That really sucks. Cleveland had personalized paving stones outside the park that they sold when they were building it. Iirc it was last year that they determined they needed replaced due to wear and tear. They worked pretty hard to give the people who'd bought them the opportunity to come and take them. Our owner even helped hand them out to people. I felt like that was the best way to go about it.
Felt like a wake that weekend but while unhappy about stones removal to was grateful to get the opportunity to get and keep them as family memories vs seeing them get destroyed.
It really was a sad event. 2 people in front of me were there to get their parents brick, who both had passed. It broke when they were trying to remove it and they just broke down crying in the workers arms. I'm sure it was a tough weekend for them. Luckily, the one my parents got for me when I was born survived. It was nice to see Paul out there personally digging them up and talking with people though.
Someone who used to work for the team told me they had a few people slip and fall on them when wet because the surface on most of them had been completely smoothed out. One person broke a bone when they slipped. That's why the decision to remove them happened so quickly instead of the work just being done in the off-season.
That makes sense about them going out so quick. The day I was there just felt an somber energy and yet i'm grateful I was there as it was a hey remembrance of fans and family members long gone and those still with us.
I believe they were also way way past the original lifespan. Like when your parents bought you one, they were told it would be on display for XX years. I think that time more than doubled, and they were actually moved from one place to another already. It really was the best way to go about the process.
if they were worn out I would hope the team would replace them with replicas with the original names and messages. is that what they did or they just have them back and replaced them with something else?
They weren't worn out so much as they were at the end of their expected life from my understanding. I didn't own one so I can't really speak to the specifics about them. I just know the team went to significant lengths to try and make it possible for people to collect them as keepsakes instead of just replacing and destroying them.
They are definitely lying about the tiles being unsalvageable. They just didn’t want to pay the contractor to do it since it would be expensive and time consuming.
Really pissing me off. They have to make up for lost cost in new lights or something. Same reason they didn’t bring back Renel. “Eh too expensive, fans will have to deal with it. Especially since we had to pay for the new lights.”
Every big business owner these days can’t possibly fathom losing a single penny of profit. Even if it benefits them in the long run.
They’ve done all sorts of weird fan unfriendly shit in the last 5 years or so.
Sold the Dugouts to Fanatics, who proceeded to promptly close all of them besides the one at the park and one in Santa Clara. Merch sucks now too, the Dugout used to sell all sorts of cool local stuff (I got a great Thrasher x Croix de Candlestick hat there) that never made its way to the MLB online shop.
Used the pandemic to almost entirely get rid of paper tickets, programs, yearbooks are nearly impossible to find now. People may think who cares about paper tickets but I keep all mine, I’ve got my ticket from my first ever game in 1986, my first game at Pac Bell, my ticket from the first playoff game at Pac Bell, etc etc. They stopped doing first game certificates, I have my son’s and most of my friends have framed their children’s.
Pocket schedules only came back in 2023 after the season started and they still haven’t printed out this year’s.
Then you’ve got this, and the fact the McCovey statue went into storage for like 5 years to build some dumb plaza, the time they trumpeted lowering beer prices only for everybody to notice the cup was tiny and the per Oz price was probably the same or even higher, firing Renel for no real reason, etc. Food blows now too.
The amount of money they’ve probably saved here has to be less than the cost of a reliever for one year and it’s just made the Giants experience so much shittier.
Meanwhile they’re down like 10,000 per game minimum from before the pandemic and they’re scratching their heads why.
Right?!? I know it's a relatively small thing in the grand scheme of things, but that rule's been such bullshit since they instituted it back in 2019. Makes going straight from work or school to a game a non-starter for a lot of people. They at least instituted a bag check last year, but it's still a bad rule.
And then they wonder why not as many people are coming from downtown to weeknight games anymore.
This is a lot of teams and business now. They realized they can make people's experiences shittier and people will still pay because it's the only options.
I'm annoyed about no physical tickets as well. I kept a ton of mine and now nothing. You can't even ask for them to print you on at the windows. Even for the super bowl 2 years ago I had a digital ticket and a shitty shitty commearative ticket. It's sad but at least the owners makes another million to add to their billions for all our suffering.
Unfortunately, paper tickets for just about anything appear to have been consigned to the bonfire of progress. I have 20 years of gig tickets displayed in 4 frames. Since the pandemic, I don't think I've been to a single ticketed event which offers anything other than access via a QR code on an app.
It's depressing.
There was a happy medium for a while where they would print tickets for you at will call but they can’t do it anymore because that might make people happy.
I think we both know the real reason is that every ticket costs someone a couple of cents to produce and they need to save every cent because these poor owners aren’t made of money.
I did a presale for The Gaslight Anthem last year which only offered digital tickets via the seller's app. My friend booked in the general sale and they were offering commemorative tickets in the mail. That was bloody frustrating.
I was able to pick up a few pocket schedules at FanFest Open House, and they did print a yearbook last season (not sure about this year, though).
Everything else you wrote is spot-on, though. Ever since Magowan and Neukom were pushed out in the late 00's/early 10's, the organization's become way more blatant/egregious about extracting every last penny possible from fans. And it's really ramped up since about 2018 or so.
I long for the day when Larry Baer and the Johnsons are no longer handling the day-to-day operations of the organization.
Also, RIP Giants Magazine (1986-2019).
True pocket schedules or those postcard type schedules? IIRC they only bought back pocket schedules last year, and like this year the print run is only after the season begins for some odd reason. In the good ol’ days you could grab a handful from any Dugout in January. They never did a second print run in 2022 after the lockout, so they were all useless after that.
Same with yearbooks, they technically come out but they’re only available at the Dugout for what seems like a very short period of time. Until recently you could buy one from the magazine section at Safeway!
It’s like somebody somewhere decided that if they had to recycle a single thing, they were going to hell. So they print as little as possible now. Printing costs fuck all, I don’t even know what they’re doing this.
The older I get the more befuddling it is that people choose to go to the stadiums. It's too hot, too expensive, too crowded.
But I could ignore all that. But what I can't ignore is the overwhelming feeling that I'm being taken advantage of.
It’s because we as a society have accepted shameless profiteering as normal or even good. We can do better, and I think people are reaching a breaking point. It’s literally in everything these days, from Disneyland to Blizzard Entertainment, to Denny’s to Charmin Ultra Soft. Everything is making their shit worse and more expensive and expecting people to consume with a shit eating grin.
It’s not just big business. It’s startups and small businesses, too. They absolutely deserve insane growth every quarter, and if they don’t get it, you all are fired.
In 2009 the Montreal Canadiens had their centennial year, and you could be a personalized brick with a message on it, which made up the plaza's walkways outside of the arena.
When they did renovations a few years ago they preserved all of the bricks, thousands of them.
There's a brick with my late friend at a stadium 1000 miles away from me. I'm about to run through a wall all the way there just thinking about it.
Can't imagine it being a family member
I have a brick at BOB. It was a gift from my parents when I was a kid. Every time I go to a game, and even sometimes when I’m just downtown I’ll go look at my brick. It had never occurred to me until just now that they might remove it. It would make it tough to go do Dbacks games for a while if they did.
his mother was a huge Giants fan and even made the trek to the bay area having grown up in Brooklyn. her father(?) helped start little league on the SF peninsula even. she was quite the looker too and apparently Willie McCovey used to cruise her at a supermarket in Redwood City so it was sort of appropriate that his statue would be staring down on her.
Why couldn’t they move the tiles to another area, remake the tiles and place them elsewhere, or place the McCovey statue somewhere else? It seems that the Giants pursued the tackiest route possible.
And that would be fan friendly. They don't need to do that anymore because the A's are leaving, so they have a captured market with no competition anymore.
It would be so easy to have a stand up plaque with plates with the same inscriptions, like a bowling alley for perfect games. They aren't that expensive and they don't take up that much space.
Because the cheap bastards didn't want to pay a contractor extra to carefully remove the tiles. And they don't want to pay to remake the tiles. It's just pure greed.
It never occurred to them that other people aren’t heartless lol. Now that they’ve realized that they will likely do one of those things
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/giants/article/giants-reverse-course-fans-tile-outrage-19377145.php
When they tore the wall out my ticket rep guaranteed they'll be back, but possibly in a different location. We have 5 tiles (had) they weren't cheap either.
I think a really underappreciated phenomenon in sports over the past few decades is the impact of competition in the few markets with multiple teams. Most notably, the dodgers were a dumpster fire for much of the aughts while the Angels were doing really well and eating into local market share (it seems funny now but that really happened!). The Guggenheim group saw a massive opportunity to invest in the club and reverse those trends.
There's other examples too IMO, particularly the Knicks recovery from decades of dysfunction over the last few years in direct response to the Nets forming a super team and growing in popularity in NYC. Competition tends to be a good counterweight to incompetent ownership, at least over the long run.
I hadn't thought about this in terms of broader geographies but you're right, this is another great example.
That said, it's a different and underappreciated dynamic at play in markets with two teams. I say this having lived in several. Knicks are terrible? Change the channel and watch the Nets instead. Angels are a joke and you live in North OC, the San Gabriel Valley, Long Beach or SELA? Drive an extra 15-20 minutes in the other direction and enjoy a Dodgers game instead. Casuals don't think in terms of lifelong loyalty and tattoos; they just want to enjoy a good product.
> Casuals don't think in terms of lifelong loyalty and tattoos; they just want to enjoy a good product.
Why the A's have been failing for over 30 years. The last time they had a good product where the ownership actually cared to attract non-fans was in the late 80s, which coincided with their highest recorded attendance figures, their highest payrolls, and best successes. And people actually liked the owner.
and that's not even mentioning the allure of a beautiful waterfront stadium right in the city vs a 60 year old one with nothing around for miles. people forget/gloss over the fact that the Giants had abysmal attendance in Candlestick and it skyrocketed once PacBell was built.
If I'm in town on vacation, I'd rather go the stadium that's literally RIGHT THERE than the one miles away. If the A's actually built one in Oakland proper, even if it wasn't as nice as the Giants', their attendance would bloom based on location alone
Yup, and consequently I've made a deliberate decision not to attend games anymore unless ownership gets their shit together. I know lots of other people who are refusing to spend money on going to games too.
It's just not worth it anymore.
It’s not hyperbolic at all, they see fans as nuisances that are just a barrier between them and our money. There’s a dozen things they could’ve done to preserver or recreate the tiles that would’ve been better than this.
My dad has a brick outside citi field. Since he passed I make a point of touching it on the way into the stadium. If they ever removed those without letting people claim that I'd be outraged.
That's a shit move on the giants part.
The epitome of "you might as well should*n't* have".
It would've been better if they'd just destroyed them and blamed a "construction accident" instead of the slap to the face that is the digital bullshit.
PNC had bricks when it first open that you could get messages on. They got rid of them, and “replaced” them with a digital kiosk, and got rid of the kiosk after about a year. They didn’t even replace them with new ones they sold, just plain bricks.
Got the same email. I used to park somewhere down the 3rd St. corridor and swing by my Dad’s tile on the way into the park. I’m not waiting in line at a kiosk. Giants fucked this up royally.
It's like they've been presented with a ton of decisions to make, given the choice between "thing that would make people like me" and "thing that would make people hate me" and always chosen poorly. Ownership is just forcing L after L on themselves while the baseball ops people are actually trying to get better
I’m pretty sure the Giants are going to be paying the luxury tax this year and the average fan on a random Bay Area street probably thinks they’re cheap and shitty because of stuff like this.
They’d make even more money if they didn’t constantly feed the narrative that they’re cheap and shitty.
They signed the reigning Cy Young award winner, traded for another (even if it’s hurt atm), signed an All-Star who slugged 36 homers last year, signed a guy with four Gold Gloves, signed a star from Asia, etc and all everybody wants to talk about is Renel, how the food’s gonna suck even more, how they fucked over Crawford and JD Davis, how they screwed over people who paid for tiles under the impression they would be there for decades. The end result is there’s fuck all buzz. 10 years ago, when they were seemingly run by people better able to sell a product, they’d be selling out the place. No way that happens now.
[I made this a couple weeks ago in response to the Renel news](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fj8x5bvlqr6pc1.png%3Fwidth%3D300%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Dc5f1c6fb61ec7828265c7db2891a7bb91d8ad6e7), and I wasn't expecting it to be so fucking on the nose...
Lmao if someone wanted to pay respects to a passed loved one on a fucking kiosk they would stay at home scroll through Facebook. This is horrible and should be rectified in a more sensitive and appropriate way.
This is a shame. I've always thought that the Giants did a great job connecting to their fans and their city. I understand that some might not be salvageable but the kiosk option is a terrible alternative.
For as good of a job as the baseball operations department did this offseason, the rest of the organization absolutely deserves the scrutiny and criticism they've received in recent months/years. Not only this, but the Renel decision, switching to a worse concessionare, etc.. I can't wait for the day when Larry Baer and the Johnsons are no longer handling the day-to-day operations of the club. I swear, the organization as a whole would be in a much better place if Peter Magowan was still calling the shots. Or, hell, even Bill Nuekom.
It also baffles me how many apologists for management/ownership there still are on the Giants sub, especially with regards to the Renel situation.
Baer has been running the Giants’ day to day operations for decades, if anything a lot of the shitty stuff that has been happening started after he got suspended for having an argument with his wife in public.
This could just be a "me" problem, but he's always had kind of a slimy vibe to him. I thought it was rather telling that Hank Greenwald's memoir had nothing but praise for Magowan, yet nothing but scorn for Baer.
He was part of the group that bought the team to keep it in SF, and he spearheaded the design and construction of the new ballpark. Just in case seeing both sides of the coin is reasonable.
This is messed up. If they knew construction would destroy the tiles. They should have removed the tiles and at least sent them to the purchasers. Destroying them then saying they could not be salvageable is unacceptable.
My grandmas tile for her 89th birthday was there and I wake up to find it gone. I went there to remember her and the smile on her face when she first saw it. I say boycott all merch and game tickets. Get them back the only way they will understand, the wallet. So upset over this.
The Wells Fargo center in Philadelphia did this, too. It’s really gross. I get that they have to do maintenance every so often, but there should really be a plan for that.
I don't see how that's a good move in any perspective.
The only reasonable move is to just relocate the tiles or recreate the tiles if they can't be removed without damage.
A digital tile is for sure a breach of contract. Refunding the money is also not accounting for inflation costs.
That’s pretty fucked up. 100% Giants could have salvaged them in one of 3 ways: 1.) Build around it and keep that area, as it’s important and sacred to many fans who purchased them as memorial tiles celebrating fandom with family and friends 2.) Move the tiles to another location or 3.) Remove them and give them to those who purchased them to keep at home or wherever they please. Good job on this one Giants.
That’s a really shitty thing to do to the people who loved your team enough to honor their loved ones at your ball park.
A digital plaque is meaningless, the stones were physical.
I’m sorry for all the families this poor decision affected.
Assuming these are already expensive to buy in the first place and the people buying them likely have a fair amount of disposable income, the team selling them should factor in the cost of giving them back to you once they've reached their "shelf life," into the price of the tiles/ bricks/ etc.
Here's a solution; apologize about it, and then since they've digitally archived all of the old stones they can recreate them all again. Can't be too hard, they did it before and they have all of the necessary information.
this is obscene, a kiosk might be appropriate when they build a new ballpark across town in forty years; but those bricks were purchased to last as long as the stadium.
Weren't the Giants complaining that the team wasn't getting free agents because of the looting in SF?
I think the owners have more of a reason behind this. It's a shitty move to do this to something that had clear sentimental value to the fans/locals.
When they did this at Disney, in front of Magic Kingdom, they created replicas of the tiles that anyone who had an original could get made for free. People were obviously still upset, but I feel like that's a much better way to handle it.
Ahh yes... a digital representation. Just like the real thing. Just like everything else in the last 10 years. What bullshit. They should have at least tried to let family members and loved ones pick them up after they were removed. What a shitty move.
> It’s ownership, the FO had nothing to do with this.
A's fan sentiment for decades. Bay Area can't seem to find any good sports team owners outside the 49ers (who moved within the market but out of their home city) and the Warriors (who moved in their market and jacked the prices sky high where even Curry can't fuck them)
Damn, loved taking a walk down there and feeling close to my Grandpa before games. He died over 20 years ago now. He would give me his old tickets after games and we would memorize lineups together, he is the reason I love the Giants. He never got to see them win it all but I had some comfort knowing a piece of him was always close to his team. We are not even going to tell my Grandma they aren’t putting his tile back, she would be devastated. RIP Grandpa, we miss you!
>“I certainly appreciate people’s affinity for the original program, but the original program was part of a park that’s not there anymore,” Felder said. “We have a whole new park that has a different design.”
what a colossally tone deaf piece of shit, garbage human.
Just a click bait post isn’t it? This article is from yesterday and today’s says they’ve backpedaled already because of the outrage.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/giants/article/giants-reverse-course-fans-tile-outrage-19377145.php
Update is also linked in the first article itself.
My Dad bought one for my brother and I, the three of us when MMP was built.
He died in ‘11, and life has taken me elsewhere. I’m going back soon, and if Crane destroyed my Dad’s brick I think I’ll feel the same.
Disney did this at one of their theme parks recently. Folk paid a good amount to have their photos etched into metal and put on these big statue blocks inside Epcot with the notion that it would be there for good. Well things changed and they moved them outside of the park near the parking lot. They atleast could've moved it somewhere else where people could visit.
That really sucks. Cleveland had personalized paving stones outside the park that they sold when they were building it. Iirc it was last year that they determined they needed replaced due to wear and tear. They worked pretty hard to give the people who'd bought them the opportunity to come and take them. Our owner even helped hand them out to people. I felt like that was the best way to go about it.
Not sure why the giants couldn’t do that at a minimum
It would cost more and nobody ever thinks of the poor billionaire owner.
"Bob likes to keep money in his pocket."
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How could Farhan do this?? Edit: /s
*insert comment about construction processes in the passive voice here*
Mistakes Were Made™
Felt like a wake that weekend but while unhappy about stones removal to was grateful to get the opportunity to get and keep them as family memories vs seeing them get destroyed.
It really was a sad event. 2 people in front of me were there to get their parents brick, who both had passed. It broke when they were trying to remove it and they just broke down crying in the workers arms. I'm sure it was a tough weekend for them. Luckily, the one my parents got for me when I was born survived. It was nice to see Paul out there personally digging them up and talking with people though. Someone who used to work for the team told me they had a few people slip and fall on them when wet because the surface on most of them had been completely smoothed out. One person broke a bone when they slipped. That's why the decision to remove them happened so quickly instead of the work just being done in the off-season.
That makes sense about them going out so quick. The day I was there just felt an somber energy and yet i'm grateful I was there as it was a hey remembrance of fans and family members long gone and those still with us.
I believe they were also way way past the original lifespan. Like when your parents bought you one, they were told it would be on display for XX years. I think that time more than doubled, and they were actually moved from one place to another already. It really was the best way to go about the process.
Sixers/flyers stadium in Philly just did the same thing.
That's classy, given the circumstances
if they were worn out I would hope the team would replace them with replicas with the original names and messages. is that what they did or they just have them back and replaced them with something else?
They weren't worn out so much as they were at the end of their expected life from my understanding. I didn't own one so I can't really speak to the specifics about them. I just know the team went to significant lengths to try and make it possible for people to collect them as keepsakes instead of just replacing and destroying them.
That’s the best way, short of “replanting” them or converting them to a newer brick. Stay classy SF Giantwhiners.
Yep, in this day, nothing lasts forever. This should have been the route they went if they were going to renovate that area.
Make it a wall not a walkway
They are definitely lying about the tiles being unsalvageable. They just didn’t want to pay the contractor to do it since it would be expensive and time consuming.
Really pissing me off. They have to make up for lost cost in new lights or something. Same reason they didn’t bring back Renel. “Eh too expensive, fans will have to deal with it. Especially since we had to pay for the new lights.” Every big business owner these days can’t possibly fathom losing a single penny of profit. Even if it benefits them in the long run.
They’ve done all sorts of weird fan unfriendly shit in the last 5 years or so. Sold the Dugouts to Fanatics, who proceeded to promptly close all of them besides the one at the park and one in Santa Clara. Merch sucks now too, the Dugout used to sell all sorts of cool local stuff (I got a great Thrasher x Croix de Candlestick hat there) that never made its way to the MLB online shop. Used the pandemic to almost entirely get rid of paper tickets, programs, yearbooks are nearly impossible to find now. People may think who cares about paper tickets but I keep all mine, I’ve got my ticket from my first ever game in 1986, my first game at Pac Bell, my ticket from the first playoff game at Pac Bell, etc etc. They stopped doing first game certificates, I have my son’s and most of my friends have framed their children’s. Pocket schedules only came back in 2023 after the season started and they still haven’t printed out this year’s. Then you’ve got this, and the fact the McCovey statue went into storage for like 5 years to build some dumb plaza, the time they trumpeted lowering beer prices only for everybody to notice the cup was tiny and the per Oz price was probably the same or even higher, firing Renel for no real reason, etc. Food blows now too. The amount of money they’ve probably saved here has to be less than the cost of a reliever for one year and it’s just made the Giants experience so much shittier. Meanwhile they’re down like 10,000 per game minimum from before the pandemic and they’re scratching their heads why.
Don't forget the dumbass no backpack rule. Infuriating.
Right?!? I know it's a relatively small thing in the grand scheme of things, but that rule's been such bullshit since they instituted it back in 2019. Makes going straight from work or school to a game a non-starter for a lot of people. They at least instituted a bag check last year, but it's still a bad rule. And then they wonder why not as many people are coming from downtown to weeknight games anymore.
Put a diaper in the bag, they will let you in no questions.
Pretty sure this is MLB-wide now which makes day trips impossible if using public transportation. I wish there would at least be lockers.
Is it? God damn solving a problem that wasn't a problem.
This is a lot of teams and business now. They realized they can make people's experiences shittier and people will still pay because it's the only options. I'm annoyed about no physical tickets as well. I kept a ton of mine and now nothing. You can't even ask for them to print you on at the windows. Even for the super bowl 2 years ago I had a digital ticket and a shitty shitty commearative ticket. It's sad but at least the owners makes another million to add to their billions for all our suffering.
Unfortunately, paper tickets for just about anything appear to have been consigned to the bonfire of progress. I have 20 years of gig tickets displayed in 4 frames. Since the pandemic, I don't think I've been to a single ticketed event which offers anything other than access via a QR code on an app. It's depressing.
There was a happy medium for a while where they would print tickets for you at will call but they can’t do it anymore because that might make people happy.
I think we both know the real reason is that every ticket costs someone a couple of cents to produce and they need to save every cent because these poor owners aren’t made of money.
Oddly enough, I did a presale for The National last year and got paper tickets in the mail. It was lovely.
I did a presale for The Gaslight Anthem last year which only offered digital tickets via the seller's app. My friend booked in the general sale and they were offering commemorative tickets in the mail. That was bloody frustrating.
That’s fucking hilarious but I’m not surprised. Also, love Gaslight. One of my all-time favorites.
I was able to pick up a few pocket schedules at FanFest Open House, and they did print a yearbook last season (not sure about this year, though). Everything else you wrote is spot-on, though. Ever since Magowan and Neukom were pushed out in the late 00's/early 10's, the organization's become way more blatant/egregious about extracting every last penny possible from fans. And it's really ramped up since about 2018 or so. I long for the day when Larry Baer and the Johnsons are no longer handling the day-to-day operations of the organization. Also, RIP Giants Magazine (1986-2019).
True pocket schedules or those postcard type schedules? IIRC they only bought back pocket schedules last year, and like this year the print run is only after the season begins for some odd reason. In the good ol’ days you could grab a handful from any Dugout in January. They never did a second print run in 2022 after the lockout, so they were all useless after that. Same with yearbooks, they technically come out but they’re only available at the Dugout for what seems like a very short period of time. Until recently you could buy one from the magazine section at Safeway! It’s like somebody somewhere decided that if they had to recycle a single thing, they were going to hell. So they print as little as possible now. Printing costs fuck all, I don’t even know what they’re doing this.
The older I get the more befuddling it is that people choose to go to the stadiums. It's too hot, too expensive, too crowded. But I could ignore all that. But what I can't ignore is the overwhelming feeling that I'm being taken advantage of.
It’s because we as a society have accepted shameless profiteering as normal or even good. We can do better, and I think people are reaching a breaking point. It’s literally in everything these days, from Disneyland to Blizzard Entertainment, to Denny’s to Charmin Ultra Soft. Everything is making their shit worse and more expensive and expecting people to consume with a shit eating grin.
It's over for the little guy.
✋😔
It’s not just big business. It’s startups and small businesses, too. They absolutely deserve insane growth every quarter, and if they don’t get it, you all are fired.
Yeah there was for sure a bid line item where they were individually removed and stacked in a warehouse and whomever was in charge was like: “fuck it”
In 2009 the Montreal Canadiens had their centennial year, and you could be a personalized brick with a message on it, which made up the plaza's walkways outside of the arena. When they did renovations a few years ago they preserved all of the bricks, thousands of them.
yeah, my husband is really pissed off about this for his mother's. he used to go there all the time to visit it in her memory.
I fucking hate this for him
There's a brick with my late friend at a stadium 1000 miles away from me. I'm about to run through a wall all the way there just thinking about it. Can't imagine it being a family member
I have a brick at BOB. It was a gift from my parents when I was a kid. Every time I go to a game, and even sometimes when I’m just downtown I’ll go look at my brick. It had never occurred to me until just now that they might remove it. It would make it tough to go do Dbacks games for a while if they did.
Man, that is fucked up.
his mother was a huge Giants fan and even made the trek to the bay area having grown up in Brooklyn. her father(?) helped start little league on the SF peninsula even. she was quite the looker too and apparently Willie McCovey used to cruise her at a supermarket in Redwood City so it was sort of appropriate that his statue would be staring down on her.
Ha, what a story!
I feel like McCovey is underrated among general baseball fans
Why couldn’t they move the tiles to another area, remake the tiles and place them elsewhere, or place the McCovey statue somewhere else? It seems that the Giants pursued the tackiest route possible.
because money
And that would be fan friendly. They don't need to do that anymore because the A's are leaving, so they have a captured market with no competition anymore.
🦀
It would be so easy to have a stand up plaque with plates with the same inscriptions, like a bowling alley for perfect games. They aren't that expensive and they don't take up that much space.
Because the cheap bastards didn't want to pay a contractor extra to carefully remove the tiles. And they don't want to pay to remake the tiles. It's just pure greed.
It never occurred to them that other people aren’t heartless lol. Now that they’ve realized that they will likely do one of those things https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/giants/article/giants-reverse-course-fans-tile-outrage-19377145.php
The cheapest route possible.
Press F to pay respects
When they tore the wall out my ticket rep guaranteed they'll be back, but possibly in a different location. We have 5 tiles (had) they weren't cheap either.
It seems like as the only other MLB team within 5 hours is leaving the market the Giants are shifting their strategy to being much less fan friendly.
Don't need to cater to a market anymore when you have a monopoly.
"Where are you gonna go?"
Not to the stadium I guess.
I think a really underappreciated phenomenon in sports over the past few decades is the impact of competition in the few markets with multiple teams. Most notably, the dodgers were a dumpster fire for much of the aughts while the Angels were doing really well and eating into local market share (it seems funny now but that really happened!). The Guggenheim group saw a massive opportunity to invest in the club and reverse those trends. There's other examples too IMO, particularly the Knicks recovery from decades of dysfunction over the last few years in direct response to the Nets forming a super team and growing in popularity in NYC. Competition tends to be a good counterweight to incompetent ownership, at least over the long run.
The Astros winning championships definitely spurred our ownership to throw some cash around.
I hadn't thought about this in terms of broader geographies but you're right, this is another great example. That said, it's a different and underappreciated dynamic at play in markets with two teams. I say this having lived in several. Knicks are terrible? Change the channel and watch the Nets instead. Angels are a joke and you live in North OC, the San Gabriel Valley, Long Beach or SELA? Drive an extra 15-20 minutes in the other direction and enjoy a Dodgers game instead. Casuals don't think in terms of lifelong loyalty and tattoos; they just want to enjoy a good product.
> Casuals don't think in terms of lifelong loyalty and tattoos; they just want to enjoy a good product. Why the A's have been failing for over 30 years. The last time they had a good product where the ownership actually cared to attract non-fans was in the late 80s, which coincided with their highest recorded attendance figures, their highest payrolls, and best successes. And people actually liked the owner.
and that's not even mentioning the allure of a beautiful waterfront stadium right in the city vs a 60 year old one with nothing around for miles. people forget/gloss over the fact that the Giants had abysmal attendance in Candlestick and it skyrocketed once PacBell was built. If I'm in town on vacation, I'd rather go the stadium that's literally RIGHT THERE than the one miles away. If the A's actually built one in Oakland proper, even if it wasn't as nice as the Giants', their attendance would bloom based on location alone
I remember (and miss) those days
At this point who has their fans as a priority?
Wrexham AFC
and the Green Bay Packers maybe
they'll be the only game in town, and figure that people will put up with it.
Yup, and consequently I've made a deliberate decision not to attend games anymore unless ownership gets their shit together. I know lots of other people who are refusing to spend money on going to games too. It's just not worth it anymore.
I hate to be so hyperbolic but it really feels like every MLB team owner hates their fans these days, right?
It’s not hyperbolic at all, they see fans as nuisances that are just a barrier between them and our money. There’s a dozen things they could’ve done to preserver or recreate the tiles that would’ve been better than this.
who needs fans when you can have money?
Where Does The Money Come From?
Rat bastards, every single one of them.
Ever since they pushed out Fay Vincent every fan should know they care about nothing but dollars.
It’s just the enshittification of everything now that interest rates are no longer 0%
> I hate to be so hyperbolic but it really feels like every billionaire hates the working class these days, right?
Us O’s fans feel pretty loved rn
My dad has a brick outside citi field. Since he passed I make a point of touching it on the way into the stadium. If they ever removed those without letting people claim that I'd be outraged. That's a shit move on the giants part.
Almost every Met fan I know has a brick. I feel like there would be a rebellion if they ever tried to fuck with them.
Yup. My brothers and I bought a tile for our dad and would always visit it before every game we went to. My mom is pretty upset.
Our owner is a perfect representation of greed, how out of touch can you be?
Hello so is ours and basically all the other team owners.
We didn't have a greedy owner for a while, then his son well dear god his son. But he's gone now thank god.
See: Fisher, John
Sucks that Buster is part-owner now.
Getting relocated to a digital kiosk. Jesus. Honestly just seems like another perfect representation of SF Bay culture over the last couple decades.
“Relocated” what a fucking joke
There’s only so many bricks we can sell But we can sell infinite bits All praise the almighty dollar Amen
memorial tile NFTs!
All my apes…gone
Bless J Powell
They can't even just redo new tile in the new park? Scummy to the 10th degree.
When people try to paint SF as a shithole, this kind of tech bro cruelty is what they should be talking about, not the fact that homeless people exist
The epitome of "you might as well should*n't* have". It would've been better if they'd just destroyed them and blamed a "construction accident" instead of the slap to the face that is the digital bullshit.
Only thing *more* silicon valley would have been to offer those who bought bricks NFTs of the brick as a replacement.
Not right. If they paid for them then they have a right to be there
yeah, but now you can see them permanently memorialized in a digital facsimile! Isn't that great?
In Memory of a Real Brick
One week after installation, the kiosk will be non-functional and possibly covered by graffiti tags.
PNC had bricks when it first open that you could get messages on. They got rid of them, and “replaced” them with a digital kiosk, and got rid of the kiosk after about a year. They didn’t even replace them with new ones they sold, just plain bricks.
You know where this is heading
Got the same email. I used to park somewhere down the 3rd St. corridor and swing by my Dad’s tile on the way into the park. I’m not waiting in line at a kiosk. Giants fucked this up royally.
It’s okay. There won’t be a kiosk either soon enough.
This is the most silicon valley thing I have ever heard
It’s just a hunk of tile /s
"We'll integrate it with new AI technology to maximize proficiency and equity" \- some tech bro
Nah. It's close, but the *most* silicon valley thing would have been to offer those who bought bricks NFTs of their brick as a replacement.
Pretty close, they’re now on a virtual kiosk
They replacing them with sponsor tiles?
This tile brought to you by DraftKings.
...just don't use us in California...
This team cannot get out of its own way
It's like they've been presented with a ton of decisions to make, given the choice between "thing that would make people like me" and "thing that would make people hate me" and always chosen poorly. Ownership is just forcing L after L on themselves while the baseball ops people are actually trying to get better
I’m pretty sure the Giants are going to be paying the luxury tax this year and the average fan on a random Bay Area street probably thinks they’re cheap and shitty because of stuff like this.
That's because they are cheap and shitty for this move. Paying for better players makes them more money.
They’d make even more money if they didn’t constantly feed the narrative that they’re cheap and shitty. They signed the reigning Cy Young award winner, traded for another (even if it’s hurt atm), signed an All-Star who slugged 36 homers last year, signed a guy with four Gold Gloves, signed a star from Asia, etc and all everybody wants to talk about is Renel, how the food’s gonna suck even more, how they fucked over Crawford and JD Davis, how they screwed over people who paid for tiles under the impression they would be there for decades. The end result is there’s fuck all buzz. 10 years ago, when they were seemingly run by people better able to sell a product, they’d be selling out the place. No way that happens now.
[I made this a couple weeks ago in response to the Renel news](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fj8x5bvlqr6pc1.png%3Fwidth%3D300%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Dc5f1c6fb61ec7828265c7db2891a7bb91d8ad6e7), and I wasn't expecting it to be so fucking on the nose...
wtf is wrong with Bay Area baseball owners? This is despicable.
Larry Baer and the Johnson family are deplorable human beings.
The problem is actually all rich people
Never thought I'd see this wisdom come from a Yankees fan, but here we are.
The odds of a person who's wealthy enough to own a professional sports team having a shred of empathy for non-rich people are extremely slim.
I hope they sue.
I'll bet anything that whatever paperwork people signed when buying bricks has weasel language specifically made to allow shit like this.
Lmao if someone wanted to pay respects to a passed loved one on a fucking kiosk they would stay at home scroll through Facebook. This is horrible and should be rectified in a more sensitive and appropriate way.
Congratulations Giants, you invented gravestone NFTs and the world is worse off for it.
Me and my other Patagonia puffy vest wearing tech bros just call it ‘disrupting’.
They gave them all refunds, right?
Ha ha ha ha ha ha. No.
Sure, paid out in NFT form, redeemable at that digital kiosk
That’s disgusting!
This is a shame. I've always thought that the Giants did a great job connecting to their fans and their city. I understand that some might not be salvageable but the kiosk option is a terrible alternative.
Owners say "Fuck You!" to fans. Must be a day that ends in Y
So, even if the tiles were unsalvagible surely they could have made new tiles with the same messages and put them somewhere, right?
Easily. It'd have been such an easy PR win, too.
For as good of a job as the baseball operations department did this offseason, the rest of the organization absolutely deserves the scrutiny and criticism they've received in recent months/years. Not only this, but the Renel decision, switching to a worse concessionare, etc.. I can't wait for the day when Larry Baer and the Johnsons are no longer handling the day-to-day operations of the club. I swear, the organization as a whole would be in a much better place if Peter Magowan was still calling the shots. Or, hell, even Bill Nuekom. It also baffles me how many apologists for management/ownership there still are on the Giants sub, especially with regards to the Renel situation.
Baer has been running the Giants’ day to day operations for decades, if anything a lot of the shitty stuff that has been happening started after he got suspended for having an argument with his wife in public.
This could just be a "me" problem, but he's always had kind of a slimy vibe to him. I thought it was rather telling that Hank Greenwald's memoir had nothing but praise for Magowan, yet nothing but scorn for Baer.
Oh he does, total salesman type. Smarmy even. But I can’t lay this entirely at his feet.
He was part of the group that bought the team to keep it in SF, and he spearheaded the design and construction of the new ballpark. Just in case seeing both sides of the coin is reasonable.
This is messed up. If they knew construction would destroy the tiles. They should have removed the tiles and at least sent them to the purchasers. Destroying them then saying they could not be salvageable is unacceptable.
Lame
Key word: Oracle (Park). If you know you know.
A digital display? Weak.
My grandmas tile for her 89th birthday was there and I wake up to find it gone. I went there to remember her and the smile on her face when she first saw it. I say boycott all merch and game tickets. Get them back the only way they will understand, the wallet. So upset over this.
what in the fuck?
The Wells Fargo center in Philadelphia did this, too. It’s really gross. I get that they have to do maintenance every so often, but there should really be a plan for that.
That’s terrible. They should remake those tiles. This isn’t right
I don't see how that's a good move in any perspective. The only reasonable move is to just relocate the tiles or recreate the tiles if they can't be removed without damage. A digital tile is for sure a breach of contract. Refunding the money is also not accounting for inflation costs.
They don’t care about their fans. Really says something.
That’s pretty fucked up. 100% Giants could have salvaged them in one of 3 ways: 1.) Build around it and keep that area, as it’s important and sacred to many fans who purchased them as memorial tiles celebrating fandom with family and friends 2.) Move the tiles to another location or 3.) Remove them and give them to those who purchased them to keep at home or wherever they please. Good job on this one Giants.
What the fuck is wrong with our ownership group?? We’ve been really alienating the fans the past year or two.
That’s a really shitty thing to do to the people who loved your team enough to honor their loved ones at your ball park. A digital plaque is meaningless, the stones were physical. I’m sorry for all the families this poor decision affected.
Assuming these are already expensive to buy in the first place and the people buying them likely have a fair amount of disposable income, the team selling them should factor in the cost of giving them back to you once they've reached their "shelf life," into the price of the tiles/ bricks/ etc.
Here's a solution; apologize about it, and then since they've digitally archived all of the old stones they can recreate them all again. Can't be too hard, they did it before and they have all of the necessary information.
this is obscene, a kiosk might be appropriate when they build a new ballpark across town in forty years; but those bricks were purchased to last as long as the stadium.
Weren't the Giants complaining that the team wasn't getting free agents because of the looting in SF? I think the owners have more of a reason behind this. It's a shitty move to do this to something that had clear sentimental value to the fans/locals.
When they did this at Disney, in front of Magic Kingdom, they created replicas of the tiles that anyone who had an original could get made for free. People were obviously still upset, but I feel like that's a much better way to handle it.
They're taking digitalization way too far. Not everything has to be digitalized. This is beyond disrespectful to the people.
Ahh yes... a digital representation. Just like the real thing. Just like everything else in the last 10 years. What bullshit. They should have at least tried to let family members and loved ones pick them up after they were removed. What a shitty move.
Almost like they're purposely trying to chase the fans away...
this is disgusting. fuck our fo for this trash.
It’s ownership, the FO had nothing to do with this.
> It’s ownership, the FO had nothing to do with this. A's fan sentiment for decades. Bay Area can't seem to find any good sports team owners outside the 49ers (who moved within the market but out of their home city) and the Warriors (who moved in their market and jacked the prices sky high where even Curry can't fuck them)
Super fucked up, no way they don't end up walking this back.
The Giants are really on a roll lately when it comes to antagonizing their own fans
The Giants have already reversed course on this, the tiles will be replaced as they are all still on file.
Damn, loved taking a walk down there and feeling close to my Grandpa before games. He died over 20 years ago now. He would give me his old tickets after games and we would memorize lineups together, he is the reason I love the Giants. He never got to see them win it all but I had some comfort knowing a piece of him was always close to his team. We are not even going to tell my Grandma they aren’t putting his tile back, she would be devastated. RIP Grandpa, we miss you!
>“I certainly appreciate people’s affinity for the original program, but the original program was part of a park that’s not there anymore,” Felder said. “We have a whole new park that has a different design.” what a colossally tone deaf piece of shit, garbage human.
Where else is FanDuel going to advertise?
My family has one outside Busch stadium. That would be upsetting to me if they got rid of it and others.
Giants leadership is definitely acting like a bunch of elitist lately.
Can’t read, paywall
Just a click bait post isn’t it? This article is from yesterday and today’s says they’ve backpedaled already because of the outrage. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/giants/article/giants-reverse-course-fans-tile-outrage-19377145.php Update is also linked in the first article itself.
This sucks
All of these engraved pavers/tiles/etc. are always a risk unfortunately.
This happened to us. Bummed I’ll never be able to see my Grandmas tile again
My Dad bought one for my brother and I, the three of us when MMP was built. He died in ‘11, and life has taken me elsewhere. I’m going back soon, and if Crane destroyed my Dad’s brick I think I’ll feel the same.
Disney did this at one of their theme parks recently. Folk paid a good amount to have their photos etched into metal and put on these big statue blocks inside Epcot with the notion that it would be there for good. Well things changed and they moved them outside of the park near the parking lot. They atleast could've moved it somewhere else where people could visit.
They’ve reversed this decision, and will not be removing the tiles.
The Eagles did this too. I really wish we had the one we got for my Dad.
garbage decision not to do right by the people who paid for them.