San Jose Giants

San Jose Giants Founded in 1962 San Jose, California
Team logo Cap insignia
Class-level
Current	Class A - Advanced
Previous	Triple-A (1977–1978)
Minor league affiliations
League	California League
Division	Northern Division
Previous leagues	Pacific Coast League (1977–1978)
Major league affiliations
Current	San Francisco Giants (1988–present)
Previous	Montreal Expos (1982) Co-Op (1981) Seattle Mariners (1978–1980) Oakland Athletics (1977) Cleveland Indians (1975–1976) Kansas City Royals (1970–1974) Los Angeles/California Angels (1962–1969)
Minor league titles
League titles (9)	1962 1967 1979 1998 2001* 2005 2007 2009 2010 *Co-champion
Division titles (9)	1995 1996 1998 1999 2001 2005 2007 2009 2010
Team data
Nickname	San Jose Giants (1988–present)
Previous names	San Jose Bees (1983–1987) San Jose Expos (1982) San Jose Missions (1977–1981) San Jose Bees (1962–1976)
Ballpark	San Jose Municipal Stadium (1988–present)
Owner(s)/ Operator(s)	San Francisco Giants 55% / Progress Sports Management 45%[1]
Manager	Nestor Rojas
General Manager	Mark Wilson

The San Jose Giants are a minor league baseball team in San Jose, California, USA. They are a Class A - Advanced team in the Northern Division of the California League, and have been a farm team of the San Francisco Giants since 1988 and have played continuously since 1962 under several different names/affiliations. Home games are played at San Jose Municipal Stadium.

Team history

A San Jose Giants game in 1994

San Jose, California has hosted multiple minor league baseball teams throughout its history. The current lineage can be traced back to the San Jose Bees who joined the California League in 1962 as an affiliate of the expansion Los Angeles Angels. They switched to a Kansas City Royals affiliate from 1970-1974 and a Cleveland Indians affiliate in 1975-1976.

San Jose Missions logo

The Sacramento Solons then leased the San Jose affiliate for two seasons, when they were known as the San Jose Missions and played in the Pacific Coast League as an affiliate of the Oakland Athletics and Seattle Mariners. They returned to the California League the following season and became a Montreal Expos affiliate in 1982. The team then became an unaffiliated independent team until it got its current affiliation with the San Francisco Giants in 1988.

Since the team's inception, the San Jose Giants have been one of the more successful teams in the California League. They captured the league championship in 1998, 2001, 2005, 2007, 2009 and most recently in 2010. In 2005 and once again in 2007 after being down 2-0 in the best of 5 series, came back home and won the final three games over Lake Elsinore Storm to claim the Championship Series 3-2. (In 2001 the Giants were declared co-champions with the Lake Elsinore Storm after the final series was cancelled after the September 11 terrorist attacks). The team has also made the California League playoffs numerous times and won the Northern Division championship 8 times. The Giants also had the best record of any minor league class A team in the 1990s.

The Giants success has shown at the turnstile as attendance has increased 14 of the last 17 years. The SJ Giants are now in their 22nd season being affiliated with the San Francisco Giants. This makes the SJ Giants affiliation the longest currently enjoyed by a team in the California League. 2008 marked a second highest team record attendance of 183,788 for the season.

San Jose Giants uniforms

San Jose Giants have developed more than 190 major league players, including Buster Posey, Tim Lincecum, Jonathan Sánchez, Matt Cain, Brian Horwitz, Noah Lowry, Merkin Valdez, Chad Zerbe, Russ Ortiz, Bill Mueller, Doug Mirabelli, Rod Beck, Joe Nathan, Francisco Liriano, Shawn Estes, Emmanuel Burriss, Andrés Torres, Pablo Sandoval, and Madison Bumgarner. In addition, many players on the Kansas City Royals teams of the 1970s and 1980s, such as George Brett, Amos Otis, and Dennis Leonard, knew their way to San Jose.

San Jose Giants former cap logo until 2011

San Jose Giants games are very much rooted in the older traditions of baseball. Fans sit very close to the field, general admission seating is available for games, players sign autographs before every game, and the outfield walls are lined with advertisements much like the stadiums of the 1920s and 1930s were. A simple scoreboard shows basic game data like runs, strikes, balls, and outs. This was updated in 2005 to feature lights to denote the count rather than numbers much like Fenway Park in Boston. The out-of-town scoreboard for other California League games is also hand hung. In 2006, the simple scoreboard was replaced with a 21-by-15-foot video screen costing $500,000,^[2] and the hand hung out-of-town scoreboard is no longer used. Between innings, fans are treated to a variety of games and entertainment, such as kids' air guitar, a child footrace around the bases, or throwing a baseball at a truck's headlights for prizes. The San Jose Giants also added a mascot, Gigante, for the 2006 season. Before Gigante's introduction, San Francisco Giants mascot Lou Seal made occasional appearances.

San Jose Giants games were often the home of Krazy George. George was a well known "fan" in the San Francisco Bay Area who attended not only SJ Giants games, but also many of the MLB, NFL, NHL, and NCAA football games in the region. His claim to fame is being the creator of "the wave" in Oakland on October 15, 1981 where fans rise and wave their arms in sequence around a stadium thus created a wave like effect when viewed from a distance.

Current roster

Notable alumni

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to San Jose Giants.

• Official website
• Baseball Reference