San Francisco Giants: Remembering Peter Magowan’s lasting impact

The San Francisco Giants lost an important family member with the passing of Peter Magowan, who left a lasting impact on the franchise and city.

It’s estimated that more than one million people took to the streets to celebrate the San Francisco Giants‘ historic championship run in 2010. Those same fans were treated to another World Series parade in 2012. Then one more in 2014.

And while those fans celebrated the heroics of Tim Lincecum, Buster Posey, and Madison Bumgarner, the Giants organization’s most important hero never pitched an inning or reached base. He never put on a uniform and, yet, those three parades down Market Street–along with countless other Giants memories–would have been impossible without Peter Magowan, the fan who saved the Giants.

Magowan passed away on Sunday at the age of 76 after a long battle with cancer. His impact on both the team and the city will be felt for generations to come thanks to his leadership, vision, and love for the Giants.

In 1992, all signs pointed to the Giants leaving the city by the Bay. With a buyer who wanted to move the team to Tampa Bay, Florida in place, San Franciscans prepared to lose the baseball team it ceremoniously welcomed in 1958 after Willie Mays and Co. left New York for the West Coast.

Magowan, who was the CEO of Safeway, put together a group that would buy the Giants and keep the team in San Francisco. After buying the team, he had the vision to relocate the Giants to another part of the city, transforming San Francisco forever. In 1997, construction began on what would come to be known as Pacific Bell Park (now Oracle Park), a privately-financed new stadium that the Giants desperately needed. It opened three years later.

The China Basin and Mission Bay areas of San Francisco are now full of energy and excitement. There are new beautiful buildings, businesses, and people. It’s one of the most advanced areas of one of the world’s most brilliant cities.

It hasn’t always been like that. Both neighborhoods are built on landfill. Slowly but surely, the evidence of the areas’ industrial roots have disappeared. Mission Bay was a dump of sorts.

It’s hard to ignore Oracle Park’s impact on the general area and the entire city of San Francisco as a whole. Magowan helped bring that to life. His full impact will never be measured, but it’s significant.

Long before the stadium and city transformation, Magowan made his mark, signing Barry Bonds without even having hired a general manager yet. He convinced the game’s biggest star to join the Giants family and become a major part of its historic tradition.

In a way, Bonds’ acquisition represented a shift in the team’s culture that was bigger than any individual game or moment that happened during the season. Bonds was a symbol of, both, the future and the past, as his father, Bobby Bonds, and godfather, Mays, donned the black and orange many years before.

Magowan, a New York native who fell in love with the team before their move to California, made sure that the team honored its tradition and history, while still looking forward. The Giants take care of their own, even if that person isn’t a part of the team anymore.

Though he stepped down as managing partner of the Giants in 2008, he had helped create so many important memories and laid the groundwork for even more.

Peter Magowan saved the San Francisco Giants, signed the greatest baseball player who ever lived immediately, spearheaded an ambitious project to create MLB’s most beautiful stadium, and made a legitimate mark on an incredible city. The Giants and San Francisco lost a special person, one they will honor on Feb. 9 with a plaque on the team’s Wall of Fame.