1.
Candlestick Park
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Candlestick Park was an outdoor sports and entertainment stadium located in San Francisco, California, in the Bayview Heights area. The stadium was built as the home of Major League Baseballs San Francisco Giants. It was also the field of the San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League from 1971 to 2013. The 49ers moved to Levis Stadium before the beginning of the 2014 NFL season, the stadium was situated at Candlestick Point on the western shore of the San Francisco Bay. Due to its next to the bay, strong winds often swirled down into the stadium. The surface of the field was natural bluegrass, but for nine seasons, from 1970 to 1978, a sliding pit configuration, with dirt cut-outs only around the bases, was installed in 1971, primarily to keep the dust down in the breezy conditions. Following the 1978 football season, the turf was replaced with natural grass. When the New York Giants arrived in San Francisco in 1958, they played their games at the old Seals Stadium at 16th. As part of the agreement regarding the Giants relocation to the west coast, most of the land at Candlestick Point was purchased from Charles Harney, a local contractor. Harney purchased the land in 1952 for a quarry and industrial development and he made a profit of over $2 million when he sold the land for the stadium. Harney received a contract to build the stadium. The entire deal was the subject of a Grand Jury investigation in 1958, ground was broken in 1958 for the stadium and the Giants selected the name of Candlestick Park, after a name-the-park contest on March 3,1959. Prior to the choice of the name, its site had been shown on maps as the generic Bay View Stadium. It was the first modern stadium, as it was the first to be built entirely of reinforced concrete. The stadium was enclosed during the winter of 1970–71 in preparation for the 49ers who were moving from their long time home of Kezar Stadium, with stands built around the outfield. The result was that the speed dropped marginally, but often swirled around throughout the stadium. Candlestick played host to two Major League Baseball All-Star Games in its life as home for the Giants, the stadium hosted the first of two games in 1961 and later hosted the 1984 All-Star Game. The Giants played a total of six postseason series at Candlestick, they played host to the NLCS in 1971,1987, and 1989, the World Series in 1962 and 1989, the 49ers hosted eight NFC Championship games during their time at Candlestick
2.
San Francisco
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San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California. It is the birthplace of the United Nations, the California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856, after three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. Politically, the city votes strongly along liberal Democratic Party lines, San Francisco is also the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co. Dolby, Airbnb, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Yelp, Pinterest, Twitter, Uber, Lyft, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation, as of 2016, San Francisco is ranked high on world liveability rankings. The earliest archaeological evidence of habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the system gradually ended, and its lands became privatized. In 1835, Englishman William Richardson erected the first independent homestead, together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, and the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7,1846, during the Mexican–American War, montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography. The California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers, with their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849. The promise of fabulous riches was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor. Some of these approximately 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships, saloons and hotels, many were left to rot, by 1851 the harbor was extended out into the bay by wharves while buildings were erected on piles among the ships. By 1870 Yerba Buena Cove had been filled to create new land, buried ships are occasionally exposed when foundations are dug for new buildings. California was quickly granted statehood in 1850 and the U. S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate, silver discoveries, including the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, further drove rapid population growth. With hordes of fortune seekers streaming through the city, lawlessness was common, and the Barbary Coast section of town gained notoriety as a haven for criminals, prostitution, entrepreneurs sought to capitalize on the wealth generated by the Gold Rush
3.
San Francisco Giants
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The San Francisco Giants are an American professional baseball franchise based in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1883 as the New York Gothams, and renamed three years later to the New York Giants, the team moved to San Francisco in 1958. The Giants compete in Major League Baseball as a club of the National League West division. As one of the longest-established and most successful baseball teams. The team was the first major team based in New York City. They have won 23 NL pennants and have played in 20 World Series competitions – both NL records, the Giants eight World Series championships rank second in the National League and are tied for fourth overall. The Giants have played in the World Series 20 times –14 times in New York, six in San Francisco –, the Giants franchise has the most Hall of Fame players in all of professional baseball. The Giants rivalry with the Dodgers is one of the longest-standing, the teams began their rivalry as the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers, respectively, before both franchises moved west for the 1958 season. The Giants have won six pennants and three World Series championships since arriving in San Francisco and those three championships have come in 2010,2012, and most recently in 2014, having defeated the Kansas City Royals four games to three during the 2014 World Series. The Giants began as the baseball club founded by millionaire tobacconist John B. Day and veteran amateur baseball player Jim Mutrie, the Gothams, as the Giants were originally known, entered the National League in 1883, while their other club, the Metropolitans played in the American Association. Nearly half of the original Gotham players were members of the disbanded Troy Trojans, Louis Browns in a pre-modern-era World Series. They repeated as champions the year with a pennant and Championship victory over the Brooklyn Bridegrooms. It is said that one particularly satisfying victory over the Philadelphia Phillies, Mutrie. From then on, the club was known as the Giants, the Giants original home stadium, the Polo Grounds, dates from this early era. It was originally located north of Central Park adjacent to 5th and 6th Avenues and 110th and 112th Streets, the Giants were a powerhouse in the late 1880s, winning their first two National League Pennants and World Championships in 1888 and 1889. But nearly all of the Giants stars jumped to the upstart Players League, whose New York franchise was named the Giants. The new team built a stadium next door to the Polo Grounds
4.
Major League Baseball
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Major League Baseball is a professional baseball organization, the oldest of the four major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada. A total of 30 teams now play in the National League and American League, the NL and AL operated as separate legal entities from 1876 and 1901 respectively. After cooperating but remaining legally separate entities since 1903, the merged into a single organization led by the Commissioner of Baseball in 2000. The organization also oversees Minor League Baseball, which comprises about 240 teams affiliated with the Major League clubs, with the World Baseball Softball Confederation, MLB manages the international World Baseball Classic tournament. Baseballs first professional team was founded in Cincinnati in 1869,30 years after Abner Doubleday supposedly invented the game of baseball, the first few decades of professional baseball were characterized by rivalries between leagues and by players who often jumped from one team or league to another. The period before 1920 in baseball was known as the dead-ball era, Baseball survived a conspiracy to fix the 1919 World Series, which came to be known as the Black Sox Scandal. The sport rose in popularity in the 1920s, and survived potential downturns during the Great Depression, shortly after the war, baseballs color barrier was broken by Jackie Robinson. The 1950s and 1960s were a time of expansion for the AL and NL, then new stadiums, Home runs dominated the game during the 1990s, and media reports began to discuss the use of anabolic steroids among Major League players in the mid-2000s. In 2006, an investigation produced the Mitchell Report, which implicated many players in the use of performance-enhancing substances, today, MLB is composed of thirty teams, twenty-nine in the United States and one in Canada. Baseball broadcasts are aired on television, radio, and the Internet throughout North America, MLB has the highest season attendance of any sports league in the world with more than 73 million spectators in 2015. MLB is governed by the Major League Baseball Constitution and this document has undergone several incarnations since 1875, with the most recent revisions being made in 2012. Under the direction of the Commissioner of Baseball, MLB hires and maintains the sports umpiring crews, and negotiates marketing, labor, MLB maintains a unique, controlling relationship over the sport, including most aspects of Minor League Baseball. This ruling has been weakened only slightly in subsequent years, the weakened ruling granted more stability to the owners of teams and has resulted in values increasing at double-digit rates. There were several challenges to MLBs primacy in the sport between the 1870s and the Federal League in 1916, the last attempt at a new league was the aborted Continental League in 1960. The chief executive of MLB is the commissioner, Rob Manfred, the chief operating officer is Tony Petitti. There are five other executives, president, chief officer, chief legal officer, chief financial officer. The multimedia branch of MLB, which is based in Manhattan, is MLB Advanced Media and this branch oversees MLB. com and each of the 30 teams websites. Its charter states that MLB Advanced Media holds editorial independence from the league, MLB Productions is a similarly structured wing of the league, focusing on video and traditional broadcast media
5.
Willie Mays
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He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979, his first year of eligibility. Mays shares the record of most appearances in the All-Star Games,24, with Hank Aaron, in appreciation of his All-Star record, Ted Williams said They invented the All-Star Game for Willie Mays. In 1999, Mays placed second on The Sporting Newss List of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, later that year, he was also elected to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. Mays is one of five National League players to have had eight consecutive 100-RBI seasons, along with Mel Ott, Sammy Sosa, Chipper Jones, and Albert Pujols. Mays hit over 50 home runs in 1955 and 1965, representing the longest time span between 50-plus home run seasons for any player in Major League Baseball history and his final Major League Baseball appearance came on October 16 during Game 3 of the 1973 World Series. Mays was born in Westfield, Alabama, just outside Fairfield and his father, Cat Mays, was a talented baseball player with the Negro team for the local iron plant. His mother, Annie Satterwhite, was a basketball and track star in high school. His parents never married each other, as a baby, Mays was cared for by his mothers younger sisters Sarah and Ernestine. Sarah became the female role model in Mays life. His father exposed him to baseball at an age. At age 10, Mays was allowed to sit on the bench of his fathers League games, Mays played multiple sports at Fairfield Industrial High School, averaging a then-record 17 points a game in basketball and more than 40 yards a punt in football, while also playing quarterback. Mays graduated from Fairfield in 1950, Mays professional baseball career began in 1947, while he was still in high school and played briefly with the Chattanooga Choo-Choos in Tennessee during the summer. A short time later, Mays left the Choo-Choos and returned to his state to join the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro American League. Mays helped them win their pennant and advance to the 1948 Negro League World Series, Mays hit a respectable.262 for the season, but it was also his excellent fielding and baserunning that made him a standout. By playing professionally with the Black Barons, Mays jeopardized his opportunities to high school sports in Alabama. This created some problems for him with school administrators at Fairfield. Over the next years, a number of Major League baseball franchises sent scouts to watch him play. The first was the Boston Braves, the scout who discovered him, Bud Maughn, had been following him for over a year and referred him to the Braves, who then packaged a deal which called for $7,500 down and $7,500 in 30 days
6.
Juan Marichal
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Juan Antonio Marichal Sánchez is a Dominican former professional baseball player. He played as a pitcher in Major League Baseball most notably for the San Francisco Giants. Marichal was known for his leg kick, pinpoint control and intimidation tactics. Marichal also played for the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers for the two seasons of his career. Marichal was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1983, Juan Marichal was born on October 20,1937 in the small farming village of Laguna Verde, Dominican Republic, the youngest of Francisco and Natividad Marichals four children. He has two brothers, Gonzalo and Rafael, and a sister named Maria and his father died of an unknown illness when Marichal was three years old. His house did not have electricity, but food was plentiful since his family owned a farm, as a child, Marichal worked on the farm daily, and was responsible for taking care of his familys horses, donkeys, and goats. He lived near the Yaque del Norte River, and often spent time swimming and fishing, one day, while Marichal was playing by the river, he fell unconscious due to poor digestion, and was in a coma for nine days. Doctors did not expect him to survive, but he regained consciousness after his family gave him steam baths by doctors orders. His older brother Gonzalo instilled a love of baseball in young Marichal, and taught him the fundamentals of pitching, fielding, every weekend, Marichal played the sport with his brother and friends. For their games, they found golf balls and paid the local shoemaker one peso to sew thick cloth around the ball to make it the proper size and they employed branches from a wassama tree for bats, and canvas tarps for gloves. Among his childhood playmates were the Alou brothers, Felipe, Jesús, and Matty, from the age of six, Marichal aspired to become a professional baseball player, but his mother discouraged this, instead urging him to get an education. At the time, there were no players from the Dominican Republic in Major League Baseball, at age 11, he briefly held a job cutting sugar cane for the J. W. Tatem Shipping conglomerate. In 1954, sixteen-year-old Marichal joined a league in Monte Cristi. Although he began at shortstop, Marichal switched to pitcher after taking inspiration from Bombo Ramos of the Dominican national team and he left high school after being recruited to play for the United Fruit Company team in 1956. Marichals delivery was renowned for one of the fullest windups in modern baseball, Marichal maintained this delivery his entire career, and photographs taken near his retirement show the vertical kick only diminished. The windup was the key to his delivery in that he was able to conceal the type of pitch until it was on its way. Marichal was discovered by Ramfis Trujillo, the son of late Dominican dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, Ramfis was the primary sponsor of the Dominican Air Force Baseball Team, against which Marichal pitched a 2–1 victory game in his native Monte Cristi
7.
Willie McCovey
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Willie Lee McCovey, nicknamed Mac, Big Mac, and Stretch, is a former Major League Baseball first baseman. He played nineteen seasons for the San Francisco Giants, and three more for the San Diego Padres and Oakland Athletics, between 1959 and 1980 and he batted and threw left-handed and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1986. One of the most intimidating power hitters of his era, McCovey was called the scariest hitter in baseball by pitcher Bob Gibson, an assessment with which Reggie Jackson concurred. Prior to playing for the San Francisco Giants, McCovey played for a Giants farm club in Dallas, Texas that was part of the Class AA Southern League. In that league, he did not participate when his team played in Shreveport and he later played for the Pacific Coast League Phoenix Giants just prior to joining the San Francisco Giants. He then took National League Rookie of the Year honors while playing in just 52 games and he had a 22-game hitting streak, setting the mark for San Francisco Giants rookies that still stands, just four short of the all-time team record. Three years later, he helped the Giants to the 1962 World Series against the New York Yankees, perhaps McCoveys best-known moment in baseball came in the bottom of the 9th of Game 7, with 2 outs and the Giants trailing 1–0. With Willie Mays on second base and Matty Alou on third, McCovey scorched a hard line drive that was snared by the Yankees second baseman Bobby Richardson, ending the series with a Yankees win. That would turn out to be the closest McCovey would get to playing on a World Series Championship team, McCovey spent many years at the heart of the Giants batting order along with fellow Hall-of-Famer Willie Mays. His best year statistically was 1969 when he hit 45 home runs, had 126 RBI, in 1974, McCovey was traded to the San Diego Padres, without him, the Giants fortunes declined. Near the end of the 1976 season, the Oakland Athletics purchased his contract, McCovey returned to the Giants in 1977. With Hank Aaron and Frank Robinson having retired at the end of the 1976 season with 755 and 586 home runs respectively, one was a grand slam and he became the first National Leaguer to hit seventeen. At age 39, he had 28 home runs and 86 RBI and was named the Comeback Player of the Year. This home run gave McCovey the distinction, along with Ted Williams, Rickey Henderson, and Omar Vizquel of homering in four different decades, the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. McCovey is one of only 29 players in history to date to have appeared in Major League baseball games in four decades. In his 22-year career, McCovey batted.270, with 521 home runs and 1,555 RBI,1,229 runs scored,2,211 hits,353 doubles,46 triples, a.374 on-base percentage and a.515 slugging percentage. He also hit 18 grand slam home runs in his career, McCovey was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1986. It was his first year of eligibility and he appeared on 346 of 425 ballots cast, in 1999, he ranked 56th on The Sporting News list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, and was nominated as a finalist for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team
8.
Road (sports)
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A road game or away game is a sports game where the specified team is not the host and must travel to another venue. Most professional teams represent cities or towns and amateur sports teams often represent academic institutions, each team has a location where it practices during the season and where it hosts games. When a team is not the host, it must travel to games. Thus, when a team is not hosting a game, the team is described as the team, the visiting team, or the away team. The venue in which the game is played is described as the stadium or the road. The host team is said to be the home team, major sporting events, if not held at a neutral venue, are often over several legs at each teams home ground, so that neither team has an advantage over the other. Occasionally, the team may not have to travel very far at all to a road game. These matches often become local derbies, a few times a year, a road team may even be lucky enough to have the road game played at their own home stadium or arena. This is prevalent in college athletics where many schools will play in regional leagues or groundshare. The related term true road game has seen increasing use in U. S. college sports in the 21st century, while regular-season tournaments and other special events have been part of college sports from their creation, the 21st century has seen a proliferation of such events. These are typically held at sites, with some of them taking place outside the contiguous U. S. or even outside the country entirely. In turn, this has led to the use of true road game to refer to contests played at one home venue. In some association football leagues, particularly in Europe, the teams fans sit in their own section. Depending on the stadium, they will either sit in a designated section or be separated from the home fans by a cordon of police officers. However, in the leagues in England, supporters may be free to mix. When games are played at a site, for instance the FA Cup final in England which is always played at Wembley Stadium. This results in each team occupying one half of the stadium and this is different from other sports, particularly in North America, where very few fans travel to games played away from their home stadium. Home and away fans are not separated at these games
9.
Los Angeles Angels
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The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim are an American professional baseball team based in Anaheim, California. The Angels compete in Major League Baseball as a club of the American League West division. The Angels have played games at Angel Stadium of Anaheim since 1966. Wrigley, the owner of the Chicago Cubs at the time, in 2009, the Angels won the AL West division championship for the third straight season. The team name started in 1892, in 1903, the name continued in L. A. through the PCL. After the Angels joined the Major Leagues, some players from the Angels PCL team joined the Major League Angels in 1961. The Angels were one of two teams established as a result of the 1961 Major League Baseball expansion, along with the second incarnation of the Washington Senators. The team then moved in 1962 to newly built Dodger Stadium, which the Angels referred to as Chavez Ravine, the teams founder, entertainer Gene Autry, owned the franchise for its first 36 years. During Autrys ownership, the made the playoffs three times, but never won the pennant. When The Walt Disney Company took control of the team in 1997, it extensively renovated Anaheim Stadium, the City of Anaheim contributed $30 million to the $118 million renovation with a renegotiated lease providing that the names of both the stadium and team contain the word Anaheim. The team was renamed the Anaheim Angels and became a subsidiary of Disney Sports, under Disneys ownership and the leadership of manager Mike Scioscia, the Angels won their first pennant and World Series championship in 2002. In 2005, new owner Arturo Moreno added Los Angeles to the name in order to better tap into the teams history. He also stated that as Los Angeles is the second largest market in the U. S. its addition would benefit the team greatly. In compliance with the terms of its lease with the city of Anaheim, which required Anaheim be a part of the teams name, local media in Southern California tend to omit a geographic identifier and refer to the team as the Angels or as the Halos. The Associated Press, the most prominent news service in the U. S. refers to the team as the Los Angeles Angels, the mantra Win One for the Cowboy is a staple that is deeply rooted in Angels history for fans. The saying refers to the Angels founder and previous owner, Gene Autry, years went by as the team experienced many losses just strikes away from American League pennants. Autrys #26 was retired as the 26th man on the field for the Angels, Angel Stadium of Anaheim is nicknamed The Big A. It has a section in center field nicknamed the California Spectacular, each game begins with the song Calling All Angels by Train being played on the P. A. with Norman Greenbaums Spirit in the Sky being played during the teams starting lineup announcement
10.
National League
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Both leagues currently have 15 teams. The two league champions of 1903 arranged to compete against each other in the inaugural World Series, after the 1904 champions failed to reach a similar agreement, the two leagues formalized the World Series as an arrangement between the leagues. National League teams have won 48 of the 112 World Series contested from 1903 to 2016, the 2016 National League champions are the Chicago Cubs. By 1875, the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players was dangerously weak, additionally, Hulbert had a problem—five of his star players were threatened with expulsion from the NAPBBP because Hulbert had signed them to his club using what were considered questionable means. Hulbert had a vested interest in creating his own league. After recruiting St. Louis privately, four western clubs met in Louisville, Kentucky, Boston Red Stockings, the dominant team in the N. A. Hartford Dark Blues from the N. A. Mutual of New York from the N. A. St. Louis Brown Stockings from the N. A, the only strong club from 1875 excluded in 1876 was a second one in Philadelphia, often called the White Stockings or Phillies. The first game in National League history was played on April 22,1876, at Philadelphias Jefferson Street Grounds, 25th & Jefferson, the new leagues authority was tested after the first season. The National League operated with six clubs during 1877 and 1878, over the next several years, various teams joined and left the struggling league. By 1880, six of the eight members had folded. The two remaining original NL franchises, Boston and Chicago, remain in operation today as the Atlanta Braves, in 1883 the New York Gothams and Philadelphia Phillies began National League play. Both teams remain in the NL today, the Phillies in their original city, the NL encountered its first strong rival organization when the American Association began play in 1882. The A. A. played in cities where the NL did not have teams, offered Sunday games and alcoholic beverages in locales where permitted, the National League and the American Association participated in a version of the World Series seven times during their ten-year coexistence. These contests were less organized than the modern Series, lasting as few as three games and as many as fifteen, with two Series ending in disputed ties, the NL won four times and the A. A. only once, in 1886. Starting with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1887, the National League began to raid the American Association for franchises to replace NL teams that folded and this undercut the stability of the A. A. Other new leagues that rose to compete with the National League were the Union Association, the Union Association was established in 1884 and folded after playing only one season, its league champion St. Louis Maroons joining the NL. The NL suffered many defections of star players to the Players League, the Brooklyn, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and New York franchises of the NL absorbed their Players League counterparts. The labor strife of 1890 hastened the downfall of the American Association, after the 1891 season, the A. A. disbanded and merged with the NL, which became known legally for the next decade as the National League and American Association
