subject: The San Francisco Giants Tickets : The Giants Have Won The Most Games In The History Of Baseball [print this page] The San Francisco Giants are a Major League Baseball (MLB) team based in San Francisco, California, which currently plays in the National League West Division. One of the older baseball teams, the Giants have won the most games of any team in the history of American baseball.
The Giants played in New York City through the 1957 season, after which they moved west to California to become the San Francisco Giants. As the New York Giants, they won 17 pennants and 5 World Championships, from the era of John McGraw and Christy Mathewson to that of Bobby Thomson and Willie Mays. The Giants have not won a World Championship since 1954, and have never done so in San Francisco, for the third-longest championship drought among MLB teams behind those of the Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians (who were defeated by the Giants in the 1954 Series).
The Giants have won three pennants in San Francisco. Game 7 of the 1962 World Series ended dramatically when a potential game-winning hit by Willie McCovey was caught. Most recently, a Giants team led by Barry Bonds lost to the Anaheim Angels in 2002. The Giants are the 2010 champions of the National League West and are currently in the playoffs for the first time in seven years.
The Giants began as the second baseball club founded by millionaire tobacconist John B. Day and veteran amateur baseball player Jim Mutrie. The Gothams, as the Giants were originally known, entered the National League in 1883, while their other club, the Metropolitans (the original Mets) played in the American Association.
Nearly half of the original Gotham players were members of the disbanded Troy Trojans, whose place in the National League the Gothams inherited. While the Metropolitans were initially the more successful club, Day and Mutrie began moving star players to the Gothams and the team won its first National League pennant in 1888, as well as a victory over the St. Louis Browns in an early incarnation of the World Series. They repeated as champions the next year with a pennant and World Series victory over the Brooklyn Bridegrooms.
It is said that after one particularly satisfying victory over the Philadelphia Phillies, Mutrie (who was also the team's manager) stormed into the dressing room and exclaimed, "My big fellows! My giants!" From then on, the club was known as the Giants.
The Giants' original home stadium, the Polo Grounds, also dates from this early era. The first of the Polo Grounds was located north of Central Park adjacent to Fifth and Sixth Avenues and 110th and 112th Streets in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem. Upon eviction from the Polo Grounds after the 1888 season, the Giants moved uptown and renamed various fields the Polo Grounds which were located between 155th and 159th Streets in the New York City neighborhoods of Harlem and Washington Heights. The Giants played at the Polo Grounds until the end of the 1957 season, when they moved to San Francisco.
The 2008 season marked the first year that Barry Bonds was not a member of the team since first signing with them in 1992. The Giants signed former Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Aaron Rowand to a 5-year, $60 million contract. Barry Zito once again got off to a poor start, losing his first eight decisions. However, the team found hope in pitcher Tim Lincecum. After going 7/5 in his first stint in 2007 with the Giants, he exploded onto the scene this year winning four straight before losing his 1st game of the year on April 29, 2008, to the Colorado Rockies.
Lincecum was selected to the 2008 MLB All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium but was unable to pitch due to being hospitalized with flu-like symptoms. He went on to win the 2008 NL Cy Young Award, finishing at 18/5. He was the first Giant to do so since Mike McCormick won it in 1967. The Giants finished the season in fourth place in the NL West with a record of 72/90.
