Plenty of free giveaways, fireworks, community activities that touch thousands of people across the Bay Area, and more of the Giants players are some of the hallmarks of the 2009 season of the San Francisco Giants.Batting practice, described as 'one of the unknown jewels' of the Giants' sporting life by Tom McDonald, Senior Vice President of Consumer Marketing, is going to be open to the public.
At the AT & T ballpark in China Basin, the gates will open an extra hour early for fans to observe and learn from their heroes on Friday and Saturday nights.
And over a hundred years of dynamic pics from 1883 to today of Giants in action, pitching, batting, catching, hang on a new banner.
Fans will also have a special day to go on the pitch to capture personal photos of their players, and in the summer sleep on the turf at the annual Slumber Party.
Around the streets, scouts clutching free tickets will be on the look out to reward fans for wearing Giants gear.
Promotions start with the traditional Opening Day calendar for the first 40,000 fans to enter the gates on Tuesday, April 7. The next day, marking the presentation of the Cy Young award to Tim Lincecum - pictured above on the cover of the 2009 handbook - a commemorative pin will be offered and at the end of the game against the Milwaukee Brewers the starry skies near McCovey Cove will be lit by the first of the dazzling fireworks displays.
Dotted throughout the season will be the opportunity to collect three popular bobbleheads featuring Tim, Brian Wilson and veteran broadcaster Jon Miller, a Lincecum-style, grey knitted hat, a black cap, an orange tie, and for kids, a bat and ball set, a cuddly orange and black Giants Build-A-Bear, a backpack, and T-shirts for both kids and adults. Prizes will be given away, too, at the games.
In keeping with their green spirit, the Giants will be celebrating a sponsored Esurance Earth Day on April 22 with messages from the players encouraging care for the environment, the showing of a film from the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, and the gift of a fabric grocery bag - pic above. Representatives of the CAS and PG & E will be there to meet people in the Giants Community Clubhouse and with an opportunity for a stainless steel water bottle.
Special ticket events and fundraisers include Filipino and Latino Heritage Nights, and an Autism Awareness Night with Will Clark. Will is a homegrown San Francisco Giants player from 1986 - 1993, who in January joined the Giants front office as special assistant.
Giving by the Giants is not only to fans. In turn they and their fans will be giving generously to the community. Associations to benefit this year will be the SF Food Bank, Project Open Hand, a city organization providing 'meals with love' to those with serious illness and seniors, Junior Giants who will receive gloves and donations, and Until There's A Cure for Aids.
The Junior Giants are just one of their community programs, an outreach venture that provides more than 15,000 children in underserved communities the chance of a free baseball league and opportunity for character development and literacy programs.
Young people engaged in charity will be honoured at the matches in partnership with Jefferson Awards, co-founded by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis to encourage voluntary work.
A day will also be devoted to sports organizations for girls and women that seek to promote health and sports opportunities for all. In the stadium for a question and answer session will be members of the Bay Area Women's Sports Initiative (BAWSI), founded in 2005 by World Cup soccer stars Brandi Chastain and Julie Foudy, and Team-Up for Youth.
Education is another priority. To encourage studies in math and science the Giants are partnering with the Exploratorium at the Palace of Fine Arts in programs where baseball is used to help explain these subjects. At the ballpark itself, 'Giants Geometry' is part of their educational interactive videoconference tours for schoolchildren using shapes in the ballpark building.
Hundreds of other community groups around the Bay Area will also benefit from some involvement by the Giants.
Commerical events using the ballpark as a venue will see the Kenny Chesney Sun City Carnival Tour on July 18, that with supporting acts will make it the largest country music show ever to be staged in Northern California, and two free SF Opera nights. The operas, Puccini's Tosca on June 5 and Verdi's 11 Trovatore on September 19 will feature live performances from the War Memorial Opera House in the city relayed onto the HD scoreboard.
And once again the Giants are promoting and ticket-selling for the AVP Crocs Tours, the beach volleyball tournament that features the world's top players and which last summer saw Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh exhibiting their skills on Piers 30/32.
This season's tour includes the men's Olympic gold medallists Phil Dalhausser and Todd Rogers, but Misty and Kerri's many fans will be disappointed to learn that neither of the girls, Olympic gold medallists in 2004 and 2008, are competing - www.avp.com
Misty ruptured an Achyilles tendon while practicing a routine for Dancing with the Stars in October and is now having therapy, although she has also been reported as saying she wanted to take time off this year - http://tvwatch.people.com/2008/10/06/misty-may-treanor-officially-quits-dwts/ - and Misty's own blog, http://www.mistymay.com/may/blogDetail/1473
Kerri is due to have her first baby mid-May.
'We believe we conceived (on) our last days in Beijing, so I think a day or two after we won the gold medal,' she is quoted as saying on the AVP website - http://www.avp.com/News/2008/12/Kerri-Pregnant.aspx
The tournament will take place on the end of the piers in a specially-built 3,000-seat venue, Bayside Court, on August 14 - 16.
***full details of all the Giants' activities and promotions are on their very informative website - sfgiants.com
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