The Original San Francisco Giants

The late baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti said that much of what we love later in sport is what it recalls to us about ourselves at our earliest memories of a time when all that was better was before us, as a hope, and that the hope was fastened to a game. Hall of Fame writer Leonard Koppett calls this the Golden Age, the earliest days of a fan’s awareness, when the names and events on the field are indelible, and grow more golden with the passage of time.

For all who love the game of baseball there is such a time, and for me it has its roots in the 1958 season, when the Giants brought major league ball to San Francisco. I was only five rears old then but have distinct memories of the ’58 Giants that will stay a part of me forever. They represent some of my earliest and most cherished childhood recollections.

My parents took my brother and me to Seals Stadium, near downtown San Francisco, early in that ’58 season for our first big league ball game. I remember walking into an auditorium-like building, holding my dad’s hand tightly as we made our way through a dimly lit and crowded corridor, before exiting to our right through an open door to the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen. The diamond was covered with glistening green grass, sparkling white bases, and sunshine. It was intimate. it was elegant, it was regal in my eyes, and now I was watching the same ballplayers on the trading cards I collected, performing in their clean white flannels.

When I wasn’t glued to action on the field I was transfixed by the Hamm’s Brewery’s flashing mug high behind the stands in back of home plate. The mug would gradually fill with beer to its foam-covered top, flash on and off three times, then start all over again. That alone could keep this five-year-old’s attention, whenever there was a break on the ball field. Years later I would discover that I wasn’t the only one transfixed. The late Don Drysdale, for one, said he didn’t remember much about losing the first big league game in West Coast history, but did recall looking up at the big Hamm’s beer glass on the brewery, and watching it fill again and again. Drysdale said he was intrigued by it, adding that after getting knocked out early in that historic opener, he could have used a cold beer.

When the games at Seals Stadium ended, the outfield wall would open magically, allowing fans to walk down to the field and across the grass out to the parking lot and the surrounding streets of the neighborhood, beyond right and center field. There were times, of course, when my folks parked closer to home plate, but they understood the thrill their kids always got walking across their field of dreams, even if it occasionally meant doubling back on 16th Street to get to our car.

Unfortunately, Seals Stadium was torn d0wn after the ’59 season because the Giants were moving to Candlestick Park. Trading Seals for the ‘Stick should go down as the worst deal in San Francisco Giants history, the Cepeda-for-Sadecki trade in ’66 notwithstanding. Sadecki threw 23 complete games, with eight shutouts and a 2.80 earned run average in his first two full seasons with the Giants. But Candlestick was such a colossal blunder from its inception that fans and players continue to pay for that mistake to this day. Talk to the guys who played at both Seals Stadium and Candlestick and, to a man, they’ll tell you that moving to the ‘Stick was a mistake, that Seals Stadium should have been enlarged and the Giants should have staved right where they were, at 16th and Bryant Streets. San Francisco baseball legend Lefty O’Doul lamented the destruction of Seals Stadium, saying what a crime it was to tear down the most beautiful little ballpark in America.

I’ll never forget Seals Stadium, nor will I forget the players who made up the 1958 Giants. I followed them throughout their careers, even when they played in other countries. Ruben Gomez, for example, pitched marvelously for many years in the Mexican League and in Puerto Rico, long after he shut out the Dodgers, 8- 0 in that first major league game played on the West Coast. Willie Kirkland became a folk hero in Osaka, Japan when he played for the Hanshin Tigers, learning to speak excellent Japanese in the process, long after he started that first game as a rookie right fielder for the Giants. Daryl Spencer became a legend in Japan with the Hankyu Braves, also long after he started at shortstop in the ’58 opener. Leon Wagner became a great home run hitter in the American League. Bill White became an outstanding player with St. Louis, and later became National League president, helping to keep the Giants in San Francisco when it looked as though they were going to be sold and moved to Tampa following the ’92 season. Stu Miller and Al Worthington became outstanding relief pitchers in the American League. Ed Bressoud became a power-hitting all-star shortstop with the Boston Red Sox. Felipe Alou blossomed as an all-star outfielder with the Atlanta Braves, and later as manager of the Montreal Expos.

Others, fortunately, enjoyed the greatest success with the Giants, including Willie Mays, Orlando Cepeda, Mike McCormick, Johnny Antonelli, and Jim Davenport. Still others wound up wonderful careers here in San Francisco: Hank Sauer, Whitey Lockman, and Marv Grissom. The list goes on and on.

These men were my heroes as a child. I memorized their vital statistics on the backs of my cards and, when I wasn’t at the ballpark itself, I listened to the games on the radio, often as I lay in bed at night, eyes closed, seeing every play before me, as Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons called the action. As I got older, as all of us got older, this hero-worship of the players appropriately faded, even as our love of the game itself continued to grow. In subsequent years that love has been sorely tested by labor issues, expansion, realignment, second-place teams going to the playoffs, domed stadiums, artificial surfaces, network television influence, and overall greed by the owners and players that somehow managed to force the first cancellation of the World Series in 90 years.

I found myself wishing I could go back in time to the innocence of my childhood when these ballplayers seemed larger than life, when baseball Was unquestionably the national pastime, when Topps cards were the only cards, and when the baseball winter meetings (and all the trade talk that surrounded them) got as much or more coverage in the local papers than the NBA, NHL and NFL combined. Yet through it all baseball remains relatively unchanged from the game we fell in love with as kids. Baseball itself continues to survive, and even thrive, despite the efforts of so many within the game to destroy it. For us, it will always remain the national pastime.

Finally, there is no better spokesman for the ’58 Giants (or for the game of baseball) than the team’s manager Bill Rigney, who is on the verge of celebrating his 60th anniversary in professional baseball. Is he tired of it? Never. Does he tire of talking about the game? Never. Is his memory not what it once was? Hardly. There are few, if any, better treats in baseball than sitting down for a few minutes or, better yet, a few hours with Bill Rigney. I consider myself fortunate to have done so.

The 1958 San Francisco Giants won 80 games and lost 74, finishing third in the National League, 12 games behind the pennant-winning Milwaukee Braves. So why write a book about these guys? Why write a book about a team that nobody ever confused with The Boys of Summer? Well, first and foremost because these guys are the original San Francisco Giants — the guys who brought big league ball to San Francisco. The ’58 Giants were supposed to finish in the second division of the National League but, in fact, were in first place much of the season, as late as July 30, after finishing a distant sixth in ’56 and ’57. But that was when they were the New York Giants. And that’s why this ’58 Giants team was something very special. It was San Francisco.

For those of us who have held this game close to our hearts ever since 1958, the original San Francisco Giants will forever be magical in a way that not even the 1962 National League champion Giants were, because the ’58 Giants were first. And fans all over the Bay Area responded accordingly. Despite a seating capacity of under 23,000, Seals Stadium drew 1,272,625 fans in 1958, nearly doubling the Giants draw in ’57 at the Polo Grounds in New York.

More than anything else, The Original San Francisco Giants is a tribute to these gentlemen who introduced major league ball to San Francisco. A way of saying thanks. Sure, if these guys hadn’t done it, some others would have. But these are the men who did it. Their stories are rich and varied. Hopefully, this book will help preserve their memories of the game, our memories of them and their rich contributions to baseball in San Francisco.

The Original San Francisco Giants, published by Sports Publishing Inc., has just been released.