CONCORD — Because he was once a skinny teenager with big glasses and a ho-hum fastball, Fred Breining loves talking to youngsters with major league dreams.
Breining somehow carved out a Giants career by coming up with a forkball — after realizing two pitches into his professional career that his curve wasn’t going to cut it.
The first curve he threw was belted for an opposite-field triple. The second one yielded a double hit so hard “it almost knocked the fence over,” Breining recalled.
“I threw those two curveballs and never threw another one. I said, ‘I have to come up with something else. This is not going to work.'”
Breining invented his own version of a forkball and wound up appearing in 140 games, mostly for the Giants, during big league career that spanned 1980-84.
As a reliever he ranked 10th in the National League in appearances in ’81. As a starter, he ranked fourth in winning percentage (.647) in ’82, when he was 11-7.
Breining, now 61, works as a sought-after pitching instructor in Northern California. He remains connected to his old team through his work with the Junior Giants Community Fund baseball program, giving lessons to kids who might not otherwise be able to afford them.
“I want to give back,” Breining said. “Nobody ever saw anything out of me, especially athletically. I teach kids, ‘Don’t give up on yourself.'”
In advance of the Junior Giants glove drive this Saturday at AT&T Park, here are five things to know about his unlikely big league career — and what he’s doing to help others follow in his path.
1. He Is The Only Player In At Least 75 Years To Hit Into A 9-1 Putout
How is that for bizarre claim to fame?
While facing the Montreal Expos on May 20, 1983, he stepped to the plate in the third inning after groundouts by Bob Brenly and Duane Kuiper.
Breining ripped a shot down the right-field line against Expos starter Steve Rogers. Off the bat, Breining saw first baseman Al Oliver dive to his left and miss the ball, so he figured he had a sure single.
“I’m looking down the line and there’s nothing. Just first base. And then all of a sudden I see Steve Rogers racing to the bag and yelling, ‘Hurry, c’mon!’
“I said, ‘Oh, crap.’ And by the time I started going, Andre Dawson threw a pea to first base.”
(The records show it was actually Warren Cromartie who fielded the ball in short right field and threw to Rogers covering.)
David Feldman, a Bay Area-based stats expert, confirms that Breining is the only major league player to hit into a right fielder-to-pitcher putout since at least 1943, the earliest records are accurate.
2. His Forkball Was Weird
Breining threw his two ill-fated curveballs in an intrasquad game after being drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates in the third round of the 1974 draft. More troubling than the result was how it looked: two Pirates coaches immediately bounded out of the dugout, aghast at Breining’s mechanics.
“You can’t throw like that!” one coach said.
“It’s the only way I know how,” Breining replied.
The Pirates taught him that if he kept slinging the ball as he was — all arm, erratic arm slot — he’d blow his arm out by the time he was out of Class A ball. Roving instructors like Larry Sherry and Harry Dorish helped teach him pitching basics, like how to line up his front shoulder.
He came started fiddling with the forkball by using a grip he’d seen a Lincoln High teammate named Larry Foster employ years earlier. Breining forked his fingers, spreading them wide enough to get his index and middle fingers each on one seam.
It took a few years, but eventually it became his yo-yo on a string. Breining threw an 87 mph fastball for show, but mostly stuck to his 76-77 mph forkball.
Breining did not invent the forkball. The pitch is sometimes credited to Bullet Joe Bush, who started fiddling with the grip in 1920 while coming back from an arm injury. The most famous forkball still belongs to Roy Face, who developed his version in 1954. Face, who went 18-1 with a 2.70 ERA for the Pirates in 1959, once said: “There’s no such thing as a good forkball hitter. Some batters would swing a foot over it.”
For a while, Breining enjoyed a similar thrill.
“What that ball was doing was just incredible. Nobody could hit it,” Breining said. “It would wiggle and drop straight down.
“The hardest part to learn on that pitch — and this is what I try to teach a lot of kids — is that you have to throw it right down the middle of the plate. Right down the heart of it. … If it doesn’t do anything, OK, they’re going to hit the heck out of it. But don’t think like that. You have to think positive or you won’t be a pitcher.”
3. He Has No Use for Your Kid’s Attitude
Breining, who lives in Galt (Sacramento County), teaches kids from ages 9 through professional baseball. He doesn’t care if the kid throws hard. He doesn’t even care if the kid throws strikes.
“I just want you throwing like I’m teaching you,” Breining said. “If you do, you’re eventually going to throw strikes and you’re going to throw hard. Every year you’re going to pick up a little more speed.”
But his biggest rule of all: respect those around you. One of the things he likes most about the Junior Giants program is that it’s as much about life lessons as it is about baseball.
Breining said he’s seen a few kids finish their mound work for the day and fling their glove at their parents as if throwing a towel at the pool boy.
“I look at the parents and say, ‘What are you doing? Just drop the glove,” he said. “Then I turn back to the kid and say, ‘What the hell are you doing? You think that’s your caddy? That’s not happening again. Pick the glove up and don’t ever do that again.”
4. He is the only born-and-bred native to pitch for San Francisco
Breining takes pride in being the only San Francisco Giants pitcher ever to be born and raised in San Francisco. He was born in The City on Nov. 15, 1955, the middle child of 12 children.
(That “raised” part is important — ex-Giants Keith Comstock and Tyler Walker were also born in San Francisco, but they spent their early years living elsewhere in the Bay Area).
Breining took a winding path to Candlestick Park. After graduating from Lincoln High, he went to the College of San Mateo but got kicked off the team by coach John Noce.
For one thing, Breining got caught smoking, which didn’t sit well with the legendary coach. For another, Breining missed four practices in a row — three for final exams and one to help his uncle finish striping runways at San Francisco International Airport.
With scant options after being booted off the CSM team, Breining signed his first professional contract at age 17. But before he reported to the minors, his father gave him a life-altering bit of advice.
“Before I got on the plane, my dad said, ‘Keep your mouth shut and your eyes and ears open and you’ll learn a lot.”’
5. Kudos Are His Currency
When he looks back on his career, Breining savors his confrontations with Pete Rose, whom he recalls as having the best bat control of any hitter he ever faced. He treasures his duels with formidable George Foster, who got so sick of seeing the forkball over and over again he yelled: “You big (coward), why don’t you challenge me with a fastball?”
But Breining played long before the era of big contracts. And he got into coaching in 1992 only because his private lessons (at $20 an hour back then) topped his bar tending gig ($15 an hour).
Now, he’s surprised at how hard it is to get highly paid modern ballplayers to pitch in with a free lesson.
“Most guys who played in the major leagues, it’s want-want-want, gimme-gimme, gimme,” Breining said. “I say, ‘Come on, man.’
“I don’t want the money. I get satisfaction from getting the letters, getting the text messages, getting the videos from parents.
“They say, ‘He’s a different kid out there now, Fred. He’s enjoying the game.”
— The Junior Giants Glove Drive begins at 10:30 a.m. at AT&T Park on Saturday (before the Giants play the Cincinnati Reds at 1:05 p.m.). The drive will provide gloves to thousands of children, enabling them to play baseball while empowering them with life skills.
Fans who donate a new or gently used baseball glove or make a $10 donation to the Giants Community Fund will receive a Gold Glove pin. Donors who give $20 will receive a limited-edition Hunter Pence bobblehead. Collections will be accepted at all gates and the Community Clubhouse on the Promenade Level. For more information or to make a donation visit jrgiants.org
