ball, the batter is out.

“It’s outrageous,” Cole said.

The Bananas played 30 games of Banana Ball in 2022 and sold out every game, convincing the Coles to fold the collegiate team after the season and turn the franchise’s full-time attention to altering the sports landscape. They hired two teams of players to field the Bananas and their counterpart, the Party Animals. Some of the players were holdovers, but the Bananas found a handful more, thanks to a wacky tryout process in which they cared more about personality than baseball skills.

Their ace, Kyle Luigs, is a former Jacksonville State University pitcher who had a 2.75 ERA for the Bananas in 2021 but now often pitches wearing a cowboy hat and a kilt. Recently, he lit a ball on fire just before throwing a pitch.

They also have Dakota Albritton, who showed up to tryouts on stilts and has become an online sensation.

“All these (minor league) teams have better baseball players than us,” Cole said. “We’re focused on having the greatest players and entertainers coming together. It’s really different.”

Their first manager was Bay Area native Eric Byrnes, the colorful former Oakland A’s outfielder and MLB Network analyst.

One of their first high-profile players was one of the quirkiest players in MLB history: Bill Lee, who was known as “Spaceman” during his 14 seasons in the majors. The 76-year-old lefty pitched relief in Banana Ball last summer, and a video of Lee entering a game from the stands after chug-

Savannah Bananas Owner Jesse Cole

Georgia native Dakota Albritton, here warming up before a game in Kansas City, Kansas, last season, showed up to Bananas tryouts on stilts and has become an online sensation. Albritton stands nearly 10 feet tall and has the largest strike zone in baseball.

ging a fan’s beer went viral. He suffered a cardiac episode while warming up for a game later in the season but was back on the team when the tour kicked off in February.

Other former big leaguers, such as former Giants pitcher Jake Peavy and former A’s outfielder Josh Reddick, have made surprise appearances.

The Bananas also employ a cast of entertainers and characters that travel with them, prompting some comparisons to a local circus.

“One of my fears is becoming the ‘Harlem Globetrotters of Baseball,’” Cole said. “I have a ton of respect and admiration for the Globetrotters. They changed the game of basketball in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s. But for us, I am more interested in being The Grateful Dead, where every single night, they’re doing a completely different set.”

the field who are dancing, doing tricks. So that aspect of it is not something that’s ever going to come to minor league baseball, because we’re developing professionals who are trying to make it to the big leagues.

“But are there going to be aspects of things they do between innings that we can figure out how to delve into? I don’t doubt it.”

The Giants already employ in-game entertainment options, including the highly-popular “Beer Batter” that cuts the cost of adult beverages at the concession stand in half for 15 minutes, if a designated opposing hitter strikes out, a promotion even the San Jose players enjoy.

Dan Runsler, a former San Jose Giants pitcher and the team’s current pitching coach, “told us, ‘hey, I got shelled once, but I struck out the beer batter twice, so I went home laughing and happy that night,’” said Giants’ vice president of marketing Matt Alongi.

The San Jose stop will be the smallest venue on the Bananas’ tour, but it’s a win-win stop for both organizations. The Giants had a good working relationship with folks who had worked with the Bananas, and it was too exciting an opportunity to pass up.

“I think they’re a fascinating entertainment option,” said Taylor, the Giants’ GM. “They’ve found a way to manipulate the game of baseball to make it incredibly entertaining for the non-baseball fan while maintaining basic parameters of a baseball game. ... To see it up close and personal from an operational standpoint will be fascinating.

“I think everybody on staff is going to be learning from the Bananas the night they’re here, including me.”

The big question: What can minor league baseball operators learn from the Savannah Bananas?

“The biggest draw of the Bananas is the fan engagement with the players,” Taylor said. “One of the things that makes the Bananas go is you have players on

The idea is the same: Engage the fans. Get them invested. Get them involved.

The Bananas are making history, too. The National Baseball Hall of Fame requested a baseball from the Banana’s first game of this year’s tour.

“We did ask for the first yellow ball used in a Banana Ball game as we look to document the rise of the Savannah Bananas as a phenomenon in baseball and their unique approach to the game,” said Jon Shestakofsky, the VP of communications and education at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Don’t be surprised if you see the Bananas soon at big league parks, too. Cole said he is already fielding calls from MLB teams who want to host Banana Ball in their stadiums.

“I mean, MLB will never change,” he said. “They’ll always have the greatest baseball players in the world. I believe that. But Banana Ball is a game that can be something truly special for a younger generation.”

And the young at heart.

Find out more at https://thesavannahbananas.com.

KENT NISHIMURA/LOS ANGELES TIMES/TNS

Fantasy camper with a bum knee finds himself in top form — as a journalist

BY DAVID DEBOLT

As I was hobbling toward San Francisco’s Oracle Park, something told me this would be a humbling assignment.

On this brisk November morning, I was scheduled to rendezvous with a courier at the Juan Marichal statue just outside the ballpark, head through stadium security and sign liability waiver forms. You know, in case something happened.

We weren’t about to parachute out of an airplane above China Basin. No, this was the sort of paperwork you fill out when — like me — you are a washed-up junior college ballplayer participating in the San Francisco Giants’ fall fantasy camp.

It’s a program that invites fans to spend two days on the diamond at Oracle Park — or a week on the field, if you go to the fantasy camp held in Scottsdale, Arizona, each January — living out their childhood dreams with coaching from the likes of former Giants pitcher Bill Laskey and former Oakland A’s and Giants lefty Vida Blue.

It had been a decade-plus since I last stepped between the chalk lines on a baseball field, and it showed. Years of pounding a keyboard instead of pavement as a newspaper reporter and now editor had ill-prepared me for what lay ahead. Attempts to break in my mitt had failed. That glove was as stiff as my right knee. The moment I clutched the railing and limped out of the first base dugout was the first indicator that my old playing days really were over — and that fact would be on full display.

But the assignment soon reminded me why so many of us love the game, so much so that dozens of adults would take off work in the middle of the week

Bay Area News Group editor David DeBolt prepares to join the fun at the San Francisco Giants Fantasy Camp at Oracle Park on Nov. 21, 2022.

SHAE HAMMOND/STAFF

to attend a fantasy camp. It also reminded me of an important moment in my life, the day I hung up my cleats to pursue journalism full time and why I owe it to a baseball great.

Tom Miles, of Redmond, Oregon, rocks out on air guitar before going up to bat during Fantasy Camp in November.

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On this particular chilly Monday, hoping to disguise my rust, I had donned a Humm Baby-era jersey, hat and jacket borrowed from a friend. It took no time, however, for Laskey to spot my bum knee, which tightens up especially on cold mornings.

Laskey, a Giants great who runs multiple fantasy camps, is godlike around these parts. He’s the man whose permission was needed for the camp to allow a scribe to spend a few hours with fans who had paid to play on the same field as their idols.

The fantasy players, all men with the exception of one woman, had come from across Northern California and as far away as Villa Hills, Kentucky. Some 44 players were spread over four teams coached by former Giants, who offered a mixture of warmups, skills clinics and games, which were limited to two hours over two days.

It was a BYO-mitt deal, but the rest of the equipment was provided, and anyone 60 or older could use a metal bat. Throwing strikes, I was told, was typically the biggest problem in previous camps, but there had been a few injuries. Although, it seemed, I was the only person who showed up with one to start with.

Laskey and the other coaches signaled it was time to stretch. Oh boy. The calisthenics that seemed so easy in my youth were a problem. And I felt seen. Some of these fantasy folks looked legit, all dressed in official gear, and fans of the players, mostly family members, began to trickle into the

seats on the first base line. Even in this atmosphere, in arguably the greatest ballpark in sports, it felt like we were back on the school yard. When it was time to play catch, like a kid on the playground, I had already selected my throwing mate. Everyone else was wearing baseball gear except Tom Miles, from Oregon, who was wearing jeans and a Grateful Dead T-shirt — and sneakers, like me. Miles seemed to be more into the jams playing over the loudspeaker. During warmups, he told me about partying with rock stars. After a couple of throws, Dave Getsoff, an athletic trainer with the Giants, sidled up to me, likely dispatched by Laskey. Getsoff wanted to check out my knee, and he asked what was up, as I dropped a couple of balls. (I’m going to blame my glove for those.) He offered a wrap for my knee, and we talked about sports injuries. Getsoff has seen his share of injuries at fantasy camps — groin injuries and the like. He told me to take it easy.

The other players broke off into their 11-person teams to begin batting practice and fielding drills. As I headed back toward the dugout, Laskey asked a pointed question.

You gonna write about how you sat out some of the warmups?

Consider it done, Bill.

Somewhere Marvin Webb must be laughing, I told myself. Webb, the last baseball coach I ever had and one of the greatest ball players to ever come out of Richmond, died last August.

The last pitch I ever threw was under Webb at Contra Costa College in San Pablo. He and assistant coach Tim Wallace liked to joke that my four-seam and twoseam fastball and circle change-up could be clocked by a calendar — “slow, slower and slowest.”

If only he could see me now. As a left-hander, there were only a few positions I was allowed to play growing up. So I hung out around first base to take some grounders and hid out in left field. That was one of the highlights of my day at fantasy camp, standing in the same spot where Barry Bonds snagged fly balls. But I took some hacks in the batting cage behind the dugout and hit a few solid liners.

In my college days, Webb gave out T-shirts that read, “I hit thangs.” They were given to players who hit monster home runs. I never got one then, and I certainly wasn’t deserving today.

It was around this time, I decided to grab my pen and steno pad and do something I knew how to do: talk to people.

In the cages, I met Steve Youtsey, of Foster City. Besides playing in a lawyers’ softball league, Youtsey hadn’t played hardball since Little League in Michigan in 1976. To prepare for his first fantasy camp, he spent the last few months beforehand stretching, playing long toss, doing foot drills and hitting a batting cage in Burlingame. Still, he was recovering from a pulled hamstring. He said it was a dream of his to take batting practice on a professional field.

“It felt awesome,” he said, going over his game day assignment. “Somehow, he’s got me on third base. I can either get out of the way or get hit.”

Over at the on-field batting practice, I talked with a Pleasanton man who recounted his days playing “street ball” against his rival neighborhood in Dublin. We watched as a player I thought was a coach glided around the infield, snatching up ground balls at shortstop. We watched in awe as he took batting practice. He took solid cuts, lining balls into the outfield, with a natural cut.

Attorney Will Ferreira, 39, of Granite Bay, is a fixture at these

Fantasy camp gives Stephen Youtsey, of Foster City, a chance to live out a longheld dream of playing on a professional baseball field.

SHAE HAMMOND/STAFF

camps. And after learning about his backstory, it makes sense why he’d put aside his day job to lace up his cleats at these camps. Ferreira never got to play ball as a teenager. He was kicked out of his home as a young teen and went to work doing odd jobs at places that would hire someone his age.

“I’m making up for lost time,” he said. “If you told me as a kid I could be out here playing on this field . . .” He didn’t finish the sentence. “This is like seeing your old friends and family at a reunion.”

Little League and high school to Contra Costa College. Heading east on the Bay Bridge, I recalled how upset Webb had been when I told him I didn’t want to play my sophomore year and instead wanted to focus on running the student newspaper.

Webb sent Willie McGee, one of our assistant coaches, over to speak with me. McGee had spent 18 seasons as an outfielder, primarily with the St. Louis Cardinals, and won two batting titles and the 1985 National League MVP award. Our conversation was short.

I thought about Ferreira’s story on my drive home. Baseball was a constant in my young life, from

“Do you wanna be a baseball player or a journalist?” he asked, no doubt knowing I had no real shot to play beyond CCC. I answered that I wanted to be a reporter. “Go do that,” he said.

Fantasy camps

You don’t have to be a professional athlete to play at Oracle Park or a spring training stadium — and the events there are not limited to baseball. Here are a few ways to extend your MLB season.

The Giants host a two-day fantasy camp for adults at San Francisco’s Oracle Park in November and a weeklong camp at Arizona’s Scottsdale Stadium, typically in January. In 2022, the Arizona session included six days of baseball games, seven nights accommodations, daily breakfast and lunch plus two dinners and custom uniforms and cost $6,500, with a $1,000 discount for returnees. Details will be available at www.mlb.com/ giants/fans as the dates draw near.

The Oakland A’s will host a fantasy camp for adults Jan. 10-16, 2024, at the Lew Wolff Training Center Complex in Mesa, Arizona, where the Athletics spend spring training. Proceeds benefit the Oakland A’s Community Fund. Find more information and sign up to receive details at www.mlb.com/athletics/ fans/fantasy-camp.

The Ballpark Back 9: Last November, the Giants debuted a fairway for baseball and golf fans at Oracle Park,

dubbing it a “Giant” version of mini golf with nine holes, dedicated caddies and tee times spread over four days. Tickets started at $99 in 2022. Find details at www.mlb.com/giants/ ballpark/events/golf.

Youth Baseball Camps: The Giants offer baseball day camps for kids ages 4 to 13 at all skill levels. The camps run from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday-Friday ($625) at 16 locations across the Bay Area, including Danville’s Osage Park (June 5-9), Redwood City’s Red Morton Park (June 19-23) and Orinda’s Wagner Ranch Elementary (July 24-28). Find details at www. mlb.com/giants/fans.

Oracle Park Tours: Take a 90-minute behind-the-scenes tour ($17.50$25) and visit areas of the park only accessible to players and staff, including the field, a dugout, a batting cage, the visitors clubhouse, a press box and more. Pregame tours are also offered. Find details at www.mlb.com/ giants/ballpark/tours.

Seven to remember The Giants and the A’s had eye-opening moments in several World Series

BY JOAN MORRIS

Baseball’s fall classic always produces memorable moments, but some World Series exploits continue to amaze even decades later. From game-interrupting earthquakes to pitchers who dug deep, the sights and sounds of those autumn deeds come hurtling back whenever the fields are freshly cut and cries of “Play ball!” ring.

In honor of longtime San Francisco Giants manager and Sacramento native Dusty Baker winning his first World Series ring as a manager — with the Houston Astros — here are seven surprising World Series moments starring the Giants and Oakland A’s.

UNHITTABLE

The only thing that stood between the Giants and a seventh game victory over the Kansas City Royals in the 2014 World Series, was three outs, but those outs were hardly the whole story.

Conventional wisdom wouldn’t have put Madison Bumgarner on the mound in the first place. He came into the game after just two days’ rest following a 117-pitch shutout. He’d been almost unhittable, allowing just a single run in the first game — a home run served up by Salvador Perez that was meaningless to the final score.

Now here he was — 61 pitches into the ninth inning, with a man on third and just one out remaining to cement a 3-2 win and a World Series ring — with Perez at the plate. Bumgarner let that 62nd pitch fly, Perez hit a pop out to third, and MadBum became part of baseball history.

The San Francisco Giants’ Buster Posey celebrated with starting pitcher Madison Bumgarner as they win their third World Series in Game 7 against the Kansas City Royals in Kansas City, Mo., on Oct. 29, 2014. JOSIE LEPE/STAFF ARCHIVES

Mark McGwire and others got a news update via portable TV, after Game 3 of the World Series was halted, due to the Loma Prieta earthquake.

KAREN T. BORCHERS/ STAFF ARCHIVES

10-DAY DELAY

Half an hour before the third game of the Bay Bridge World Series on Oct. 17, 1989, Giants fans were hoping for a comeback win. A’s fans hoped to celebrate a victory that would put them one win away from the championship.

But at 5:04 p.m., a 6.9 magnitude earthquake hit the Bay Area along the Loma Prieta fault. The quake knocked chunks of concrete off Candlestick’s top tier and cut power to the stadium. Damage was more severe across the Bay Area, where 63 people died and thousands were injured. Buildings crumbled, Oakland’s Cypress highway structure pancaked and a section of the upper deck of the Bay Bridge fell onto the lower. The death rate likely would have

been higher, were it not for the World Series, officials said. With fans leaving work early to watch the game, the Cypress, normally jam packed during rush hour, was relatively empty.

The game was delayed by 10 days, but the A’s resumed their dominance over the Giants, winning the series in four.

HAIRS VS. SQUARES

It was a different world back in the 1970s, perhaps best illustrated by the 1972 series between the Hairs (Oakland A’s) and the Squares (Cincinnati Reds).

The A’s, under owner Charlie Finley, wore bright yellow uniforms and sported thick mustaches to go along with brash personalities — Catfish Hunter, Rollie Fingers, Reggie Jackson and Ken Holtzman. The non-mustachioed Reds had its own squad of All-Stars and future Hall of Famers, including catcher Johnny Bench, first baseman Tony Perez, second baseman Joe Morgan and outfielder Pete Rose.

Despite their opposite images, the teams were strikingly wellmatched, with each game in the series, save one, won by a single run. The teams ended the series — the A’s won in seven — with identical hits (46) and an identical batting average of .209.

The A’s celebrate in the locker room after winning the 1972 World Series in Cincinnati. Front row from left is Sal Bando, Catfish Hunter and World Series MVP Gene Tenace. Back row from left is Dave Duncan, Joe Rudi, Rollie Fingers and Mike Epstein.

The A’s biggest star, Jackson, had pulled his hamstring stealing home in the fifth game of the ALCS, so the bold, brash A’s relied on an unlikely hero, backup catcher Gene Tenace. Tenace had hit five home runs all season — 20 less than Jackson that year — but during the series, he hit four. And Tenace, who drove in nine of the 16 runs the A’s totaled during the series, was named MVP.

THE CATCH, BASEBALL VERSION

In the first game of the 1954 World Series, four years before the New York Giants became the San Francisco Giants, center fielder Willie Mays made a defensive play so incredible, the memory spans generations.

RON RIESTERER / STAFF ARCHIVES

A 6.9 earthquake rocked San Francisco’s Candlestick Park in 1989, shutting down Game 3 of the World Series between the Oakland A’s and San Francisco Giants.

It was the eighth inning of Game 1, and New York and Cleveland were tied 2-2. With Cleveland at bat and two runners in scoring positions, lefty Vic Wertz took a mighty swing and drove the ball 425 feet into center field. Mays, in a full-out gallop to the warning track, never even looked back at the ball for the last 20 feet. He just reached up and caught it over his shoulder, then pivoted and hurled the ball to second, preserving the tie. The Giants went on to win that game as well as the next three to claim the series.

ANGELS IN THE OUTFIELD, MONKEY IN THE DUGOUT

It was 2002, and the Giants were looking for their first championship in 48 years. Their opponents: the Anaheim Angels, who had yet to win a World Series ring. Going into the sixth game of the series, the Giants held a one-game advantage, and by the seventh inning, they were leading 5-0 with one out, when the rally monkey made its appearance, and everything went south.

The Giants’ simian nemesis had made its debut two years earlier, when the Angels were hosting the team in regular season play. The Angels were down by one run in the ninth inning, when video board operators aired a clip of the monkey from “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” and added the words “rally monkey.” The Angels promptly scored two runs, winning the game and making the rally monkey instantly famous. So the team hired Katie, the whitehaired capuchin who famously played Marcel, Ross’ pet monkey in “Friends,”and recorded “rally time” clips to a musical backdrop of “Jump Around” by the House of Pain.

The Angels’ rally monkey worked its magic at the World Series, too. After Katie appeared, the Angels scored six unanswered runs in two innings, knotting the series and forcing Game 7, which the Angels also won.

HOME RUN LIMP

The 1988 World Series was a disappointment for the Oakland A’s. Not only did they lose four

games to one, the series also featured a shocking, come-frombehind, walk-off home run for the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 1.

Dodgers outfielder Kirk Gibson, hobbled by leg injuries, was called up as a pinch hitter. The A’s dynamic closer, Dennis Eckersley, entered the game in the ninth to preserve the win, but Gibson fought off Eckersley until he finally sent one soaring over the wall.

As he limped around the bases, Gibson pumped his fists, celebrating every step. Gibson later would

With a runner bearing down on home plate, J.T. Snow grabbed young batboy Darren Baker by the shirt and hauled him to safety during Game 5 of the 2002 World Series against the Angels.

apologize to Eck, who said he hadn’t been offended.

THE MOST IMPORTANT SAVE

Although the Giants lost the 2002 World Series to the Anaheim Angels — we blame the monkey! — first baseman J.T. Snow made a dramatic save that had nothing to do with hitting or fielding.

In Game 5 of the series, which the Giants won handily 16-4, outfielder Kenny Lofton drilled

an off-speed pitch off the wall in right center, driving home Snow and David Bell. Just as Snow crossed the plate, and with Bell close behind, 3-year-old batboy Darren Baker, the son of manager Dusty Baker, ran out to pick up Lofton’s bat.

Realizing the boy was in danger of being run over at home plate, Snow grabbed the front of the youngster’s jacket and pulled him to safety. Afterward, the league declared ball boys and girls should be at least 14.