Football Giants, baseball Giants spoof classic Mike Francesa call on WFAN

Eli Manning and Matt Chapman exchanged phone numbers on Thursday.

It was a seemingly ordinary interaction between professional athletes that in most circumstances would have been unremarkable. But this was no ordinary circumstance.

It was life imitating art, the coda of a day that recalled a famous New York sports radio moment in the form of a digital short that premiered Monday to promote Season 5 of “The Eli Manning Show.”

“Really unbelievable,” Mike Francesa said when it was over.

Wait, what does Francesa have to do with Manning, the New York Giants’ two-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback, and Chapman, the San Francisco Giants’ third baseman?

Funny story.

It began 10 years ago when “Dan in Warwick” called into Francesa’s show on WFAN and asked a seemingly sincere question: Do the San Francisco Giants and New York Giants get together when visiting one another’s cities?

After all, the football Giants are named after the baseball team, they both used to be based in New York City and they even shared the Polo Grounds from 1925-55. “Do they ever say, ‘Hi’?” Dan wondered. “I don’t know, go out to dinner or something?”

(In a brief interview with WFAN’s Sal Licata on Monday, Dan insisted his call was a prank. “Of course, it was,” he said. “What do you think?”)

Francesa called it the strangest question he had gotten in a long time, then had some fun with it, imagining an annual Giants picnic in Totowa, New Jersey, including a relay race and raffle.

Then came the comic clincher: He joked about a New York Rangers/Texas Rangers meetup in Abilene, Texas, every August.

“[Henrik] Lundqvist is particularly close to [then-Texas pitcher] Yu Darvish, as a matter of fact,” Francesa said. “There’s a kinship there between the two of them.”

In the decade that followed, the two-minute call became a sports world inside joke.

When the Winnipeg Jets were in town in 2024, they posted on social media an invitation to dinner to the New York Jets, adding that it could be like the Giants-Giants picnic in Totowa.

Hey @nyjets, since we’re in town do you want to get together on Friday for dinner? cause we have the same name. It could be like the @Giants & @SFGiants picnic in Totowa 😁

— Winnipeg Jets (@NHLJets) March 20, 2024

“It’s become like the biggest call in the history of the station,” said Francesa, who left WFAN in 2020. “I was shocked by the legs it’s had and how much attention it’s gotten.”

That attention long ago prompted an idea in the football Giants’ marketing department: Pairing real-life baseball Giants with Manning as a gag tied to his program, which streams on the Giants’ YouTube channel.

It seemed like a long shot. Multiple scheduling hurdles were in the way, notably the need for the baseball Giants to have an off day in New York, preferably after arriving at a reasonable hour following a day game.

That day turned out to be Thursday, before a weekend series against the Mets.

“Thankfully the stars aligned, and we’re excited for this,” said Nilay Shah, the football Giants’ senior vice president of marketing and brand strategy.

Chapman and All-Star pitcher Logan Webb joined Manning and his co-host, friend and former teammate Shaun O’Hara, at the baseball Giants’ midtown Manhattan hotel.

Over numerous takes, they shot a skit in which Francesa accidentally walks into a room where the four athletes are talking over breakfast, planning an upcoming picnic.

“They really do get together,” an incredulous Francesa says as he leaves the room.

After the “teaser” was shot, Manning and O’Hara interviewed Francesa for the actual episode of “The Eli Manning Show,” which will premiere later this month.

The baseball Giants had lost six games in a row as of Thursday, but Chapman and Webb seemed to genuinely enjoy the experience and lingered when it was over.

Both players are from California and are thus not steeped in New York sports talk lore. But they were certainly familiar with Manning.

“I grew up watching him play football,” Chapman said. “To be able to meet him, it’s really cool.”

The baseball Giants’ social media team had Manning critique video of Webb playing quarterback in high school. Wisecracks ensued.

Chapman and Webb were shown the Fox Sports 2 simulcast of the 2015 call to prepare them. Shah earlier had played it for Manning, who had not seen it before.

“When I showed him the clip, he lost it in my office,” Shah said. “It was unbelievable. I was, like, ‘Are you down to do this?’ He said, ‘No-brainer.’ ”

“It’s a typical Mike response of just no-holds-barred, ‘You’re a moron. What are you thinking?’ ” Manning said. “Typical New York bluntness that he always had.

“Obviously, what made that show so great are the fans calling in and asking these questions and that interaction is obviously an instant classic.”

Manning loved the idea of the promo but was concerned about logistics. “It was almost like, ‘When is this ever going to happen?’ ” he said. Then it did. “It was fun to film, fun to talk to those guys and it should be a funny little skit.”

Francesa called the idea “ingenious,” and figured Manning’s presence was the key.

“If I call the San Francisco Giants, they’re not doing this, let’s be honest,” Francesa said. “They’d hang up on me right now, in a losing streak. It’s Eli’s star power that got this done.”

Manning and Francesa have a relationship that dates to Manning’s weekly in-season appearances on WFAN during his playing career.

“When I was on the show, he was supposed to be interviewing me, but he was talking the whole time,” Manning said. “Now I get to flip the script and ask him some questions.”

Shah said the idea for “The Eli Manning Show” was to “create synergy between sports, entertainment and lifestyle. Eli transcends all of those now.”

Shah said the first four seasons generated more than 150 million views. “It’s literally bigger than anything we’ve put out content-wise on the field, just because you don’t have to be a diehard Giants fan to care about this content.”

Manning said his relationship with O’Hara enables them to be loose with one another and to translate that vibe to guests. They try to have fun and, literally, games. Manning beat Caitlin Clark in a Pop-A-Shot contest in one episode.

“The first rule of football in the locker room is you can’t be sensitive,” Manning said. “We’ve kind of taken that over into the media content space.”

The promotional skit is in keeping with the show’s freewheeling culture. Everyone involved expected it to be a hit on social media, just like the call that inspired it.

“It’s really something that’s had its own life,” Francesa said. “Part of the art form is to be able to turn any call, whether it’s angry, whether it’s comical, whether it’s just complete insanity, into something that works.”

“Dan in Warwick” worked as a call. Then it worked in real life.

Chapman, Webb, Manning and O’Hara talked pro-athlete shop before, during and after the taping. Soon Manning was taking Chapman’s number and telling him about local golf course access he might help with the next time Chapman visits.

“It’s funny the things that people think, like that we would get together,” Chapman said. “But now we did it, and it’s fun. And it’s funny. It’s awesome.”