Bob Melvin and his core group of childhood friends used to attend about a dozen San Francisco Giants games each year, routinely driving from Menlo Park up U.S. Highway 101 to Candlestick Park.
Jim Dunton — a part of that clique who’s still close with Melvin today — said they would sit behind the Giants dugout and wait for Willie McCovey, the team’s flexible and stalky star first baseman, to throw baseballs into the stands after warming up before the start of an inning.
“With the Astroturf, Willie knew that if he could throw it high enough, it would take a big enough bounce and bounce over the dugout, and we’d all scramble for it,” Dunton recalled.
Melvin opened his first season as the manager of the Giants on March 28, looking to lead his childhood team into a new era of success. San Francisco has only made the playoffs twice since 2014, when the team won its most recent World Series.
The position could represent the last — and the most meaningful — stop in the 62-year-old Melvin’s long and successful baseball life.
Of course, this isn’t the first time he’s returned to the Bay Area to be a manager. Melvin spent 11 seasons in the same position with the Oakland Athletics, leading them to the playoffs four times and accumulating 853 victories, second only to Connie Mack in club history.
But the Giants are different. They were the squad Melvin and his friends lived and died with through the chill of Candlestick Park as swirling winds whipped hot-dog wrappers across the outfield grass.
They are Melvin’s team, through and through.
“I think probably every series, I would look in that dugout and look over to the other side and say, ‘maybe someday, hopefully,’” said Melvin, who also played for the Giants for three seasons, during his introductory press conference in October. “There were always times here — I can admit that now — that I was hoping at some point in time I’d come back.”
His friends from his Bay Area upbringing said returning to the Giants is a fitting final chapter to his baseball story.
“I think a lot of us felt like it was eventually going to happen,” Dunton said.
“It’s full circle for him,” said Matt Morey, who said he’s known Melvin since the two were toddlers. “This is a really great way to finish off his career.”
‘head and shoulders above’
If this is the twilight of Melvin’s career, the journey brings the new Giants manager back to where he first fell in love with the game of baseball. Those who saw that love blossom said that Melvin’s talent, competitiveness and baseball aptitude stood out from the beginning.
“We had a lot of good players; we had a lot of good athletes,” said Morey, who was raised on the same street as Melvin. “But back then he was just at a different level.”
“He was head and shoulders above us,” said Dunton, who said Melvin used to pick him up in his yellow Firebird on the way to Menlo-Atherton High School.
Melvin, Morey, Dunton and their other friends — some of whom, including Melvin, are part of an investment group now — would play every backyard game imaginable. His friends recalled launching Wiffle balls with PVC-pipe bats and kicking footballs between a pair of trees serving as makeshift goal posts.
Morey said he could count on one hand the amount of times he beat Melvin in an athletic activity. And even the few times Morey got the upper hand, he recalled that Melvin would make sure he had the last word.
“Let’s put it this way: The game wouldn’t be over until he was on top,” Morey said.
That competitiveness still drives Melvin today, according to his friends.
Morey said if he has plans to get dinner or drinks with Melvin after a game, those reservations are always contingent on whether or not his team wins or loses. If Melvin loses, Morey said, he also loses out on any postgame get-together.
“He’s the biggest competitor I’ve ever met,” he said.
Dunton ended up earning a baseball scholarship to UCLA, but he joked that the only reason is because scouts used to flock to Menlo-Atherton High’s baseball field to watch Melvin play catcher. There, they happened to see Dunton play, he said.
“He’s right up there with the best athletes I’ve been around,” said Dunton of Melvin. Dunton’s brother is the all-time home-run leader at Santa Clara University and their father, Tom, was a legendary pitching coach for Stanford University.
