Gary Peterson

Barry Zito began his first day on the job as a San Francisco Giant by marching to the bullpen, setting up a video camera, doing some surveying work with a tape measure, then throwing with an exaggerated step-back followed by a delivery evocative of Sandy Koufax-meets-Nuke LaLoosh.

Naturally, the Giants were aghast, having just signed Zito to a seven-year contract worth $126 million — more than any baseball team has ever spent on a pitcher.

“We’ll see how sore his groin is tomorrow,” said pitching coach Dave Righetti like a man who didn’t really want to find out.

No worries. Zito wasn’t really completely redefining his approach to pitching. It was just Barry being Barry. And whereas that phrase has inspired all manner of conditioned response in Giants Town since 1993 — from shock and awe to fear and loathing — it has taken on an entirely different connotation over the past seven weeks.

For starters, it requires elaboration. As in: Barry Bonds, or Barry Zito?

That’s a good thing. Good as in, Barry Zito brings a sense of calm to the Giants locker room. He is a quiet, peaceful, free-thinking presence, from his Zen leanings, to his surfer’s mentality, to his love of guitar, to the preservative-free diet designed by a former NASA consultant.

Mandarin Danish toast, anyone?

Zito is left-handed (and right-brained) to the core, accustomed to being an island of unaffected consciousness in a turbulent sea. In his seven seasons with the Oakland A’s, Zito was a spiritualist among base-instinct good-time Charlies. He got along just fine with his fun-loving teammates. Thus, there is nothing the Giants locker room can throw at him that he can’t handle.

That can’t be said of all Barry Bonds’ teammates during his stay in San Francisco.

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Some, like Jeff Kent, have openly disliked Bonds and the preferential treatment he has demanded from the Giants. Some, like Shawon Dunston and Eric Davis, have bonded with Bonds. Some, like Steve Finley and Mark Sweeney, have leapt to Bonds’ defense in the face of the intrusive media scrutiny he attracts. Most have silently tolerated the circus.

None of them affected the dynamic the way Zito does. That’s because for all the Giants who have come and gone over the past 14-going-on-15 seasons, Bonds has never shared the locker room with an athletic/economic alpha male.

Now he does.

This is why the whopper of a free-agent contract that brought Zito to the Giants last December is about more than what will happen on the mound. Oh, that counts too, starting with Tuesday’s opening day start against San Diego. In fact, with Zito, a more experienced Matt Cain and a (presumably) rejuvenated Matt Morris, the Giants can claim a top-notch top of the rotation.

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