Kevin Mitchell was a converted third baseman. Maybe the most important Giants example - Willie McCovey and Orlando Cepeda.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
8/28/2008 3:24 PM ET
McCovey no stranger to position shifts
Former Giant recalls his own personal shuffles in Majors
By Chris Haft / MLB.com

SAN FRANCISCO -- You might think that Willie McCovey has little in common with the assortment of young Giants trying to settle into a position.

You'd think wrong.

McCovey, the Hall of Famer who attends nearly every Giants home game, has watched Pablo Sandoval rotate among catcher and the infield corners, Eugenio Velez shuttle between second base and the outfield, and since-demoted John Bowker and Daniel Ortmeier move from the outfield to first base. That doesn't even count Jose Castillo, a second baseman by trade, playing third until the Giants let him go, or Kevin Frandsen's brief Spring Training trial at shortstop.

McCovey genuinely relates to all this position shifting. He even considers it part of the normal chain of events.

"That's what baseball is all about," McCovey said earlier this week. "Very often, you do not play your original position when you come to the Major Leagues. I mean, Hank Aaron was an infielder [when the Braves signed him], and he played his whole career in the outfield. So you just never know. That's why it's nice to be able to play more positions."

Consider McCovey himself. When he ascended to the Majors in 1959, first base -- his natural spot -- was occupied by Orlando Cepeda, the National League's Rookie of the Year in 1958. Interestingly, as McCovey pointed out, Cepeda himself didn't originally play first base. The Giants signed him in 1955 to play third base, which he manned for his first two Minor League seasons and part of his third.

Cepeda played 215 games in the outfield from 1959-61 as managers Bill Rigney, Tom Sheehan and Alvin Dark tried to get his bat and McCovey's in the lineup simultaneously. Dark, who became the Giants' manager in 1961, tried to break the logjam by playing McCovey extensively in the outfield -- mostly left field, from 1962-64 -- while Cepeda played almost exclusively first base.

"I ended up liking it out there," McCovey said. "How could you not? You're playing beside Willie Mays, and you knew if you weren't going to get it, he would."

Still, leaving first base wasn't easy for McCovey initially.

"I had never played anywhere else," he said. "So when Alvin put me in left field, I was trying to learn how to play it at the Major League level, which is tough to do -- which is what a lot of these guys are going through now. They're trying to teach them at the Major League level. When you get here, you should already know how to play."

McCovey strived to become an adequate outfielder. He's even credited with preserving Juan Marichal's 1963 no-hitter against Houston by making a running catch of Bob Aspromonte's seventh-inning drive. But he started out as a novice.

"I had never even shagged balls in the outfield, let alone try to play it. I don't mind saying that I was scared to death out there," McCovey said, smiling at the memory. "The only thing that gave me confidence was, I knew Mays was playing beside me. And Alvin told Willie, 'Catch all you can.' "

Mays didn't employ that strategy all the time, as McCovey remembers it. McCovey started in right field for Game 3 of the 1962 World Series, since left field at Yankee Stadium was regarded as challenging territory and Dark wanted Felipe Alou, a more polished defender, to play there. Bobby Richardson, the Yankees' second batter, hit a fly to right-center field that McCovey caught. Mays barely moved, because he wanted his less-experienced teammate to handle the play and gain trust in himself.

"I knew he did it for a reason," McCovey. "After that, I felt OK."

Just as McCovey began to accept being an outfielder -- "I thought that's the way it was going to be for the next 20 years," he said -- the landscape changed. Cepeda was injured for most of the 1965 season, so McCovey took over first base and never played anywhere else afterward. San Francisco traded Cepeda to St. Louis in 1966, further cementing McCovey's presence at first.

McCovey's advice to the Giants' youngsters is simple: Keep working.

"They have good coaching," he said. "You just have to practice."

• McCovey no stranger to position shifts