San Francisco Giants Tickets

San Francisco Giants

The San Francisco Giants, based in San Francisco, CA, are part of the MLB’s NL West Division. They started as the 2nd baseball club founded by John B. Day and Jim Mutrie. The Gothams (the Giants’ original name) were their way in to the National League in 1883; their other club, the Metropolitans (the original Mets) were part of the American Association. Almost half of the Gotham players were members of the recently broken up Troy Trojans. The Metropolitans were the more successful club at first, but Day and Mutrie started to move star players to the Gothams and they won their first NL pennant in 1888; they also won against the St. Louis Browns in the early form of the World Series.

It’s rumored that after one satisfying victory, Mutrie, who was also the team’s manager, went into the dressing room and exclaimed, “My big fellows! My giants!” The club was known as the Giants from that point on. Their original home stadium, the Polo Grounds, was also from this era; the 1st Polo Grounds was situated north of Central Park next to 5th and 6th Aves and 110th and 112th Sts in the Harlem neighborhood of NYC. After eviction from there following the 1888 season, they moved uptown and renamed other field the Polo Grounds. They played there until the end of the 1957 season, when they were moved to San Francisco. Names like Christy Mathewson, Iron Man Joe McGinnity, Bill Terry, Jim Thorpe, Mel Ott, Casey Stengel and Red Ames are just a few of the players who perfected their skills under John McGraw, the player-manager in 1902. Their rivals are the Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Yankees and Oakland Athletics. Their rivalry with the Athletics is friendly, unlike the rivalries of the New York Mets and Yankees, Chicago White Sox and Chicago Cubs or the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

The San Francisco Giants is a Major League Baseball team, established in 1883 and based in San Francisco, California since 1958, that currently plays in the National League West Division. The Giants played in Seals Stadium for their first two seasons when they moved to San Francisco and in 1960 moved to Candlestick Park. Thanks to several Hall-of-Famers the Giants continued to be pennant contenders through the 1960s. The Giants became the first National League team to hire a black manager in 1981, Frank Robinson and three years later hosted the All-Star Game at Candlestick Park. The next year brings them 100 lost games and they lost the 1987 National League Championship Series to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games. The period from 1994 to 1996 was also a bad period for the team, but in 1999 the Giants finished second in the NL West with an 86–76 record. After 40 years at Candlestick Park, the Giants moved new, privately financed downtown stadium in 2000, the Pacific Bell Park, later renamed SBC Park and then in February 2006 AT&T Park. In honor of Baseball Hall of Famer Juan Marichal, on May 25, 2005 the Giants held a celebration and a statue of Marichal was dedicated on the plaza outside of the ballpark. On September 22, 2007, they officially announced that Barry Bonds would not return in 2008.