Roger Craig (baseball)
Roger Lee Craig is an American former pitcher, coach and manager in Major League Baseball. Craig played for five National League teams over all or parts of 12 seasons —most notably as a member of the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers, and New York Mets—and then forged a successful post-playing career as a pitching coach and manager. As a player and coach, Craig was part of four World Series championship teams. As a manager, he led the 1989 San Francisco Giants to the team's first National League championship in 27 years. He was born in Durham, North Carolina, and attended North Carolina State University.
Playing career
Craig threw and batted right-handed, stood tall and weighed. He signed with Brooklyn in 1950 and began his rise through the Dodger farm system, missing 1952 and 1953 while performing Korean War military service. In July 1955, after he won ten of 12 decisions for the Triple-A Montreal Royals, Craig was called up to the majors. In his debut game July 17, Craig was the Dodgers' starting pitcher against the Cincinnati Redlegs at Ebbets Field. He threw a complete game victory and allowed only three hits and one earned run as Brooklyn triumphed, 6–2. He made nine more starts for the Dodgers over the next ten weeks, and relieved in a dozen games more; he threw two more complete games, earned two saves, and posted a fine 2.78 earned run average as the Dodgers won the National League pennant. He started Game 5 of the 1955 World Series against the New York Yankees, worked six innings, gave up four hits and only two runs before being relieved by Clem Labine, and was credited with Brooklyn's 5–3 victory. Two days later, on October 4, 1955, Craig's teammate Johnny Podres shut out the Yanks in Game 7, giving Brooklyn its first and only World Series championship.Craig would appear in three more World Series. He was treated harshly by the Yankees and Chicago White Sox in the 1956 and 1959 World Series, losing two decisions with a dismal 9.98 earned run average; but he was almost flawless as a reliever for the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1964 Series. In two appearances for the Redbirds, he kept the Yankees scoreless and allowed only two hits in five innings pitched. A yeoman effort in Game 4, in which Craig worked 4 scoreless innings pitched in relief of Ray Sadecki, enabled the Cardinals to recover from a 3–0 deficit to win, 4–3, with Craig getting credit for the victory. St. Louis went on to take the series in seven games.
Craig was well-known as an original 1962 New York Met. As a member of the starting rotation of the 1962 and Mets, who lost 120 and 111 games, respectively, Craig posted a nightmarish 15–46 won–lost record during his two seasons with the expansion team. He lost the first game in Mets' history, 11–4, in St. Louis. In 1963, Craig suffered through a personal 18-game losing streak, and changed his uniform number from his traditional 38 to "unlucky" 13 to break the 90-day winless skein. "But," Craig once recalled, "11 of those times it took a shutout to beat me." Despite his poor record, Craig was a stalwart of the legendarily bad team's pitching staff. Remarkably, he threw 27 complete games in 64 starts, demonstrating that he was one of the Mets' best pitchers. His manager, Casey Stengel, told him, "You've gotta be good to lose that many."
A master of the split-finger fastball, Craig worked in 368 games over the course of his 12-year MLB career. He won ten or more games in, and 1962, and posted a 74–98 won–lost mark. In 1,536 career innings pitched, he surrendered 1,528 hits and 522 bases on balls, with 803 strikeouts and a 3.83 earned run average. He threw seven shutouts and 58 complete games, and earned 19 saves. His late MLB tenure consisted of one-year stops with the Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds and Philadelphia Phillies. Although he performed poorly during the 1959 World Series, Craig helped pitch the 1959 Los Angeles Dodgers to the National League pennant, winning 11 games, posting a brilliant 2.06 ERA, and leading his league in shutouts, despite making only 17 starts and spending part of the season with the Triple-A Spokane Indians. Overall he appeared in four World Series; in seven games and 26 innings pitched, he allowed 19 earned runs on 31 hits and 16 bases on balls, and struck out 25. He split four World Series decisions and compiled a 6.49 ERA.
Coach and manager
Craig retired from the mound after the 1966 campaign and rejoined the Dodgers as a scout and manager of Double-A Albuquerque. In, former Dodger general manager Buzzie Bavasi appointed Craig the first pitching coach in the history of the newly born San Diego Padres. Enduring the growing pains of another expansion team, Craig spent four years as the Padres' mound tutor before he was replaced by ex-teammate Podres. After another brief return to the Dodgers as a minor league pitching instructor in 1973, Craig resumed his MLB coaching career with the Houston Astros and had a second tour with the Padres. During the latter year, the Padres lost 93 games under two managers, John McNamara and Alvin Dark.In March 1978—in the midst of spring training, and only two weeks before Opening Day—the Padres' ownership fired Dark for "miscommunication" with his players and elevated Craig to the manager's post. Said Craig at the time: "It was the shock of my life, but the best shock I've ever had. My main task now is to get the players to relax so they can perform to the best of their capabilities." The 1978 Padres responded to Craig's leadership, improving by 15 games over 1977 and posting the first winning season in franchise history. However, Craig's 1979 team took a giant step backward, reverting to a poor 68–93 record. Craig was fired at season's end and replaced by Jerry Coleman, the former Yankee second baseman then serving as the radio voice of the Padres.
The firing eventually proved to be beneficial to Craig's managing career, however. Sparky Anderson, a former Dodger minor leaguer and coaching colleague of Craig's on the 1969 Padres, had taken over as pilot of the Detroit Tigers in the middle of. He appointed Craig his pitching coach for, and over the next five seasons, Craig moulded the Detroit pitching staff into a formidable group. The 1984 Tigers stormed to a 35–5 start, the American League pennant, and World Series championship. The national exposure he received burnished Craig's reputation as one of baseball's top pitching coaches and teacher of the split-finger fastball. But when the Detroit front office refused his request for a salary increase for 1985, Craig retired to his San Diego County ranch. His retirement did not last a full baseball season.
San Francisco Giants
From September 18, 1985, through the end of 1992, Craig was the manager of the San Francisco Giants. He replaced Jim Davenport for the final 18 games of the 1985 season, posting a 6–12 record. But in his first five full seasons with the Giants, 1986 through 1990, they never finished with a losing record.Under Craig the Giants won 90 games and the National League Western Division title in 1987, their first appearance in the postseason since. The term "Humm Baby" was given to the roster's third catcher for the 1986 season, Brad Gulden, who was on his way out of baseball but he managed to squeeze onto the roster for the 1986 season. Craig felt that Gulden didn't really have the talent but he had the heart so he called him the "Humm Baby". The Giants' divisional title in 1987 came just two years after they lost 100 games; it came within one game of going to the World Series that year, losing to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games.
In 1989, Craig's Giants won their first National League pennant since 1962. Led by sluggers Kevin Mitchell and Will Clark and starting pitcher Rick Reuschel, they won 92 regular-season games and took the NL West title by three games over the Padres. Then they defeated the Chicago Cubs in five games in the 1989 National League Championship Series. But Craig's Giants were swept in four games by the Oakland Athletics in the World Series. That Series, the first ever between San Francisco Bay Area teams, was marred by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which struck October 17, minutes before Game 3, scheduled for Candlestick Park. The quake killed 63 people and caused over 3,750 casualties. It delayed the World Series for ten days.
The Giants then began a slow decline on the field, winning 85 games in, 75 in and 72 in. Owner Bob Lurie put the team on the market, and when he reached a tentative sales agreement with Florida businessman Vince Naimoli, the club was poised to relocate to Tampa–St. Petersburg for. But, in an eventful offseason, the National League rejected the Lurie-Naimoli deal; it instead approved the Giants' sale to a San Francisco group, headed by Peter Magowan, committed to keeping the club in the Bay Area. The new owners dismissed Craig on December 2. He finished with a career managerial record of 738 wins and 737 losses, 586–566 with the Giants. Then Magowan's group signed superstar free agent Barry Bonds on December 8. With Bonds anchoring his lineup, Craig's successor, Dusty Baker, won 103 games in 1993 and was named National League Manager of the Year.