The greatest Giant of all time, and the greatest Giant of this time, held court in separate rooms in the bowels of AT&T Park this afternoon.

Willie Mays, in his ever-present Giants' cap and jacket, fielded questions from wide-eyed Giants' rookies about the toughest pitchers he ever faced (Koufax, Gibson, Drysdale and Rush) and his greatest influence (his father) during his reign as the best player in baseball.

Down the hall, in the Giants press conference room, newly crowned two-time Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum fielded questions from reporters about his hopes for the future (World Series ring) and his greatest influence (yes, his father) during his two-year reign as the best pitcher in baseball.

The concrete corridor connecting the two rooms felt like a wormhole in an orange-and-black universe, a shortcut through time and space.

"I couldn't have ever seen this happening growing up,'' Lincecum was saying.

He was flanked by Bruce Bochy, Dave Righetti and Brian Sabean, who struggled to put into words just how remarkable Lincecum's performance has been, winning back-to-back Cy Youngs in his first two full seasons in the majors.

"It's almost overwhelming,'' Righetti said. "Where do you go from here?''

You go where Mays went.

Into the history books.

Because you can read and hear everything from Lincecum's press conference elsewhere, I'll bring you the highlights of Mays' lively chat with the Giants' draftees on the second-to-last day of their winter conditioning camp.

(I'll try to bring you a postmortem from Lincecum sometime in the next week.)

The 25 or so young players sat in chairs encircling Mays, who sat behind a small table.

"All right, guys, c'mon, what else?'' Mays said, prompting the next question.

"No, no! I didn't run! I told them, 'I can't run the ball over the fence.' When they were out running, I was asleep in the clubhouse. They got you just running here? You doing some hitting?''

No, the players said. Just conditioning work.

"That's not fun! Maybe I should say something. You want to hit a little bit and then go run. You got to enjoy yourself.''

He told them about his struggles against Drysdale, Gibson, Koufax and Bob Rush then added: "I made up for it on all the other guys, the scrubs. I destroyed them.''

Robert Clemente, Mays said. Barry Bonds - "If I don't say Barry, he'll start a fight.'' Bobby Bonds (Now, he could run!'' ) , Maury Wills ("Played a good shortstop.'') and Frank Robinson ("Triple Crown winner'').

"Work, man, work! That's a very good question. I played basketball, football - touch football - they didn't know I played football! I had a 32 waistline. I worked out and played all the time. No time to lay around. Had to keep myself in shape. Played winter ball two times.''

"In 1962, they made me captain. I positioned the outfielders, the infielders, I'd call pitches from centerfield - he didn't have to take them but I wanted him throw a pitch I thought I could catch. You had to get 25 guys playing together even though nine or ten don't play much at all and it feels bad. I'd go to the manager and say, 'I want this guy to play because he needs to feel part of the team.' The guy would go 9 for 10 and he'd go sit down and feel like a part of the team. When guys had problems at home, they'd come to me and I'd call their wives. I knew the wives better than I knew the players!''

Your greatest baseball achievement?

"Man, I had so many! I think my greatest achievement was when I signed my major-league contract.''

"Hitting four home runs in Milwaukee [with 8 RBI] was the greatest thing I ever did.''

"Wrigley. To me the ball went out of there pretty good.''

"Candlestick. The wind's always blowing in. We put a glove to a fence to see if it would fall and it didn't fall. We could even hit it out in batting practice.

"I know you guys are saying, 'Oh, hell, he didn't do all this stuff. Oh yes I did.''

"I never worried about that! You just get it over the fence! You don't care how far it went.''

What effect did race have back when you played?

"We went to some towns and I couldn't stay in the same hotel. I remember once in Hagerstown, they dropped me off on the other side of the tracks. You guys from the South, you know what the other side of the track is. So they drop me off and I'm in a hotel, and at 2 o'clock in the morning two or three guys come through the window and sleep the rest of the night on my floor, and then at 6 a.m. they get up and go back out the window. They did the same thing the next night, watching out for me. Nothing was ever said.

"My father told me no matter what anybody said, never to fight. Turn the other cheek. I'd call him up and he'd ask, "Did you fight today?' Back then, you had to make sure you were bigger than those people who called you names. They called you all kinds of names. But I knew for me to get ahead, I had to take all that kind of stuff. Every time somebody called me a name, I hit the ball.''

What did you do in a slump?

"A slump is going to happen to everybody in some way. For me, a slump was 0-for-10. Everyone has a different way of getting out of a slump. I'd get out by swinging inside-out and getting a hit that way.''

Throughout Mays' talk, the young guys snapped photos with their cell phone, leaning close, recording forever their moment with the greatest player who ever stepped on a baseball field.

When Mays left, he rode a golf cart down the concrete corridor to Mike Murphy's office inside the clubhouse. Then Lincecum, finally finished with his round of interviews, stopped by. Mays rose from his chair.

"Don't get up!'' Lincecum said. "You're getting up for me?''

"Congratulations!'' Mays said. He shook Lincecum's hand.

They exchanged pleasantries as cameras snapped.

"Enjoy this,'' Mays told him.

Lincecum said he would, thanked him and left, smiling and shaking his head at the whirlwind day. He still had more interviews to do - still more questions about how he does what he does. But Lincecum doesn't have a clear answer to the question any more than Mays ever did.

In case you missed it, here's an article from yesterday about Pablo's strength and conditioning camp feature on SF Gate.

Fan favorite Sandoval goes extra mile to shape up, slim down

"After 10 days of workouts that would make a Marine drill instructor weep with sadistic joy, the Giants' cuddly Kung Fu Panda finally bared his fangs.

With a host of others, including Giants head trainer Dave Groeschner and strength and conditioning coordinator Ben Potenziano, infielder Pablo Sandoval climbed Phoenix's Camelback Mountain on Thursday, 54 minutes up, 38 minutes down, and thought he was done for the day.

Then, Potenziano gave him the bad news: another weightlifting circuit and 30 more minutes of cardio.

'He was a little poopy-pants the rest of the afternoon,' Potenziano said. 'He wasn't his happy self.'

"Pedro Martinez in 1999,'' he says. "He threw 95 mph from the first pitch to the last. He had an 85-mph change-up with the same arm speed as his fastball. It was just silly. He made me look silly. He made me feel silly. It was totally inappropriate.'' 

***UPDATE*** Click below for a video from "Operation Panda" Camp:

http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=7132677&c_id=sf

SCOTTSDALE -- Pablo Sandoval strips down to his shorts and steps on the scale inside the gym at the Giants' minor-league complex. It is Wednesday, weigh-in day.

"Five pounds!'' he says, his face lighting up. He high-fives Giants conditioning and strength coach Ben Potenziano and Pablo's 28-year-old brother, Michael.

It is Day 11 of Sandoval's personal conditioning camp - a three-week project Potenziano and head trainer Dave Groeschner have dubbed "Operation Panda.'' They even had T-shirts printed up with the words "Operation Panda: Discipline-Hard Work -Perseverance.''

"We've never had a player do anything like this - ever,'' Groeschner says of the one-man camp.

The Sandoval brothers are now on side-by-side stationary bikes for 40 minutes of cardio. They'll follow that with 12 minutes on the treadmill at 3.5 mph and a 6 percent incline. Then they'll do weight training, then exercises to improve balance and strengthen core muscles, then throwing or batting practice, and finally another 40 minutes of cardio on the elliptical machine.

"There are no guys who show up in November to get ready for the season,'' Groeschner says. "But this is something Pablo wanted to do. He knows how important it is for him and for the team that he has the endurance to play every game. And what he's doing is not easy. It's an entire life-style change.''

For the first time in his life, Sandoval is lifting weights. He's eating vegetables. He is meeting every Wednesday while he's in Scottsdale with a nutrition professor from Arizona State University, who is teaching him about healthy food choices and portion control. He and his brother, who Sandoval brought with him for motivation and support, are eating catered meals - delivered to the Giants complex every morning in a cooler -- of low-cal entrees like broiled chicken or salmon, and lots of salads, veggies and fruits.

There is no going out to restaurants or bars. The strongest beverage in Sandoval's diet right now is green tea. Mostly he drinks water - 12 to 15 bottles a day. In the evening, after eating their prepared meals, the Sandoval brothers take a walk on a bike path near their rented apartment or play basketball to keep their metabolism up.

With the five pounds he lost during the past week, Sandoval has lost 10 pounds so far, on his way toward his goal of slimming down and building muscle for the 2010 season. (Michael is participating in every workout, working right alongside his brother, and he has lost 10 pounds, too.)

"I love this team and the way they treat me,'' Sandoval says later in the afternoon, after he finishes about 10 minutes of alternating between warm and cold tubs to minimize muscle soreness.

"The fans, I love them and want them to know I'll always be the guy who's working hard. I know I have to lose weight so I can play this game for a long time.''

After their workout and time in the tubs, Pablo and Michael make their way to the Giants' conference room, where they heat up their crab and spinach chowder and eat the white bean and arugula salad and the five strawberries they are allotted for dessert.

Potenziano slaps Pablo on the back and says, "Run the Embarcadero next week, right?''

Potenziano and Groeschner are going to San Francisco next week to run the winter conditioning camp for rookies, so Pablo is tagging along to continue his workout regimen.

Sandoval crinkles his nose. "Too cold!''

"You're going to run,'' Potenziano says, smiling. Pablo delights in giving Potenziano a hard time.

Pablo shakes his head and laughs. "No chance!''

Tomorrow they're tackling Camelback Mountain, nearly a mile of trails straight up. That will make the Embarcadero seem like a walk in the park.

When lunch is finished, Pablo and Michael trudge out the door. It's after 3.

"Long day,'' Pablo says. "Time to take a nap.''

Pictures from Camelback Mountain, Thursday, November 12:

From left to right: Ben Potenziano (conditioning and strength coach), Ryan Garko, Mike Sandoval, Pablo Sandoval, Dave Groeshner (head trainer), Front: Todd Jennings (minor league catcher)

When I arrived at the indoor batting cage earlier today, new Giants hitting coach Bam-Bam Meulens was feeding baseballs into a pitching machine, one after another, sending fastballs and curveballs hurtling toward John Bowker. Nate Schierholtz, one of Meulens' other pupils, watched from a folding chair behind the plate, protected by netting that enclosed the space like a soft box.

"Good separation and balance,'' Meulens said when Bowker crushed a pitch. "Nice.''

The two players were in shorts and T-shirts and drenched in sweat as they took turns at the plate. Bowker was working, at the moment, on letting the ball get deeper through the strike zone and hitting it to the opposite field. I knew they had arrived at 9 and assumed they had been hacking at balls most of the morning.

"Actually, we haven't been in the cage all that long,'' Schierholtz said.

Instead, it turns out, Meulens' weeklong hitting clinic began this morning with one-on-one conversations with each player - Bowker and Schierholtz, plus Travis Ishikawa and minor-leaguer Brett Pill, who had already left by the time I arrived around 11:30.

Meulens is a big believer in understanding his players' minds as well as their mechanics. He asked them how they felt their season went, where they thought they needed to improve, how they approach the game. He spent 45 minutes just with Ishikawa, trying to learn how he thinks and what he knows.

"All of that helps me to be a better teacher to them,'' Meulens said later.

He wants to shift the attitude of players who blame their poor performance on not playing regularly. "The guy who writes out the lineup card doesn't care if you need 300 at-bats to get comfortable,'' he said. "Don't complain about not playing enough. I want to eliminate that totally.''

And he wants to fine-tune their mental approach so they are prepared for every pitch in every at-bat. "That's critical - you've got to have a plan to attack every pitcher. You have to know how he got you out before, or if you've had success, how he's going to try to do different stuff.''

He'd like to see more of what the Giants did against Ubaldo Jimenez and the Rockies on September 15. Giants batters were instructed not to swing until they had a strike. Jimenez needed 38 pitches to get through the first inning and had thrown close to 90 pitches before he was pulled in the third inning.

"When you take pitches early in the game, you get to see what pitches are working for (the opposing pitcher) and which ones aren't. And you let the guys behind you see more pitches,'' he said.

Schierholtz leaves Tuesday for winter ball in Puerto Rico. On Saturday, Meulens will fly down to Venezuela with Bowker and Pill and get them settled onto their winter teams there. He'll stop in Puerto Rico on the way home to check in on Schierholtz.

More soon.

The rest of the world is recognizing what you have known since spring training: There's something special about this Giants team.

If haven't already seen the stories, click on these links:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/08/02/SPD6192TU1.DTL

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1158621/index.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/sports/baseball/03frisco.html

A lot of media attention has gone to Pablo Sandoval, and for good reason. He is so different from any professional athlete I've known. He is, for want of a better word, authentic. He is so himself. There is not a whiff of artifice. And he hasn't changed a bit since his ascension as a media darling. He's friendly to everyone, and he takes nothing for granted. He carries himself as if he still can't quite believe he's in the major leagues.

When I chatted with him in the Giants parking lot before the team left for Houston on Sunday, his wife and mother were there, and his daughter was asleep in her grandmother's arms. I have to tell you - she is Kung Fu Panda Mini-Me. She looks so much like Pablo - the chubby cheeks, the curly hair, the mocha skin. Pablo lights up when he looks at her - as if, like his baseball life, he can't quite believe how lucky he is.

I've been away from the ballpark for most of the month, but I've spent some time in Norwich, CT, where the Giants' Double-A team, the Defenders, play. That team is loaded with prospects, as you know. I talked at length to Madison Bumgarner, who not only is a phenomenal pitcher but a character right out of a movie. He's tall and lean and speaks with a gorgeous Southern drawl. He hunts bear and ropes cattle and lives in a town so small "you wave at everybody you see pretty much.''

He's also fiercely competitive. Earlier this season, when Boston's top draft pick was taking a little too long to get settled in the batter's box, Bumgarner fired a pitch high and up, dropping the kid to his knees.

Not sure when he'll make the big club, but he'll fit right in when he does.

For more comments from local and national baseball writers and other members of the baseball community about the Giants, visit the "In the News" page on sfgiants.com:

http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com/sf/fan_forum/inthenews.jsp

Before the All-Star break, I was talking to Aaron Rowand about Juan Uribe. Uribe is such a popular guy in the clubhouse, and I knew almost nothing about him. Rowand and Uribe had played together in Chicago.

"He's always laughing,'' Rowand said. "He likes messing with everybody.''

Rowand was standing in the dugout before batting practice. Pablo Sandoval bounded up the steps past us and onto the field. Then Jeremy Affeldt. And Tim Lincecum. 

"When you look at this team, we have guys who like to have fun,'' Rowand said. "They're there to play baseball, but they know how to fun, too.''

I asked him how important that is. Some people dismiss chemistry as a factor in a team's success. If you have talent, you win, no matter how well or poorly the players got along. Did Rowand think chemistry matters?

"Absolutely,'' he said.

And on this Giants team, he said, the chemistry has been evolving since the start of spring training.

"When you're putting a team together, it's not just about quality players. It's about quality people, too,'' he said. "There's the personality factor. If you don't get along, it's tough to play together on the field. I think unless you've played sports at a high level it might be hard to understand how much (good chemistry) means to playing well on the field. If everyone's going their separate ways, that can't help you play together as a team on the field.

"You've got to give a lot of credit to Brian Sabean for putting the rights guys together. We have guys here who are just coming into their own - Matty, Timmy, Brian Wilson. Then you add in guys who bring intensity, like Randy Johnson.

"He's been wonderful for the guys in here. He's intense but he'll laugh, joke around. He's not what we expected. We're very pleasantly surprised how personable he is with his teammates. We all feel really lucky to part of one of the biggest games of his career.

"There's no measurement for chemistry,'' Rowand said, "but it's big. It's bigger than I think people realize.''

(If you haven't already seen it, look at the story on the front page of USA Today today (July 16) by Jorge Ortiz. It's all about chemistry, in particular how much fun the Giants are having this season.)