BORREGO SPRINGS, Calif. — On the top floor of baseball Manager Roger Craig's new two-story log cabin in the mountains, a hand-carved wooden bridge extends about 20 feet from the master bedroom to his workout room.
And from this bridge, the living room below can be viewed through a railing of baseball bats contributed by the San Francisco Giants, the club Craig manages.
"There's a bat from each player," he said the other day. "When I trade a guy, I'll just take out his bat and get one from the new guy."
That won't be easy. It's a project merely getting to Craig's mountain-top cabin--which is actually a 3,000-square-foot rustic-modern mansion on a rolling, wooded 41-acre ranch he bought a few years ago.
Made of hand-hewn logs with oak floors and big, square hemlock beams, the cabin sits in the splendor of a grove of oak trees near a 3,600-foot peak in the Volcan Mountains.
The Volcan range edges eastern San Diego County. "When it rains in San Diego, we get a foot of snow here," Craig said.
His daughter, Sherri Craig-Dickerson of San Diego, said: "You've heard of remote and isolated. This is the most remote place in the most isolated place in the West. I have trouble finding my way up here myself."
Craig, who in recent years has lived in nearby Alpine, moved into his new cabin home this month with his wife, Carolyn. He left for spring training a week later but said he will return on the ballclub's days off whenever he can.
By air from Phoenix--or from San Francisco, where Craig led the Giants to first place in the National League West last year--it's about an hour to Los Angeles. A connecting commercial flight takes 40 minutes to Borrego Springs, a desert oasis not far from Palm Springs. And from Borrego, by car, it's only 40 minutes more, west by southwest, up to Craig's ranch, if you really want to go there. And if you know exactly where you're going.
That's the rub.
The road is continuously uphill, consistently winding, and often scary if unfailingly scenic. And at the end, the last few miles are graveled, rutted, narrow and dust-covered. It is a road that eventually leads nowhere, seemingly, into 5,100 oak trees.
"I counted them one year," Craig said.
On horseback that time, he was on an all-day ride through his estate, which he calls the Humm Baby Ranch. With its improvements, it is valued now at about $500,000.
Normally, he spends only the cocktail hour on a horse--as he did one final afternoon this month before taking off for spring training.
Climbing aboard shortly after 3 p.m.--with two or three beers in a saddlebag--Craig spurred his mount into a trot as a pair of golden retrievers and his favorite mutt yipped happily at the horse's heels.
They returned just before dark, as usual--the sleek, obedient horse, the noisy dogs, and their tall, lean master. A craggy cowboy-type who stands 6 feet 4 inches, Craig, as he hopped off, looked even taller in his dusty, old broad-brimmed cowboy hat.
"That's my meditation," he said of his late-afternoon ride.
In his four decades in baseball, Craig, 58, has known the good life in some of America's great cities. As a young man, he pitched in both Los Angeles and New York for the Dodgers and Mets, and in his maturity in San Francisco he is a celebrity in one of the nation's most sophisticated cities.
Why would anybody forsake all that to live in isolation at the top of a mountain?
"This is me," he said.
THE OPTIMIST
In recent years, San Francisco has had a winning pair of Roger Craigs. One of them is a 49er halfback, the other manages the Giants. Most sports fans know that. What they may not know is that on the Giants alone, there are two Roger Craigs, or, at the least, one with two remarkably distinct personalities:
--At times, the man who in two years turned things around in Candlestick Park--converting the Giants from a 100-game loser in 1985 to a division champion in 1987--is a reclusive mountain cowboy.
--In his other being, Craig is an uncommonly extroverted, inspirational baseball man. As Sparky Anderson, manager of the Detroit Tigers, said: "Roger is Mr. Upbeat. He's the most positive and optimistic character I've known."
Some of the first to see this side of Craig were the 9 or 10 pitchers on the Padres' 1969 staff, where at the end of his playing career he became their pitching coach.
That year, his pitchers, acknowledging the help and encouragement they were getting from him steadily in both professional and private matters, got together before Mother's Day and paid Craig a unique tribute. They sent him a Mother's Day card.
"I can understand that," said his daughter, Sherri, who grew up with a brother and two sisters. "At home, Mom was the heavy who kept us in line. Dad was the gentle, affectionate one who held you and hugged you when you needed it. He was the cheerleader who always made you think positive."
Cheerleading, however, isn't easy. It takes a lot out of any person, and in Craig's case it drains him each year.
