The San Francisco Giants are a Major League Baseball team based in San Francisco, California, that currently play in the National League West Division. One of the oldest of the MLB teams, the Giants hold the distinction of having won the most games of any team in the history of organized sports. The Giants also have the most members in the Baseball Hall of Fame. The Giants played in New York through the 1957 season, after which they moved west to California to become the San Francisco Giants.

In 2000, after 40 years at Candlestick Park, the Giants bid a bittersweet farewell to their old home and relocated to a new, privately financed downtown stadium, a long-advocated move. AT&T Park (originally Pacific Bell Park and later SBC Park) sits on the shores of China Basin (often referred to as McCovey Cove by Giants fans) at the corner of 3rd and King Streets (with an official address of 24 Willie Mays Plaza to honor the long-time Giant). Regardless of anything that might happen on the field of play, this move represented an entirely new era for the Giants and their fans. Whereas the team used to occupy what was widely regarded as the least baseball-friendly stadium in all of Major League Baseball, a throwback to the era of suburban, multi-purpose, concrete “cookie-cutter” stadiums that so many teams moved to during the 1960s and 70s, their new home is regarded as one of the better venues in all of professional sports.

San Francisco Giants tickets are routinely hard to come by. The Giants routinely sell out this nearly 43,000-seat stadium, whereas it was not uncommon for them to have a paid attendance of less than 10,000 in Candlestick’s nearly 60,000 seating capacity, although by the 1999 season the Giants managed about 25,000 fans a game. The franchise since the move annually vies for highest MLB season attendance, in contrast to being often threatened with having the league-low figure before. While still breezy in the summer time in comparison to other MLB parks, AT&T Park has been a consensus success and has developed the reputation as a “pitcher’s park.” Its state-of-the-art design minimizes wind-chill, it is well served by mass transit, and it has spectacular views of the bay and the city skyline (which even Candlestick had until it was redesigned in the early 1970s to accommodate the 49ers). AT&T Park is the centerpiece of a renaissance in San Francisco’s South Beach and Mission Bay neighborhoods. But most important to Giants fans, the new ballpark means they no longer have to worry about their team moving away from San Francisco, at least not any time soon.