My family’s connection to the Giants goes back nearly a century, when tickets cost a dollar and the team called itself the “New York Base Ball Club.”
My dad grew up in Manhattan in the 1930s and ’40s, and the New York Giants were his ballclub. When our family moved to the Bay Area in 1975, nearly two decades after the Giants moved to San Francisco, he reconnected with the team.
My brother and I soon became Giants fans, exulting when the team made the playoffs and sticking with them through lean years. When we took my dad to Candlestick in 1999 to celebrate his 70th birthday, I got a foul ball and gave it to him.
One of my father’s last wishes was to go to one more game. It took everything he had, but on an August afternoon in 2003, we made it. Our family’s commitment to this team runs deep.
Recently, the Giants have tested my loyalty. I remain a fan and will always hope they win, but the joy of supporting the Giants is slipping away.
That’s mostly because of what’s happened off the field, though the team’s recent play is a factor. The Giants aren’t just bad; they’re boring.
I’m not a fair-weather fan, but during the past couple of years, the team has made multiple decisions that trouble me. Among them:
Memorial bricks destroyed: After ripping out thousands of inscribed bricks near McCovey Cove for the Mission Rock project, the Giants told fans they’d create a digital kiosk where they could see virtual bricks. This was shockingly tone-deaf.
Many of the bricks were tributes to deceased loved ones; visiting them became a pregame ritual. I foot-tap a brick in memory of my father every time I go to a game (Our brick is in Willie Mays Plaza, so it was not torn out).
One fan who’d dedicated a brick to his late mother said he’d rather visit her brick than her grave. I feel the same — there’s no baseball at Skylawn.
After fans’ outcry during the spring of 2025, the Giants relented and made replacement bricks.
Beloved PA announcer let go: Before the 2024 season, popular public address announcer Renel Brooks-Moon was not retained.
She was the first Black woman to serve as a Major League Baseball stadium announcer and is forever associated with the opening of the new ballpark, Barry Bonds’ home run record and the three World Series titles.
Brooks-Moon is a consummate pro, yet the team said it couldn’t come to terms with her on a contract. This is hard to fathom as the Giants offer deals worth more than $100 million to mediocre players.
Midway through last season, the Giants picked up then-manager Bob Melvin’s $4 million extension for 2026, something they didn’t have to do. Then they fired Melvin after the 2025 season. So clearly the team had enough money to keep their PA announcer.
Brooks-Moon had been critical of Giants owner Charles Johnson for donating to far-right candidates in the South who sought to disenfranchise Black voters.
Loyal player shafted: J.D. Davis was a solid third baseman for the Giants in 2022 and 2023. Then the team signed Matt Chapman, and Davis became expendable.
According to Davis, the Giants wouldn’t engage in good-faith negotiations before the 2024 season, forcing arbitration. The team offered $6.55 million. Davis asked for $6.9 million, a narrow gap that he said he’d be willing to bridge.
Arbitrators sided with Davis, but the Giants had found a loophole. Because they went to arbitration, they could release Davis and pay him just $1.1 million.
Chapman humiliates groundskeeper: Last summer, third baseman Matt Chapman publicly ripped Greg Elliott, then the team’s head groundskeeper. Chapman blamed his subpar play on a hard infield, saying the compact dirt was cutting the heels of his hands. Yet the compressed infield probably had more to do with Oracle Park hosting in-season concerts and a Bay FC soccer game than Elliott’s groundskeeping.
It’s ugly when a “star” making more than $25 million a year vents to the press about his unhappiness with a team employee. Elliott left the Giants after last season and now is head groundskeeper for the San Jose Earthquakes.
Chapman blames teammate: During an April 1 game against the San Diego Padres, Chapman shouted “catch the (expletive) ball” to Casey Schmitt who was playing first base.
There were two errors on the Giants that day on throws from Chapman to Schmitt — one on Chapman, the other on Schmitt. Both throws from Chapman were off the mark but catchable. Schmitt is a third baseman — he was playing first because the Giants needed him to fill in.
Chapman has just one home run this season and hasn’t gone deep since March. Schmitt, with fewer at-bats than Chapman, leads the team with six home runs. Oh, and Schmitt is earning $810,000 this season, less than what Chapman earns in a week.
The Devers debacle: You might think it’s 20/20 hindsight, but I hated the Rafael Devers trade from its inception because he’s a poor defender and the deal saddled the Giants with a salary of more than $30 million a year (on average) through 2033. That’s eight years, including this season.
When Devers, a third baseman, was with the Red Sox, the team asked him to play first base. He refused. If I were earning $30 million a year, I’d help in any way I could.
The Giants’ World Series teams were built on young, homegrown talent — high-character guys such as Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Madison Bumgarner, Buster Posey, Pablo Sandoval, Brandon Crawford, Joe Panik and Brandon Belt.
I’ll always appreciate what Posey did as a player — he was the heart of the 2010, 2012 and 2014 World Series champions. But as the Giants’ president of baseball operations, he got burned on the Devers deal.
After the Giants failed to land Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge, Posey was desperate to add a power hitter. He made a reckless trade.
The Red Sox would have been elated to simply dump Devers’ gargantuan salary, yet they got the Giants to offer promising young pitcher Kyle Harrison and top prospect James Tibbs, an outfielder drafted in the first round in 2024.
Boston has since traded both those players. Kyle Harrison is having a superb season for the Milwaukee Brewers: 3-1 with a 2.12 ERA ahead of his next start, slated for Saturday.
The Red Sox sent Tibbs to the Los Angeles Dodgers. He’s crushing the ball for their AAA affiliate, the Oklahoma City Comets. As of Thursday, in just 140 at-bats Tibbs has 11 homers, 27 RBIs and a .402 on-base percentage. He’s on the fast track to the Dodgers and will likely haunt the Giants.
Of course, not every trade works out, but the writing was on the wall before this one was made. It may go down as the worst trade in Giants’ history.
A bleak future: Several Giants “stars” are on the downside of their careers and have bloated contracts that will limit the team’s options for many years.
One example: Mediocre shortstop Willy Adames, who Posey signed before last season, will be owed more than $150 million over the next five years. No matter how badly Devers and Adames scuffle, the Giants are likely to keep playing them because the team has invested so much in them. This keeps other players from developing and contributing.
Beer boondoggle: It’s bad enough that a craft beer costs about $20 at Oracle Park. Worse was the 9-9-9 Challenge, offered by the Giants last year.
The deal: Nine hot dogs and nine beers for $55. The hot dogs were small, but the scam was the beer: a single 24-ounce can of Coors Light to fill nine glasses. So each of those nine beers had less than three ounces. Of Coors Light!
Fans were apoplectic. “It’s really a 9-1-9 challenge,” one fan wrote on X. The team no longer offers the 9-9-9 box.
Selling shares to investment firms: In late April, the Giants said they’re seeking to sell a share of the team to Thrive Eternal, a capital holding company founded by Joshua Kushner, the brother of Jared Kushner, who is President Donald Trump’s son-in-law.
Having a Kushner own part of the team sounded alarm bells, though unlike other members of his family, Joshua has a history of supporting Democratic candidates, aligning him with the region.
The issue isn’t the Kushner name; it’s selling a piece of the team to investment firms whose
primary interest is financial return. Last year, the Giants sold 10% of the team to Sixth Street Equity.
It’s a shame that billionaires who have more money than they’ll ever need or spend don’t put fans first. Baseball is a business, but a team is a public trust.
When fans spend money, it’s not just to be entertained for a few hours. It’s to remember going to a game with your dad, to high-five friends, to recall the glory days when Lincecum whiffed 14 hitters in his first playoff game and when journeyman Travis Ishikawa hit one into the Arcade to send the Giants to the World Series.
It’s to remember when you ducked out of work and headed to Candlestick on a windy Wednesday afternoon and saw reserve catcher Brian Johnson bash a 12th-inning homer to beat the Dodgers in a heated pennant race.
I once interviewed a fan who said, “I don’t know why I care so much, but I do.” I think we care because we’re tribal, and the Giants are our tribe.
There’s still much to like: pitcher Logan Webb’s tenacity, Schmitt’s emergence, savvy hitter Luis Arráez, the view of the bay from Section 320, and the memorabilia on the Club level if you can afford a ticket there.
And we’re blessed with the best announcers in baseball. Jon Miller is in the Hall of Fame. Duane Kuiper has a voice for the ages. No one is faster to recognize a homer off the bat, and his home run call is epic: “He hits it high, he hits it deep, outta here!”
Mike Krukow’s depth of baseball knowledge is unmatched, his quips spot on. When speaking of a hitter this week who once swung at almost every pitch, he said, “There was a time when he’d swing at the rosin bag if you’d drop it on the mound.”
Dave Flemming, who called his first Giants game in 2003 when he was in his 20s, could be San Francisco’s answer to Vin Scully. There will never be another Scully, but Flemming could announce Giants games for more than half a century, as Scully did for the Dodgers.
This hasn’t been an easy to column to write. I’d much prefer celebrating the team’s success.
Yet the season is less than a quarter complete. Even if it’s unlikely, perhaps delusional, we can hope the Giants turns things around.
And isn’t that the best thing about baseball? There’s always hope.
Michael Shapiro, a former editor at The Press Democrat, writes features and performing arts stories for the newspaper. While reporting a magazine feature about Giants Fantasy Camp in Arizona, he was summoned to kangaroo court by first baseman J.T. Snow.