Around the horn
Dan Fost
I am thrilled at the reception “Giants Past and Present” is getting. With baseball season around the corner, and the Giants ready to come home from Arizona and play their final exhibition games – starting Thursday at AT&T Park against the Oakland A’s – I’ve been conducting many interviews, both online and on the air.
Some highlights:
* I had a great conversation this morning with my old Chronicle colleague Brian Murphy and his partner Paul McCaffrey on KNBR’s Murph and Mac show. It meant a lot to me, especially because Murph wrote the official and definitive book on the Giants’ first 50 years in San Francisco, and he seemed to love “Giants Past and Present,” calling it gorgeous. Right back at you, bro!
* I also had a lot of fun talking to Joe Magennis of Baseballisms, who put up a podcast of our talk. Joe has a real affection for the history of baseball, and I loved drawing threads from the old days at the Polo Grounds, through the Candlestick years, to the modern era at AT&T Park.
* Jay Roberts is a rare bird: A Giants fan who did not live in New York or San Francisco. But the Giants have a big tent, and Jaybird’s Jottings, his blog, is one of the great voices talking about the team. He posted some enthusiastic remarks about the book.
* I went on television Sunday morning, appearing on “Henry’s Garden” on KRON, San Francisco’s Channel 4, with Henry Tenenbaum, a real fixture in local TV. The clip is not online. Henry’s favorite line from the book: The quote from a Giants coach that John McGraw “eats gunpowder every morning and washes it down with warm blood.”
* Stan Bunger edited our half-hour conversation to a bite-sized nugget, less than two minutes, complete with great Giants theme music! Bye Bye Baby: Dan Fost and Stan Bunger on KCBS radio
* And keep an eye out for more media appearances! I will be on John Rothmann’s show on KGO radio, 810 AM, Monday, April 5, at 11 p.m., and I’ll be on Forum, Michael Krasny’s show on KQED, 88.5 FM, at 9 a.m. Thursday, April 8. Some Web sites will be running contests, giving away a copy of the book, and I’m working on other television, radio and print appearances.
It’s a funny feeling, going from being a reporter to being the subject, and I’m having a blast while it lasts!
The first review – “essential for Giants fans”
As a first-time author, the butterflies were fluttering when I saw that my book’s first review was in, at Remember51. Knowing that these guys know and appreciate their Giants history had me even more nervous.
That’s why I am thrilled to report that reviewer Kevin O’Brien liked it – he really, really liked it!
An excerpt:
In “Giants Past and Present,” Fost covers all the bases of the Giants history. You want to know about John McGraw’s managing days? Fost covers it. You want to know about the Polo Grounds in New York and the huge smoking Chesterfield cigarette sign that’s “H” lit up when a player got a hit and “E” lit up when a player made an error? Fost covers it. Want to know a little bit about each owner, manager and general manager in the history of the Giants baseball organization? Fost covers it.
In many ways, Fost leaves no corner of the Giants franchise un-examined in this book, and not only does he capture this franchise’s arduous history nicely and succinctly through his writing (he mentions the Joe Nathan, Francisco Liriano and Boof Bonser for A.J. Pierzynski trade, which boosted the book’s “Only a Giants geek would write about that” factor by thirty or forty points), but “Giants Past and Present” also tells the great story of the Giants’ history through photographs and pictures.
And these aren’t run-of-the-mill pictures either. “Giants Past and Present” is chock-full of photos that baseball fans in general aren’t used to seeing. There’s a picture of Willie Mays rounding third after a home run…in the minor leagues. There’s a picture of former owner Bob Lurie and the former mayor of San Jose, Susan Hammer, at the podium in front of a sign that says “San Jose Giants” back in 1991, when the Giants were thinking about moving to San Jose. There’s a picture of Willie Mays, Orlando Cepeda and Willie McCovey b’sing in the locker rooms of Candlestick Park in 1960.
The pictures help make this book, like any great coffee table book. They engage you, interest you and make you look at them over and over again, usually in disbelief. (One picture of Peter Magowan at a press conference in 1992 makes you wonder “How the heck could a CEO get away with hair like that?”)
“Giants Past and Present” is exactly the kind of book you can have lying around when you have company over for a party, or when you’re bored and looking something to gauge your interest between innings of Giants games when the same two-minute Roni Deutch ad plays for the 100th time. Fost’s book is that versatile.
To address O’Brien’s criticisms: he wishes the book was longer, and frankly, so do I! He also questions the emphasis on the 2009 team; granted, they may not loom large in the Giants’ pantheon, but in the template of writing about “past and present,” they are the present. And while I am a fan of Bengie Molina — except possibly in those agonizing moments when he can’t seem to score from second on a double — he basically makes the cut as a representative of the most current team.
My favorite comment, though, was his observation about my hair protruding from beneath my cap. I do pride myself on my Oscar Gamble.
Talking baseball
The great Stan Bunger, a lifelong Giants fan and the morning man on KCBS-740 AM, San Francisco’s all-news radio station, led me through a fun interview about the book and the Giants’ history. Snippets from the interview will air on the radio this weekend, but you can hear the whole thing here.
In addition, I also got a nice plug today alongside some sportswriters I’ve admired all my reading life, Jerry Izenberg and Maury Allen. Thanks to Ron Kaplan for announcing my forthcoming appearance at the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center in New Jersey on his Web site.
Here’s to you, Will Clark
So Will “the Thrill” Clark turns 46 today. Seeing photos of him re-visiting the Giants, now fully in the throes of midlife – balding, paunchy – actually does nothing to diminish the joy of watching him play ball in his younger, leaner days.
This Sports Illustrated cover captures it perfectly — the signature eye-black, the overwhelming intensity. Remember his second year, 1987, when he helped lead the team to the post-season, and then declared from beneath a champagne shower, “I’ve been waiting a loooong time for this!” (I love the announcer, suggesting, “You’re over-modulating.” Video is below.)
I arrived in San Francisco in 1989, just in time for Clark’s epic at-bat against Mitch “Wild Thing” Williams in the NLCS, where his clutch single sent the Giants to the World Series. The man could flat-out hit.
Some diehards who remember those days believe Clark deserves a place in Cooperstown, or at least that the Giants should retire his number 22. (They probably also give weight to the Wikipedia entry that says Clark is a descendant of William Clark, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. I am skeptical – I could not get the Giants to verify it – but it could be true; I see the claim cited on a site that says it can book Clark for speeches and signings.)
Clark is a presence throughout my book, ripping line drives, batting in runs, making the plays at first. He revived a Giants legacy at first base, a position where the team claims six Hall of Famers, from early superstar Roger Connor in the 1880s to Bill Terry, the last National Leaguer to hit .400, to the improbability of having Willie McCovey and Orlando Cepeda on the same team.
As Aubrey Huff struggles to learn the position in spring training this year, we can only ask: Where have you gone, Will the Thrill? And happy birthday.
The books are here!
Dan Fost with his first shipment of "Giants Past and Present"
I came home this afternoon to a couple of boxes outside my front door: The books! It’s a very exciting day for a first-time author, and my son Harry captured the moment with my cameraphone.
I’m told the books will be in stores by the end of the month – that is, by Opening Day! That’s two weeks early, so I’m excited about that as well.
I have a reading scheduled at Book Passage in Corte Madera for 7 pm April 21, and my publisher is working on other Bay Area venues. Stay tuned!
Seals Stadium lives!
Workers remove home plate before demolishing Seals Stadium in San Francisco in 1960
What could be sadder than the dismantling of a ballpark?
I grew up going to Yankee games in the Bronx, and often my dad would park across the Harlem River from Yankee Stadium, right across the street from the housing projects that stood on the land once occupied by the Polo Grounds. (At least, he parked there until the car was vandalized and it no longer felt safe.) So I know about the sadness that exists in places where legendary ballparks once stood.
Now the immensely creative Todd Lappin, and his pal Burrito Justice, have figured out a way to reclaim a little bit of the joy of an old ballpark. They used some modern technology to triangulate the spot where home plate once stood in San Francisco’s Seals Stadium, home of the Giants in their maiden seasons on the West Coast. The park was torn down when the team moved into Candlestick Park in 1960, and a tacky little strip mall was built in its place. (It’s hard to imagine such a thing happening today in a city so preservation-minded, as well as anti-chain-store.)
X marks the spot where Seals Stadium home plate once stood. Batter up!
And where does home plate belong? In aisle 6 of Office Depot, the PC aisle, by a Verizon Wireless display. (Take that, AT&T Park!) Lappin (aka Telstar Logistics — the name is another brilliantly creative story) maps out the rest of the diamond:
First base is now the entryway just inside the door of Office Depot. Second base is now by the first table in the seating area next to the Starbucks kiosk at Safeway. Third base is a food aisle — right between the refrigerated tortillas and the frozen pizzas — deeper in the supermarket.
Look at that X, and imagine Willie Mays launching home runs; or the spectacular rookie seasons of Willie McCovey and Orlando Cepeda; old New York Giants trying to cope with a foggy new home, and fresh new Giants like Jimmy Davenport making their big league debuts.
Lappin closes:
Next up, in collaboation with Burrito Justice, we may try to convince the managers of the Office Depot and Safeway stores to place permanent markers for each of the bases on their respective floors. Stay tuned.
I can get behind that effort!
Day late kudos to Master Melvin and the Baby Bull
A big belated happy birthday greeting to Mel Ott, who would have turned 101 on March 2. One of the all-time great Giants, Ott ruled right field in the Polo Grounds, and held the National League home run record – until Willie Mays broke it. (Mays didn’t have it for long before Hank Aaron claimed it, but Barry Bonds put it back in Giant hands.)
In a cruel twist of irony, Ott was succeeded as Giant manager by Leo Durocher, the man who derided Ott in his famed remark, “Nice guys finish last.”
March 2 also marks the 11th anniversary of Orlando Cepeda’s overdue election into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Cepeda terrorized pitchers during his tenure with the Giants, who never should have traded him – for Ray Sadecky! – a deal that led to a Cepeda MVP award, a World Series win for the Cardinals, and more second place finishes for San Francisco.
Today’s Giants could use another Ott or Cepeda!