Giants Turning NL Upside-Down : They’ve Gone From Last Place to First Almost Overnight

It’s a little early to compare the resurgent San Francisco Giants to the Miracle Mets of 1969, but look at the standings.

It’s the end of June, nearly midseason, and the Giants have been at or near the top of the National League West every step of the way.

When was the last time an NL team lost 100 games or finished in the cellar one year and won a pennant the next?

Hint: It wasn’t the New York Mets, who finished next-to-last in 1968.

Answer: It never happened. (For trivia buffs, in 1890 Louisville won the pennant in the American Assn., then the second major league, after finishing last, 66 1/2 games out, with a 27-111 record the year before.)

It may not happen this summer, but don’t tell that to the Gee Whiz Kids on the Giants. They believe in miracles, and so do their fans, who are setting a record for sending telegrams and letters.

“I’ve watched the Giants for 25 years and I remember the glory days,” said Tim Walton, 34, of Fremont. “This is a glory team, this is a team that has restored the love of baseball in the Bay Area.

“To be able to say they may go all the way, that is amazing. Now the fans are coming out of the closet. My wife is obsessed, driving down the highway, listening to the games and screaming ‘Go Giants.’ ”

There’s still a lot of baseball left, plenty of time for the bubble to burst, but the Giants are undaunted.

“We’re going to win this thing,” pitcher Mike Krukow said. “If people think we’re just a fluke and take us lightly, that’s good. I hope they take us lightly the whole year.”

This time last summer, the Giants were in last place, 18 games behind division-leading San Diego, and grumbling on the way to their worst season ever while playing to empty seats.

“We were a bad movie last year,” Krukow said. “I wouldn’t have paid to see us play. Nobody wants to watch crummy baseball and that’s what we showed them. This year, the fans are not only coming out to the ballpark, they’re psyched up in the communities, too. Giants’ fever is contagious.”

Fifth-year catcher Bob Brenly noted with a grin that: “In the past, it wasn’t always the proper thing to walk into a restaurant and say you play with the Giants and hope to get a good table. They’d stick you in the kitchen. This year we get better seats.”

The players got charged up when bundle after bundle of telegrams from fans were delivered to the team during a recent trip to Houston. At Candlestick Park, no one talks about the wind and cold anymore and the average attendance has leaped to 20,000 from 13,000 at this point last year.

Veterans such as Krukow, Brenly, pitcher Vida Blue, and hard-hitting outfielders Jeff Leonard and Chili Davis are as hungry as the fans after years of suffering.

But rookies don’t know the hard times, and this team is full of players who dropped through the fog from Phoenix and began playing, as Brenly said, “like they were born to the job.”

At times there have been as many as six rookies in the lineup. They heard new Manager Roger Craig tell them in spring training that they could win the division this year and they believed him, no matter how hard skeptics laughed.

“A lot of people talked about how young we were and said we were going to be in the cellar,” rookie second baseman Rob Thompson said. “They were saying our double-play combination wasn’t any good and we had a long way to go. But we fooled them all.”

Indeed, the Giants have so far fooled everybody, without mirrors or tricks. They are near the top of the league in runs, batting average, pitching and turning double plays with an infield of two rookies and two second-year players.

“We have a lot of no-names who are just doing everything that has to be done on a daily basis in order to win ballgames,” said Al Rosen, the Giants’ president and general manager who has made some key trades to open opportunities for the rookies since taking over last fall.

Thompson got a chance to play regularly when Manny Trillo was traded to Chicago and has been so good in the field that Rosen flatly calls him the league’s top rookie so far this season.

At first base, rookie Will Clark jumped to a strong start and, after getting hurt June 3, was relieved with aplomb by rookie Mike Aldrete.

Big, rangy Chris Brown at third and sure-handed Jose Uribe at shortstop also do a lot for a pitcher’s confidence, diving in the hole to take away singles.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that Chris Brown is the best third baseman in the National League,” said Rosen, four times an All-Star at third. “I think he’s going to go on to have a tremendous career and be a very potent force, the type of player who will change ballgames.”

Brown, a powerful 6-foot-2, 210 pounder, is challenging for the batting title with an average of about .340, but Rosen is more impressed with the 24-year-old’s fielding.

Perhaps in equal measure because of the infield and the split-finger fastball taught by Craig, the mostly veteran pitching staff is among the league leaders in earned run average.

Krukow is having his best season in 10 years, taking a 9-4 record into the weekend. Blue shed a few pounds by running and lifting weights and is pitching better than he has in years. Scott Garrelts is improving after shifting from ace reliever to starter.

Perhaps the biggest surprise on the Giants, though, has been Mike LaCoss, a journeyman right-hander who signed as a free agent in February. LaCoss is 7-2 with a 2.60 earned-run average.

Juan Berenguer, who learned the split-finger at Detroit when Craig was a pitching coach there, has emerged as the bullpen ace lately, complementing Jeff Robinson and Mark Davis while veteran Greg Minton continues to struggle.

Also helping the defense has been the catching and strong arm of Bob Melvin, a 24-year-old who came with Berenguer in the deal for pitcher Dave LaPoint.

Even injuries don’t hurt this team. After center fielder Dan Gladden injured his thumb and left the lineup on June 3 with a .281 batting average, rookie Randy Kutcher came up from Phoenix to take over center and had a single and homer in his first game.

“We haven’t skipped a beat,” Brenly said. “When guys go down there’s always somebody there to take their places. I think that’s the most amazing thing about being where we are right now, the fact that we kept winning with the number of starters on the disabled list or playing hurt.”

Gladden and Clark are expected back in the second half of the season and the Giants figure once they’re at full strength they’ll be tough to beat.

“It’s a very heady experience we’re going through because it is a complete change from last year,” Rosen said.

“Many of the players had career bad years last year,” Rosen said. “In order to win you have to have career good years, seven or eight players having outstanding seasons. No manager ever tasted World Series success unless the talent was there.”