New York Giants (baseball)

This article is about the baseball team in New York until 1957. For the history of the team from 1958 onward, see History of the San Francisco Giants. For information on the franchise in general, see San Francisco Giants. For the Players' League team, see New York Giants (Players' League). For New York Giants football team, see New York Giants.
"New York Gothams" redirects here. For the basketball team, see New York Gothams (basketball).
New York Giants
Team logo Cap insignia
Information
LeagueNational League (1883–1957)
BallparkPolo Grounds III (1891–1957)
Established1883
Relocated1957 (to San Francisco; became the San Francisco Giants)
Nickname(s)
  • The Jints[1][2]
  • The Orange and Black
National League pennant17 (1888, 1889, 1904, 1905, 1911, 1912, 1913, 1917, 1921, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1933, 1936, 1937, 1951, 1954)
Pre-modern World Series2 (1888,1889)
World Series championships5 (1905,1921,1922, 1933, 1954)
Former name(s)New York Gothams (1883–1884)
Former ballparks
ColorsBlack, orange, white[3][4]
     
OwnershipHorace Stoneham
ManagerSee list

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[a] and became known as the Giants in 1885. They continued as the New York Giants until the team moved to San Francisco, California 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.

  1. ^ Press, ed. (1916). "The Terrible Three". Literary Digest. p. 1394. Retrieved 30 July 2024.
  2. ^ Dickson, Paul, ed. (1999). "The New Dickson Baseball Dictionary - A Cyclopedic Reference to More Than 7,000 Words, Names, Phrases, and Slang Expressions that Define the Game, Its Heritage, Culture, and Variations". p. 280. ISBN 9780156005807. Retrieved 30 July 2024.
  3. ^ "San Francisco Giants Uniforms 1958 – Present". SFGiants.com. MLB Advanced Media. Retrieved October 24, 2019.
  4. ^ Clair, Michael (March 30, 2020). "One weird fact you may not know for every team". MLB.com. MLB Advanced Media. Retrieved April 4, 2021. The Giants have been noted for their classic black-and-orange look throughout their history – whether in New York or San Francisco.
  5. ^ Coen, Ed. "Setting the Record Straight on Major League Team Nicknames". Baseball Research Journal. Fall 2019. Society for American Baseball Research. Retrieved 2 October 2023.


Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).