San Francisco Giants

The San Francisco Giants are now as synonymous with the beautiful West Coast city on the Bay as trolley rides and the Golden Gate Bridge, but the team actually spent the first half of its existence as a franchise on the other side of the country in the Big Apple, as the New York Giants (a name duplicated by the city’s first NFL team, the New York Giants, which remains there to this day). The Giants were actually the most successful baseball team in New York in their early years, winning the World Series three times before it became the official championship of Major League Baseball in 1903. The Giants qualified for the second World Series in 1904, but refused to play the Boston Americans (later the Boston Red Sox) as their owner didn’t consider a team from the American League to be worthy of playing his mighty Giants (even though the Americans had won the Series in 1903). There was a huge backlash from fans and sportswriters of the time, leading the owner to backtrack in 1905, where his team seemed to prove him right by winning the World Series in five games over the Philadelphia Athletics (later the Oakland Athletics, soon to be the Vegas Somethings). The “inferior” American League soon learned how to topple the Giants, however, with the Athletics defeating them in 1911 and 1913 and the Red Sox (now properly named) winning a seven-game thriller in 1914. Socks of a different color beat the Giants in 1917 in the form of the Chicago White Sox (that’s American League 4, New York Giants 1, for anyone keeping score on that snooty owner). There was great excitement in the Big Apple in the early 1920s when the Giants faced the upstart New York Yankees, led by Babe Ruth and his Murderers’ Row of sluggers, in three consecutive World Series. The Giants nonetheless took the first two championships before being handed a four-to-two series defeat in 1923. They then traded World Series triumphs with the Washington Senators, losing in 1924 but winning in 1933. Three more World Series battles against the surging Yankees through the next two decades saw the Giants beaten soundly on all three occasions, with a general shift in interest and support clearly moving away from the older franchise towards their more glamorous pin-striped crosstown rivals. Led by the incomparable Willie Mays, the Giants managed one more World Series victory before leaving New York when they not only defeated but swept the heavily favored Cleveland Indians (now the Cleveland Guardians) in 1954, a series best known for “The Catch” by Willie Mays in which he sprinted back into the outfield to make a game-saving overhead grab. In 1958, the Giants made their big move west, heading across the nation along with their fellow former New York State residents, the Brooklyn Dodgers (now the Los Angeles Dodgers) to become the first two MLB teams to play on America’s Pacific Coast. The San Francisco Giants set up shop in the famously windy, cold, and rainy Candlestick Park, where they would remain until 1999, adding precisely zero new titles to their New York tally of five, though the team did come achingly close to a dream start in 1962. They finished first in the National League to set up a World Series meeting with (would ya believe it?) the New York Yankees. Mays and Willie McCovey led the Giants into one of the most epic World Series of all time, which see-sawed back and forth until the final Game Seven decider at Candlestick Park. With the Yankees a sliver ahead at 1-0 in the bottom of the 9th inning, with two on base, McCovey drove a sharp line drive into the outfield that looked like it was headed for daylight, but spun and dropped into the glove of the Yankees’ outfielder. Had it landed, the Giants would have won the game and the series. The team wouldn’t get another crack at the championship until 1989, when they faced off against a new local Bay Area rival in the Oakland Athletics in the World Series but were swept in four. The Giants came much closer to ending their drought in their new ballpark (their current home, now known as Oracle Park) in 2002, battling their fellow Californians, the Los Angeles Angels, but the team choked in Game Six, up three games to two, when they allowed six late runs to lose 6-5 and went on to lose Game Seven 4-1. It would not be until 2010 that the ghosts of their move to San Francisco were finally exorcized, with a new hero with the old-timey sounding name of Buster Posey leading the Giants to their first World Series in 56 years and first ever in San Francisco. The joy would continue in the years to come with subsequent World Series triumphs in 2012 and 2014, the latter featuring a nerve-shredding Game Seven where pitcher Madison Bumgarner held off the Kansas City Royals for five innings to keep the score at 3-2 and win the series. The years since have seen a dip in the Giants’ fortunes, aside from an exciting if futile NLDS outing against the Dodgers in 2021 where the Giants lost the decider 2-1 on a run in the bottom of the ninth. Fans in San Fran will be hoping that upcoming years will see their Giants rise back into full contention, knocking plenty of “splash hits” over the wall and into the Bay while denying their opponents the same. 

San Francisco Giants Rivalries

The San Francisco Giants have quite a number of rivalries based both on their time in New York and on the West Coast. The most intense of these is inevitably the Los Angeles Dodgers due to their parallel histories of moving cross-country and the fact that the two share a division and so compete each year directly for playoff spots. The Oakland Athletics carry a similar combination of history and geography into their rivalry with the Giants, as they were previously located in Philadelphia, close to New York, though they play the Giants less frequently as they are in the American League. The teams’ annual series is known as the Battle of the Bay or Bay Bridge Series (though it will end, to some extent, when the A’s leave in 2025). The Giants’ other huge rivals are still the New York Yankees, renewed from 1997 onwards through interleague play. 

A trip to see the immensely popular Giants in populous San Francisco at their beautiful stadium is a memorable experience, but getting tickets can be tricky. Head to TicketX to find the tickets you need at the prices you seek to all the most exciting San Francisco Giants games!