The San Francisco Giants are tied for first place and all is well.

Of course it is.

Not a pitch has yet been thrown in anger, nor a ball struck with such ferocity that it brought the crowd to its feet. There have been no disputed calls, no bats flipped, and no questioning of a single decision the manager made.

It’s before serious sets in. Everyone’s in the same uniform. Most are just trying to get noticed. It’s Spring Training in Scottsdale and while it’s changed remarkably over the years, it remains the same. It’s the season of hope.

The Giants don’t play a game until Saturday, so there’s time to interact with the two or three hundred people — most of whom are wearing the same jersey as the players — who have come to the park just to feel the ambiance of baseball after a long winter.

There’s Justin Verlander soft-tossing a ball to an anxious kid in the front row behind the dugout. The kid makes the catch. Verlander approves.

There’s Heliot Ramos driving a ball off of Verlander so far over the left-centerfield fence it almost hit a gardener mowing the lawn near the public parking lot. Ramos swung and missed at Verlander’s next three pitches. Verlander chuckled.

There’s nothing that happens in Spring Training that is a lock to carry into the regular season, but there is a vibe.

Verlander is a guru. His presence here is palpable. After his turn on the mound, he sat in the dugout with catcher Patrick Bailey and talked to him like Obi-Wan Kenobi spoke to Luke Skywalker. Student and teacher. And the student paid rapt attention.

“I’m thinking what the hitter might be thinking and might be expecting,” I overheard Verlander say, “So, I want to do something else.” Bailey wasn’t taking notes, but I’m certain he’ll be thinking exactly what Verlander told him when next he calls a pitch for him in a crucial moment when it counts.

Before retreating to the clubhouse, Verlander held court in the dugout while a half-dozen guys who might as well have had “occupant” on the back of their jersey rather than their name, clung to every word as though it came from the mountain.

In a way, I guess it did.

There’s a life in camp this year that I believe has been MIA in recent springs. It’s Verlander, it’s Willy Adames, it’s the return of Jung Hoo Lee, it’s the huge upside of No. 1 prospect Bryce Eldridge, it’s an unburdened manager, Bob Melvin, it’s the presence of faces from the good times: Bobby Evans, Dave Righetti, Randy Winn, and others to come.

I spent part of a day at the Papago Sports Complex, where the Giants minor leaguers hold forth and learn. It’s a sprawling facility of a half dozen fields with offices, a restaurant, meeting rooms and a weight room that’s as shiny and new as the faces of the future Giants who occupy it.

This is a point of emphasis for these Buster Posey Giants. In past years the draftees and other players who trained here weren’t nearly as efficient as the facility they were playing in. The Giants minor league system has for years been in the bottom quarter of major league teams. Fixing that is Topic A for the new GM.

But, there’s a glimmer. A sense of a pulse.

When I first came to Spring Training, which was shortly after the Bronze Age, things were a bit different.

The team hotel was on a main drag near the old Phoenix Stadium, right across the street from a fruit stand and a massage parlor. The players rarely bought fruit.

The players and coaches, media, and the notorious Giants’ Booster Club all stayed in the same hotel. Sport for the gathered media was watching the boosters (and the occasional player) stagger from the bar to their room without falling into the swimming pool. Some actually made it.

The locker room at Phoenix Stadium was generally a hook to hang clothes, a stool and a place to store the golf clubs that the players would be using minutes after being removed from a spring game in the third inning.

Walking through the current Giants’ clubhouse in Scottsdale is like walking through the Champions Locker Room at Augusta National.

What also struck me is that there were three chess sets ready to be played on in the center of the room, and printed copies of the New York Times crossword puzzle and Sudoku were there for the taking.

What ever happened to hooks and stools, shooting craps in a corner, and giving the rookies a hotfoot?

After spending a week here in Scottsdale and watching the first spring training of the first year of the Buster Posey era of San Francisco Giants, I’m convinced of a couple of things.

I think this year’s Giants can absolutely compete on a level playing field with the Dodgers, D-Backs and Padres — in chess, puzzle solving, and clubhouse carpeting. Baseball could be a tad more difficult.

But, that said, my first impression is the elevator’s going up. There’s an intangible feeling that this is a team with character. A team that, unlike its recent predecessors, will be fun to watch. A team that seems to be composed of guys who can all get better.

It’s a clubhouse with solid leadership, something sadly missing from virtually all of the Farhan Zaidi years. Matt Chapman, Justin Verlander, and Willy Adames are solid leaders capable of beating the drum that others dance to.

This team’s not likely to be playing baseball late in October, but they’ll be worth the price of a Cha-Cha bowl to go see from April to September.

At which time you can start worrying about the 49ers.

Barry Tompkins is a 40-year network television sportscaster and a San Francisco native. Email him at barrytompkins1@gmail.com.