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The Original San Francisco Giants: The Giants of '58

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The year 1958 was truly a turning point for major league baseball, and for America. The country was booming. People were on the move, looking to cash in on a decade of postwar prosperity, and many of them headed west. The New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers were part of that westward migration.
Steve Bitker's wonderful book about the original San Francisco Giants is a literary home run, bringing the memories back from that pivotal year with vivid clarity. For a true fan, watching the Giants play that season in Seals Stadium might have been the best seat in major league history. Located smack in the middle of a working class neighborhood, the stadium gave spectators a close-up view of the game and the atmosphere was enhanced by the smells of a bakery and brewery located nearby. (Pitcher Jim Brosnan, who visited Seals Stadium with a variety of teams from 1955-59, has a marvelous quote about the aroma factor on page 16).
In this era of 24/7 TV and cable channels, media superstars, and multi-million dollar contracts, we sometimes forget that not very long ago, pro sports had a much closer connection to the spectators in the stands. Sneaking off from work to catch an afternoon of baseball was as simple as grabbing a cab or jumping on the right bus line.
No more. Now we have massive all-weather ballparks, salary caps that only accountants can understand, and a seemingly endless search for added revenue every year.
If I had a time machine, I would set it for Seals Stadium in 1958, and I would stay there forever, watching every home game of the Original San Francisco Giants!

Those who remember San Francisco's entry into Major League Baseball will love reading the fond memories of the men (& boys in some cases - for goodness sake, Mike McCormick was just 17) who lived it. Those who don't remember will still find this an enjoyable read. Here is more than just a cursory glance at lineup cards, which Hank Sauer kept tearing up, and statistics tables from the '58 Giants. We read the personal anecdotes of everyone from the manager to the batboy, and more. We feel like we're in our own living room hearing firsthand stories as Willie Mays, Felipe Alou, Orlando Cepeda and just about everyone else who wore a Giants uniform in 1958 drops in for a visit. It always stays fresh because each person interviewed speaks in his own style. The book goes way beyond just a look at one season, however. These guys were involved with baseball for many years and tell the tales of all of them. Subjects range from neighborhood games as kids to World Series and All-Star Games. There are also plenty of looks into the lives of these Giants off the field. For those of us who never made it to Seals Stadium, a great picture is painted. Likewise with the Polo Grounds in New York and the Dodgers' first stadium in Los Angeles. But don't ask the author about Candlestick Park. A lot of fun.

Mr Bitker, the KCBS sportscaster, has written a well-researched book on the original San Francisco Giants. Most of the players of that time are represented. The author manages to succeed in bringing 1950's San Francisco to life. A wonderful book for a Giants fans and people who left their heart in San Francisco.

After my beloved Dodgers left Brooklyn, I couldn't bring myself to root for the hated Yankees. So, I became a fan of the game in general. This book presents a fine look at a baseball team in a positive transition following their exit from NYC. The Giants fielded a good team in 1958 with many stellar rookies! They battled the then World Champion Milwaukee Braves for most of the season. That season's review is a good one in these pages, as are interviews with most of the players, coaches, & the late Manager Bill Rigney. Most of the players loved Seals Stadium & lamented the shift to Candlestick Park in 1960, wishing they expanded the former instead. I highly recommend this book!

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this team biography, it gave me new insights into the early years of the newly-moved-to San Francisco Giants! The first review that I read, spurred me on to purchase this book, because my recollections of our team started at Candlestick Park in 1960. Our family of 4, moved to the Oakland-side of the Bay Area in 1958, from Albany, New York, and it was just a coincidence that it worked out that way. I have been a Giants fan from 1961, and I wish I had the earlier memories of Seals Stadium, as the author did. This book, with all the photographs and insights, helps the reader understand how sports, fans & players were, before all the crass commercialism of today!

I met Steve when he came to Texas for the A's vs. Rangers series a few years back and I was working in the radio booth. I was impressed by his baseball knowledge and I so I bought the book. The book is a masterpiece and you got to get it if you are a Giants fan! I a Texas Rangers fan and loved it! Good stuff!

THIS IS A WELL WRITTEN AND ACCUARTAE STORY ABOUT THE MOVE TO THE WEST COAST BY THE GIANTS IN 1958. FIRST IT COVERS THE SEASON MONTH BY MONTH AND THEN EACH LIVING PLAYER, COACH, AND MEDIA ARE INTERVIEWED ON THEIR THOUGHTS ON THE 1958 SEASON. THIS IS GREAT COLLECTION OF RARE AND CANDID INTERVIEWS WITH MAYS, CEPEDA, ALOU AND MANY OTHERS WHO WERE PART OF THAT HISTORIC TRANSITION. ALSO INCLUDED IS THE SCORE OF EACH GAME AND THE CAREER STATS OF THE ENTIRE ROSTER. YOU GET A LOT OF BANG FOR YOUR BUCK WITH THIS DETAILED AMD WELL WRITTEN PIECE OF NOSTALGIA.

this was a very informing book and i loved it. i highly recommend it to anybody

The 1958 San Francisco Giants induce nostalgia not only because this was the first San Francisco Giants team but because they preceded the multiple heartbreaks that have since caused Giants fans to age rapidly.

1958 was before the 1959 collapse, in which the Giants blew a 2-game lead over the Dodgers with a week remaining in the season. It was before Willie McCovey's ninth-inning line drive in Game 7 of the 1962 World Series, smashed with the tying and winning runs on base, was snagged by New York Yankee second baseman Bobby Richardson. It was before the five straight second-place finishes behind the Dodgers and the St. Louis Cardinals in the mid-1960's and before the 1987 flop to the Cardinals in the National League Championship Series after the Giants had taken a 3-2 game lead. It was before the collapse of 1993, in which a 10-game lead over the Atlanta Braves was lost and before Dusty Baker's country club director-like "leadership" tranquilized the team into a ten-year sleepwalk.

The author, Bay Area sportscaster, Steve Bitker, brings us back to a year in which the Giants were new and different to the City, as fresh as a piping hot loaf of bread emerging from the Boudini Bakery overlooking Seals Stadium (players and fans could both enjoy this smell AND the smell of the hops from the nearby Hamms brewery).

The Giants were welcomed by all except for some diehard Seals fans, who mourned the necessary departure of their Pacific Coast League favorites. A-MAYS-ingly enough, the schism between working-class baseball fans and the City's baseball-disdaining jet set, which was exposed during the "ballpark" elections in the 1980's, didn't exist in 1958, as art-lovers took their transistor radios and earplugs into the Opera House in order to simultaneously enjoy both Mozart's "Abduction from the Seraglio" and Willie's thefts of second base.

Bitker was able to find 36 surviving members from the 1958 team who consented to be interviewed for the book. These included Manager Bill Rigney; everyday stars such as Mays, Orlando "Baby Bull" Cepeda and Felipe Alou; pitching aces such as Ruben Gomez, John Antonelli, and Stu Miller; "almost-weres" such as Leon Wagner ("Daddy Wags"); "once-weres" such as Whitey Lockman and Hank Sauer; "would- later-becomes" such as Bill White; "coulda-beens" such as Willie Kirkland, Valmy Thomas, and Andre Rogers; and "we-were-theres" such as Jackie Brandt and Don Taussig.

Bitker also provides an overview of the Giants' departure from declining attendance in New York and of the welcome that they received from the City. He also gives a blow-by-blow account of a remarkable season in which a team, regarded by most analysts as both too young and too old to seriously compete, was in first place for much of the year. It would finish impressively in third place behind the Milwaukee Braves and the Pittsburgh Pirates, but ahead of the rival Dodgers in the standings and would gloriously beat them 16 times (against 6 losses) in head-to-head competition ("WE MURDER THE BUMS", screamed the Chronicle headline, following Gomez's 8-0 victory over them on Opening Day).

But the hatred existing between the two teams starts to dissipate when they no longer share the same metropolitan area. And 1958 was NOT a sign of things to come. The Dodgers would enjoy greater success on the West Coast. And they would leave the Coliseum for a beautiful ballpark at Chavez Ravine while the Giants would leave their beloved (by all except Antonelli) Seals Stadium for a cavernous wind tunnel at Candlestick Point.

Bitker provides information about the curious circumstances that led to the construction of what was commonly believed to be the worst ballpark in the majors, where the Giants roamed for 40 years before returning downtown in 2000 to Pac Bell Park.

But let it never be forgot that the 1958 upstarts evolved into the 1962 pennant winners that came within three feet of besting the mighty Yankees for the world championship. And Giants fans must learn this brutal truth: it will never happen again. Even after Dusty Baker is led to the glue factory, the Giants will never again come as close as they did 40 years ago.

Bitker's narrative shows why. Say what you will about him, owner Horace Stoneham recognized the value of a productive farm system and invested heavily in the Giants` farm system. It responded by producing young stars such as Mays, McCovey, Cepeda, the Alous, and Jim Davenport, all of whom played crucial roles in 1962.

With the advent of free agency, the formula today is often different. But current Giants management is unable or unwilling to buy additional free agent superstars to complement Barry Bonds, while saddled with $170 million worth of debt service on their new privately financed ballpark. A good farm system might ultimately produce low-salaried but high quality championship-caliber youngsters. But there is a sense that Bay Area fans, more jaded than they were in 1958, will not support a youthful team experiencing growing pains for a few losing years while maturing into contenders.

So the Giants' strategy in the "Pac Bell" era has been to siphon off the cream of the farm system in exchange for aging, past-their-prime, low-maintenance veterans such as Eric Davis, Reggie Sanders and Shawon Dunston, in hopes of finding an occasional pearl (Ellis Burks) in the cracked oyster shells. It's a strategy destined to produce a number of 85-90 win seasons (fewer wins should be expected after the departure of the Great Barry) and zero championships.

The strategy is contrary to that which produced a near-champion in 1962, and Giants fans, like Sisyphus, must resign ourselves that for all eternity (or at least for another 15 years or so until the debt on the ballpark is paid off), the team is doomed to disappointment every time it arrives near the top of the mountain.

Until the end of eternity arrives, Giant fans can remain grateful to Bitker for taking us back to 1958 when the world was young.

If you are a Giants fan, you'll love it.