CONCORD — Because he was once a skinny teenager with big glasses and a ho-hum fastball, Fred Breining loves talking to youngsters with major league dreams.
Breining somehow carved out a Giants career by coming up with a forkball — after realizing two pitches into his professional career that his curve wasn’t going to cut it.
The first curve he threw was belted for an opposite-field triple. The second one yielded a double hit so hard “it almost knocked the fence over,” Breining recalled.
“I threw those two curveballs and never threw another one. I said, ‘I have to come up with something else.