Here's the scene. 

Gorgeous day.  Blue sky. High sixties, low seventies maybe. Sunny, but just enough leftover winter to need a jacket in the shade. 

Scottsdale Stadium at 10 a.m. 

The field is scattered with players and ball machines and screens. 

Brian Sabean and Felipe Alou are on the top step of the dugout, leaning on the railing, silent, their eyes taking in the smallest details about this player or that one, bits and pieces of information to be filed away in their baseball brains for later analysis. Bobby Evans joins them. Then Larry Baer. A couple of equipment guys. A few reporters. 

We look like railbirds at the racetrack.

On the field, coach Fred Stanley is hitting grounders to third base. Sandoval, Guzman, Gillaspie, Rohlinger, Uribe, Aurilia - they take turns scooping and throwing to first. Scoop and throw. Scoop and throw.

Each throw seems barely to miss coach Ron Wotus, who is standing a few feet behind the pitcher's mound, tossing soft grounders to three players taking turns at shortstop. They field the ball and throw to second. Another group of players, lined up at second, take turns catching the throw, pivoting and firing to first.

 Except it's not really first base. That has already been claimed by the guys participating in the third-base drill. The second basemen throw to coach Roberto Kelly, who stands in the baseline between first and second. There is a screen behind him to keep errant throws from beaning the coach playing first.

In the outfield, a ball machine shoots fly balls from the right-field line to players spread out in center field. They practice calling for the ball. 

"Gottit! Gottit! Gottit!'' each one yells as he settles under the ball. 

Scoop, throw, pivot, fire, gottit, gottit.

Over and over at all three stations. 

They're the same drills you see in Little League. The same drills, probably, players have done for a hundred years, minus the ball machines.

"Doesn't even look like he's moving,'' one of the equipment guys says of Fred Lewis, chasing down a ball by the far fence. "He just glides across the field.''

I ask Bobby Evans what he looks for this early in the spring.

"You look at the crispness,'' he says. "This early on, that stands out. If you can make the play over and over. If you have the range and footwork.''

He's not paying much attention to hitting yet. The players just started with live pitching yesterday. But he watches the pitchers, who have been in camp almost a week. "You look to see how well they're able to repeat their delivery. Finding that arm slot.''

Only a smattering of people watch from the stands. I'm not sure why more people don't come down to this portion of spring training, before the games. You get to see all the players on the field simultaneously. No one's in the dugout. You see non-stop action. And it's free. And you can spread out across three seats, like the old days. 

Larry Baer recognizes the pleasure of just watching the players practice. So this year, the Giants plan to open the doors to spring training games  about 30 minutes earlier than usual so fans can watch more batting practice and fielding drills. 

I was laid up yesterday with a bad cold and couldn't make it to the ballpark. Something's going around because today the team sent seven players home from practice for the same reason. Happens every spring. 

Fred Lewis is still waiting for his special spikes from Nike. After his bunion problems last season, he flew up to Nike in Oregon in December and his feet were measured by some special computerized system. He needs his spikes to be a little wider than usual to reduce the risk of further bunions. Until the new custom shoes arrive, Lewis wears his old spikes to take fielding, then switches to tennis shoes for hitting and conditioning. 

More tomorrow.

It was the kind of morning that makes you tilt your face to the sun, take a long deep breath and give silent thanks to whatever cosmic forces conspired to allow you one more trip to spring training.

At 9:30 a.m., Bruce Bochy stood in the middle of the Giants' Scottsdale packed clubhouse and welcomed 58 players to the team's first day of full-squad workouts.

After congratulating the guys participating in their first big-league spring camp, Bochy acknowledged the losses suffered by several Giants during the off-season - in particular, Bengie Molina's father and Barry Zito's mother. Then he delivered a brief tribute to Ted Uhlaender, a former major-league player and valued Giants scout, who died of a heart attack last week at the age of 68. Brian Sabean and other Giants representatives flew to Denver for this afternoon's memorial service.

Bochy asked for a moment of silence, and before he finished the sentence, every player in the clubhouse had his cap off.

"He was a good baseball man,'' Bochy said of Uhlaender.

In that room, there could be no higher compliment.

One after another, players stepped into the batting cage for the first time in 2009 and murdered pitches from coaches. Other coaches hit grounders to the infielders. Barely a word passed among them. It was all cracks and pops - the background music of spring.

The players will take live batting practice tomorrow, Bochy said in his meeting with the beat writers in the dugout after practice. Today, he wanted to get them acclimated, "get some swings in.''

Out on the field, Brian Wilson was doing an interview with a TV station. Henry Schulman asked Bochy about a game last season in which Wilson threw nothing but sliders. Bochy looked over at Wilson - with his standing-straight-up hair that Bochy compares to a quail - and smiled.

"Sometimes you wonder if he's playing another game inside our game,'' he said.

You won't be seeing any all-black bats in the major leagues this year. On every handle -of which will be natural wood -- you'll see a black-ink, hand-made line. And on many of the knobs, you'll see a date etched into the wood - indicating the exact day the bat was manufactured.

With the spate of broken bats in recent seasons - and several injuries -- MLB analyzed 2,232 bats that broke during games last season. MLB and the Players Union then agreed on new rules for this season, many having to do with something called "slope of grain.'' Slope of grain refers to how straight the grain on the wood is.

This list of rules ran in The New York Times:

# All manufacturers must place an ink dot on the tangential face of the sugar maple and yellow birch bats before finishing. This enables the slope of grain to be viewed easily.

# The orientation of the hitting surface on sugar maple and maple bats should be rotated 90 degrees. To facilitate the change, all manufacturers must rotate the logo they placed on bats by 90 degrees.

# The handles of sugar maple and yellow birch bats must be natural or clear to allow for the inspection of the slope of grain in the handle.

# Manufacturers must track each bat they supply.

# Officials from each manufacturer must participate in an M.L.B.-sponsored workshop on engineering properties and grading practices of wood.

# M.L.B. will visit manufacturers regularly to audit each company's manufacturing processes.

# Random audits of bats will be conducted by M.L.B. at ballparks.

# A third-party bat certification and quality control program should be established to certify new suppliers, approve new species of wood, provide training and education to manufacturers and address non-compliance issues.

In 10 years in the majors, pitcher Bob Howry said, he has never heard a team owner address the players the way Bill Neukom did at a breakfast meeting this morning. Howry was with the Cubs, Indians, Red Sox and White Sox before signing with the Giants this season.

"They basically welcome you and wish you luck,'' Howry said of other executives.

Neukom was more direct, talking to the players as professional colleagues, articulating the Giants' expectation that players are civic leaders and businessmen as well as athletes. In particular, he emphasized the importance of connecting with fans at tomorrow's Fanfest.

"People are coming out and spending their hard-earned money with us - and it is hard-earned. As we all know, most people have less money in their pockets this year than last year,'' Neukom told the players in a large meeting room on the suite level of AT&T Park. The fans need to know, Neukom said, that the players - and the entire organization - don't take their support for granted.

"I think the veterans know that,'' Howry said, "but there are so many younger guys on this team, so it's good to have that kind of message from the man at the top.''

Later in the morning, the players met for nearly two hours with members of the media. Then, the team joined Giants employees for lunch - each player sitting at a different table so everyone had a chance to talk and get to know each other.

Jeremy Affledt and his wife, Larisa, are having dinner tonight with David Batstone, an ethics professor at USF and the director Not For Sale, a non-profit group that fights human trafficking. Affeldt called the organization two months ago after reading about it. Affeldt began his own foundation six years ago that focuses mostly on youth issues. He spoke at 18 high schools in Spokane, where he lives, and hopes to get to as many high schools in the Bay Area as he can during the season. 

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Check out Andy Baggarly's blog (http://blogs.mercurynews.com/extrabaggs/). He had a great interview with Tim Lincecum in San Jose last night. Lincecum was a rock star at the Sharks game, where he dropped the first puck. The crowd - and the entire Sharks team - gave him a standing ovation.

I'm off to go shopping with Pablo Sandoval for a piece I'm writing for Giants Magazine. Look for it on Opening Day.

I hope you can make it to FanFest tomorrow! Get here early and pray for clear skies.

I did a double take when I saw pitcher Sergio Romo with his teammates at the Giants fan event at the Britannia Arms restaurant in downtown San Jose last night.

Romo's round baby face was lean and angular. Last season he almost could have passed for a guy who played on the company softball team. Now he looks ready for the San Francisco marathon.

I told him he looked great and asked how much weight he lost.

"Last time I checked, about 12 pounds,'' he said. "People here (with the Giants) are taking me seriously, so I've got to take it seriously, too.''

He played fall ball in Mexicali, Mexico, then attended the Giants' three-week conditioning camp in Scottsdale. He continued training at home in Yuma, forgoing a vacation.

"(The trainers) took the time to teach me what I should be doing, and I saw what a difference it made,'' Romo said.

Here is the first thing I heard when the team arrived at the Brit Arms into a crowd of fans:

"That little kid? He looks like the kid that rides the bus to the mall in Santa Cruz!''

The incredulous woman's companion had just pointed out the 2008 Cy Young Award winner.

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Rookie RH pitcher Joe Martinez -- signing autographs at a table between Steve Holm and Kevin Frandsen -- went straight from the instructional league in November to Columbia High School in Maplewood, N.J.

Since he was signed by the Giants out of Boston College in 2005, Martinez has earned a few bucks every off-season by working at a substitute teacher.

"He teaches whatever class they need him to teach - gym, Spanish,'' said his girlfriend, Lindsay Harrington. The two met while students at BC. Harrington works at a public relations firm in Boston.

Alex Hinshaw's fiancé, Courtney, is much more comfortable going into this season than she was last year when Hinshaw was a rookie.

"I was a little intimidated and a little worried about what we were going to find when Alex was called up to San Francisco. But there are so many good guys here. I can't imagine there's any other team like this. We feel really lucky.

"Brian Wilson and Barry Zito have been amazing,'' she said. "And Jack Taschner. I commend them on how they've helped him grow. They gave him a taste of the nightlife and a taste of responsibility. A little bit of everything.''

She and Hinshaw met at San Diego State. Courtney was a basketball player and would have liked to become a high school coach.

"But this has always been his dream,'' she said. "So I'm putting that first. He's had such a tough time getting here, so I want to help him see this through. I get so much joy from seeing him so happy.''

The two plan to get married in November in Oregon, where Courtney's parents live.

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Look for another post later today from the players' meetings with new managing general partner Bill Neukom, media interviews and lunch with the Giants office staff.

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Lincecum at Britannia Arms:

Thirty-five-year-old Jeremy Shelley, the Giants' newly promoted senior director of baseball operations, won't ever tell you exactly what he does - or at least how he does what he does.

He's kind of like the guy in CIA movies who sits in an ordinary office behind an unmarked door and, unbeknownst to everyone but the most senior staff, is actually one of the most powerful operatives in the building.

Shelley works with General Manager Brian Sabean and VP of Baseball Operations Bobby Evans on player research, statistical analysis, major league contracts, arbitration preparation and scouting. He also oversees the information systems within the scouting department.

In short, Shelley decodes baseball statistics. He finds meaning in numbers. He excavates databases like an archaeologist at a dig - except Shelley uses his unearthed artifacts to piece together a picture of the future instead of the past.

He projects how players are likely to perform over a season, or over the course of a contract. He and his team figure out before each season, for example, how many runs the Giants are likely to score and how many they are likely to give up. They go through each guy in the lineup. They add and subtract. They move decimal points around. They substitute this player for that one and recalculate everything. They use arcane formulas they have developed over the years and that they share strictly on a need-to-know basis, and, really, almost no one outside baseball operations needs to know.

"I'm a little uncomfortable saying anything more than that,'' Shelley tells me. "What I can say is that analysis in baseball has gotten so sophisticated and it's changing all the time. I read, read, read - every baseball web site, every publication, everything.

"And every day, it seems, I see some new stat or method of analysis out there. We're always asking ourselves Does this make sense? Does this help us?''

Shelley was a finance major at Santa Clara University when he landed an internship at the Giants in the spring of 1994. He went to classes until about 11 a.m. then spent the next eight or 10 hours at Candlestick Park, earning $5 an hour to sit at a computer and input hand-written scouting reports, players' medical histories and other relevant information in preparation of the draft. He worked nights and weekends.

In August of that year, with still two months left in his internship, the players went on strike and the season was over. He took another internship in the Giants' baseball operations from March to October in 1995, balancing the Giants with schoolwork until he graduated in June. He moved back in with his parents in Concord, unable to support himself on an intern's salary. He spent one more season, 1996, as an intern, hooked now on the numerical intricacies of the game.

"But after three years, I told the Giants I needed to get a full-time job,'' Shelley says. They hired him in July 1996 as an administrative assistant in baseball operations.

He has been with the Giants 16 years. When his own baseball-playing days ended 20 years ago at the age of 15 -- "Too small,'' he says. "Not good enough.'' - he never imagined a career in major-league baseball.

"I just want to keep learning and growing,'' he says.

Maybe some day there will be a stat that shows how many runs are produced and saved by the work of Shelley and his colleagues in baseball ops - the guys who help major-league teams win games without ever touching a bat or ball.