As the reality set in that the Giants might actually make it to—and then win—the 2010 World Series, a wave of palpable electricity crept across San Francisco and invaded every bar, home and neighborhood. Night after night, as the Giants inched closer to victory, growing numbers of elated fans piled into cars, honked horns, hung out of windows and whooped their way through the streets.
At the beginning of the team’s winning streak, fans tried not to get their hopes up too high. Since the Giants moved from New York to San Francisco in 1958, every championship that came within reach slipped away at the last moment. In both 1962 (against the New York Yankees) and 2002 (against the Anaheim Angels), the Giants lost in Game 7. They hadn’t made it to the playoffs since 2003. So by 2010—56 years since the Giants’ last World Series win—there was an acute sense of not wanting to jinx it. (In a perfect expression of this anxiety, the front page of The San Francisco Examiner’s advertising section screamed “Torture is over!” the day after the Giants’ 2010 win.)
The San Francisco Giants celebrate their 3-1 victory to win the World Series over the Texas Rangers in Game 5 of the 2010 MLB World Series at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington on Nov. 1, 2010 in Arlington, Texas. (Elsa/Getty Images)
Where fans weren’t afraid to be vocal in their enthusiasm was when it came to the motley crew of players. The standouts were either remarkably young (Madison Bumgarner was 21, Buster Posey was 23) or defiantly strange. “San Francisco is a ball club with a level of weirdness that works well in its home city,” Sports Illustrated noted at the time. That was an understatement.
There was Brian Wilson with his mohawk, bushy black beard and willfully bizarre interviews, the greatest of which involved him bringing out an almost naked man in a leather bondage mask during an interview with Fox Sports’ The Cheap Seats. There was Tim “The Freak” Lincecum with his stoner-y expression, long hair and practically inhuman pitching style. (The Sunday Telegraph once referred to him as quite simply, a marvel of physics.”) There was Sergio Romo, the Latino pitcher who showed up to the World Series victory parade wearing a Beatles parody T-shirt that said: “The Beaners.” (For the 2012 parade, he famously showed up in one that read: “I JUST LOOK ILLEGAL.”) Even Aubrey Huff was open about wearing a red, rhinestoned thong under his uniform for luck.
Looking back at 2010… What a run. What a season. What a team. #SFGiants pic.twitter.com/seSrmBPeXp
— SFGiants (@SFGiants) August 25, 2018
The fact that the oddest team in Giants history was the one to finally lead the city to World Series victory felt so quintessentially San Francisco. And it only enhanced fans’ sudden sense of invincibility—something that was reflected in the destruction of property that took place in the Mission and other scattered neighborhoods immediately following the defeat of the Texas Rangers in Game 5.
“The night the Giants won was crazy, but not a surprise,” says Mission resident Michael Scanland, who lived on the corner of 24th and Alabama Streets at the time. “You could feel it coming. It was like New Year’s Eve and the Fourth of July, but crazier—just on the edge of dangerous. I remember seeing riot cops lined up on the sidewalk, but they weren’t doing anything and I didn’t think they could have if they wanted to—they were totally outnumbered.”
San Francisco Giants fans celebrate their team’s winning of the World Series against the Detroit Tigers in San Francisco on Oct. 28, 2012. (Kimihiro Hoshino/AFP/Getty Images)
Days later in downtown San Francisco, even larger crowds showed up—more than a million people, in fact—for the team’s victory parade. The reception was so enormous, BART set an all-time single day record for passenger numbers.
Even more inexplicably, the 2010 triumph was just the beginning. Something about that long-overdue victory lit a fuse for Bay Area sports that lasted the entire decade. There were subsequent World Series wins for the Giants in 2012 and 2014; the 49ers made it to the Superbowl in 2013; in 2016, the San Jose Sharks reached the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time. And in a series of wins that ignited the Bay once more, the Golden State Warriors stepped up and seized the NBA championships in 2015, 2017 and 2018.
It wasn’t just the Warriors’ trio of wins that paralleled the Giants’ success; it was the sheer length of time Warriors fans had waited for it—40 years, to be precise. And just as the Giants had a “freak” in Tim Lincecum, the Warriors had the Splash Brothers: Klay Thompson, with his legendarily flawless jumpshots, and Steph Curry, whose ability to make three-pointers from 30 to 40 feet away shifted team strategy in ways that completely baffled opposing teams. “Getting the ball to Curry is so important,” the Wall Street Journal once noted, “that conventional wisdom flies out the window.”
The Golden State Warriors celebrate at the end of Game 6 of the 2015 NBA Finals on June 16, 2015 at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. The Warriors took the best-of-seven series four games to two over the Cavaliers to claim their first title since 1975. (Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images)
As with the Giants, the Warriors went from underdogs to virtually unbeatable almost overnight. By the time Kevin Durant left rivals Oklahoma City Thunder to join the Warriors in 2016, NBA fans and commentators were complaining that the team was too good. “The way Kevin Durant is flowing with this team, how in God’s name is anybody going to stop them?” Stephen A. Smith exclaimed on ESPN in January 2017. “I’m looking at the Golden State Warriors and thinking, ‘Dammit, that’s just not fair!’”
Though the decade in local sports will be most remembered in the history books for its remarkable successes, at the same time, Bay Area sports couldn’t help but be impacted by the demographic and economic shifts that defined the period. The 49ers’ move to Santa Clara and the Raiders’ imminent exit to Vegas hurt fans. The A’s, after losing all five of their postseason appearances in the decade, continue to plan for a new stadium. But no base has felt the impact harder than longtime East Bay Warriors fans who couldn’t help but feel betrayed by the team’s 2019 move from Oakland Arena to San Francisco’s brand new Chase Center—a shift that was accompanied by ticket price hikes and a wealthier, whiter fan base.
With Bruce Bochy’s recent retirement as Giants manager, as well as Kevin Durant’s exit from the Warriors and Steph Curry’s hiatus due to a hand injury, there is a sense that it’s the end of an era for Bay Area sports teams. Whether or not that turns out to be true, fans will continue to revel in the spectacular wins of this decade for many years to come. The fact that it all started with a group of oddballs, on the back of one of the longest losing streaks in sporting history, just makes it all the more extraordinary.
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