San Francisco Giants Lifetime Memories, Two Willies to Panda Hats

From the dawn of the first Mays-McCovey memories in 1960, to the long-overdue 3x Championships of the two-thousand teens (and A’s departure), the Giants have been the flagship Bay Area franchise (mostly).

Good ol’ Willie McCovey, who is commemorated with “McCovey Cove”, the stretch of Bay waters beyond the right field wall.

THE 1962 WORLD SERIES SEASON: Being a Central Valley farm kid, with a narrow TV view into the world (we only got 2 fuzzy Fresno channels in the early 60s, and few sporting events were televised anyway), I only became aware of the Giants as a 5 yr old, when my older brothers began chattering about Willie Mays. The Giants had just moved into the new Candlestick Park, and Dad finally took us to a game in ’61. It was a long journey back then (before I-5 and I-580 were built), and we’d augment the wind-swept occasion with trips to Tommy’s Joynt and/or Lefty O’Doul’s for a sandwich lunch/dinner. Since there were few African Americans in the Valley, and no mention of deep-South Jim Crow politics, we were awe-struck by the ethnic and muscular Giants lineup…Mays and McCovey from Alabama, Orlando Cepeda, the Alou brothers (Felipe and Matty), Juan Marichal, Jose Pagan from the Caribbean. There were also a few Southern white-boys (Billy O’Dell, Jim Davenport, Ed Bailey, Bobby Bolin, Gaylord Perry), some Midwesterners (Tom Haller, Chuck Hiller, Harvey Kuenn, Billy Pierce), New Englanders (Stu Miller and Jack Sanford), and a So Cal boy (Mike…