Roger Lee Craig (February 17, 1930 – June 4, 2023) was an American pitcher, coach and manager in Major League Baseball (MLB).

After playing for the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Mets, St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds and Philadelphia Phillies between 1955 and 1966, Craig became an acclaimed pitching coach,[1] and a manager, between 1969 and 1992.

He started Game 5 of the 1955 World Series against the New York Yankees, worked six innings, gave up four hits and only two runs before being relieved by Clem Labine, and was credited with Brooklyn's 5–3 victory.

[5] Two days later, on October 4, 1955, Craig's teammate Johnny Podres shut out the Yanks in Game 7, giving Brooklyn its first and only World Series championship.

Although he performed poorly during the 1959 World Series, Craig helped pitch the 1959 Los Angeles Dodgers to the National League pennant, winning 11 games (with complete-game victories in his last three starts), posting a brilliant 2.06 ERA, and leading his league in shutouts (four), despite making only 17 starts and spending part of the season with the Triple-A Spokane Indians.

In 1969, former Dodger general manager Buzzie Bavasi appointed Craig the first pitching coach in the history of the newly born San Diego Padres.

Enduring the growing pains of another expansion team, Craig spent four years as the Padres' mound tutor before he was replaced by ex-teammate Johnny Podres.

After another brief return to the Dodgers as a minor league pitching instructor in 1973, Craig resumed his MLB coaching career with the Houston Astros (1974–1975) and had a second tour with the Padres (1976–1977).

In March 1978—in the midst of spring training, and only two weeks before Opening Day—the Padres' ownership fired Dark for "miscommunication" with his players and elevated Craig to the manager's post.

Craig was fired at season's end and replaced by Jerry Coleman, the former Yankee second baseman then serving as the radio voice of the Padres.

Sparky Anderson, a former Dodger minor leaguer and coaching colleague of Craig's on the 1969 Padres, had taken over as pilot of the Detroit Tigers in the middle of 1979.

The national exposure Craig received burnished his reputation as one of baseball's top pitching coaches and "guru of the split-finger fastball".

[11] Along the way, Craig brought new popularity to the old baseball term "Humm Baby"[12] — traditional bench and infield chatter that urges pitchers to put extra "mustard" on their fastballs.

That Series, the first ever between San Francisco Bay Area teams, was marred by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which struck October 17, minutes before Game 3, scheduled for Candlestick Park.

Owner Bob Lurie put the team on the market, and when he reached a tentative sales agreement with Florida businessman Vince Naimoli, the club was poised to relocate to Tampa–St.

But, in an eventful offseason, the National League rejected the Lurie-Naimoli deal; it instead approved the Giants' sale to a San Francisco group, headed by Peter Magowan, committed to keeping the club in the Bay Area.

With Bonds anchoring his lineup, Craig's successor, Dusty Baker, won 103 games in 1993 and was named National League Manager of the Year.