<i> The </i> Roger Craigs : Giant Manager, 49er Running Back Have Much in Common

Roger Craig remembers the eerie October afternoon distinctly.

He and his wife were driving through the Midwest, heading home after the long season in Detroit, where he was then the pitching coach of the Tigers. Craig turned on the radio and heard an announcer screaming:

“Roger Craig just scored his third touchdown of the day! This clinches All-American for a great, great running back!”

Craig recalls: “My wife looked at me suspiciously and asked, ‘Aren’t you Roger Craig?’

“I told her, ‘I think so, dear. Maybe not.’ ”

Baseball men tend to lead insular lives. Never before had Roger Craig, the baseball man, heard of Roger Craig, the Nebraska football player.

“The coincidence is hard to believe,” he said later.

Last fall, it got even harder to believe. Roger Craig took over as manager of the San Francisco Giants in the same stadium where Roger Craig was carrying the ball for the San Francisco 49ers and breaking National Football League records in the process.

Before the season was over, the football Roger Craig had become the first NFL player ever to gain 1,000 yards from scrimmage and 1,000 yards as a receiver the same year.

Meanwhile, the baseball Roger Craig was also finding fame as the patron of a particular pitch, the split-fingered fastball.

This year, since teaching it to his pitchers, Craig has surprisingly managed the formerly tattered Giants into contention in the National League West.

“I loved it when Roger the Great joined up with the Giants,” said the football Roger Craig, who calls himself Roger the Younger. “Everybody likes to see their name in the paper, and now my name is in the paper most every day, the year around.”

Roger the Younger, 26, and Roger the Great, 53, had never met until The Times got them together on a recent Sunday morning at Candlestick Park. On a day off from training camp, the football player agreed to drive down from Rocklin, Calif., to say hello to the baseball man at his stadium office.

“Hi, Roger,” Roger said.

Said Roger: “Hi, Roger.”

Curiously, neither man knew the roots of his own name. They had never asked their parents about it. They had never been told by any relative.

But both are from the South. The Great was born in North Carolina, the Younger in Mississippi. Some of their friends have theorized that their ancestors lived in the same county, perhaps on the same farm or plantation.

As a youth, boxer Cassius Clay examined his roots one day and learned that the first Cassius Clay had been a prominent 19th Century Southern politician. Ali disavowed him, individualizing his name to Muhammad Ali.

The Craigs’ friends have noticed that, by contrast, both Rogers seem content with the status quo.

The Roger Craigs are both originals, too. Neither was named for any other Roger Craig.

So how does it happen that they’re both called Roger?

Ernestine Craig knows about her son, Roger the Younger. Mother of seven, she told this story from her home in Davenport, Iowa:

Her late husband Elijah, Roger’s father, was a lumberjack by day and a musician by night--he played guitar--who had served in the Navy with a pal he admired.

His friend, although he had been badly wounded in the Pacific and crippled for life, courageously made his own living for years as a booking agent for dance bands in the South.

“One day when I was carrying Roger, I asked Elijah what we should name the baby,” Ernestine Craig said.

“Elijah said: ‘Boy or girl, we’re going to call the child Roger.’

“I said fine, because that was the name of his brave friend.”

Hearing about this for the first time, Roger the Younger said: “Hey, how about that? I was named for a war hero.”

The case of Roger the Great is a bit different. A former Dodger right-hander who moved to Los Angeles with the club in 1958 after pitching some historic wins in Brooklyn, the Giant manager identified the family historian as his brother, J.T. Craig, a retired letter carrier in North Carolina.

“There were 10 of us children altogether,” J.T. said from Durham, “My daddy was a shoe salesman. The family was so big, our mother had to work very hard, and religion was her solace.

“She always went to hear the traveling preachers that came through our town every summer. And one time, when I was about 9, mother took me with her to hear the new man. She said she’d never met a traveling preacher she liked so much. His name was Roger E. Lee.”

Hearing about it for the first time, Roger Lee Craig, alias Roger the Great, said: “Named for a man of God, by golly. Now when I tell you something, listen up.”

The Giant manager’s family traces its American ancestry to 1743, when the first Craig came over from Scotland.

“Our great, great, great grandfather fought for America as a soldier in the Revolutionary War,” J.T. Craig said. “But in the last 300 years, my brother is the only Craig named Roger.”

Not quite. The manager’s son and grandson are Roger II and Roger III.

And then there’s the Roger with the 49ers.

“We named our boy Rodrick,” said the football Roger Craig, who seems more interested in contemporaries than ancestors.

His favorite relative, he says, is the undefeated middleweight boxer from Iowa, Michael Nunn, whose sister Vernessia is Craig’s wife.

Although Nunn weighs 160 to Craig’s 220, Craig wouldn’t fight him.

“He’s too quick for me,” he said.

The baseball Roger Craig would have been too quick for him, too. Pitching for the 1959 Dodger team that won the Coliseum World Series, Craig had an 11-5 record and a 2.06 earned-run average. That season, Sandy Koufax had marks of 8-6 and 4.05, and Don Drysdale was 17-13 and 3.46.

Earlier, as a rookie, Craig had pitched one of the Dodgers’ four victories in the 1955 World Series, the first they ever won.

Still, the game he remembers with the most pleasure was played in the 1955 regular season.

“I pitched a three-hitter that day,” he said, “in the first major league game I ever saw.”

At Candlestick Park, on a cool, foggy morning, the football Roger Craig drives up in a blue Toyota four-wheel drive vehicle. Sturdy, muscular, standing an even 6 feet, he is casually dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt.

The baseball Roger Craig, arriving in a black Chevrolet sedan, could be a well-preserved old linebacker.

Carrying 212 pounds impressively, the 6-foot 4-inch Giant manager looks more like a 7-footer in his big gray cowboy hat. It’s one of the stylish “Man From Snowy River” Stetsons with a 3 1/2-inch brim. Real cowboys still wear a 5-inch brim, but in San Francisco, Craig doesn’t need the shade. Ever.

Roger the Younger has brought along one of his 49er jerseys. On the backside is his name and number: Craig 33.

He trades it for one of Roger the Great’s Giant jerseys, on the back of which is an identical inscription: Craig 33.

“I’m proud to wear your number,” the manager says graciously. “One year I even got one of your tax bills.”

“You should have paid it,” the football player replies.

“Couldn’t,” says the manager. “Your taxes were bigger than my salary.”

The football player tells the manager what he says is his favorite Roger Craig story.

“My wife and I are having an early dinner downtown before the ballgame, and this guy comes over to our table and asks me: ‘Who you gonna pitch tonight, Roger?’

“I look him over while he’s looking me over, and I tell him: ‘Vida Blue.’

“ ‘Vida Blue,’ the guy says. ‘Is he ready?’

“ ‘You better believe it,’ I tell him. “ ‘The whole damn team is ready.’

“And it was.”

Then, winking, the football player says: “That was when you were winning, skipper.”

The Giant team is arriving now, and Roger the Great leads Roger the Younger into the clubhouse to meet some of the players.

“This here is the real Roger Craig,” he says to outfielder Chili Davis.

“My pleasure,” says Davis, shaking the football player’s hand. “Now you can teach Joe Montana the split-fingered fastball.”

A Giant infielder stops the manager, points to Roger the Younger, and says: “I hear you get a lot of his fan mail.”

“I get some,” the manager says.

“Do me a favor,” the infielder says. “The (phone) numbers in his mail, save me the ones you’re fixing to throw back.”

It’s getting close to work time now for Roger the Great, and the tall manager leads the chunky football player to a Candlestick Park gate. There, a 49er fan recognizes the 49er running back and decides to tell him about the day the Giants hired one of their most successful managers since McGraw.

“At the time, I didn’t know there were two Roger Craigs,” the fan remarks.

“So when my buddy said, ‘Ain’t that great?’ I said: ‘I don’t know about that. What does a football player know about baseball? Does he just want a summer job?”

The running back smiles.

The fan says: “You don’t know baseball, do you?”

“I sure do,” says Roger the Younger. “I’m Roger Craig.”