Historically Connected To The Yankees, San Francisco Giants Finally Win A Series At Yankee Stadium

The San Francisco Giants hold a long and storied history with various links to the New York Yankees but the one thing they never attained was a successful regular season visit to Yankee Stadium that ended with a series win.

At least not until Sunday, though you might be hard-pressed to find anyone actually aware of it, though they certainly appreciated it, especially after Jung Ho Lee continued to be an early star with two homers into the right field seats and three homers there in a series that was played in various amounts of rain before Lee homered into 50-something degree winds.

“I just heard that, it’s pretty remarkable,” said manager Bob Melvin, who was a Yankee for nine games in 1994.

“It’s the New York Yankees and it was a good test for us,” starter Logan Webb said after settling down after the Yankees went up by three runs.

In the big picture scheme of things, the comeback continued a strong start for the Giants, who are 11-4 through 15 games, marking their best beginning since winning 13 of 15 at the outset of 2003 and Lee is fueling things after missing most of last season with a shoulder injury.

“I want to put a lot of meaning in that as a team that we came over and then had a good series,” Lee said through a translator after hammering a mislocated slider and curveball from Carlos Rodon into the seats.

“I’m a little biased but I think he’s one of the best at putting the in play,” Webb said.

It was probably the best time the Giants ever experienced at any version of Yankee Stadium against a team with several connections to them and a comedic connection to the area in the form of an WFAN caller wondering about if the baseball Giants ever met up with the football Giants, who also spent time at the original Yankee Stadium.

Among the real connections are the fact they once shared the same ballpark at the Polo Grounds, a location that is a short walk over the Macombs Dam Bridge from the location of Yankee Stadium, where the Yankees moved to the Bronx after John McGraw was angered with Babe Ruth taking fans away from watching the Giants.

The Giants and Yankees also shared the spotlight of the World Series on seven occasions, five fewer times than the Yankees met the Dodgers in the Fall Classic. The Giants won the first two encounters in 1921 and 1922 before Babe Ruth hit .368 in 1923 and Joe DiMaggio won two titles in the early stages of his career while Lou Gehrig’s was tragically winding down, resulting in him retiring in 2019 and saying this about the Giants giving him a gift during his famous “Luckiest Man” speech in 1939:

“When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift – that’s something.”

The Giants also lost to the Yankees in 1951, going straight from Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard Around the World off Ralph Branca” to a six-game Fall Classic and then dropped the 1962 series in their first pennant in San Francisco when the Yankees won a 1-0 game in Game 7 when Willie McCovey lined out to Bobby Richardson to end it.

Before the current interleague play schedule where every team alternates visits, the Giants made one trip to the previous Yankee Stadium in 2002, and appearances in 2013 and 2016. In 2002, Barry Bonds was coming off his 73-homer season and hit a memorable homer into the upper deck before getting walked four times in the series finale when the Yankees scored three off Felix Rodriguez and Rob Nen.

After winning the first two of their three titles in New York, the Giants were shutout twice in 2013, lost twice in 2016 around the time the Yankees were sellers at the trade deadline. Two years ago, they ended their win by getting Giancarlo Stanton to hit into a double play only to be shut out in Jhonny Brito’s first career start.

This time, the Giants’ nice weekend in the Bronx gave them a needed hot start in the NL West, where the Dodgers and Padres are establishing the pace and the Diamondbacks are trying to return to the postseason after losing on a tiebreaker at the end of last season.

“To be to come back and win a game like that and then hold on at the end, which can be difficult to do, it’s pretty rewarding,” Melvin said. “It says a lot about our team to this point.”