New Bay Area collab on tap for Patrick Bailey

This story was excerpted from Maria Guardado's Giants Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

SAN DIEGO -- Patrick Bailey’s mastery behind the plate made him the first Giants catcher to win back-to-back Gold Glove Awards last year. It also inspired his very own gold lager.

Bailey collaborated with Fieldwork Brewing Company, a Berkeley, Calif.-based craft brewery, to launch his official beer last month, which was fittingly dubbed "Strike Thief 2x Gold Lager."

The drink is an homage to Bailey’s elite pitch framing and is described by Fieldwork as “a crisp, dialed in 5% lager built to execute with quiet precision. Clean malt, a snap of noble hop bitterness, and a finish so smooth it barely touches the edge of the zone before disappearing.”

“I've tried it, it's pretty good,” Bailey said. “It's cool. My father-in-law was in town for Opening Weekend. He got one of them in the stadium, so it's a neat thing, for sure.”

Fieldwork co-founder and CEO Barry Braden said Bailey’s representatives at Excel Sports Management reached out to inquire about a possible partnership last year. Braden is a Giants fan, so he said it was easy for him to get on board from the start.

“We were excited to partner with him because he's such an up-and-comer in the league,” Braden said in a phone interview. “He sort of embodies what we're all about -- smart baseball. We're about smart, well-crafted beer. We consider ourselves sort of scrappy. We're a smaller company in the Bay Area, and it was just a good opportunity for us to partner with someone who we think is going to be in the league for a long time and contribute greatly to the Giants’ success.

“I'm a baseball fan. I love the game. All of us in the company love to go to the games. It's not something we ever really considered for ourselves, because we are a small company and never had been approached by anyone to do anything like this. When it did come about, it didn't take long for me to say, ‘Yeah, absolutely.’”

When the two sides started brainstorming design concepts for the beer, Fieldwork felt the obvious place to start was with Bailey’s defensive prowess.

“He's a two-time Gold Glove [winner],” Braden said. “He's at the top of his position. Strike Thief was a name that we came up with, which I think embodies Patrick's ability to manage the game and steal some strikes for his pitchers.

“I think he's pretty excited about it. I think it embodied what he had in mind.”

“It’s really cool,” Bailey said. “I think the design’s been the best part. It’s kind of fun being a part of the Bay Area community like that.”

Strike Thief is available at all of Fieldwork’s locations across the Bay Area, including its new beer garden at China Basin Park, which is part of the Giants’ Mission Rock development. The beverage is also being sold throughout Oracle Park this year.

“It's the No. 1 seller in our beer garden across McCovey Cove,” Braden said. “There's lots of social media and lots of pictures and photos around it. We don't have the sales numbers from inside the ballpark yet, but we do know that it's very popular at the beer garden there.”

The Giants even have Strike Thief cans stocked in a couple of their home clubhouse beer fridges for Bailey’s teammates to try.

“It's fun to get it in the locker room for the boys,” Bailey said. “[Christian] Koss had good things to say. I think [Logan Webb] liked it, so it's good.”

“It was a good beer,” Koss confirmed. “The can design is cool. I think it’s cool for him to be on display.”