Giants, A’s Try to Bridge Gap : Baseball: Game 3 finally will be played, 10 days after devastating earthquake hit the Bay Area.

It is not listed on the detailed schedule of pregame events, but Manager Roger Craig of the San Francisco Giants said that before today’s Game 3 of the World Series, it will be the most important thing he does.

It involves a two-page letter from a fan named Glenn Smith of nearby Concord. Before the Giants take the field against the Oakland Athletics in the controversial resumption of a Series delayed 10 days by an earthquake, Craig will read the letter aloud.

It begins: “Dear Roger Craig and the San Francisco Giants.”

It ends: “You represent the earthquake capital of the world at its most downtrodden moment. You know that out there will be injured people, homeless people, rescue workers and just plainly depressed sympathizers temporarily focused on your activities.

“Give them a moment of cheer and pride. Imagine the smiles on their faces when Will (Clark) smoothly strokes a ball into the gap and Kevin (Mitchell) follows it with a rocket into the bleachers.

“Show your city, the Bay Area, the nation and the world what . . . spirit is all about. You will never have another opportunity to contribute so much.”

Craig said Thursday: “That letter puts it all into perspective.”

That perspective will be both seen and felt today when, less than two weeks after an Oct. 17 earthquake halted the start of Game 3, baseball will try again.

As Craig will tell his team, and as Commissioner Fay Vincent has told a nation by refusing to cancel the remainder of the Series, today will not be exclusively about baseball as played on a diamond. It will not be just about the Giants attempting a comeback from a two-games-to none deficit. Or about Giant starting pitcher Scott Garrelts facing A’s starting pitcher Dave Stewart.

It will also be about baseball as played in the heart.

“Tonight is about the magic of ‘Let’s play ball,’ ” Giant outfielder Brett Butler said. “We’re going to throw the first pitch, and 62,000 people are going to have a chance to let out all that frustration and hurt and trauma.

“This is America’s game, and hopefully tonight, it’s going to bring all of us in this area back together again.”

Gone, it seems, is last week’s reluctance of the Giants to engage in play while others are burying their relatives. Gone is the embarrassment the players felt in simply putting on a uniform.

Those emotions have been replaced by a sense of mission, one that has little to do with hitting a Stewart forkball.

“I read a letter from a guy a couple of days ago who said, ‘I’ve lost everything in the earthquake, but go Giants,’ ” Butler said. “Right then I said, ‘OK, if this is what you want, I’ll do it.’ ”

Said Craig: “We’ve realized we all need this. Baseball can be part of this area’s mental therapy.”

That therapy will be carefully orchestrated today, beginning with a moment of silence at 5:04 p.m., the exact moment the earthquake rocked Candlestick Park the last time these two teams met here.

Three minutes later, fans will be asked to change that mood by breaking out in the song, “San Francisco,” the city’s unofficial national anthem written by Gus Kahn in 1936. They will be led by another symbol of survival, the cast of the City’s long-running “Beach Blanket Babylon” musical.

At 5:27 p.m., the first ball will be thrown out by representatives of the public safety and volunteer agencies who offered assistance after the quake. Symbolic of this city’s grit, one pitching mound will not be able to hold them all.

“Before the game, there will definitely be a powerful minute or two,” Vincent said.

Then finally, at 5:31 p.m., Garrelts will throw a pitch to Oakland leadoff hitter Rickey Henderson, and for only the third time in 18 days, the two world championship contenders will officially play ball.

At that point, most people here believe that there will already be a winner--baseball.

“This would be the ultimate compliment to Bart (Giamatti),” Vincent said of his late predecessor, for whom this Series was supposed to be a memorial. “Bart was a firm believer that baseball was bigger than earthquakes, that baseball could rise above all of this, that baseball would ultimately overcome.

“Baseball is the most resilient of all American institutions, and (today) will show why.”

While Vincent held court on the Candlestick Park field Thursday, he demanded that the media clear a path so he could watch the Giants take batting practice. What he saw, and heard, were many free swings accompanied by much joking and shouting.

The Giants are definitely a looser team than the one that left their clubhouse last week to face dominating Oakland when the earthquake struck.

“Guys are starting to get into their off-season modes, some guys are even letting their beards grow,” Will Clark noted.

Most players think this attitude will help because, well . . .

“All I know is, last week we were down, two games to none, to a great team playing at its best, so some time off can’t hurt us,” Craig said, noting that he has given his team a free reign at recent workouts to emphasize a new start.

“At our first practices (after the earthquake), guys were saying, ‘Oh man, what are we doing here?’ ” he recalled. “Guys were throwing bats and throwing helmets. So I decided to do something different. At this point, the psychological thing is more important than the physical thing.”

Said pitcher Don Robinson with a smile, “Our mood has definitely changed.”

One notable Giant thinks that change is not for the better.

“I feel like I’m getting ready for an intrasquad game,” outfielder Kevin Mitchell complained. “I just can’t get pumped up. I feel like the year is over.

“I look at everybody and they don’t seem themselves. They just don’t have that intensity.”

The Giants believe that they have an advantage in another way. Spring training has annually proven that hitters, particularly big swingers, recover from layoffs more slowly than pitchers. Anyone knows that the A’s have more big hitters than the Giants.

“Guys with longer strokes, there are more things that can go wrong with that swing,” Giant hitting coach Dusty Baker said. “The advantage goes to hitters with shorter, more compact swings . . . like our hitters. Their hitters are the other kind, the big hitters. So that is going to help us.”

The Giant pitching staff also appears to benefit the most, considering that today’s starter, Garrelts, has recovered from a sore elbow, while Game 4 starter Robinson has been able to rest his sore knee.

“All the pitchers will have an advantage,” Giant pitching coach Norm Sherry said. “It will be like spring training--the hitters haven’t had a bat in their hands for a while. They’ve been hitting against coaches and batting practice people. They haven’t seen anybody working on his pitches or mixing them up.”

Not that any of that matters, or will matter over the remainder of this 86th and most unusual World Series. The Giants said they will play today as if they know exactly what matters.

“We know what the lasting memories of this Series will be . . . and they won’t be about who won the MVP, or who even won the Series,” Butler said. “They will be about the earthquake, and how this area has survived it and gotten on with its life. We just hope that in some way, we can help.”