48 Fun Facts About San Francisco Giants

Record books list the Giants franchise under which name for its first two seasons, 1883 and 1884?

Gothams is the record-book name, though the club was also simply called the New Yorks; 'Giants' is said to date from 1885, when manager Jim Mutrie hailed his players as 'my giants' after a win.

Through 2026, the Giants had recorded more what than any other franchise in Major League history?

Wins: 11,687 of them through 2026, a total built on 75 seasons of .553 baseball in New York, although the next club on the list had closed to within 62.

Which manager led the New York Giants to their last title, in 1954?

Leo Durocher had been hired away from the Giants' fiercest rival in the middle of the 1948 season, and six years later he delivered the club's last title before the move west.

Which Giant hit the 'Shot Heard 'Round the World', the home run that won the 1951 pennant playoff against Brooklyn?

Bobby Thomson's three-run homer off Ralph Branca in the ninth inning turned a 4–2 deficit into the pennant, after the Giants had won 37 of their last 44 games just to force the playoff.

Willie Mays made 'The Catch' against which team in the 1954 World Series?

Cleveland Indians: they had won 111 games, but Mays ran down Vic Wertz's long drive with the score tied in the eighth inning, and the Giants swept a team expected to roll over them.

Willie Mays' nickname was what?

The Say Hey Kid is said to come from the rookie's habit of greeting people with 'Say hey' before he had learned their names, though which sportswriter coined it is disputed.

The Giants played their first game in San Francisco on April 15, 1958, beating which team 8-0?

Los Angeles Dodgers: the two rivals had left New York together, after the Dodgers' owner talked Giants owner Horace Stoneham out of his plan to move the club to Minnesota.

The Giants' first San Francisco home, for two seasons, was which former Pacific Coast League ballpark?

Seals Stadium, a minor-league park in the Mission District with fewer than 23,000 seats, was only a stopgap while Candlestick was built, and it was torn down within weeks of the Giants' last game there.

Which Yankees second baseman snared a line drive with two runners on to end Game 7 of the 1962 World Series?

Bobby Richardson's catch stranded the tying and winning runs, a finish Charles Schulz mourned in Peanuts by having Charlie Brown ask why the ball couldn't have been hit just three feet higher.

Fans earned the Giants' Croix de Candlestick pin by doing what?

Outlasting an extra-inning night game earned the pin, whose Latin motto 'Veni, vidi, vixi' twists Caesar into 'I came, I saw, I lived': from 1983 the club chose to joke about its freezing ballpark.

Which Giants pitcher was supposedly blown off the mound at the 1961 All-Star Game at Candlestick?

Stu Miller only swayed in a gust and was called for a balk, and for the rest of his life he denied the legend that the Candlestick wind had blown him off the mound.

Which band played its last full public concert at Candlestick Park in August 1966?

The Beatles had already decided to stop touring when they played to about 25,000 there, and 48 years later Paul McCartney came back to play the last event ever held at Candlestick.

Which Giants pitcher won 191 games in the 1960s, the most that decade?

Juan Marichal out-won every pitcher of the decade yet never took home a Cy Young Award, because Sandy Koufax or Bob Gibson won it unanimously in each of his best seasons.

The Giants slugger nicknamed 'Stretch' retired with 521 home runs, level with which Red Sox legend?

Ted Williams also finished on 521; 'Stretch' pulled the ball so hard that some teams shifted their fielders against him, and 231 of his homers came at Candlestick Park, more than anyone else hit there.

The 1989 World Series against Oakland was interrupted by what?

The Loma Prieta earthquake struck minutes before Game 3, with television already live from Candlestick, so the whole country saw it; the Series resumed ten days later and Oakland swept.

Whose single-season home run record did Barry Bonds break in 2001?

Mark McGwire had set the mark at 70 only three years earlier; pitchers grew so wary of Bonds in 2001 that he also drew 177 walks, then a record, on his way to 73.

Whose career home run record did Barry Bonds break in 2007?

Hank Aaron's 755 had stood for three decades, and when No. 756 landed, a video of Aaron congratulating Bonds was played on the scoreboard; Bonds finished with 762.

Barry Bonds won his first two MVP awards with which team?

Pirates: he won in Pittsburgh in 1990 and 1992, then signed what was at the time the richest contract in baseball with the Giants and won again in his first season with them, on the way to a record seven.

Bobby Bonds, Barry's father, hit what in his first major-league game for the Giants in 1968?

A grand slam: it came on his third trip to the plate, and 25 years later he rejoined the Giants as a coach when his son signed with the club.

The Giants lost the 2002 World Series in seven games to which team?

Anaheim Angels: the Giants led Game 6 by 5–0 in the seventh inning, eight outs from the title, then gave up six runs in two innings and lost Game 7 the next night.

Which team did the Giants sweep in the 2012 World Series for their second title in three years?

Detroit Tigers: Pablo Sandoval hit three home runs in Game 1, two off Justin Verlander, and the sweep capped a postseason in which the Giants had won six straight games while facing elimination.

The Giants' 2010 title, the first for the city of San Francisco, came against which team?

Texas Rangers: the Giants won in five games to end a 56-year drought, and 13 years later the manager who had beaten them led the Rangers to their own first title.

Which Giants catcher won 2010 Rookie of the Year and 2012 MVP, later becoming president of baseball operations?

Buster Posey retired at 34 after a club-record 107-win season, bought into the ownership group a year later, and in 2024 was put in charge of baseball operations.

A 2011 injury to the Giants' catcher is widely credited with leading MLB to restrict what?

Home-plate collisions: a Marlins runner crashed into the catcher in May 2011 and ended his season, and the rule that followed bars runners from leaving their path to hit the man guarding the plate.

Which pitcher was 2014 World Series MVP after two wins and a Game 7 save against Kansas City?

Madison Bumgarner came out of the bullpen in Game 7 on two days' rest and threw five shutout innings to finish off the Royals, having already won both of his starts in the Series.

The stretch of San Francisco Bay just beyond right field at Oracle Park is nicknamed what?

McCovey Cove: a sportswriter first floated 'McCovey Channel' and 'McCovey Run' for the inlet, officially China Basin, before a colleague suggested the more lyrical name that stuck.

In 2024, which Giant became the first right-handed batter to launch a 'splash hit' into the bay?

Heliot Ramos did it on September 15, 2024; because the water lies beyond right field, all 104 splash hits before his had come from left-handed batters, 35 of them from Barry Bonds.

The Giants' waterfront home opened in 2000 under what name?

Pacific Bell Park: the phone company paid $50 million for 24 years of naming rights, but takeovers turned it into SBC Park and then AT&T Park long before the deal ran out.

The giant Coca-Cola bottle behind Oracle Park's left-field bleachers contains what?

Playground slides: four of them run inside the 80-foot bottle so that children can 'slide into home plate', and every Giants home run sets the whole bottle flashing with lights.

What at Oracle Park is 24 feet high to honour Willie Mays?

Right-field wall: the bay behind it leaves only 309 feet to the foul pole, so home runs there must clear 24 feet of brick.

What did the Giants openly encourage fans to do to Crazy Crab, their 1984 mascot?

Boo him: Crazy Crab was the club's joke about the mascot craze, and fans went so far, throwing bottles and batteries, that his costume needed a fiberglass shell.

Which Giants pitcher nicknamed 'The Freak' won back-to-back Cy Young Awards in 2008 and 2009?

Tim Lincecum earned the nickname by generating overpowering pitches from a 5-foot-11, 170-pound frame with an unorthodox delivery, and he later threw no-hitters in 2013 and 2014.

The Giants' orange alternate jerseys, introduced in 2010, are worn for home games on which day of the week?

Fridays: 'Orange Friday' was already a fan promotion at the ballpark by 2008, and two years later the club made an orange jersey to go with it.

Which Giants second baseman joined the Baseball Hall of Fame in the class of 2026?

Jeff Kent, the 2000 MVP, never won even half the writers' votes in ten years on their ballot, then was elected by a committee, and the Giants retired his No. 21 the summer he went in.

The Giants beat the Yankees in the 1921 and 1922 World Series, both played entirely in which ballpark?

Polo Grounds: the Yankees had shared the Giants' park since 1913, and the 1922 Series, their second straight defeat there, proved to be their last as a home team in the building.

The 1951 World Series against the Giants was the last for which Yankees great?

Joe DiMaggio retired after the sixth all-New York Series between the clubs, just as two rookies, Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle, were playing in their first.

Which manager led the Giants for 13 seasons and all three San Francisco titles before retiring in 2019?

Bruce Bochy came out of retirement in 2023 and won a fourth title in his first season with an American League club, after 12 years in San Diego had brought him none.

What infamous baserunning gaffe forced the Giants' 1908 season-ending replay with the Cubs?

Merkle's Boner: Fred Merkle, 19 and the youngest player in the league, never touched second base on an apparent game-winning hit, so the game was ruled a tie and the Cubs won the replay and the pennant.

Which Giants broadcaster cried 'The Giants win the pennant!' in 1951?

Russ Hodges, honoured with the Ford C. Frick Award in 1980, repeated the line again and again as the home run landed, and the call survives only because one fan had his mother tape the radio broadcast at home.

Willie Mays finished his playing career with which team, appearing in the 1973 World Series?

New York Mets: owner Joan Payson had long wanted to bring him back to the city where he started, and fifty years later the Mets kept a promise she made him then by retiring his No. 24.

Willie Mays received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from which president?

Barack Obama said at the 2015 ceremony that it was 'because of giants like Willie that someone like me could even think about running for President', a line he had first told Mays aboard Air Force One.

The Giants won their 23rd pennant in 2014 on a walk-off home run against which team?

St. Louis Cardinals: Travis Ishikawa, a first baseman who had started that season with another club and was filling in as a left fielder, hit the three-run homer that ended the series.

Which Giants pitcher in 1944 became the first National Leaguer to have his number retired?

Carl Hubbell, master of the screwball, struck out Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons and Joe Cronin in a row in the 1934 All-Star Game, and the Giants retired his 11 the year after he stopped pitching.

As of 2026, Barry Bonds and which other player are the only Giants with retired numbers still outside the Hall of Fame?

Will Clark had to wait even for the club's honour: his No. 22 ceremony was set for 2020 and held in 2022 because of the pandemic, and every other Giant so honoured, apart from Bonds, has a plaque in Cooperstown.

What replaces a number for John McGraw and Christy Mathewson among the Giants' retired honours?

The letters 'NY': both men wore the Giants uniform before numbers existed, so the club honoured them with New York's initials, while its award-winning broadcasters are marked by an old-style microphone.

The Giants' 2025 City Connect 'remix' jersey has a sleeve glove design that echoes which style of 1960s art?

San Francisco rock music posters, the warped gig bills of the psychedelic era, shaped both the glove patch and the chest script, and the purple in the trim is meant to recall the Fillmore's stage lights.

Who threw the first perfect game in Giants history, against Houston in June 2012?

Matt Cain struck out 14, equalling Sandy Koufax's record for a perfect game, and needed Gregor Blanco's diving catch in the seventh inning to keep it alive.

The 1904 Giants refused to play a World Series against which city's champions?

Boston: owner John Brush and manager John McGraw dismissed the American League as inferior and would not meet its champions, and the outcry pushed Brush to accept a Series the next year, which the Giants won.