The San Francisco Giants are an American baseball team. The 2009 season was their fifty-second year in the city since their move from New York in 1958. After four consecutive losing seasons, the Giants finished 88–74. Following Peter Magowan's retirement, Bill Neukom served as general managing partner of the Giants. After a season with the fewest home runs of any team since the 1993 Florida Marlins, general manager Brian Sabean said the Giants would attempt to bring in a power hitter as well as strengthening a bullpen that held a 4.45 ERA in 2008, fourteenth in the National League.
After leading the National League Wild Card race for most of the season, the Giants were ultimately passed by the Colorado Rockies. The team finished third in the NL West and second in the Wild Card. Though they missed the playoffs, the Giants surpassed most expectations for their season; for example, Sports Illustrated projected that the Giants would finish with a record of 77–85. Sports Illustrated's Lee Jenkins noted San Francisco's promising farm system (including products Pablo Sandoval and Madison Bumgarner) and the perceived weakness of the NL West as reasons to be optimistic about the Giants' potential. Additionally, the Giants' starting rotation boasted three Cy Young Award winners: Randy Johnson, Tim Lincecum, and Barry Zito. After the season ended, Lincecum won his second straight Cy Young. The Giants would build on their surprising 2009 season the following year, winning the World Series. It would be their first in San Francisco.
Famous quotes containing the words san, francisco, giants and/or season:
“the San Marco Library,
Whence turbulent Italy should draw
Delight in Art whose end is peace,
In logic and in natural law
By sucking at the dugs of Greece.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Mr. Wiggam, I want you to change the policy of The Clarion. I want you to write a story I should have written myself long ago. I want you to tell the people of San Francisco that no city can exist without law and order. Write a story about that flag, write about what verifies and brings a promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. There are some people in this town who don’t seem to know that. Let The Clarion tell them.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)
“We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.... The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.”
—Omar Bradley (1893–1981)
“Only he who has had the good fortune to read them in the nick of time, in the most perceptive and recipient season of life, can give any adequate account of them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)