It all started with Roger Craig and 1985. Well, actually, that's not entirely so -- too many lives and baseball careers converged too many ways before then.

But 1985 is the sensible starting point for the Arizona Diamondbacks. It is when Craig, taking over the dead embers of a 100-loss team in San Francisco, met Bob Brenly, a workaday but hardly spectacular 30-year-old catcher, a year after his best season and in no particular way a man on baseball's fast track.

But along the way, Brenly and Craig developed a relationship based both on experience and intellectual curiosity that nearly turned into a managerial job seven years too soon but has turned out much better for the waiting.

You'll see it Saturday in the pregame introductions. Brenly, the manager of the Diamondbacks ... Bob Melvin, the bench coach and Brenly's understudy in San Francisco ... Chris Speier, the third base coach and a teammate of Brenly's in 1987 ... pitching coach Bob Welch, who struck out and gave up doubles and homers to Brenly while with the Los Angeles Dodgers ... hitting coach Dwayne Murphy, who preceded Brenly in Arizona but came to know him during a series of spring training meetings in the '80s.

But it starts with Craig, who will be home with his wife of 50 years, Carolyn. He is listed as a spring training advisor but joined the team at a few crucial junctions to help both Brenly and Welch without intruding on their prerogatives. And he is in Brenly's head every day.

"You could see it in spring training," Melvin said. "He did some things exactly the way Roger did them when we were in San Francisco. Just the way he ran the drills, when he liked to pitch out or hit-and-run, stuff like that. There's still some of that in him, but eventually he started managing more the way he is. But there's still some Roger in him, sure. There's some of Roger in a lot of us here."

Interestingly, Brenly likely would have succeeded Craig in San Francisco in 1994 had not fate and high finance intervened. Craig and general manager Al Rosen, both of whom had been hired by former San Francisco owner Bob Lurie, hinted at eventual retirement when Lurie tried for the fourth unsuccessful time to get a city government to build him a new stadium. When that failed, Lurie decided to sell.

Lurie tried to sell the team to Vince Naimoli, who has since helped drive the Tampa Bay Devil Rays into the Everglades, but Lurie's fellow owners rejected the deal, forcing him to sell instead to Peter Magowan and a consortium of Bay Area types.

Magowan's first act was to make it clear that Rosen and Craig wouldn't hold their places in the new world order, and both men resigned. Brenly, who was believed to be Craig's successor no later than 1995, stayed for three years as bullpen coach under Dusty Baker, but eventually moved on, first to Fox and the Diamondbacks radio network, and then to the big leather chair when the Buck Showalter Era ended in flames.

"I found out when I got this job that it can't be 'My way or the highway,' " Brenly said. "I don't know that I would have realized that six or seven years ago."

But in his time as a mike jockey, talking to other managers for insight and throwaway lines for use on the air, Brenly absorbed and commingled what he already had taken from Craig and his Giant teammates, and turned it into what, for better or worse, is his own managerial style, which he describes as "feel ... finding out that your most important tool is your eyes."

That was Craig's method as well, straying into the unorthodox when the by-the-numbers managing seemed like an inadequate response. Brenly has produced his share of head-scratchers, as any first-year manager would, but his team is in the World Series and seems to appreciate his don't-sweat-the-small-stuff interpersonal style.

That is pure Brenly in a business that is mostly influences and borrowed strategies. Allowing for individual stylistic variations, Brenly's debt remains to Roger Craig, whose debt is to Casey Stengel, whose debt is to John McGraw. Brenly has paid that debt with a staff that has a fair amount of ink from Craig's stamp on it.

Now we'll see how good a classroom he runs when everyone is watching.

Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Chronicle is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.