Hooray for The Home Teams, San Francisco’s Sports Legacy

Before the MLB, NBA, or NFL San Francisco had (and has) a well-established sports culture.  Ever since the first contest between the UC Berkeley and Stanford University football teams in 1892, San Francisco and the greater bay area has enjoyed a fine athletic tradition.

If you are of a certain age, you remember Joe DiMaggio played for the New York Yankees from 1936 to 1951, and was then the Mr. Coffee spokesman for many decades.  But before all of that, he grew up in the Italian enclave of North Beach, and learned his craft at the North Beach Playground off Columbus Ave.  Which, by the way, is still there.

His most famous moment in San Francisco was not that of an athlete, but a groom.  Joe DiMaggio married movie star Marilyn Monroe in 1954, at St. Peter and Paul's church in his old North Beach neighborhood.  Although the marriage only lasted a little over a year, it is still the stuff of society column legends and cemented in the annals of San Francisco history.

Also cemented in the annals of San Francisco history, though for more nefarious reasons, was a high school football star who went on to gain infamy and is simply known by two letters: OJ.

Before he was known as the driver of the infamous white Branco, and before he appeared in the Naked Gun movies and the Towering Inferno (his first film, by the way, and filmed in San Francisco), OJ Simpson was a local football star and legend at Galileo High School in the city's Fisherman's Wharf neighborhood.  He later went on to fame at USC then the NFL, then greater fame for murdering his ex-wife and her friend.  I don't think I need to reference that any further, except to say he hailed from San Francisco.

The Willie Mays Statue In Front Of The Currently Named Oracle Park

Baseball legend Willie Mays played with the San Francisco Giants since before they moved from New York City to San Francisco.  For 21 years the “Say Hey Kid" brought grace and dignity to the game, even when he encountered racism wile looking for a home when the Giants moved to San Francisco in 1957.

The Renamed Willie Mays Plaza

Because of that experience, and with his fame, he helped motivate the city and state to strike down housing discrimination laws.  So beloved was he that Oracle Park, the current home of the San Francisco Giants is officially located at 24 Willie Mays Plaza.

Bill Russell played with the Boston Celtics for 13 years but led the University of San Francisco Dons to two back-to-back NCAA championships in 1955 and 1956.  In fact, his image is quite prominent at the USF War Memorial Gym, where the Dons play.  Legendary UCLA basketball coach  John Wooden called him the “greatest defensive man” he had ever seen.

The San Francisco Giants won three out of five World's Series between 2010 and 2014.  In fact,  between 2010 and 2024, a professional San Francisco sports franchise (be they the Giants, Warriors, or 49ers) has been either a winner, or a contender in a championship playoff eight times in the last 14 years.  

Since 1946, the 49ers have been part of the fabric of the city but became the legendary team they are today because of the “Catch" at the 1982 Super Bowl, which changed the city's sports legacy forever.  The 49ers played their first game in 1946 at the old Kezar stadium, which has sadly been torn down and replaced with a better(?) more appropriate smaller facility.  If you want to see what it looked like, just watch the film Dirty Harry from 1971.  It is where Dirty Harry captures the Scorpio killer.

The New Kezar Stadium

I don't think I'll get any criticism pointing out that they were not a very good team. Not until the 1982 Super Bowl did the team become the stuff of legend.  And the “Catch" happened when the city was reeling for recent political assassinations in the late 1970s and contending with the emerging AIDS crisis in the 1980s.

In his book, Season of the Witch, author David Talbot writes about another time when the city experienced anxiety over a pandemic, political upheaval, and a sports franchise that won a championship victory when the city really needed it.  The 1982 Super Bowl defeat of the Dallas Cowboys was just such an event. "Wounded by one civic trauma after the next -and long used to the dreariness of defeat on its athletic fields -San Francisco was not quite ready to give itself over to the 49ers fever.  But the numbness from all those years of grisly headlines slowly began to lift from the city.  The glow was spreading, like the first fingers of light over Twin Peaks, after an endless shroud of gloom.”  

In the end, Mr. Talbot's observation of that magical time in 1982 rings true today,  "Cities, like people, have souls.  And they can be broken by terrible events, but they can also be healed.  It was just a game.  It was just a catch.  But sometimes that's enough."