G i a n t s 5 CONTENTS CHAPTERS Giants on the Move 6 Masterful McGraw 15 The Three M’s 22 Shaking up the NL West 29 Turning up the Power 36 AROUND THE HORN A Rivalry Is Born 12 Merkle’s Mistake 20 Thomson’s Shot 24 Different Coast Same Story 31 The Nine-Day Game 38 Number 756 43 ALL-TIME GIANTS P Christy Mathewson 8 C Buck Ewing 13 1B Willie McCovey 14 2B Jeff Kent 18 3B Darrell Evans 23 SS George Davis 28 LF Barry Bonds 30 CF Willie Mays 35 RF Mel Ott 39 M John McGraw 40 Index 48
6 G i a n t s GIANTS ON THE MOVE n 1776 a Spanish mission was established by Franciscan monks on the West Coast of the United States in what is now northern California This settlement was named Yerba Buena Spanish for good herb on account of an herb that grew there and was used as medicine Eventually Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco after Saint Francis The town grew slowly for 72 years until gold was discovered nearby in 1848 Then over the next 18 months thousands upon thousands of gold-seeking Forty-niners poured into the area quickly turning San Francisco into the largest American city west of the Mississippi River Only a few of the new arrivals struck it rich but most stayed in the area and helped build it up into a great cultural and economic center More than 100 years later in 1958 a new migration occurred when the Giants and Dodgers of professional baseball’s National League NL decided to move west from their original homes in New York City the Giants settling in San Francisco and the Dodgers in Los Angeles The I
Long known as a fashionable city San Francisco represented an attractive destination when big league baseball started to spread west
