Brad Grems takes you behind-the-scenes of what it is like to manage the Giants clubhouse

Hey sports fans, it's Murf here for my friends at Bigelow T. Every season is Bigelow T season.

And that's why Bigelow is the number one T in the Bay Area. One of the first things I do

each day is reach for a mug full of English breakfast to get me going. I'll have all the Bigelow's

different flavor options is perfect for someone who makes his living behind a microphone.

You want to know what keeps me going? Look, no further than my cup of Bigelow T next to me

in the studio. So grab a mug full of your favorite Bigelow T and T proudly. Welcome back to

Sportsphone K and B.R. with Bill Lasky. I'm very pleased to bring in a good friend of mine.

He's the home clubhouse manager of the San Francisco Giants. Let's bring in Brad Grems.

Brad, how are you today? Bill, all is great. Just another day out here in spring training,

grinding away. Well, I got to right off the bat congratulate you as the clubhouse manager of

the year, a major league baseball last year, 30 teams. And you became a top house manager of

the year. How great was that? No, it's quite an honor, honestly, to be voted in by my peers.

Something you know we strive for to have excellence and be the best out there. So it was awesome

to receive that honor. Well, you've gone through three managers. You started with Gabe Capital,

you moved on to Bob Melvin. Now you're on with Tony Vittello. Tell us a little bit about Tony

and the clubhouse. Tony's been amazing. Honestly, all the managers I've had in the past have all

been great. Tony's been kind of unique in the sense of he brings a different energy and kind

of enthusiasm and excitement that I haven't seen as far from our managers. And just watching

the report that he has with the guys every day, watching him to dug out and just how fired up he is,

you know, encouraging guys every single bat, every pitch. It's been really refreshing to see

and it makes us really excited for the season. Well, Brad, we always talk about coaches being in

the locker room for so many hours. So I think you guys as clubhouse manager and your staff are

they're 24 hours. It never seems that you guys get an hour off yet a day off. And it's continuing

with two weeks left to go in spring training. It's rewarding experience, but it's a lot of work.

Yeah, right now in spring, our days are probably 12 to 14 hours. Some days I'm here 16 hours,

depending on how crazy the day goes. You know, the tough part about spring training is it's every

single day, a lot of day games, maybe one or two days off if we're lucky, but it's part of it.

You know, we're used to it and it's my 26 year in baseball. So, you know, just it's part of part

of what we know and just kind of muscle through it. And the good thing is is that spring training

feels like a season in itself. So once you get past spring, the season's pretty easy after that.

That voice you're on sports phone KBR's Brad Grims. Let's go before spring training.

A couple truck loads of stuff coming from San Francisco to Arizona. So many things are moving,

moving parts. So many people are involved. How difficult is that to put that together?

Honestly, you know, we have a really good system here. I actually run four total 26-foot trucks.

We split it up into several loads of equipment and then we we do trucks, you know, to allow

anyone that front office staff or players live in the Bay Area to throw luggage and stuff on.

You know, we have a pretty good system. Just pretty much bring everything that we need and then

do the same thing, bring everything back to San Francisco.

Well, Brad, you're in charge of major league equipment. We're talking about bats. We're talking about

spikes. We're talking about so many things that players use throughout the season yet in spring

training. These are all special orders. How do you work with players for all that?

So bats, I start reaching out to guys right around Christmas, right before Christmas,

I'll start getting their bad orders. And then I try to put those in before new years and shoes

and catching gloves and fielding gloves, stuff like that are usually on the player and they're

agent to source. We pretty much handle everything outside of their shoes and their gloves.

Everything else is on us. And they're like, today I'm working on ordering luggage tags and

shoe stickers and bat knock stickers. And you have lizard skins and just, you know, socks and

all the gear. All of our Nike authentic collection gear is ordered a year in advance. So

here in a few days, I'm going to put the order in for 2027. You know, hats, you know,

beanies, headbands, I mean, it's just the list never ends, right? And so what I'm noticing now is

as these players, the younger players come up, there's just new trends and new new equipment and

just technology that's out there that, you know, gets thrown at us if guys wanted to try different

things out. Well, Brian, let's talk about bats or so many new companies now that are bringing

bats or bringing the authentic bats to Major League Baseball. Their torpedo bat was such a big

thing last year. It seems as a diet off real quick. Tell me a little bit out all the bad orders you

put in. Yeah. So torpedo bats specifically, when that craze started last year, I had 12 guys

they ordered it. And that process is a little more tedious. You have to get with the analytics

department and they have all the data for the contact made, you know, for each player on the

specific part of the barrel and you send it over and then the bat companies kind of work with us

into and getting that right. So out of the 12 players, none of them have stuck. So we do have a

couple of non-raster younger guys that are still using the torpedo. But there's 39 different

bat companies out there right now. I would say I probably order from maybe 12. A majority of

guys are ordering from from Victus Marucci and Old Hickory and Chandler kind of our main ones.

And then you have a smaller companies here and there that guys like to order from as well.

Well, Brad, colors of uniforms have changed. Guys are going away from just the orange and black.

How does that make you? You have to order all the new stuff and, you know, Willie Adams were in

purple last year. It was different look. But where did that change? How come now majorly

baseballs letting players use whatever colors they want? So when it comes to uniforms,

majorly baseball, the agreement with Nike, they have a four plus one model, meaning you can have

four primary jerseys, meaning your home road and then two alts and then the plus one is your city

connect. And so the city connect cycle is on a three-year cycle right now. So we'll wear this one

that we just came out with last year for another two seasons and then we'll start the redesign for

the next city connect. A lot of that's dictated from, like I said, majorly baseball, but then also

with our, you know, own internal marketing and ownership group as far as, you know, what uniforms

are going to wear for any given year. And then everything to access rise, it's the same thing.

There's really no regulations of how these guys want to express themselves, you know, with undershirts

and arms leave them and why not. Brad Grimes joined me on Sportsphone KBR. Of course, he's a home club

house manager for the San Francisco Giants. You make that home clubhouse home for these players.

They're there eight months of the year. Everything is when you come home to that clubhouse,

you want to make it comfortable. And it starts with music. It starts about the lockers and everything

else you put in there. How much work do you do for that? I mean, it's daily constantly, right?

Something that's, you know, I was fortunate to learn from a legend like Mike Murphy. And so

kind of the atmosphere we want to create is just like you said, it's their home. We spend more time

here with each other in the clubhouse than we do with our families or anyone else in our lives.

So it's just creating that warm and welcoming environment, making guys feel comfortable and

always making sure that my staff and myself are always approachable if anyone needs anything. But

it's a constant grind as far as making sure that we're keeping everything clean and orderly.

I'm very kind of attention to detail and OCD when it comes to making sure things are looking

clean in the clubhouse. Just don't like clutter everywhere. But like I said, it's constant,

right? I have guys right now in spring running around the clubhouse and picking up, you know,

whether it's trash or moving hangers over to one side or pushing chairs in or vacuuming,

you know, it's something that never stops throughout the day for us.

Brad, your job does this on stop with players. You have trainers to work with and all their

equipment. You now have workouts. You've got to work where you're about weights and different

things in the equipment room. A lot of different things you put on your shoulders. How difficult

is that for you? I mean, you know, it's part of the job. It's something that, you know, you get

used to. And honestly, the feeling for me is once you walk through those clubhouse doors,

it doesn't matter if you're a trainer or a player or owner or coach whatever, like we treat

everybody the same and you're part of our family once you come through those doors. And that's

what we're here to do. You know, we do travel with a lot or about 10 to 12,000 pounds of equipment

that we travel with on our plane. And, you know, so like I said before, as the technology

gets more advanced, you have more machines and more just different things that are getting thrown

to have to travel with and deal with. But for the most part, we all work together and make

it work and go pretty fluid through the year. Brad, you work with a traveling secretary,

but your staff is more important. You got guys working there constantly. Some great people,

some great guys that you've had for many years. Tell me a little bit about your staff.

So I have five guys that work with me and you know, they kind of rotate. I like to bring them all

on the road and give them an opportunity to go out there and see other cities. And if they come on

the road, they usually bat boy for us. And so I kind of like to have control of the bench and

have that familiarity with our players and our staff anywhere we go. But we've been together,

you know, now for some of us have been together for the last 11, 12 years. And you know,

we had a new guy start about three years ago, but I have an amazing staff and these guys honestly

help make everything go smoothly and they're on it. And like I said, we're like a family. We spend

we spend a lot of time together. And so we enjoy being around each other and just make it fun

throughout the course of the season. Brad, you're talking about two weeks left to go and spring

training. So many players are there. So many extra coaches. It's a huge, huge plus for you

for all your staff there to help in you. But my goodness, you got guys from the minor leagues

coming over, putting uniforms on. You got big leaders there. You got older players, younger players.

It's a mix. But you have to put it all in one category, a professional baseball player. How do

you mix all that in with all these players? You know, it's it's it's it's a challenge sometimes,

right? And trying to figure out lockers and and how many guys come in like right now, we have 62

players in camp. We've had 19 guest coaches of former players that have cycled through our 15

or 14 major league coaches on staff plus another. There's any given day, maybe 10 to 12 minor league

coaches that are over here from Papago as well. I think it's like 150 plus people in the building

in spring training. So it's you know, it's it's a lot of conversations and just constantly just

checking in with different groups and people and making sure that they're happy and and they need

anything. And so with like I said, you start off with a little lot of guys. And then as is the

spring tails down, you start to chop those numbers down a little bit and get to a little easier

as you go. So by the time you roll into opening day in the season, you know, you can it kind of

makes it easy because now you're down to 26 to 30 players, depending on guys that are on the IL.

And and then obviously the staff is a lot less. So so yeah, going into the seasons piece of cake.

Got more minutes with Brad Graham. So of course, he is the clubhouse manager of the home side of

the San Francisco Giants on sports phone K and B.R. Let's get through a couple questions.

Who are the funny players in this clubhouse? Who are the guys that are comedians?

Oh, man. Um, I mean, we got a lot. Um, let's say, you know,

Chappy, like, you know, Webby's funny, like Robbie Ray's got a little, um, you know,

silent kind of funny to him, a dumbass. I mean, we have a lot of characters.

I really like a Rias coming in. He's got, you know, really loose, um, Jarrar and Karnasian.

He's always joking around with guys. Drew Gilbert. Um, you know, there's, there's honestly,

here's a good mix of characters in this clubhouse. Well, you know, Brad, we always see after a

Giants win the doors open and a celebration happens. You know, you have strobe lights on,

you have fake money, guns coming out at you. Uh, what are some of the new things you're

thinking about for this year? We haven't started talking about that. I like to let that be

organic with the players, right? And so it's kind of what, whatever, whatever they want to do,

kind of dictates and drives how we're going to roll it out. Um, you know, this is about,

about them as a team winning. And so it just really depends on, on what they're feeling.

You know, last year we had a, we had two WWE, like, you know, belts made up for the player,

the game, the pitcher, the game. And so they had a really cool thing going every time we won the

game, whether Homer wrote, they would do a presentation and present those to the player and pitcher

of the game. Um, and so we haven't started those conversations yet for this year. So I'm kind

of interested to see what we're going to throw in the mix. Um, but yeah, it makes it exciting. And

and obviously, you know, you want to win and anything you can do to kind of create that

atmosphere to, to motivate these guys to keep winning is, is what we're here to do.

Well, Brad, it was a pleasure catching up with you. Your day is so busy and it never

stopped seven days a week, but I thank you for your time today. Thank you, Bill. Appreciate you.

That was Brad Grums on Sportsphone, K&B. Our more coming up right here on K&B Art,

the sports leader. Hey, sports fans. It's Murf here from my friends at Bigelow T. Every season

is Bigelow T season. And that's why Bigelow is the number one T in the Bay Area. One of the first

things I do each day is reach for a mug full of English breakfast to get me going. I'll have all

Bigelow's different flavor options is perfect for someone who makes his living behind a microphone.

You want to know what keeps me going? Look no further than my cup of Bigelow T next to me in the

studio. So grab a mug full of your favorite Bigelow T and T proudly.