page_title: Fresno Giants
section_title: Giants Affiliation
hierarchical_section_title: Fresno Giants / Giants Affiliation
caption_attribution_description: English: 1958-1984 logo
context_page_description: The Fresno Giants were a minor league baseball team that played in the California League from 1941–1988. The team was based in Fresno, California.
context_section_description: In 1958, the team entered into a working agreement with the San Francisco Giants, who had moved from New York the previous winter, and were renamed the Fresno Giants, winning the California League pennant in their inaugural year.
  In 1963, the entire minor league system was reorganized, with the California League granted Class A status for the first time. As a Class A team, the Fresno Giants won championships in 1964, 1968, 1974, 1985 and 1987.  With the 1987 championship, Fresno tied Modesto for most California League championships (9) up to that time in the history of the league. On August 8, 1985, Fresno became the first California League franchise to win 3,000 games (Source: Bill Weiss).  Fresno hosted the California League All-Star game in 1986 and 1987 at Euless Park.
  The Greater Fresno Youth Foundation operated the Fresno Giants and hosted an annual hot stove league dinner in the winter.  The San Francisco Giants, Oakland A's, Los Angeles Dodgers and other teams sent players and coaches to the dinner regularly as part of their winter hot stove league tours. The Greater Fresno Youth Foundation had two general managers during the time it owned the team.  Tom McGurn ran the ballclub (source: Fresno Bee death notice, October 24, 1989, retrieved July 11, 2014) from 1957 to 1978.  In those days, running a minor league baseball operation was a one-man job.  Bill Thompson, who had formerly teamed with Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons announcing San Francisco Giants radio broadcasts from 1965–1975, was hired as general manager in 1978 and was there when the Greater Fresno Youth Foundation sold the team to Modesto-based Save Mart Supermarkets president Bob Piccinini in 1982.  As minor league operations became more sophisticated and required more management, Piccinini and Thompson hired an assistant general manager, Curt Goldgrabe in 1983, and later Brian Pickering in 1987. Thompson remained general manager until Piccinini sold the Fresno franchise following the 1987 season. (In 1999, Piccinini led an unsuccessful attempt to buy the Oakland A’s.)
  An account of the rest of the ownership story of the Fresno Giants is found in a Fresno Bee sports article from September 13, 1988:
  ″Piccinini sold the team to Bill Yuill, a Canadian media mogul, for a reported $560,000 on September 15, 1987.  After the 46-year-old Euless grandstand was condemned because of structural defects and the team lost its long working agreement with the San Francisco Giants, Yuill reportedly sold it to Dave Kramer, a Van Nuys businessman, for $615,000 in 1988.
  Kramer suffered major financial losses as the team was forced to rent portable bleachers and trailers to house its dressing rooms, concessions and offices at Euless.  In addition, the Fresno Suns operated as a co-op, with players supplied by several major league clubs and the Hanshin Tigers of Japan.″
  Up to 1988, Fresno and the San Francisco Giants held the longest continuous working agreement in all of minor league baseball, 30 years (Source: San Francisco Giants publicity department).  Without a working agreement, operating independently as the Fresno Suns in 1988, and lacking an adequate park, the team finished near the bottom of the standings and drew only 34,734 patrons, less than half the league average. The franchise was bought by Joe Buzas, who moved it to Salinas for the 1989 season.
  Minor league baseball returned to Fresno in 1998, when the owners of the Tucson Toros of the AAA Pacific Coast League moved their franchise to Fresno and renamed it the Fresno Grizzlies, where it once again became a San Francisco Giants affiliate.  Grizzlies games were played at Pete Beiden Field on the Fresno State campus until a new downtown ballpark, Chukchansi Park, was finished for the 2002 season.
caption: 1958–1984 logo
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