Roger Craig's name belongs right there with the greatest managers in Giants history.
Focus On Sport/Getty ImagesBruce Bochy is the obvious answer, for good reason. Dusty Baker will get his fair share of votes. Alvin Dark may even have a case.
But there’s another name that deserves to be mentioned right there with the greats: Roger Craig. He was the lodestar for a generation of fans like me who discovered baseball and the Giants in the 1980s., immediately made his mark. The Giants were bad — historically, terribly, awfully bad — for well over a decade before he took over as manager in the fall of 1985.
It’s hard to put into words how incredible of a turnaround it was, from losing 100 in ’85 to playing in the World Series in ’89. In an era now where rebuilds meander for half a decade or more, the Giants went from the toilet to the pinnacle in four years. And that was in large part because of Roger Craig.
A lot of younger fans who grew up in the dynasty era will have a hard time understanding just how miserable the Giants were prior to Craig’s arrival, and by extension how miserable the fans were, too. Candlestick Park was cold and empty. The team always seemed to be on the verge of relocating. Hopes for a new ballpark were slim. The on-field product stunk, and before ’87 the team hadn’t finished higher than 3rd place since 1971.
Craig changed all that with an inexorable sense of positivity. He convinced his players to buy into the idea that Candlestick gave them the
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