After some good teams in the early part of the 1970s, including an NL West title in 1971, the San Francisco Giants fell onto some hard times. They posted four straight losing season. In 1978, the Giants made a big trade to get themselves back on the map and it worked. They contended and even […]
San Francisco had started a nice run of success in 1997 when they won the NL West, then followed that up with two more winning seasons. The 2000 San Francisco Giants kicked it up a notch and won another division title. Barry Bonds had been the juice in the San Francisco lineup since coming to […]
The move west had been good for the Giants franchise. After two losing seasons ended their tenure in New York, the team began playing winning baseball as soon as they arrived in San Francisco in 1958. They consistently contended over the next decade-plus and won a National League pennant in 1962. The 1971 San Francisco […]
The 1990 San Francisco Giants came into the season as the cream of the NL West crop. The Giants had won the division title in 1987 and the National League pennant in 1989. The tenure of manager Roger Craig (who ironically shared the name of a great 49ers running back of this same era), which […]
The 1993 San Francisco Giants hold a place in history. It’s a place that’s worthy of honor and respect, but also one that the players and fans surely wish they didn’t have. The ’93 Giants are baseball’s last great team to be left out of the playoffs. Major league baseball was at the end of […]
In the 21st century, the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants are arguably baseball’s two pre-eminent franchises. They’ve combined for seven National League pennants and four World Series titles. On three occasions (2002, 2012 & 2014) they’ve gone head-to-head in the postseason. That wasn’t the case when they met in the 1987 NLCS and […]
Roger Craig was hired as the manager in San Francisco in 1986, inheriting a franchise that had just lost 100 games and had not won the NL West since 1971. Craig—who ironically had the same name as a great running back who also starred in San Francisco in this same time period—immediately turned the team […]
After chasing the NL West title to the final weekend in 1982, the San Francisco Giants slid off the map for the next three years and bottomed out with a 100-loss campaign in 1985. The organization reached out to Roger Craig, one of the game’s highly regarded pitching coaches and one who had been part […]
The centennial season of the Giants franchise was one to remember. It wasn’t a championship team or even a pennant winner, like they’d enjoyed in the New York days. It wasn’t a dynasty like they would later experience in San Francisco. But the 1982 San Francisco Giants nearly put on one a stretch drive to […]
This post will focus on the game-by-game narrative of the battle between the A’s and Giants, both of whom stepped up and contributed to their communities in the aftermath of the devastation.
The San Francisco Giants and Chicago Cubs met in the 1989 NLCS with each in pursuit of a long-sought pennant. The Cubs’ chase of their first National League pennant since 1945 is the stuff of legend, but the Giants had been out of the Fall Classic for a while themselves. Their last appearance was 1962. It was San Francisco who ended their drought with a five-game victory in 1989
The 1989 San Francisco Giants lineup was anchored by first baseman Will Clark and leftfielder Kevin Mitchell. Clark was one the really good pure hitters of this time, able to hit for contact without compromising his power stroke. His productive years ended prematurely, as his upper body wasn’t built to last, and there’s no evidence he used steroids at the time everyone else was trying out the new fad. Mitchell had been a part of the Mets’ 1986 championship team and was one of the game’s top power hitters, as his 47 home runs, .635 slugging percentage and NL MVP award in ’89 would attest.