Roger Lee Craig was born February 17, 1930 in Durham, North Carolina.
In 1986 Sports Illustrated called Roger Craig “the acknowledged maestro of the split-fingered fastball.” He was best known as a player for being an original New York Met and was a stalwart of the legendarily bad team’s pitching staff, losing 24 and 22 games in those first two seasons. Remarkably during those two years, he completed 27 games while winning only 15, demonstrating that he was one of the best pitchers on the staff.
Welcome to the Baseball History Podcast: Featuring This Week in Baseball History, baseball dictionary and a tour of baseball cities. I’m your game announcer Bob Wright.
This is game 46 of the 2009 baseball season
In the first inning let’s take a look at This Week in Baseball History for the 1 week of November.
November 4
1963 The Cardinals trade outfielder George Altman and pitcher Bill Wakefield to the Mets for veteran hurler Roger Craig.
Roger Lee Craig was born February 17, 1930 in Durham, North Carolina.
In 1986 Sports Illustrated called Roger Craig “the acknowledged maestro of the split-fingered fastball.” He was best known as a player for being an original New York Met and was a stalwart of the legendarily bad team’s pitching staff, losing 24 and 22 games in those first two seasons. Remarkably during those two years, he completed 27 games while winning only 15, demonstrating that he was one of the best pitchers on the staff.
Most careers include ups and downs, but few have such roller-coaster peaks and valleys as Craig’s. Five years after signing off the North Carolina State campus with Branch Rickey’s Brooklyn organization, as a major league rookie Craig found distinct success as a key contributor to the pennant and World Series triumph of the fabled “Boys of Summer” 1955 Dodgers. Yet before he reached the majors, Craig had so fiercely struggled with his control that twice he’d been demoted to lower classifications. In one season he walked 173 minor league batters, and in another 175.
After establishing himself as an effective major leaguer in 1955-56, Craig regressed so badly that he was sent back to the minors in 1958, where he endured a hideous 5-17 campaign. But the next year Craig would not only be recalled to the majors in mid-season, but would deliver a tremendous performance, sparking the now-Los Angeles Dodgers to a second-half drive to another pennant and World Series championship.
The team sprinted to the 1959 finish, winning 17 of their final 22, with Craig contributing four victories and a September Earned Run Average of 1.01. On the season’s final regular season game, Craig delivered a complete-game 7-1 triumph, clinching a first-place tie.
But two seasons later Craig slumped terribly, his Earned Run Average ballooning to 6.15, as he was pummeled for 22 home runs in 113 innings. The Dodgers then allowed him to be picked up in the National League’s first-ever expansion draft, and thus began the episode for which Craig is probably best-known: he was the ace pitcher for the famously hapless New York Mets of 1962-63. Deployed in a thankless workhorse role, in two seasons Craig appeared in 88 games for the Mets, 64 of them starts, and 469 innings.
Despite pitching reasonably well under these brutal conditions Craig was supported so pitifully that his won-lost record was 15-46. That two-season defeat total was the highest recorded by any major league pitcher since the early 1930s, and will almost certainly never be approached again.
Over the 90-day span from May 4 to August 4 of 1963, Craig lost 18 straight decisions, tying the most ever in the National League. With his record standing at 2-20, in an attempt to change his luck Craig switched his uniform number from 38 to 13.
On August 9, with two outs and the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth in a 3-3 tie against the Cubs, Mets’ third baseman Jim Hickman hit a high, lazy fly. Cubs’ left fielder Billy Williams settled under it, but the descending ball grazed the overhanging Polo Grounds second-deck scoreboard, fewer than 300 feet from home plate: a grand slam! Craig’s streak was over.
Following that season Craig was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals. In late July of 1964 the Cards were below .500, in seventh place, before roaring down the stretch to capture their first pennant in nearly two decades. In that fall’s memorable World Series victory over the dynastic Yankees, Craig was a particular hero, as described by St. Louis shortstop Dick Groat in Danny Peary’s We Played the Game:
Game Four was the key game. We had to win it, but Sadecki fell behind 3-0 in the first inning. Manager Johnny Keane brought in Roger Craig with men on first and second. He had the best pickoff move in the league besides Elroy Face. And we picked off Mantle at second. That may have been the biggest play of the Series because it prevented them from scoring again. Craig and Ron Taylor shut out the Yankees on two hits for 8 2/3 innings. And in the top of the fifth, Ken Boyer hit a grand slam homer off Al Downing, which was enough for us to win 4-3. That was the turning point in the Series.
Craig’s playing career finally reached its end in 1966, and the following year his old organization, the Dodgers, hired him as a scout. Then in 1968 Craig landed his first managerial job, for the Dodgers’ Texas League farm club in Albuquerque.
From 1969 through 1977 Craig served as a major league pitching coach, for the Padres and Astros, as well as a stint as a minor league pitching instructor for the Dodgers. In 1978-79 Craig managed the San Diego Padres; in their first season under his guidance the Padres achieved their first-ever winning record.
Then Craig became the pitching coach for the Detroit Tigers. In his playing days Craig’s best pitch was the slider, but in Detroit his teaching of the split-finger fastball to Jack Morris gained Craig particular renown as something of a split-finger guru. In the 1984-85 off-season Mike Scott of the Astros sought out Craig and learned the split-finger from him; Scott’s career would utterly turn around.
In September of 1985 Al Rosen, newly installed as the General Manager of the San Francisco Giants, hired Craig as his field manager. The once-proud Giants had been encountering hard times: the 1985 club that Craig took over in the season’s final couple of weeks lost 100 games for the only time in franchise history, going all the way back to 1883.
Craig undertook bold action in 1986, installing as regulars first baseman Will Clark and second baseman Robby Thompson, even though neither had any experience as high as triple-A. The young team was completely revitalized, surging to first place before eventually finishing third. Craig’s positive, good-humored spirit was infectious, and with his all-purpose catch phrase, “Humm Baby!” he became an enormously popular figure in the Bay Area.
In 1987 Craig’s Giants won their first division championship since 1971, and in 1989 they captured their first pennant since 1962. Craig’s managerial style made audacious use of the squeeze play and featured some highly questionable baserunning aggressiveness: for instance, Clark in 1987 was thrown out 17 times in 22 steal attempts.
Nevertheless Craig’s teams were loose yet focused, and disciplined on defense. Player after player thrived under Craig’s firm-but-warm leadership.
A large part of this biography comes from an article by Steve Treder, a staff writer for The Hardball Times,
In this inning we’ll open up the Baseball Dictionary
Under the letter: H
Humm-baby
Roger Craig originally gave the “Humm-baby” nickname to a journeyman catcher who squeaked onto the Giants’ roster back in the spring of 1986, Brad Gulden.
After having stints with 5 other teams, Gulden knew his playing career was near its end when he signed with the Giants in December 1985.
In fact, as the ’86 spring training was coming to a close, Gulden feared the Giants were not going to keep him as a third catcher behind Bob Brenly and Bob Melvin.
In a later interview, Gulden said, “It got down to the last day. They called (me) into the office. Roger Craig said, ‘Brad, you made the ballclub, you’re the Humm-baby.’ ”
Craig later recalled what prompted him to slap the Humm-baby tag on Gulden. Craig stated:
“It symbolizes to me something special because he didn’t have a lot of talent, but he gave you 180 percent; that’s the way Brad (was). Humm-baby.”
Gulden went on to say, “Roger Craig kinda liked me, I guess. I think he liked the drive I had to get the ballplayers fired-up. I could handle that, I was a gamer.”
Craig said the term Humm-baby derived from his days playing as a boy, when teammates would encourage a pitcher by yelling, “Come on, baby.” That morphed into Humm-baby, and the term Humm-baby took on a life of its own.
Gulden, has another distinction: He was traded for himself.
On Nov. 18, 1980, the Yankees sent Gulden and cash to the Mariners for infielder Larry Milbourne and a player to be named later. On May 18, 1981, Seattle sent that player to be named later to New York. His name was Brad Gulden.
It’s doubtful that being traded for yourself would rate as a Humm-baby transaction, but Gulden appreciates the fact that it makes him a piece of baseball trivia, as does the Humm-baby nickname.
He is quoted as saying, “If somebody remembers you 20 years after you’ve been out of the game, that’s great.”
It’s particularly noteworthy for someone with a career batting average of an even .200.
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Well, that’s it for today’s game of Baseball History Podcast. I’ll see you later at the ballpark.
