Scott Strazzante/S.F. Chronicle
Darren Yamashita/MLB Photos via Getty Images
Scott Strazzante/S.F. Chronicle
Darren Yamashita/MLB Photos via Getty Images
Scott Strazzante/S.F. Chronicle
The vibe at the corner of Third and King streets for the San Francisco Giants’ home opener was lively. Happy.
“It feels like coming home again,” former Giants player F.P. Santangelo said Friday.
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Santangelo was hanging out in an upstairs suite where the 25th anniversary celebration of the ballpark was under way, with members of past Giants teams. Many said they didn’t feel welcome or comfortable around the team under the previous regime.
But those days are over. One of the great resources of any sports franchise is its past, its wealth of accumulated history and knowledge. And Buster Posey’s Giants are welcoming back all former Giants, men who knew how to win, how to play the game, how to make the ballpark at 24 Willie Mays Plaza a home-field advantage.
The vibe at the home opener was also a winning one, in that familiar tortuous kind of way. The Giants won 10-9 in the 11th inning, in a decidedly non-Buster Ball kind of way.
The two teams combined for 32 hits and 19 runs: Willy Adames drove in the tying and winning runs with a single. The back-and-forth game entertained the crowd of 40,865, but you can assume it did not match the vision Posey has put forth for this team.
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“There were a lot of twists and turns,” manager Bob Melvin said. “For Opening Day, with a packed house and drama every single inning, at least we put on a good show.”
The Giants are 6-1, off to a fabulous start that only enhances the goodwill that has been built up over the months since Posey ascended to the top of baseball operations. Goodwill with the fans, with the former players, with the whole Giants family.
Posey, wearing a pale orange tie, was in his suite, taking in the festivities in a way he never could as a player.
“I was always so hyper-focused on the game, I could never enjoy the pageantry of Opening Day,” he said.
On Friday, there was pageantry, pomp and a blending of old and new, which is what baseball is all about. There can be new ideas, new ways of using numbers, but the game remains essentially the same.
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“My perspective is we always want to honor the players that came before us,” Posey said. “There’s a lot to learn from the guys that came before you. Appreciate that past and that history and have an eye on the future as well. And try to intertwine it.”
Posey’s hiring marks a new era, but a familiar feeling. He wants to emphasize the Giants’ style of playing, of pitching and defense and making the ballpark work in the team’s favor. Too often, in recent years, Oracle Park has been presented as a problem, an albatross. That’s quite a change from a quarter-century ago when its opening was regarded as nothing short of a miracle, after the bleak years at Candlestick.
Maybe the three World Series trophies — won not that long ago — prominently placed in the entrance of the clubhouse will help exorcise that negative talk from the current Giants’ mindsets.
“You walk in and you see that and you kind of want to add to it,” ace Logan Webb said. “I think that’s an awesome addition to the clubhouse.”
As Dusty Baker — on hand for the 25th anniversary party — pointed out, the Giants have won World Series at the ballpark, his teams won a lot at the ballpark, Felipe Alou’s teams won at the ballpark. Baseball hasn’t changed so dramatically, or gotten so complicated, that the possibility of winning at Oracle Park has vanished.
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“It’s a pretty simple game,” Baker said.
The good vibes weren’t just in the suite on the fourth level, or in Posey’s baseball operations suite on the third level. They were in the clubhouse, too, both before the game and after the raucous on-field celebration several hours later.
Before the game, Webb said the biggest difference is “just the vibe of the team.”
“We’re a very close group,” he said. “We started that in the spring and we continue it. So that’s kind of the biggest difference.”
Webb is one of the few players left on the roster who played with Posey and was a recipient of a Buster hug. Now that Posey’s the boss, Webb’s opinion hasn’t changed.
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“He commands a respect for baseball and he’s carried that into this role,” Webb said. “I remember being a young guy and the biggest thing was I didn’t want to disappoint Buster. It’s kind of the same feeling now. We want to do well for him and are trying to play well and play the brand of baseball that he likes, which did really well when he played.
“I definitely think there’s a mindset change. From the minute we got to spring training, (Posey) wants us to play baseball a certain way. It kind of pointed us in the right direction early in spring.”
The team didn’t play the Posey way at the home opener. Far from it. But that’s OK, too.
“Good teams find different ways to win ballgames,” said Justin Verlander, who was chased in the third inning and watched the next eight innings from the clubhouse. “This team has something special.”
The specialness may be the intertwining of old and new, traditional and modern, and taking advantage of the place they’ve called home for 25 years.
“There’s the old way and there’s the new way,” Baker said. “And then there’s the right way.”
The Buster Posey Giants want to play baseball the right way.
Reach Ann Killion: [email protected]; X: @annkillion
