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.”