Making a Giants Change : Kevin Mitchell Finds Happiness in San Francisco

The Kevin Mitchell story is a purely heartwarming one--at first glance.

Kid from the school of hard knocks makes good, mostly because he has got an angel, San Francisco Giant Manager Roger Craig, on one shoulder and a saint, the grandmother who raised him, on the other.

If only it had been that easy.

Mitchell, undoubtedly the brightest thing to happen not only to the Giants this season, but also to the entire hitting fraternity, is by no means an overnight success.

Yes, he is riding an astounding offensive wave, one that washed over the New York Mets Sunday with four hits. Included were home run No. 14 and RBI No. 42, both major league highs, key contributions to a 10-6 Giant victory.

And everything he is doing looks frighteningly easy. But Mitchell has had to fight for this success. And he bears the look of a young man who has met up, face-to-face, with the harsher side of realism, on the field and off.

First, Mitchell survived a childhood of gang activity in San Diego. Then came two trades. The first broke his heart, the second almost broke his spirit.

The first deal to tear at him was engineered by the team he helped pummel this weekend. After the Mets won the 1986 championship with Mitchell as a valuable role player, he was traded to San Diego.

“I didn’t know what was going on,” Mitchell said. “All I knew is that I wanted to play here and I tried my best. This was my second home.”

Being a Jack-of-all-trades, playing six positions, which Mitchell did, the Mets liked him. But they liked Kevin McReynolds even more. And the price to get him included giving San Diego a third baseman. San Diego passed on Howard Johnson and chose Mitchell.

What should have been a happy, albeit unsolicited, homecoming turned into a nightmare. Larry Bowa, then the manager of the Padres, turned out to be a lot like the Mets, either unwilling or unable to find a permanent slot for Mitchell.

Unlike the Mets, Bowa did not go out of his way to make Mitchell feel wanted. In one bitter memory, Mitchell recalls going 0 for 4 against Orel Hershiser and being told by Bowa he would never face the Dodgers’ right-hander again.

He did not until he was traded to the Giants and, in his first encounter against Hershiser, Mitchell rocketed an RBI single.

The rocky relationship with San Diego ended almost as soon as it began. On July 4, 1987, Mitchell was traded with pitchers Dave Dravecky and Craig Lefferts for Giants third baseman Chris Brown and pitchers Keith Comstock, Mark Davis and Mark Grant.

“That trade was the hardest,” Mitchell said. “I want to ask the Padres: Why did you trade for me and mess around with me? I was happy. I could have stayed with the Mets.”

Looking back, both moves were good, even though the painful detour hurt. Mitchell acknowledges he would still probably be a role player in New York. And the chain reaction took him to San Francisco, to Craig. “When I came over, Roger said, ‘You’re my third baseman and you’re in the lineup every day,’ ” Mitchell said. “Roger’s the type of manager who could be an angel you’d find in a church, to give you that kind of confidence.”

That confidence has shown itself in awesome fashion. Mitchell, in 42 games, is batting .317. Thirty-two of the cleanup hitter’s 51 hits have been for extra bases. He has had 15 multihit games, 12 multiple-RBI games. He has driven in at least three runs five times.

“When he walks up there, I expect him to get at least a double every time up,” Craig said.

Even when he is slumping, Craig says he hits the ball hard. Even when he’s hurt, the 27-year-old left fielder seemingly cannot be stopped. He has not taken batting practice in a half-dozen games because of a stretched ligament in his right wrist. Yet he is 12 for 23 with three home runs in his last seven games.

“We’d probably be in last place without him,” Craig said. “He’s carried us. He and Will (Clark, the league’s leading hitter) come to the ballpark every day ready to play and their attitude is rubbing off on other guys.”

That, in itself, is a heart-warmer. Because Mitchell’s background made him an easy target for stereotypes. Granted, he’s a tough kid--he had to be, something people in baseball still have difficulty comprehending. Such as the time the Giants invited the chaplain from nearby San Quentin penitentiary to speak at chapel.

“Four or five of Kevin’s friends sent their hellos with the chaplain,” Giants hitting instructor Dusty Baker said incredulously. “Before, I always thought, ‘nah, it could not be that bad.’ ”

It was, but Mitchell survived. His grandmother, 65-year-old Josie Winfield, saw to it. And to this day, she is his guiding light. It was she who suspected his headaches and hitting woes last season were related to an eye injury caused by a Jay Tibbs pitch in 1986.

She sent him to a specialist this winter. Mitchell now wears contacts. “The confidence in myself says this (hitting) is never going to stop,” he said. “I get that confidence from my grandmother. I play for her, too.”

And he fights to prove what he is not. He knows that there were undercurrents that he might be a bad influence on Mets players such as Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry. He knows the Padres had suspicions, too.

“They (Padres) said playing in my hometown had hurt me, that my friends were a bad influence,” Mitchell said. “Well, I’m just 500 miles away now, and my friends still come to see me.”

Baker finds those innuendoes the most incredulous of all.

“He’s a clean liver,” Baker said. “A guy who came from where he did--to me, he’s a role model for all of America.”