San Francisco Giants | History & Notable Players (2024)

San Francisco Giants, American professional baseball team based in San Francisco. The Giants have won eight World Series titles and 23 National League (NL) pennants.

The franchise that would become the Giants was established in 1883 in New York City and was initially known as the Gothams. In 1885 the team changed its name to the Giants, which was supposedly inspired by a description of the squad by its proud manager in the wake of an extra-inning victory. The Giants won their first pennant in 1888—as well as an early and unofficial version of the World Series against the champions of the American Association—and they repeated as NL champions the following year. The team’s 1889 “World Series” win was notable because it came over the American Association’s Brooklyn Bridegrooms (later Dodgers, now the Los Angeles Dodgers), who, after joining the NL in 1890, began a storied rivalry with the Giants franchise that extends to the present day.

The Giants soon entered into a less competitive period and only returned to the top of the NL with the hiring of manager John McGraw in the middle of the 1902 season. McGraw’s Giants won the NL pennant in his second full season with the team, but he refused to play the champion of the supposedly inferior American League, so the nascent official World Series was not held in 1904. The Giants won another pennant the following season and agreed to play in the World Series, in which they defeated the Philadelphia Athletics in five games behind the stellar pitching of future Hall of Famers Christy Mathewson and Joe McGinnity, who combined to allow no earned runs in the series.

McGraw would guide the Giants to four World Series berths between 1911 and 1917, but the team lost on each occasion. The Giants broke through to win a World Series title in 1921 and repeated the feat the following season. By the end of the 1920s, the Giants had added three future Hall of Fame players: first baseman Bill Terry, outfielder Mel Ott, and pitcher Carl Hubbell. McGraw retired midway through the 1932 season and was replaced by Terry, who served as a player-manager until 1936 and as manager only until 1941. Terry led his team to a World Series win in his first full season managing the Giants, as well as Series losses to the dominant New York Yankees in 1936 and 1937.

During the 1940s the Giants never finished higher than third place in the NL. The team made a bold move by hiring manager Leo Durocher away from the Dodgers during the course of the 1948 season. His acquisition paid off with trips to the World Series in 1951 and 1954, with the Giants winning the title in 1954. Additionally, those two postseason appearances were noteworthy for involving two of the greatest plays in baseball history: Bobby Thomson’s dramatic pennant-winning home run (known as the “shot heard ’round the world”) in 1951 and Willie Mays’s famed over-the-shoulder catch during the 1954 World Series.

Despite those high points, attendance at the Giants’ now legendary home, the Polo Grounds, lagged as the team continued to play in the Yankees’ shadow, so the franchise relocated to San Francisco in 1958, at the same time that the Dodgers moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. The San Francisco Giants featured a number of prominent young players that brought fans to the team’s new stadium, Candlestick Park, in droves. In addition to Mays—who is considered one of the greatest all-around players in baseball history—the Giants boasted a lineup with first basem*n/outfielders Orlando Cepeda and Willie McCovey and pitcher Juan Marichal. However, this star-studded team was not the foundation of great on-field success: the Giants played in only one World Series (a loss in 1962) during the team’s first 29 years in the Bay Area.

While the Giants’ return to the World Series in 1989 did not feature much memorable on-field play—the team was swept in four games by the Oakland A’s—it was noteworthy for a 7.1-magnitude earthquake that struck the Bay Area shortly before game three of the series was scheduled to begin. The event was made even more prominent by the fact that many television stations were broadcasting live from Candlestick Park before the game, so images of the earthquake and its aftermath were instantly carried to households across the country.

Superstar outfielder Barry Bonds (whose father Bobby was a fixture in the San Francisco outfield in the late 1960s and early ’70s) came to the Giants in 1993 and began an assault on baseball’s record books with his outstanding home-run hitting. He won four consecutive Most Valuable Player awards (2001–04) while in San Francisco, and he also led the Giants to the World Series in 2002, which they lost to the Anaheim Angels in a dramatic seven-game series. But by the middle of the first decade of the 2000s, steroid allegations began shadowing Bond’s achievements, and he was not retained by a rebuilding Giants franchise in 2007.

In 2010 the Giants, behind a strong pitching staff led by young star Tim Lincecum, returned to the postseason for the first time since 2003. The team then advanced to the World Series, where they defeated the Texas Rangers in five games to capture the franchise’s first championship since its move to California. In 2012 the Giants won six elimination games during the playoffs to rally from series deficits of 2–0 and 3–1 in the division and championship rounds, respectively, to clinch the NL pennant, and in the World Series they defeated the Detroit Tigers in four games. The following season, however, the team’s play fell off, as the Giants won 18 fewer games than they had in 2012, and San Francisco finished the year with a losing record.

The team rebounded in 2014, winning 88 games to qualify for an NL Wild Card spot, and in the subsequent postseason the Giants lost just twice in the NL playoffs while advancing to the World Series. There the team beat the Kansas City Royals in a seven-game series, led by the stellar pitching of ace Madison Bumgarner: Bumgarner decisively won both of his starts in the series and came out of the bullpen to pitch five scoreless innings and clinch the title in game seven. The Giants returned to the postseason in 2016 (losing in the division series), but a series of injuries in 2017 led to the team posting the worst record in the NL. After several lacklustre seasons, San Francisco surprised observers in 2021 by winning 107 games, a franchise record and the most in the league. The team returned to the playoffs for the first time in five years, but the Giants were eliminated in the division series by the Dodgers.