NOTEBOOK : Craig Knows Who to Blame If Giants Lose

A tricky pitch, that split-fingered fastball. Even when you’ve got it mastered, you’re never really quite sure what turn it might take next.

Roger Craig knows. The acknowledged guru of the split-finger, the man who took the pitch and gave it to the masses, has seen all his ground-breaking work come back and betray his San Francisco Giants during the first two games of the 1989 World Series.

Dave Stewart couldn’t keep a job in the major leagues before coverting to the Church of the Split-Finger.

Since then, he has won 62 games in three seasons and used the pitch Saturday night to shut out the Giants, 5-0, in Game 1.

Mike Moore was a pitcher of untapped potential with a 65-96 career record before he came to Oakland and was introduced to the split-finger this spring.

Six months later, he’s a 19-game winner and a World Series Game 2 winner, throwing seven innings’ worth of split-fingered fastballs past the Giants Sunday night en route to a 5-1 Oakland victory.

Oh mighty split-finger, what hath thou wrought?

“I guess you could say it’s come back to haunt us,” Craig said during the Giants’ off-day workout at Candlestick Park Monday. “It’s the pitch that’s been called the Pitch of the 80s and, even more so, it’s going to be the pitch of the 90s. Now, more people are learning to throw it because of the success so many people have had with it.”

Craig insists he didn’t invent the pitch, which is basically a forkball thrown with a fastball delivery. The Einstein of the split-finger, according to Craig, is Fred Martin, the late pitching coach of the Chicago Cubs.

“He was the one who taught it to Bruce Sutter,” Craig said. “That’s where it started. If I did anything, it was to come up with a simple way to teach it.”

Craig broke in his method at his baseball school in San Diego, teaching the pitch to 16- and 17-year olds, before taking his findings to the Detroit Tigers, where Craig was employed as pitching coach.

Then, in 1984, the Tigers won the World Series.

By 1985, Craig was named manager of the Giants.

By 1987, he had his whole staff throwing the pitch and San Francisco made the playoffs for the first time in 16 years.

Split-finger fever swept the country.

“I remember when Gene Mauch was managing the Angels and he told me, ‘I don’t know if any of our guys can throw it, but they’re all going to try,’ ” Craig said. “Now, the Angels have several pitchers who throw a good split-finger.”

So, to Craig’s immediate chagrin, do the A’s.

Stewart first learned the pitch from Sandy Koufax when he was with the Dodgers, but didn’t perfect it until he joined Oakland in 1986. Moore picked it up this spring from A’s pitching coach Dave Duncan, almost on a whim.

“It kind of came by accident,” Moore says. “I was sitting on the bench, stretching my fingers over a ball, when Dave Duncan comes over and asks me if I ever threw (a split-finger) before. I told him no, but we started fooling around with it in the bullpen.

“A few starts into the season, I began throwing it in games. Then, I threw it more and more as the season progressed.”

Now, Moore is among the leading practitioners of the pitch.

“I know a lot of guys came back here and said that Moore’s got one of the best they’ve ever seen,” said San Francisco pitcher Don Robinson, who, of course, also throws one.

And so does Bob Welch, Oakland’s scheduled starter for Game 3 tonight.

Will the madness ever cease? Craig can only wonder.

And if it results this week in the World Series elimination of the Giants, Craig knows who’ll have to answer for it.

One Way To Shut Him Up: Stricken by a case of tonsillitis, San Francisco first baseman Will Clark didn’t participate in Monday’s workout, although he did show up at Candlestick Park briefly to undergo therapy on his sore knee.

“We also changed his medication for his tonsillitis,” Giant trainer Mark Letendre reported. “Although he had a general malaise--and that’s not somebody who was in the French Revolution--he felt a lot better today.”

According to Craig, Game 3 won’t go on without Clark.

“If I’m managing, or even if I’m not managing, he’ll be at first base,” Craig said.

After going hitless in seven at-bats in the first two games at Oakland, Candy Maldonado is out as Craig’s right fielder and Pat Sheridan is in.

It’s the latest downward spin in a season Maldonado says “I wouldn’t wish on anybody.”

Maldonado, who batted just .217 with nine home runs and 41 runs batted in during the regular season, lost his starting job in May, platooned with Sheridan through August and then served primarily as a pinch-hitter and defensive replacement for the last six weeks of the season.

“It hurts,” Maldonado said of his Game 3 benching. “All year long, you get on your knees, hoping and praying to do your best in times like this.”

Maldonado fell short of that against Stewart and Moore, but believes he’s been made a scapegoat for San Francisco’s overall offensive drought thus far in the Series.

“Every time, it seems like right field is the position that (supposedly) costs us the game,” Maldonado said. “They keep bringing it back--if we lose a ballgame, it’s because the right fielder didn’t hit.

“It seems like it’s been a one-man show all year. It could be myself, it could be Pat, it could be whoever’s out there. It seems like we’re always the focus.

“Right now, it seems like the World Series focus has been ‘Candy Maldonado--what’s he going to do?’ ”

The last time the Giants made the playoffs, in 1987, Maldonado was an integral part of the San Francisco attack, batting .292 with 20 home runs and 85 RBIs. Now, he gets benched because the Giants need more offense--and gets replaced by a .205 hitter.

“This is one of those things people don’t realize about pro athletes,” Maldonado said. “If a pro athlete doesn’t perform to his capabilities, we’re human beings, too. We’re not a computer. You can’t program us--’Do this, do that.’

“It’s not fun when you take your uniform off and go home and see your kids and your wife and try to be happy. When you’re not successful in your job, it’s tough.”

Tonight, however, Maldonado says it’s time for “all of us to pull on the same side of the rope. I didn’t do the job. Hopefully, they’ve found the right man. I hoping Pat can do the job.”

Although this World Series has taken on the early look of a foregone conclusion, San Francisco center fielder Brett Butler insists that the return to Candlestick will make an immeasurable difference for the Giants.

“Yeah, it puts (Dave) Parker on the bench and we’ll get (the wind) to come out and make it cold and windy,” Butler said.

Parker is the Oakland designated hitter who will not be in the Oakland lineup tonight because they play by National League rules tonight.

The frigid wind that whips through Candlestick Park during night games turns the stadium into the world’s largest ice box.

“You better concentrate on every pitch in every inning here, or (the wind) is gonna get you,” Butler says.

“I remember coming in here when I was with the (Atlanta) Braves. I never liked playing here. You know it’s going to be cold and windy and you’re always thinking, ‘Three days and I’m getting out of here.’

“Now, we try to use it to our advantage. As the home team, we know what they are thinking. They’re saying, ‘How can you play here? It stinks.’

“I hear that and I love it.”