The New York Giants were a Major League Baseball team in the National League that began play in the 1883 season as the New York Gothams and became known as the Giants in 1885. They continued as the New York Giants until the team moved to San Francisco after the 1957 season, where the team continues its history as the San Francisco Giants. The team moved west at the same time as its longtime rival, the Brooklyn Dodgers, also in the National League, moved to Los Angeles in Southern California as the Los Angeles Dodgers, continuing the National League, same-state rivalry.
During most of their 75 seasons in New York City, the Giants played home games at various incarnations of the Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan.
Numerous inductees of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum played for the New York Giants, including Christy Mathewson (a member of the Hall of Fame's inaugural class), John McGraw, Mel Ott, Bill Terry, Willie Mays, Monte Irvin, Frankie Frisch, Ross Youngs and Travis Jackson. During the club's tenure in New York, it won five of the franchise's eight World Series championships and 17 of its 23 National League pennants. Famous moments in the Giants' New York history include the 1922 World Series, in which the Giants swept the Yankees in four games, Bobby Thomson's 1951 home run known as the "Shot Heard 'Round the World", and the defensive feat by Willie Mays during the first game of the 1954 World Series known as "the Catch".
The Giants had intense rivalries with their fellow New York teams the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers, facing the Yankees in six World Series and playing the league rival Dodgers multiple times per season. Games between any two of these three teams were known collectively as the Subway Series.
The New York Giants of the National Football League were named after the team; to distinguish the two clubs, the football team was legally incorporated as the New York Football Giants, which remains its corporate name to this day.
The New York Giants had an overall win–loss record of 6,067–4,898–157 (.553) during their 74 years in New York. Nineteen former New York Giants players were elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Contents
History
Early days
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 seven years after its 1876 formation, in 1883, while their other club, the Metropolitans played in the rival American Association (1882–1891). Nearly half of the original Gothams players were members of the disbanded Troy Trojans in upstate New York, whose place in the National League the Gothams inherited. While the Metropolitans were initially the more successful club, after they won the 1884 AA championship, Day and Mutrie began moving star players to the NL Gothams, whose fortunes improved while the Metropolitans' afterwards slumped.
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 (1885), the club was known as the Giants. However, more recent research has suggested that the New York World was already widely using the Giants nickname throughout the 1885 season, before the legendary game was played.
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 pre-modern-era World Series. They repeated as champions the next year with a pennant and world championship victory over Brooklyn.
The Giants' original home stadium, the Polo Grounds, also dates from this early era. It had been built in 1876 as a pitch for playing polo, and was located north of Central Park adjacent to Fifth and Sixth Avenues and 110th and 112th Streets, in Harlem in upper Manhattan. After their eviction from that first incarnation of the Polo Grounds after the 1888 season, they moved further uptown to various fields which they also named the "Polo Grounds" located between 155th and 159th Streets in Harlem and Washington Heights, playing at the famous Washington Heights location at the foot of Coogan's Bluff until the end of the 1957 season, when they moved to San Francisco.
The Giants were a powerhouse in the late 1880s, winning their first two National League Pennants and World Championships in 1888 and 1889. But nearly all of the Giants' stars jumped to the upstart newly organized rival loop, the Players' League, whose New York franchise was also named the Giants, in 1890. The new team even built a stadium next door to the NL Polo Grounds. With a decimated roster, the NL Giants finished a distant sixth. Attendance took a nosedive, and the financial strain affected Day's tobacco business as well. The Players' League dissolved after the single season, and Day sold a minority interest in his NL Giants to the defunct PL Giants' principal backer, Edward Talcott. As a condition of the sale, Day had to fire Mutrie as manager. Although the Giants rebounded to third place in 1891, Day was forced to sell a controlling interest to Talcott at the end of the '91 season.
1930–1957: Five pennants in 28 seasons
McGraw handed over the team to Bill Terry midway through the 1932 season. Terry served as manager for nine-and-a-half years, serving as player-manager until 1936. Under Terry, the Giants won three pennants, defeating the Senators in the 1933 World Series but swept by the Yankees in consecutive fall classics, 1936 and 1937. Aside from Terry himself, the other stars of the era were slugger Mel Ott and southpaw hurler Carl Hubbell. Known as "King Carl" and "The Meal Ticket", Hubbell gained fame in the first two innings of the 1934 All-Star Game (played at the Polo Grounds) by striking out five future AL Hall of Famers in a row: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons and Joe Cronin.
Ott succeeded Terry as manager in 1942, but the war years proved to be difficult for the Giants. Midway during the 1948 season Brooklyn Dodgers manager Leo Durocher left as Dodgers skipper to manage the Giants, not without controversy. Not only was such a midseason managerial switch unprecedented, but Durocher had been accused of gambling in 1947 and subsequently suspended for that whole season by Baseball Commissioner Albert "Happy" Chandler. Durocher's ensuing eight full seasons managing the Giants proved some of the most memorable for their fans, particularly because of the arrival of five-tool superstar Willie Mays, their two pennants in 1951 and 1954, their unexpected sweep of the powerful (111–43) Cleveland Indians in the 1954 World Series and arguably the two most famous plays in Giants history.
The "Shot Heard 'Round the World," or Bobby Thomson's come-from-behind ninth-inning walk-off home run that won the National League pennant for the Giants over their bitter rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers, in the deciding game of a three-game playoff series ended one of baseball's most memorable pennant races. The Giants had been 13+1⁄2 games behind the league-leading Dodgers in August, but under Durocher's guidance and with a 16-game winning streak, got hot and caught the Dodgers to tie for the lead on the next-to-last day of the season.
In Game 1 of the 1954 World Series at the Polo Grounds against the Cleveland Indians, Willie Mays made "The Catch," a dramatic over-the-shoulder catch of a fly ball by Vic Wertz after sprinting with his back to the plate on a dead run to deepest center field. At the time the game was tied 2–2 in the eighth inning, with men on first and second and nobody out. Mays caught the ball 450 ft (140 m) from the plate, whirled and threw the ball to the infield, keeping the lead runner, Larry Doby, from scoring. Doby advanced to third on the play, and then new pitcher Marv Grissom walked Dale Mitchell to load the bases. Grissom then struck out Dave Pope looking and got Jim Hegan to fly out to left fielder Monte Irvin to end the inning.
Rivalries
Brooklyn Dodgers
The historic and heated rivalry between the Giants and the Dodgers is more than a century old. It began when the Giants and Brooklyn Bridegrooms (later known as the Dodgers) faced each other in the 1889 World Series, the ancestor of the Subway Series, and both played in separate, neighboring cities (New York and Brooklyn were separate cities until 1898, when they became neighboring boroughs of the newly expanded New York City). When both franchises moved to California after the 1957 season, the rivalry was easily transplanted, as the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles have long been economic, political, and cultural rivals, representative of the broader Northern/Southern California divide.
New York Yankees
Though in different leagues, the Giants were historical rivals of the Yankees because both teams were based in New York and shared the Polo Grounds. They also met each other six times in the World Series, including their first three (1921–1923) in a row. The Yankees are 4–2 against the New York Giants, with the Giants winning the 1921 and 1922 World Series back-to-back. However, from 1923, when the Yankees moved to the Bronx, to their last meeting in 1951, the Yankees won every World Series against the Giants.
Since the Giants moved to San Francisco in 1958, they have only met the Yankees in a World Series once, in 1962, which the Yankees won 4–3.
In his July 4, 1939, farewell speech ending with the renowned "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth", Yankee slugger Lou Gehrig, who played in 2,130 consecutive games, declared that the Giants were a team he "would give his right arm to beat, and vice versa".
Baseball Hall of Famers
Other
The following inducted members of the Hall of Fame played or managed for the Giants, but either played for the Giants and were inducted as a manager having never managed the Giants, or managed the Giants and were inducted as a player having never played for the Giants:
Cap Anson – inducted as player, managed Giants in 1898.
Hughie Jennings – inducted as player, managed Giants from 1924 to 1925.
Bill McKechnie – inducted as manager, played for Giants in 1916.
Frank Robinson – inducted as player, managed Giants from 1981 to 1984.
Casey Stengel – inducted as manager, played for Giants from 1921 to 1923.
Retired numbers
The New York/San Francisco Giants have retired 11 numbers. Two were retired while the team was in New York. After the team moved west, they retired three more numbers used by New York players and honored two New York players who played before numbers were commonly worn.
Every New York Giant whose number has been retired has been elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
In 1944, Carl Hubbell (#11) became the first National Leaguer to have his number retired by his team. Bill Terry (#3), Mel Ott (#4), and Hubbell played or managed their entire careers for the New York Giants. Willie Mays (#24) began his career in New York and moved with the Giants to San Francisco in 1958.
Similarly honored are John McGraw (3B, 1902–1906; manager, 1902–1932) and Christy Mathewson (P, 1900–1916), members of the New York team before the introduction of uniform numbers; they have the letters "NY" displayed in place of a number.
Broadcaster Russ Hodges (1949–1957) is represented by an old-style radio microphone displayed in place of a number.
Team captains
The Giants have had ten official recorded captains over the years:
Jack Doyle, 1902
Dan McGann, 1903–1907
Larry Doyle, 1908–1916
Gus Mancuso, 1937–1938
Mel Ott, 1939–1947
Alvin Dark, 1950–1956
Home stadiums
Polo Grounds I (1883–1888)
Oakland Park (1889)
St. George Cricket Grounds (1889)
Polo Grounds II (1889–1890)
Polo Grounds III (1891–1957)
Hilltop Park (1911 due to 1911 fire)