Position in the Sporlight: San Francisco

I haven’t taken on a PITS in some time, and it’s time for me to get back in the game, taking a look at San Francisco. It may be easy to pick a role, depending on your favorite sport. If you are a football fan, than this is a slam dunk: 49ers quarterback. You could even make a case, perhaps for their wide receivers. If you are a baseball fan, however, the position is clearly that of the Giants and their all-star sluggers. How could someone turn their back on the likes of Joe Montana and Steve Young? Consider it the siren song on Willie Mays, Willie McCovey and Barry Bonds. The Position in the Spotlight for San Francisco is the Giants Outfield.
When the Giants moved to San Francisco, they brought with them someone who would eventually become one of, if not the best, player in the history of the league, Willie Mays. Mays was the original 5 tool player, amassing a batting average of .302, 660 home runs, 338 stolen bases and 11 Gold gloves in his career, with most of those stats earned between 1958, when the team moved to the Bay, to 1972, when he was traded to the Mets.
The Giants of the early 60s were a promising team fraught with future Hall of Famers. Orlando Cepeda, a rookie of the year and eventual first baseman was labeled as a “Utility Player” on the 1961 version of the Giants, according to their Baseball-Reference page. Why? They have Mays in the outfield, Felipe Alou, a stud in his own right, mostly for his lead-off hitting, playing in right, and Willie McCovey, another 23 year old playing first. Cepeda would go on to have a HOF career, eventually transitioning from the outfield to first, taking over for McCovey. Cepeda hit almost 400 homers in his career, with a .297 average.
McCovey, too, would spend most of his career at first, but for a few glorious seasons in the Giants outfield. McCovey’s lefthanded power stroke was so much that they named the body of water behind the right field fence at the Giants new AT&T Park “McCovey Cove”. The other Willie in San Francisco spent almost the entirety of his career by the Bay, save for a couple seasons in San Diego and part of a year in Oakland. McCovey had 521 homers in his career despite only managing a .270 average for his career.
The Giants’ outfield has always been a family affair. There have been multiple generations of Alous on the team, for example. The same was no different in the 90s, when Barry Bonds came to join the team that his father, Bobby Bonds, played for. In a Giants uniform, he broke the single season home run record, the career home run record and the hearts of a nation when he was implicated in baseball’s ongoing steroid investigation. Despite the obvious blight on his record, there is no doubt that Bonds was one of the greatest hitters in the history of the league.
The Giants after Bonds hope there isn’t a lengthy gap between future Hall of Famers in the outfield, though at this time, it doesn’t appear they have that type of guy, which is too bad.
Something that should be noted is that all of the players I mentioned were either African American or dark-skinned Hispanics. Given the era in which many played, the Giants did an exemplary job employing minorities and bucking what, in the 60s, was still a trend of latent racism. Even today, Randy Winn and Fred Lewis continue the trend of African Americans in the Giants outfield in a period when baseball’s popularity is waning among their race. Not only has the Giants outfield been breathtakingly skilled, but they have been progressive and culturally significant as well.

Honorable Mention:
49ers QB: Joe Montana and Steve Young are two of the best QBs in the history of the game. That said, the 49ers haven’t really excelled at the position outside of those two. IT’s hard to justify Jeff Garcia as the third best player at the position being spotlit given the alternative. Still, 5 rings between the two can’t be ignored.
49ers WR: Jerry Rice and John Taylor helped Joe Montana immeasurably, while Terrell Owens made Garcia look better than he was. the team hopes to get the same production from Michael Crabtree in the near future.
Giants SP: How about Juan Marichal, Gaylord Perry and Jason Schmidt, among the teams top strikeout leaders of all time, and they have Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum to look forward to in the immediate future.