GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTON PART 5

New York City had three baseball teams at one time, the Yankees in the American League and the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants in the National League. Baseball from 1900 to 1957 was at the Zenith of the sport’s world because of New York. The Giants were one of the oldest franchises in the Majors and is rich with history and tradition, all of which no longer exists for New Yorkers.

New York Giants 1883 – 1957

Five of the franchise's World Series wins and 17 of its National League pennants were won in New York City. Playing in the odd shaped Polo Grounds, it would burn down and be rebuilt, move form one location to another and be the home also of the New York Yankees.

The Gothams entered the National League for the 1883 and played their home games at a site called the Polo Grounds.

1888 NY GIANTS

The Giants' original home stadium, the Polo Grounds, also dates from the late 1800’s. The first of the Polo Grounds was located north of Central Park adjacent to Fifth and Sixth Avenues and 110th and 112th Streets in Harlem. Evicted from the Polo Grounds after the 1888 season, the Giants moved uptown and renamed various fields the Polo Grounds that 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

HALL TROPHY

In 1902, after a series of disastrous moves that left the Giants 53½ games behind, the Giants signed John McGraw as a player-manager. McGraw went on to manage the Giants for three decades, one of the longest tenures in professional sports.  Under McGraw, the Giants would win ten National League pennants and three World Series championships.

The Giants boycotted their first ever World Series in 1904—with the existing World Champion Boston club the Americans. Original McGraw’s reluctance was because of the rival New York Highlanders who looked like they would win the AL pennant. The Highlanders lost to Boston on the last day, but the Giants stuck by their refusal.

The Giants won the 1905 World Series besting the Philadelphia Athletics, with Christy Mathewson almost winning the Series single-handedly.

In 1908 they finished in a tie with the Chicago Cubs and had a one-game playoff at the Polo Grounds. The game was a replay of a tied game that resulted from the Merkle Boner That they lost to the Cubs.

PRE-1930

The Giants faced some hard luck in the early 1910s, losing three straight World Series to the A's, the Red Sox, then the A's again.  After losing the 1917 Series to the Chicago White Sox (the White Sox's last World Series win until 2005), the Giants played in four straight World Series in the early 1920s, winning the first two over their tenants, the Yankees, then losing to the Yankees in 1923 when Yankee Stadium opened after the Giants evicted them from the Polo Grounds. 1924, found the Giants losing to the Washington Senators who won their only World Series in their history (prior to their move to Minnesota).

1930–57: Five pennants in 28 seasons

In 1932, Bill Terry took over as manager and played for the Giants for ten years, winning pennants, and the 1933 World Series and losing to the Yankees in 1936 and 1937.

POLO GROUNDS 1954

Mel Ott succeeded Terry as manager in 1942, and during the 1948 season Brooklyn Dodgers manager Leo Durocher left the Dodgers to became manager of the Giants. Durocher had been accused of gambling in 1947 and subsequently suspended for the entire 1947 season by Baseball Commissioner Albert "Happy" Chandler. Durocher remained at the helm of the Giants through the 1955 season, and those eight years proved to be some of the most memorable for Giants fans, particularly because of the arrival of Willie Mays and arguably the two most famous plays in Giants' history.

LEO DUROCHER

1951: The "Shot Heard 'Round the World"

One of the greatest moments in sports history was the "Shot Heard 'Round the World" Bobby Thomson's walk-off home run clinched the National League pennant for the Giants over the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Giants thirteen and a half games behind the league-leading Dodgers in August, went on a sixteen-game winning streak, caught the Dodgers to tie for the lead on the last day of the season.

The underdog Giants went on to sweep the Cleveland Indians in the 1954 series in four straight, despite the Indians having won a then American League record 111 games that year. This was the Giants' last World Series victory in New.

In between World Series titles, the Giants lost the World Series in 1962 to the Yankees, the 1989 to the Oakland A's, whom they defeated in their first World Series when both clubs were in the Northeast, and the 2002 to the Anaheim Angels. The 1954 World Series would also be the Giants' last appearance in the Fall Classic as the New York Giants, as the team moved to San Francisco prior to 1958 season.

San Francisco Giants 1957-present

The Giants' final three years in New York City were uneventful. The Giants needed a new stadium to replace the crumbling Polo Grounds and began to contemplate a move from New York. At this time, the Giants were approached by the San Francisco mayor to move to SanFrancisco. Horace Stoneham entered into negotiations with San Francisco officials around the same time that Dodgers' owner Walter O'Malley was courting the city of Los Angeles. The Dodgers would not be allowed to move to Los Angeles unless a second team moved to California as well. He convinced Stoneham to relocate. In the summer of 1957, both the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers announced their moves to California, and the golden age of baseball in the New York was over.

That's all I wrote, folks!