On Oracle Park’s 25th birthday, SF Giants ring in new era in multiple ways

SAN FRANCISCO — It’s officially the post-Mays, post-A’s era at the ballpark by the Bay.

The Giants couldn’t have asked for better weather or better circumstances to ring in Oracle Park’s 25th anniversary, and it was a big one.

“There’s definitely a lot of changes,” outfielder Mike Yastrzmeski, the team’s longest-tenured player, said before taking the field for his seventh Opening Day on the shores of McCovey Cove.

It begins with the man in charge, Buster Posey, whose reign as the president of baseball operations is off to about as fast a start as his playing career that produced three World Series championships. His club is 6-1 after a 10-9 win in 11 innings on a sunny Friday afternoon.

The bounty of those teams is prominently displayed now in the entrance to the Giants’ clubhouse, which received a small makeover during the offseason that included the addition of three World Series trophies in the entranceway.

The other new things include a mysterious, gold-plated wrestling belt with the letters “BMF” — take a guess what those stand for — that will be awarded to a player after each win, and more publicly, an LED screen on the iconic renovated Coca Cola bottle in left field.

But some of the biggest differences had to do with what — and who — wasn’t there.

“I think everybody feels Willie’s absence,” manager Bob Melvin said. “Orlando (Cepeda), too.”

For the first time in the Giants’ 67-year history in San Francisco, they opened a baseball season in a world without Willie Mays or Orlando Cepeda. While the old-timers haven’t been part of the festivities for a few years, the Giants used to parade their living Hall of Famers around the warning track at the start of each new season.

Now, the only one left is Juan Marichal, who will turn 88 in October. Giants fans did get a chance Friday to celebrate their recent past, breaking out in chants of “Bar-ry!” when Mays’ godson, Barry Bonds, addressed the crowd as part of a pregame ceremony with then-manager Dusty Baker and other members of the 2000 club honoring the group that opened the ballpark.

“It’s harder for us (older fans),” said Kevin Parker of Los Altos, who became a Giants fan when Mays tossed him a ball at Candlestick Park. “Our heroes are disappearing. It’s a right of passage in a sense with those guys gone.”

Mays and Cepeda died last summer within 10 days of each other and received headline billing during the pregame “In Memorium” ceremony. Mays’ family and personal caretaker were on hand in a suite to witness the warm reception, and Melvin said the pair of Giants legends are “going to have a big presence here. They’re going to be like angels here for us now.”

Twenty-five years ago, the Giants celebrated the opening of their new waterfront ballpark by unveiling a statue of Mays outside the home plate entrance. In a surprise, even to Mays, then-chairman Peter McGowan announced another tribute that would live on in his wake.

“From that day forward the official address of the ballpark would be 24 Willie Mays Plaza,” broadcaster Jon Miller remembered. “I’m sitting right next to Willie, and Willie just couldn’t believe it. He almost burst out into tears, it was such an incredible honor. He did not take it for granted. He just seemed to be overcome.”

The Giants have had no trouble filling the place in the quarter century since, and that was with another team operating on the other side of the Bay Bridge.

For the first time since 1967, the Bay Area is a one-team market again.

“I know it’s not the Bay Area, but they’re still here in Northern California. They’re still in Sacramento,” starter Logan Webb noted of the A’s, who were swept by the Cubs in three games to start their three-year residency at the home of the Giants’ Triple-A team.

While the Giants’ ace said it was “weird” not to play their former regional rivals in the annual post-spring exhibitions — they hosted the Tigers for two games instead — the Sacramento-area native who grew up rooting for the A’s was skeptical of the Giants’ ability to siphon off any fans.

“If they want to hop on board, they can,” said Webb, who also maintained his Raiders allegiances when they skipped town for Las Vegas. “I know when I was younger and you asked me to do that I probably would have said no, even if they left.”

That said, the Giants couldn’t have done much better through the first week of the season at appealing to the woebegone Bay Area baseball fan.

Webb and Yastrzemski, two key figures of the previous administration under Farhan Zaidi, pushed back on the idea that it was an entirely new era of Giants baseball with Posey in charge.

“I think by saying that we’re taking away from what has happened and insinuating that before we didn’t care as much, which I don’t think is the case,” Yastrzemski said.

But both players said they noticed a difference in spring training, starting with a focus on the little things, such as situational hitting. Entering Friday’s game, the Giants led the National League with a .308 batting average with runners in scoring position.

“I think there’s a mindset change,” Webb said. “It’s almost like (Posey) demands it a certain way. Not in a bad way. He wants us to play baseball a certain way. I think he pointed us in the right direction early on in spring and we’ve done really well executing that.”

The trophies, Webb said, are an “awesome addition.”

“When you walk in, you see that,” Webb said. “You kind of want to add to that.”

As for the wrestling belt, according to Yastrzemski, the team had something similar in 2019.

“It’s a little ode to the past and a little bringing it to the future, too,” he said.

Returning home from a 5-1 road trip, the Giants were welcomed by weather to match the positive start to the season. The blue skies and 63-degree temperature at first pitch even caused Melvin to pause for a moment in the dugout to take it all in.

“This is quite the place to have a baseball game, let alone Opening Day,” Melvin said. “There’s only one day that gets you feeling like this, and that’s the home opener.”

Hey, skip, Mays’ angel wants to have a word.

“When he spoke about the ballpark,” Miller remembered, “he said, ‘People keep saying it’s a beautiful ballpark. And it is. But they say it has so many great views, have you seen the views?’

“Willie said, ‘Man, it’s not a condominium, what do I care about the views? How does it play? How’s the ball carry? What are the winds going to do to the fly balls? That’s what I’m worried about!’ I’ll never forget that.”