The 1957 PCL season faced uncertainty about the impending "invasion of major league baseball" in 1958. While the meetings, wheeling and dealing and politics took place off the diamond, the historic San Francisco Seals, a charter member of the Golden Era of the league, 1903-1957, played baseball and clinched the pennant two days before the season ended. We follow this team one game at a time as players faced historic rivals from spring training through the final game of the era. Readers experience minor league baseball as it was more than fifty years ago when there were no agents, next year's contract was based on this year's performance, and PCL teams consisted of a blend of major league veterans and minor leaguers on the cusp. The Pacific Coast League was no ordinary league, the Seals were no ordinary team, and 1957 was no ordinary season.

The San Francisco Seals were members of baseball's Pacific Coast League from 1903 until 1958. Arguably the most successful minor league franchise ever, the Seals held the minor league attendance record from 1946 until it was broken by Louisville in the 1980s, and remained independently owned until 1956. The Seals were also Joe DiMaggio's first team and many another major league star was on the team's roster on his climb up the ranks. This work is a collection of oral histories of players who took the field for the Seals from 1946 through 1957, just before the Giants came to San Francisco and when the Seals played their final game. Ferris Fain said of the 1946 Seals, "I just think that that was the best ballclub that I've ever played on, including major league. I mean, as a team." Frank Seward, Don Trower, Jack Brewer, Roy Nicely, Neill Sheridan, Joe Brovia, Bill Werle, Con Dempsey, Dario Lodigiani, Lou Burdette, Ed Cereghino, Bill Bradford, Reno Cheso, Nini Tornay, Jerry Zuvela, Leo Righetti, Jim Westlake, Ted Beard, Chuck Stevens, Bob DiPietro, Don Lenhardt, Riverboat Smith, Jack Spring, and Bert Thiel also reminisce about their careers with the Seals.

For more than half a century, San Francisco Seals baseball was a fertile source of future major league players, with a legacy firmly grounded in the annals of Pacific Coast League baseball. Paul and Lloyd Waner, Ping Bodie, Earl Averill, William Kamm, Ferris Fain, Harry Heilmann, Smead Jolley, Lefty ODoul, Frankie Crosetti, the DiMaggio brothers (Joe, Vince, and Dom), Larry Jansen, and others all launched their careers as Seals. From 1903 to 1957, the Seals were the toast of the town, offering tight pennant races and intense games with the Oakland Oakstheir cross-bay rivalswhile playing at Recreation Park and Seals Stadium. In almost 6 decades, the Seals won 11 pennants and 4 Governors Cups. They survived the earthquake and fire of 1906, the Great Depression, and two world wars. Never forgotten will be Smead Jolley, who in 1928 had what many consider the best all-around season in PCL history by hitting .404 and winning the Triple Crown; Gus Suhrs record-breaking 51 homeruns in 1929; Joe DiMaggios 61-game hitting streak during his 1933 rookie season; and pitcher Bob Joyces 31 victories and 35 complete games in 1945.

In 1903, a small league in California defied Organized Baseball by adding teams in Portland and Seattle to become the strongest minor league of the twentieth century. Calling itself the Pacific Coast League, this outlaw association frequently outdrew its major league counterparts and continued to challenge the authority of Organized Baseball until the majors expanded into California in 1958. The Pacific Coast League introduced the world to Joe, Vince and Dom DiMaggio, Paul and Lloyd Waner, Ted Williams, Tony Lazzeri, Lefty O’Doul, Mickey Cochrane, Bobby Doerr, and many other baseball stars, all of whom originally signed with PCL teams. This thorough history of the Pacific Coast League chronicles its foremost personalities, governance, and contentious relationship with the majors, proving that the history of the game involves far more than the happenings in the American and National leagues.

"An biography of perhaps the most significant and controversial player in baseball history, Ty Cobb, drawing in part on newly discovered letters and documents"--

In 1957 Horace Stoneham took his Giants of New York baseball team and headed west, starting a gold rush with bats and balls rather than pans and mines. But San Francisco already had a team, the Seals of the Pacific Coast League, and West Coast fans had to learn to embrace the newcomers. Starting with the franchise’s earliest days and following the team up to recent World Series glory, Home Team chronicles the story of the Giants and their often topsy-turvy relationship with the city of San Francisco. Robert F. Garratt shines light on those who worked behind the scenes in the story of West Coast baseball: the politicians, businessmen, and owners who were instrumental in the club’s history. Home Team presents Stoneham, often left in the shadow of Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley, as a true baseball pioneer in his willingness to sign black and Latino players and his recruitment of the first Japanese player in the Major Leagues, making the Giants one of the most integrated teams in baseball in the early 1960s. Garratt also records the turbulent times, poor results, declining attendance, two near-moves away from California, and the role of post-Stoneham owners Bob Lurie and Peter Magowan in the Giants’ eventual reemergence as a baseball powerhouse. Garratt’s superb history of this great ball club makes the Giants’ story one of the most compelling of all Major League franchises.