Giants with strong arms recall QB days
Crawford, Webb and Casali were all high school quarterbacks
Picture Brandon Crawford darting across the grass, preparing to reach back and hit his target square in the chest.
Giants fans have seen it countless times: Crawford throws a ball across his body and fires a perfect strike to a teammate with a big catch radius, great hands and a knack for bailing him out when he misses ever so slightly.
Before the 34-year-old Crawford was throwing fastballs across the diamond to baseman Brandon Belt, he was tossing spirals over the middle to Foothill High’s (Pleasanton) leading wide receiver, Neima Khaila.
“I wouldn’t necessarily say I was mobile because it’s not like I had a ton of rushing yards, but I was a scrambling, improvisational quarterback,” Crawford said. “I was on the run a lot and tried to make stuff happen.”
Crawford’s elite footwork has helped the Giants shortstop win three Gold Gloves and two World Series titles, but back in his high school days, the tutelage of late quarterbacks guru Roger Theder helped Crawford lead the Foothill Falcons football squad to an 8-3 record and NCS playoff appearance.
A converted safety who was a second-team ALL-NCS defensive back as a junior — a recognition Crawford called “no big deal” with a smirk — the three-time All-star is one of several high school quarterbacks leading the Giants toward the postseason.
Catcher Curt Casali led New
Canaan High to a Connecticut state title as a senior, his third year as the varsity starting signal-caller. The Giants’ backup said after running a pro-style offense in each of his first two seasons, Casali and his teammates convinced his head coach, Lou Marinelli, to switch to the spread for his senior year.
“I preferred not to be mobile, first off because I’m not very fast,” Casali said. “I did have the chance to read the defense before the play and get it out quickly and I thought that’s where I was best.”
Pitcher Logan Webb also started under center for three seasons at Rocklin High, where he transitioned from a passfirst spread system into a runoriented pistol offense as a senior. Webb’s statistics took a hit, but he still threw 47 touchdown passes and racked up more than 3,700 career passing yards over three seasons, according to Maxpreps.
Webb’s arm strength, unsurprisingly, has never been in question.
“Back in my peewee junior program, it was me and another quarterback, and he would play quarterback throughout the game,” Webb said. “But if we needed to pass the ball, they’d put me in. We’d just run streaks down the field and I would just throw it as far as I could if we were losing.”
Hitting coach Donnie Ecker also started three prep seasons at quarterback and may have been one of the most efficient passers in the history of the run-heavy Wingt offense, which was invented at Saratoga High and brought to Ecker’s alma mater, Los Altos, by head coach Bob Sykes. As a senior, Ecker threw for 27 touchdowns to just one interception.
“I was more of a runner that could throw and they put me under center and we ran the option and the Wing-t,” Ecker said. “A little bit ahead of my time. If I would have come up about five years later, I would have been the guy you would have spread out and played the RPO game.”
All four former quarterbacks are thrilled with how their lives in baseball turned out, but they’ll readily admit how much they miss the gridiron.
“I think football is the greatest team sport there is, period,” Casali said. “I miss football every day, I love watching it on TV and the thing it taught me most was everybody has to contribute to every play.”
Webb said playing football shaped his mentality as a starting pitcher, which is reflected in the intense demeanor he brings to the mound.
“It’s weird, but I enjoyed getting hit in football and the physicality of football was my favorite,” Webb said. “I feel like it’s the intensity, that’s what I bring to baseball.”
Ecker believes learning to prepare for various situations in a football game has turned him into a better baseball coach.
“I think so much of what you do on game day is predicated on your five days of training,” Ecker said. “How to break the game up into phases situationally, so what’s your red zone offense? What’s your third down offense? What’s your two-minute drill? I think the core principles of how a football game is broken up is something that I’ve taken into baseball.”
With different offensive systems and different skill sets — Webb said, “I could not run at all,” whereas Crawford could keep plays alive with his feet — it’s difficult to know who among the Giants’ four passers could have had the longest career in football if they devoted their energy to playing the sport at the next level.
The only member of the Giants who seriously entertained a future as a college quarterback was Ecker, whose decision to forego a scholarship offer to run the famous pistol offense under Chris Ault at Nevada paid off for one famous passer.
“I can remember the No. 10 jersey and the Adidas outfit they had in my locker with my name on it,” Ecker said of his recruiting visit to Nevada. “And then I remember them calling me and saying within the next 2448 hours, we really need you to make a decision. Your backup option is also in baseball.”
The player who took the scholarship?
“I didn’t think anything of it, but then you find out Colin Kaepernick is that guy,” Ecker said.
Yes, Kaepernick’s career at Nevada was launched in part because Ecker chose baseball over football. And for Ecker and three Giants players, giving up football turned out to be the right move.
“I preferred not to be mobile, first off because I’m not very fast. I did have the chance to read the defense before the play and get it out quickly and I thought that’s where I was best.” — Catcher Curt Casali