![]() ![]() Humm Baby, my second dad and the man who taught me the game of baseball. Will Clark, who debuted with the Giants in 1986, Craig’s first full season at the helm, and starred during the remainder of his managerial run, paid tribute on Twitter: He was a father figure to many and his optimism and wisdom resulted in some of the most memorable seasons in our history.” “Roger was beloved by players, coaches, front-office staff and fans. “We have lost a legendary member of our Giants family.” Giants CEO Larry Baer said in a statement. Such traits were reflected in the tributes paid to him after he died on Sunday at the age of 93, after what his family said was a short illness. Indeed, he was even-keeled, revered within the game for his positivity. Years later, the likes of Roger Clemens, David Cone, Curt Schilling, and John Smoltz would find similar success with the pitch, though it eventually fell out of vogue due to a belief that it caused arm problems, an allegation that Craig hotly refuted. Jack Morris, Ron Darling, and Dave Stewart won championships with the pitch, as did Hershiser. ![]() After pioneering reliever Bruce Sutter rode the pitch to the NL Cy Young Award in 1979, pitchers such as Mike Scott, Mark Davis, Orel Hershiser, and Bob Welch either learned the pitch directly from Craig, or from someone Craig taught, and themselves took home Cy Youngs in the 1980s. Given its sudden drop, the pitch was often mistaken for a spitball, so much so that it was sometimes referred to as “a dry spitter.” It baffled hitters and helped turn journeymen into stars, and stars into superstars. “To put it in layman’s terms, it’s a fastball that’s also got the extra spin of a curveball.” The resulting pitch “drops down in front of the batter so fast he don’t know where it’s goin’,” Craig told Playboy in 1988. For the pitch, a pitcher splits his index and middle fingers parallel to the seams, as in a forkball grip, but holds the ball further away from the palm, and throws with the arm action of a fastball. He was particularly beloved within the Giants family for his positive demeanor and the way he shook the franchise out of the doldrums, though it was via his role as a teacher and evangelist of the split-fingered fastball - the pitch of the 1980s, as Sports Illustrated and others often called it - that he left his greatest mark on the game.Ĭraig didn’t invent the splitter, which owed its lineage to the forkball, a pitch that was popular in the 1940s and ’50s, but he proved exceptionally adept at teaching it to anyone eager to learn, regardless of team. ![]() Across a career in baseball that spanned over 40 years, Roger Craig was at various points a hotshot rookie who helped the Dodgers win their only championship in Brooklyn, the first and best pitcher on an historically awful Mets team, the answer to a trivia question linking the Dodgers and Mets, a well-traveled pitching coach who shaped a championship-winning Tigers staff, and a culture-changing, pennant-winning manager of the Giants. ![]()
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