San Francisco Giants Trivia
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48 free San Francisco Giants trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This San Francisco Giants trivia quiz spans the winningest franchise in baseball history, from the New York Gothams and John McGraw's Polo Grounds teams through the Shot Heard 'Round the World and Willie Mays' Catch, to the 1958 move west. It covers Candlestick Park's wind and the Croix de Candlestick, the 1962 line drive Bobby Richardson caught, Marichal and McCovey, the earthquake World Series of 1989, Barry Bonds' 73 and 762, and the even-year dynasty of 2010, 2012 and 2014 with Bruce Bochy, Buster Posey and Madison Bumgarner. Oracle Park gets its own round: McCovey Cove and splash hits, the 24-foot right-field wall, the Coca-Cola bottle slides, the retired numbers and Lou Seal, plus the orange Fridays, the Gigantes jersey and the fog-gradient City Connect look, and the rivalry with the Dodgers that crossed a continent. Easy questions suit any Giants fan; the hard ones are for people who know how many splash hits Bonds has. Every answer has been checked against an encyclopaedic source and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Record books list the Giants franchise under which name for its first two seasons, 1883 and 1884?
Gothams
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.
Q 02Through 2026, the Giants had recorded more what than any other franchise in Major League history?
Wins
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.
Q 03Which manager led the New York Giants to their last title, in 1954?
Leo Durocher
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.
Q 04Which Giant hit the 'Shot Heard 'Round the World', the home run that won the 1951 pennant playoff against Brooklyn?
Bobby Thomson
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.
Q 05Willie Mays made 'The Catch' against which team in the 1954 World Series?
Cleveland Indians
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.
Q 06Willie Mays' nickname was what?
The Say Hey Kid
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.
Q 07The Giants played their first game in San Francisco on April 15, 1958, beating which team 8-0?
Los Angeles Dodgers
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.
Q 08The Giants' first San Francisco home, for two seasons, was which former Pacific Coast League ballpark?
Seals Stadium
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.
Q 09Which Yankees second baseman snared a line drive with two runners on to end Game 7 of the 1962 World Series?
Bobby Richardson
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.
Q 10Fans earned the Giants' Croix de Candlestick pin by doing what?
Outlasting an extra-inning night game
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.
Q 11Which Giants pitcher was supposedly blown off the mound at the 1961 All-Star Game at Candlestick?
Stu Miller
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.
Q 12Which band played its last full public concert at Candlestick Park in August 1966?
The Beatles
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.
Q 13Which Giants pitcher won 191 games in the 1960s, the most that decade?
Juan Marichal
Q 21Which team did the Giants sweep in the 2012 World Series for their second title in three years?
Detroit Tigers
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.
Q 22The Giants' 2010 title, the first for the city of San Francisco, came against which team?
Texas Rangers
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.
Q 23Which Giants catcher won 2010 Rookie of the Year and 2012 MVP, later becoming president of baseball operations?
Buster Posey
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.
Q 14The Giants slugger nicknamed 'Stretch' retired with 521 home runs, level with which Red Sox legend?
Ted Williams
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.
Q 15The 1989 World Series against Oakland was interrupted by what?
The Loma Prieta earthquake
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.
Q 16Whose single-season home run record did Barry Bonds break in 2001?
Mark McGwire
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.
Q 17Whose career home run record did Barry Bonds break in 2007?
Hank Aaron
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.
Q 18Barry Bonds won his first two MVP awards with which team?
Pirates
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.
Q 19Bobby Bonds, Barry's father, hit what in his first major-league game for the Giants in 1968?
A grand slam
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.
Q 20The Giants lost the 2002 World Series in seven games to which team?
Anaheim Angels
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.
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.
Q 24A 2011 injury to the Giants' catcher is widely credited with leading MLB to restrict what?
Home-plate collisions
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.
Q 25Which pitcher was 2014 World Series MVP after two wins and a Game 7 save against Kansas City?
Madison Bumgarner
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.
Q 26The stretch of San Francisco Bay just beyond right field at Oracle Park is nicknamed what?
McCovey Cove
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.
Q 27In 2024, which Giant became the first right-handed batter to launch a 'splash hit' into the bay?
Heliot Ramos
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.
Q 28The Giants' waterfront home opened in 2000 under what name?
Pacific Bell Park
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.
Q 29The giant Coca-Cola bottle behind Oracle Park's left-field bleachers contains what?
Playground slides
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.
Q 30What at Oracle Park is 24 feet high to honour Willie Mays?
Right-field wall
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.